Select, Display, and Sell: Curation practices in the bookshop

Bookstores are one of the most visible places for books in the public space. No bookstore can ever offer every book available; rather it is in its selection that each bookstore is unique. Value, writes Michael Bhaskar in Curation (2016), no longer resides in access, but in curation – in selecting and arranging. The article argues that curating practices in bookstores can be mapped from four main aspects: space, selection, display, and experience. In order to understand the day-to-day practices in a bookstore, and the different form of curation that takes place, an ethnographic observation study was performed. The results in this study point to the bookstore being a place where more than books are sold: there is also selling the experience and sensation of being in a bookstore. In the borderlands of culture and commerce, bookstores are important curators of books.