If there’s some­thing Philadel­phi­a’s real­ly miss­ing, it’s a book­store like the Strand. What makes the Strand great is the same thing that used to make some record stores great: pro­mos. We need some­thing like this. I thought Philadel­phia Book Com­pa­ny might be the answer, but it isn’t yet.

When I wan­dered into the ware­house on Frank­ford, it looked promis­ing. There are book dis­plays in the cen­ter of the space sur­round­ed by met­al book­shelves stacked high with who knows what. It seemed like the answer to my prayers. Who knew that uwishunu would lead me astray?

But it’s not real­ly uwishunu’s fault, at least not entire­ly. It’s the Philadel­phia Book Com­pa­ny’s web­site, which is essen­tial­ly a mas­sive affil­i­ate fun­nel for Ama­zon. What hap­pened was I had searched a few titles–right now I’m look­ing to pick up David Car­r’s mem­oir, Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise, George Lewis’ book about A.A.C.M., and Mark’s friend’s book about trib­ute bands–and they all appeared in the search results! Lit­tle did I know I’d over­looked the note that states that any book not found in their inven­to­ry returns Ama­zon search results. Bummer.

Philadel­phi­a’s lit­er­ary Shangri-La remains a myth, at least for now. I hold out hope that some dar­ing entre­pre­neur will open a used book­store that’s more than a garbage heap for books, but with the way things are going for the pub­lish­ing indus­try, it’s prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before review copies become a thing of the past, and that inde­pen­dent book­stores, which are already strug­gling to sur­vive, qui­et­ly slip off, too.