The article is from 2021, but this town is still devoted almost entirely to book stores. Here's a recent YouTube video about Hobart:
A long time ago I used to really enjoy visiting used book stores in New York City, in the small towns where I lived, and around the country when I travelled. I thought those day were over.
I am going to plan a trip in the near future and post about it.
I was also a great frequenter of used bookstores. Used to be that I always knew where each one in town was. I spent a lot of time in those stores. It was often how I discovered new books and authors.
Now it's all on the internet. Vastly more, but doesn't smell as nice.
I'm going to visit the town, but maybe I'm spoiled by the vast selection and ease of searching on the internet. My attention span might be too short to wander dusty shelves.
How do they stay economically sustainable?
every book ever written will need to be acquired and scanned by AI companies. Many old and rare books live with the old bookstores.
I thought the industry for physical books would have died - but it seems to have built up a recent sprint, at least until everything humanity has ever recorded is encoded in the training set.
It has to be a labor of love, although the Catskills gets a good year round tourist crowd from NYC, where there are probably more book collectors than anywhere else. The antiquarian crowd.
🔗 Privacy-friendly: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=ZtkkZDpeiQA