Local literary star Matt Briggs chimes in on Heidi's Elliott Bay take down.

And, well, he agrees:

8. Matt Briggs says:

This is a great piece. Thanks for posting it. I agree. I hope the business of Elliott Bay survives the move and does well in the new space. Maybe the move will force the bookstore to consider what it has, how to make the most of it, and how to focus its business in light of still being in the shadow of Amazon and now in a city with very focused bookstores such as Pilot and Open Books. (I’m saying this though as a writer and reader and person who likes books, ebooks, whatever involves written things, not as a retailer or even a business person. You wouldn’t want me to run your business.) The reading series alone is an institution. I also hope a business that understands new media (including the changes in the book business) opens up shop in Elliott Bay’s old space. @6 … it isn’t armchair quarter-backing; this piece points out the painfully obvious: Elliott Bay in its current incarnation has the bare minimum of a Web presence — and a move isn’t going to fix its current lack of presence on the Web. The lack of a thoughtful online presence indicates a kind of willful avoidance of the changes in the book world and also a weird unwillingness to make the most of Elliott Bay’s considerable assets — that is a huge community of book readers, a literate and thoughtful staff capable of writing good information about books, and the steady stream of great readings (and the implication then that they have a wide community of author who could provide a lot of support to any on-line endeavor.) Twitter! Elliott Bay doesn’t even a blog for crying out loud. Links on their old site used to break regularly. Moving, which may good for them I don’t know, seems to focus on the physical aspects of the store and I think most likely will detract from them addressing the lack of their Web presence. Yeah. They need a lot more than twitter or a blog, but those things would be a start.

12/12/2009 at 1:19 pm