I want to make this crystal clear: I love bookstores. I love going to them and checking out the bookshelves and the magazine racks, and finding some good things to read. I discovered a bunch of books and magazine because of bookstores, including the .net Magazine, the best web development magazine out there. That being said, I find more and more often that I go into bookstores and leave empty handed. Here’s why.

Let me start off by saying that even though I have a Kindle and read magazines on my tablet from time to time, sometimes there is just no substitute for a real, physical book. This is especially true of programming and web development books, which I tend to reference a lot so I prefer the physical copy to its digital counterpart. I also have a pretty nice bookshelf that would go to waste if I didn’t keep buying print books. So I truly enjoy going into bookstores in hopes of finding something new to read, whether it be a coding book, fiction, or a new magazine. But as I said in the intro, I tend to go into bookstores with the intention of buying a book, and end up leaving empty handed. The culprit for this is technology as a whole, specifically smart phones, the Internet, and e-readers.

(more…)