The saddest truth: Books sell online

Sometimes my desire to keep a good book alive competes with another of my main desires, which is to help support Spokane-area booksellers. And then both those conflict with my main objective, which is to serve readers of The Spokesman-Review .

Case in point: The Spokesman-Review Book Club ’s November reading choice, Moritz Thomsen’s “The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers.” Following my feature story on the book in Sunday’s newspaper, one local bookseller had to turn away a reader who couldn’t find the book on his shelves. Turns out the book isn’t in any of the area’s major stores. And because of the way the bookselling business works, none of the stores can get the book easily through their distributors .

Yet the book is widely available. You just have to go online. Amazon.com has any number of copies, new and used. Portland’s Powell’s Books had six on hand just a half hour ago, four of them new. And a representative for the New York-based bookseller Longitude Books said that he could get as many copies as I might need through the publisher, Graywolf Press.

Moral: “The Saddest Pleasure” lives, and the bookselling business continues to change.