Disappearing Libraries

During her stay in Warsaw, an American journalist was amazed that we had so many libraries. There is nothing like it back home. It seemed like a paradox, because it was right when yet another library in Warsaw was being closed. In its window, a notice with the writing “we’re closing due to rent prices” on it. It reminded me of my first visit to the U.S. in 2001, when I went to the bookstore Barnes & Noble. I had the feeling that it was some new, better world, created for readers, who stayed there well into the night on soft carpets and armchairs drinking coffee and reading. I wondered if we’d ever get anything like that.

Lo and behold, it arrived — and pretty quickly. And as it turns out, every single bookstore nowadays has to be a media-rich store, or a shop with home items; doing anything else makes it very difficult to stay in business. In my neighborhood, several bookstores closed down, and while one was left open, I’m not particularly fond of it because you can sometimes find anti-Semitic books in the windows. Going to Empik isn’t really enjoyable, because asking the employees for help will just give you confused stares in return: Robert Walser? Isn’t that the dieting guy? The place that used to be called Traffic I liked going to. I know that they didn’t pay their employees, but at least they had the right idea about books. The best used to be Czytelnik, where chatting with ladies used to be fun. Now, you have to get your specialist literature from Libra and Prus in Krakow’s Przedmieście — which, most of the time, you have to order anyway. For coffee with a book, you go to Tarabuka, while in Wrocław, as we all know, the best place to go is to Tajny Komplet, where you can find everything, and there’s coffee and readers. Failing that, there’s always the Internet. You can find Robert Walser without any issues — and not the one [who writes] about diets. The question remains: What next?

The Polish Book Society is readying a project to fix the prices of books (for a given period of time) by the publisher; it will mean that the big guys in the business won’t be able to lower their prices. Will it help small bookstores? That is being debated heatedly. The issue of rent is entirely up to local authorities. In Poland, the giants in the business are selling the most; they boast of rising sales, but the desperate flooding of kitchenware into Empik seems to indicate that it’s not the books that are making them money. Empik closed their bookstore in Krakow’s Old Town, while the other big player, Matras, was just put up for sale.

Optimists say that all that matters these days is the idea: The formula for having a shop with books is over and it’s time for something new. Specializing is what seems to work. For instance, Cafe Kredka is bookstore with books for children plus a play area; Wrzenie świata is a bookstore with news coverage. In Łódź, the club Niebostan has an entire wall dedicated to books which were painstakingly chosen. In the West, there was a kind of fashion for selling books in elegant boutiques. Since now you can buy everything in bookstores, it means that books are everywhere in shops like Rossman and clothing shops. It’s great that in cities, places like Tajny Komplet or Niebostan are popping up. But what about in smaller towns? What’s really needed is a plan with support from the top. Books aren’t a commodity like pans. The West has a number of programs designed to help independent bookstores; it’s something that we won’t be able to do without.

And by the by, where do you guy guys to buy your books?