The Incredible Shrinking Technology Book Section
Shelf space for technology books in book stores seems to be shrinking.
For thirty-five years, I have been a retail book store junkie. I have easily spent hundreds of hours walking through the technology sections of book stores over the years. In the process, I have found and bought many amazing books. In the 1990s and early 2000s, books stores I frequented would include Borders, Barnes and Noble, Foyles (London) and other independent book stores like Politics and Prose in Washington D.C. I still occasionally drop in to a Barnes and Noble for coffee and to see what has become of the technology section. I have been fairly disappointed with the rapid decline in availability of technology books in book stores since the pandemic. The technology sections continue to shrink, and recently was so hard to find at my local book store, I thought maybe it had completely disappeared. I finally found it after refusing to give up hope. The picture of the technology section I found is above.
My Book Shelves are Almost Full
The resulting benefit of having been a book store junkie for so long is that I have an amazing technology book shelf at home. The variety and age of technology books varies from the 1980s to released in 2025. I have some older books outside of the tech space, like poetry, history, jokes, cookbooks, yearbooks, but the technology books fill the most cubbies on my book shelf.
As a new Java programming book author myself, I expected and planned on being disappointed by the technology section of my local retail book store. I do not expect I will ever see my book on the bookshelf there. I saw the post-pandemic technology book shelf shrinking happening in real time. Literally two full rows of book shelves in 2019 consolidated down to a single book shelf with mostly books “for dummies” and books from No Starch Press in 2025. I have a few titles from both publishers on my book shelf.
Bad Medicine
I had a hard time finding any Java programming books on the shelf of my local book store. Then I looked at the shelf right next to the Technology section which was labeled “Medicine.” I think the title of the shelf says all that needs to to be said. Queue the Bon Jovi song. This is a tough pill for a programming book author to swallow. If you’re planning or thinking of becoming a programming book author, it’s best to set your expectations accordingly. Check out your own local book stores to confirm, as it is possible my experience with technology book shelves is a statistical anomaly. I’ve had to explain to family and friends that it is very unlikely that my book will ever be found on a retail book store shelf. I am much more hopeful for my book to appear in my local library, especially once I offer to donate a copy.
I find it hard to blame book stores for the sparse number of technology and programming books on their shelves. I’m pretty sure they put up books that sell. If tech books aren’t selling, it’s most likely because there are not enough tech folks going to buy programming books in retail book stores. This is not for a lack of some amazing technical books having been written over the years. I know this because I have bought some of them for my own bookshelf.
Searching for Retail Book Stores with Tech Books
I’ve only sampled a few book stores that are near where I live, or occasionally when I travel. The experience of shrinking technology book sections has been fairly consistent so far. I used to go to Foyles book store in London and scan the technology section for great books when I lived in London in 2004. They had an amazing selection. I haven’t been in London since 2014 so am not sure how the past decade has impacted Foyles.
If you know of any book stores that have a decent selection of technology books, regardless of city, state, country, planet, please leave a comment on this blog.
I would love to visit book stores that still stock great works (old and new) on their book shelves. Maybe collectively we can help bring some foot traffic and business to any retail book stores that stock important technology works, before finding and buying books online is the only option that is available. That’s if it is not already too late.
Thank you for reading!
I am the creator of and committer for the Eclipse Collections OSS project, which is managed at the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse Collections is open for contributions. I am also the author of the book, Eclipse Collections Categorically: Level up your programming game.
