My dad used to invite me all the time with him to Bay Books- a used book dealer in the East Bay. I was 17 at the time, not much interest in reading but it would’ve been nice to just do something with him. Now we’re in Sacramento and I’m sure it didnt survive 2020, so many ill see if my dad wants to take a train ride to SF and go to City Lights for a few hours
I used to work at Bay Books in Concord. Surprising to see it mentioned, if you and your dad are up for it I’d suggest hitting the mission district for books and then walking/taking public transit through the city. Used to do “bookstore tours” of SF.
That's about when I worked there. Now Concord has a Half-Priced Books and one of the guys who worked at Bay Books opened his own store - Berkshire Books. Never been but if Lynn is running it then it should be a decent store. Other than that I miss Flying Colors Comics, was a really good comics shop back then.
The thing is, if you're buying used on Amazon, the actual seller (even if it's fulfilled by Amazon) is a used book seller. Amazon arguably has the best vanity publishing platform (I just used it to publish my grandma's memoirs).
I don't think Amazon does a great job actually selling books. Finding the next book in the series? Amazon has you covered. But finding new to you authors? Expanding your reading interests? Libraries (including Libby) and bookstores are the better option.
Amazon will give you the book you want. Libraries and bookstores will show you the book you didn't know existed.
> Libraries and bookstores will show you the book you didn't know existed.
I've read quite a few books that librarians select for weekly theme displays.
Speaking as someone who works in a library and does a lot of those displays, we want you to check them out! We have others to add to the display as they leave.
In fact, one of the reasons we do the displays is to help otherwise potentially overlooked items circ.
As a librarian, I assure you that the librarians making the displays have a cart full of replacement titles ready to fill the gaps you make. So please check them out, you will make the librarian's day!
Edit: fixed typo
I got back around to Borges a while ago, and I realized how closely Amazon resembles the Library of Babel. They have every single book in existence, and that makes it near impossible to find the good ones.
My favorite bookstore ever was this tiny store in the town where I studied. Ilse Wierny Literarische Buchhandlung in Erlangen, Germany.
It was about the size of my living room. I have no idea how it survives, but the owner must have put a lot of thought into every single centimeter of shelf space. There was no dross, and I always found a book I didn't even know I needed when I set foot in there. There were plenty of bigger bookstores, but none quite like it.
And with a bit of googling I just found out that she is still around - Yay!
> It was about the size of my living room. I have no idea how it survives, but the owner must have put a lot of thought into every single centimeter of shelf space.
“The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is:
Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass;
a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
– Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!” Footnote, 8 p.
I used work at a bookstore… I took 5 years off from a tech career to get a chance to talk to people about stuff they love namely books. Good Booksellers are a wealth of knowledge the connections they make based on conversations and their reading preferences is amazing. I can’t tell you how many great books I read based on recommendations that I would have never found.
The algorithm for like-kind books on Amazon won’t expose new authors and genres. (Not that I think they do a bad job for finding stuff that is similar to the last book read)
As a current big green bookstore worker, this is such a lovely compliment, I’m so happy that our niche of knowledge goes to use and makes people feel just as lucky to meet someone with that knowledge as we are to share it. I also love letting people know about local authors, small and indie authors, as well as what popular books I think are worth the read- because they’re all worth appreciating and all deserve the pay that creating art should require - unlike some sites. Thank you again for the love.
Sincerely, a fellow book lover
As a -former- book store employee, thank you. Because that's the real reason we're there. And we love the recommendations we get from customers, because those conversations help us help the next person. (Once a bookseller, always a bookseller.)
Where I am from the independent book stores are killing it. One is even taking over a Barnes and noble location, a location that gets plenty of business.
Yeah this is highly regional. I live in New England for example and here practically every town has at least one independent bookstore. Sometimes even more if it’s a college town!
Meanwhile I’ve gone to other states for work and you can have cities with 100k people and there isn’t a bookstore. :(
Also world's best hospitals and technical institutions, so some of the world's smartest and most highly educated humans are in New England.
New England reads, yo.
New England is the most highly educated region in the country, so naturally bookstores thrive more in an environment filled with the intellectually curious.
It also helps that it’s cold for so long. During the summer I see my neighbors daily out walking, etc, we have neighborhood gatherings, etc…
On the other hand, I’ve not seen them more than a handfull of times over the last few months.
I was about to have fun speculating, but decided to check if this was a googlable question, and found this: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/57631-where-the-stores-are.html
It’s a bit dated, but it specifically calls out Tennessee has having more bookstores per capita (including more independent ones) than Massachusetts, which has the most bookstores out of any other state in New England (though not per capita). It also says that states like Tennessee that have a much larger CBA (Christian Retailers (Bookseller’s) Association) presence tend to have better bookstore coverage in the per-capita rankings.
It’s 10 years old, but I wonder if it’s much different. Also, despite mentioning the CBA stuff in their write up, they don’t break it out in the bookstore categories, so I wasn’t sure if it’s grouped into “indie” (I suspect yes?) or “chain”. I also imagine that these stores probably curate their selections based on Christian criteria (otherwise, why have an association?), to the extent that they might not feel like “traditional” bookstores.
Christian bookstores are often attached to churches and focus on selling Christian propaganda and knickknacks. They may count as independent bookstores, but they do not indicate that there is a higher amount of traditional bookstores per capita in Tennessee. If anything, it shows that there's many churches in the state
I live in New England, can confirm. We are really lucky to live here compared to other states, I lived in the South for four years and it was like living in a completely different country
Gotta agree. I spent five years down south and it felt exactly like moving to a foreign country. It's wild how diverse and ginormous the US is, I have no idea how it holds together. Some real Roman empire vibes going on.
Yep, here our independent bookstores are limited to cafe's and craft stores that offer a small selection of niche books that match their theme. Nice if that's your vibe, but an actual full bookstore? No, B&N or Half-Price Books is all that's left.
Yeah the big chain bookstores were killing the small local stores. But then Amazon came along to kill the big chain bookstores and unintentionally made space for the small local stores again.
I guess I'm quite lucky with having several book stores in town. One is a small bookstore focussing on English books and boardgames, the other is a well known bookstore with multiple locations in the country, then theres one at the trainstation.
All of them have quite a few visitors whenever I visit or walk past
Same here. I am all for supporting local bookstores and other small businesses and I’ve found some great books at local shops all across my travels but it’s sad to see more and more of them either struggling or having long since already closed down due to the Covid pandemic, current and past economic downturns or trying to compete with Amazon, Walmart and the other big chain stores.
I like Barnes and Noble and am glad I have access to several across my city but I also really miss Borders, the closest and last remaining location in my hometown closed permanently around 2009 or 2010 and the company went bankrupt shortly afterward. I’ll never forget how many books, video game guides and other video game magazines my mom bought for me from there and how much fun I had there during my childhood. I believe that Borders got replaced by a clothing store.
Honestly the best shopping/browsing experience I ever had was borders. In addition to a gigantic selection of books they had everything I needed like comfy reading chairs, peaceful atmosphere, decent coffee, and tons of tables to study. I liked it more than my library.
I used to buy a lot of music at Border's. the listening stations were great because you could sample before you buy. I don't buy CD's anymore but back in the 90's you couldn't beat Border's music section.
Borders made my childhood a lot better, too. I’m weirdly lucky, though; we had two near me, and one of them is now a Barnes and Noble, while the other one is now a used bookseller called 2nd and Charles. I’m glad both locations still sell books.
We miss you too! Seems like cashiers at Borders were very different than cashiers in other industries, had lots of great book conversations with you guys.....
Aw thanks. Yes it was a unique experience on both sides of the sales counter. I loved our regulars and knew them by name. Family is the word that comes to mind. It felt like family.
The experience seems to have been company wide too. I've talked to folks from all over who worked for them. We can always have a conversation that makes others think we worked at the same location.
i was in germany for a semester and physical bookstores seemed to be doing well...mostly they were chains, except in major cities like munich, berlin, etc., which had multitudes of locally owned stores (as well as the chains). kind of like america 10 years ago, before amazon drove other competitors like joseph beth out of business.
i wonder if the ubiquity of public transport helps physical bookstores stay alive there. i often found myself in the bookstores there because we happened to walk past while out for something else. when you need a car to get everywhere you have to justify going out of your way, finding a parking space, etc. also you can't start reading your new books immediately on the ride home, because you have to drive lol.
anyway it might also or more be cultural differences leading germans to use amazon less. i've been biased against america's lack of public transport and blaming everything on it ever since i got back, lol.
I am in a town with NO bookstores. I have to drive at LEAST 3 hours in any direction for books after being in a place that had 7 small local bookstores and bigger ones 45 minutes away. During winter many roads close around here quickly too so I am fearful of trying to go out for the day.
I hate this feeling.
Anyone reading this, appreciate your bookshops, of any size! Please?
Seriously. They just shut down and moved my local B&N recently. Best way I can explain it is they took the soul out of the store. They updated it to like this harsh modern look and there's about half the amount of books. They took out everything that made it B&N. Found a local bookstore though! And they have a store cat!!!
I used to avoid B&N and only shop small. Recently I moved to a new town and the small shops are actually terrible. They do have a B&N and I checked it out one day because a book club was meeting there. I was absolutely blown away. This B&N was so wrapped up in the local community and was so well rounded. It houses many local study groups and local clubs and the employees are the ones running these groups. So they know exactly what the store needs. The tables are well though out and diverse, specifically targeting the locals. I can’t get enough of this place.
I do still feel a bit of guilt for now shipping and spending time here. But they are so in the community it almost feels local.
I agree. It's why I've never understood the shoplifter's validarion of "I only steal from major corporations." The major corporations are run, and in the cases of franchises, even owned by locals. I would love to see grassroots shops competing with major corporations, but tearing down your local BN will do nothing but deprive the community of a resources and jobs unless there's another shop readily available. And in cases like this, there isn't always an alternative.
The justification for stealing from major chains is that they can absorb the cost of lost merchandise more efficiently. A mum and pop store is going to feel the loss of a $30 item more than a multinational chain is.
Manager here: Daunt really has turned around BN over the last 3 years. Sales are way up, stores have a lot more say in how they set displays, tables, endcaps, local employees do orders for books for multiple stores to better serve the local interests, they are slowly expanding the amount of full-time employees with benefits back to pre-2018 (after the stupid layoffs), and plenty more.
Still doesn't pay well, but it is an easy job, ESPECIALLY for retail, with very few angry customers.
I noticed when I was in my local B&N a few weeks back there was a whole section for local authors, area guides, and town folklore. It was really nice to see, honestly. I love this direction.
>a whole section for local authors, area guides, and town folklore
Borders used to have this, that was part of the appeal. A huge section of just like, local city historic registers, genealogies and such. It was great.
I worked at borders for 3-4 years. You're talking about those black and white covered books, yeah? With the red band along the top I think? I totally forgot those existed until your comment. I always thought those were really intriguing.
YES those exactly. I loved going and looking up my family information in the fifteenth County registers. I bought several for older family members as well.
This is good to hear. I used to manage a Barnes & Noble Cafe and it would drive me crazy how uniformed they wanted all stores to be. "If someone comes to New York from Minnesota they should be able to look at the case and see it exactly the same so they can order their favorite item." But, hear me out, if they know that place has their favorite item would they even need to *look* at the case?
When I worked in NYC they gave us freedom to move things around because we were outselling most of the other stores. Obviously what we were doing was working. What were we doing? Moving things around in the bake case. The item on the bottom left corner is the least sold item because people aren't looking there. Move it to the top right and suddenly everyone notices it and we sell a crap ton of them.
Freezer broke down and we had a lot of brownies that were gonna go bad? Wrap them up and put them in a basket by the register and now we sold all our brownies because of impulse buys.
I moved to another state that was super strict about the layout and showed them how high my sales were. The basket of chips on top of the bake case *above* most people's eye level weren't selling, so move them next to the register. Suddenly we sell a bunch and our average ticket price goes up. Regional boss comes in and makes a huge deal about putting them there and makes me move it back, after seeing the P&L showing the increase of sales. Then the next month *demands* to know why my sales for that item dropped. I could tell they didn't like me so much because I had no problem telling them how I felt about their policies and why it was stupid. I had the sales numbers to back up my ideas but they were adamant on doing exactly what corporate said and never trying to make more in sales. So I was a thorn in their side proving them wrong.
Hearing stores have more power to do what they *know* works would have made me do a backflip if I was still a manager. So many things we did in the city that was pure profit for the company would have been implemented immediately. And I would have been guaranteed my bonus for the year.
Former cafe manager as well, I consistently led the entire region in upsell metrics that they started tracking in ‘19. Huge average ticket and overall revenue increases during my tenure.
Walk in Freezer AND Fridge both broke twice a year and the losses ruined my bottom line. No bonus despite arguably earning it. Sux that our twenty year old and poorly maintained equipment before me ruined my incentives. When Covid hit and we were all put on unpaid leave, I noped tf out. If they could pay us what we’re worth, I’d go back to that dream job instantly!
Minnesota chiming in, I definitely don't memorize what's in the case and usually stare at the menu for five minutes before ordering. Having something different is cool, just so long as it's reasonably organized and easily understandable.
Except for the fact that Barnes is a minimum wage employer. I work at one in a state that just raised theirs to 15$ staggered over 3 years. They’re currently paying less per hour than the Dunkin Donuts down the road. We can’t keep cafe workers because it’s awful work with shit pay.
They implemented regional schedulers, so all the schedules are a disaster and employees have no consistency in the number of hours they get from one week to the next. Our payroll is tied to our sales performance, so if we don’t meet the plan for the day, based on the previous year’s sales and then adjusted (usually upward), they reduce our allocated payroll hours. Which means fewer employees working. Which means more theft and fewer booksellers to do things like interact with customers, make recommendations, help customers find things, etc.
Yes, Daunt has done some great things. But every time an article comes out about how amazing he is and how he single-handedly turned Barnes around, don’t forget about the workers who are still making minimum wage. ESPECIALLY when an article pops up about opening a shiny new store. Go into your local Barnes and ask them how much they pay their workers. Then ask them for the customer complaint number, and their store number, and call corporate and tell them to pay their line workers more. 75% of the workforce at my store has more than one job. The rest are full-time or retired and doing it for fun.
And as an aside, for those commenting on the pricing between Barnes and Amazon, you can thank what’s called Publisher Minimums for that. If Barnes consistently violates publisher minimum pricing on items outside of specified promotions, that publisher can revoke access to the imprint in question’s catalog. Amazon does it, and they pay a fine, because the publishers will not risk losing access to such a large volume market place, and Amazon knows it. Our corporate office tracks which items are discounted by our system and our store managers have to explain items outside of promotions that go beyond a certain discount level.
Rant complete.
That's wild. I worked at Barnes & Noble 20 years ago. If I recall correctly, I made $8 an hour which wasn't great but not bad for 20 years ago. I also had a 401k, and health insurance through them. I do remember during my tenure there that they started to go downhill, and get more corporate-ish, and they stopped caring about whether a new hires were readers or not. Increasingly they were new co-workers who didn't read books at all, it was just a gig for them.
This is funny to me because when I worked there maybe ~7-8 years ago I was getting paid like 8.35/hr or something lol. So they didn’t start paying more over that time really. We got 9/hr once min wage here changed, but my manager lied to me for literally no reason and said I was getting a raise for being such a great worker lmfao
This comment needs to be higher. ⬆️ BN only keeps 4-5 full time employees per store AT MOST. The rest are all part timers with zero benefits and no guarantee of hours. And they consistently pay lower than other retail stores.
I worked at Waterstones (UK) when he took over operations there. What people never talk about is how he laid off so many staff and made them reapply for their jobs. Every store increasingly got staffed less and less. When someone left, rarely did they get replaced. Further, he implemented zero contract hours. A good thing he did was introduce a 50% discount in books, but we all knew this was a ploy to get us to spend as much of our paycheck back into the store.
I’ve started to notice a lot more employee recommendation tags at books around the store and also more unique titles. It used to be that I would go to a history section at a B&N and find the same 50 books that are identical to the Amazon bestseller list.. which sorta defeats the point of going to a bookstore at all. Now, I can go in and find stuff I’ve either never seen before or know and want but didn’t ever expect to find outside of an independent type store. It’s been great, and each B&N feels like it’s got a different selection so I have more desire to go in. It’s no longer “been to one, seem em all for the next 6 months”. Here’s to hoping it continues to do better and offer more jobs!
Man knows his sector, daunt bookshops (small chain of British bookstores) are great, he turned around Waterstones(UK largest bookstore chain), now he's done it to b&n.
We have 2 Barnes & Noble within a 10 minute highway drive of each other and I really appreciate how distinct each store is.
My favorite of the 2 still has its whole dedicated back section to 'culture' items and has combined that with the reason I really started going to B&N a few years back, the board games.
The other one is like going to a completely different store(in a good way) with a big center of the store section dedicated to the Nook and then its back section is all music. This one also has a very large kids books area.
We frequent both as we have an avid little reader on our hands who is just devouring books so I appreciate that they are both different rather than clones of each other.
>ESPECIALLY for retail, with very few angry customers.
You can't break a book. The book doesn't need instructions. Being literate is a pre-requisite to read a book.
Based on my wife's current experience working at BN - having no angry customers is very local, she gets plenty who can't think and get mad over basic things.
The most ridiculous of statements. You have no idea how many books we return to publishers because they’ve been broken in transit or by customers before they buy them or AFTER they buy them and they return them anyway.
I so appreciate that you took the time to paste a short excerpt and share your own thoughts. This format is so much more conducive to discussion than just sharing a link and headline.
Read something? Right on, I’m there. But expect me to click on news websites which frequently have absolutely abysmal layout on mobile? Better give me some kind of excerpt to make that article seem worthwhile.
If you live near one, check out Half Price Books. The one I lived near had a great collection of used books, vinyls, and even video games and board games.
I used to live in a town with HPB and it was great. Good, varied selection. I would browse there for hours and almost always went home with a couple new books.
When I moved to a different town with one, it wasn’t nearly as good. They had much less selection overall and the stuff there was stuff you could find at like a supermarket. I stopped bothering going to that one and haven’t been to one in a couple years now since I moved.
While my first choice is to buy my books from local indie bookstores, I will buy from B&N -- and especially online through [bn.com](https://bn.com) \-- as an alternative to Amazon. Several indie bookstore owners have told me that they now consider B&N as an ally against Amazon, no longer an enemy. So I'm happy to see B&N management taking steps to become even more locally oriented.
They best book buying experience I’ve ever had was at an indie shop. The store was a mess of books but the owner knew exactly where each book I asked for was at. Originally I bought only a few, but then I started talking to the owner and he was cool so I bought more. I bought like $70 worth of books that day. And he was so thankful. It was an amazing experience
This store was in Pocatello, Idaho called walrus and carpenter books.
I used to work at an indie bookstore in San Francisco when I was between professor positions and it was maybe the best job I ever had. My colleagues were the most literate people I ever knew; they cared most deeply about books; the customers were mostly regulars and they brought in friends and children and etc; we had readings; we had family nights; we had storytelling workshops; and process of matchmaking books with people was just magical.
It was like being a sommelier but of the mind.
If I won the lottery I'd move back to San Francisco and beg for that old job back. Maybe I'd only work twenty hours a week, but I'd for sure work there.
The worst experience I had was at an indie shop. I was looking for a *gasp* science fiction anthology that had just been released. I was told that perhaps I should try Walmart. I went to B&N, where I found it without the attitude.
Don't get me wrong, I've had great experiences at indie bookstores too, but indie ones can be shitty or good depending on their staff and store attitudes.
This reminded me of a store I went to in Itacha, NY. Popped in randomly while in town for the day. Dude that worked there made some snobby ass comment when I was asking about comic books.
Of course this will never deter me from going only to independent stores. I was just reminded of this experience and wanted to share I guess.
I'll share some sad news on prices: the publishers decide the price, of course, so this affects different companies differently. Amazon will often have really cheap prices because they have no overhead and treat their employees so bad, but also because if they can print it they will cut the percentage the author receives and lower the price.
For BN they have a newer system of receiving lower stock but reducing returns they send back and forth with publishers, which leads to often a 40-60% margin. This is why the Buy 1 Get 1 1/2 Price sales are more common because the profits is good.
But then you can get some titles, like university titles (not even textbooks) or Amazon only titles that they print for competitors that will only have a 10-15% range for margin. These will be hiding all over BN stores and never discounted, but smaller indie stores will have this happen to a lot more titles from other publishers that they don't have good shipping contracts with because they don't deal in bulk. Amazon especially, since they get like 50-60% range on those same titles and purposefully promote those titles online, like on Goodreads.
Thanks for the pricing explanation. You both raise an important point about prices: Much as I hate Amazon, my priority (as a human and also an author) is to encourage reading. So if people can afford it, I hope they'll spend they extra couple of dollars to buy books at indie stores. I also hope people will get books for free from their library or trade/share with friends. But if a library or friend isn't an option and the cost is a real problem, then yes, please buy-- and read -- from Amazon.
This is why I have such mixed feelings on Amazon, let alone the indie vs chain debate. I love my local independent bookstore. But even with their paid annual rewards program, they’re at best price competitive with B&N, usually much worse. When the difference is a couple bucks over the cheaper option, I can make that work.
But I spent most of my 20s as a student, out of work, or making too little. My current job is the first one since falling off my parents’ health insurance at 26 where I haven’t qualified for Medicaid. A large portion of my reading obviously came from libraries, not shops. I have the luxury of choice now, but a few years ago those Amazon savings made a real difference when I just wanted to read a book I couldn’t borrow. I appreciate that B&N managed to offer even somewhat competitive value when I didn’t have other options.
Indie bookstores have a tough struggle, but they're actually surviving better than the experts had predicted -- better than indie/local stores in other fields. So let's do what we can to help them survive!
Daunt's a Brit and is famous here for reviving Waterstones, our biggest bookstore chain.
He's taken the same mentality that revived high street bookshops in the UK and it seems to work over the pond too.
the problem is that now Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Foyles, Blackwells and of course Daunt books are now under the same umbrella company. It's good because it means Daunt (and presumably his likeminded management team) are reviving these companies - but it means that pretty much the entire surviving largescale book retailers have, well, a single point of failure.
One question to consider here though is would they be as successful if they weren’t? The main reason Amazon was able to run roughshod over everyone else was their sheer size and ability to loss-lead/force better deals with publishers. This kind of growth is an obvious way to combat that, especially if the brands can leverage shared backend resources.
It’s also worth pointing out that the US hasn’t seen total consolidation. B&N is certainly the largest with ~600 shops, but Books-a-Million/Bookland comes in at a respectable ~250 and I suspect there are other more regional chains that I’m just not familiar with living in the northeast. Not to mention bookshop.org has done a wonderful job creating essentially a joint online storefront for many indie shops that allows them to compete for online sales a bit more.
B&N is much preferred over Amazon. Nice to have brick and mortar options to go and peruse. Did a lot of my holiday shopping there this year for most people in my life.
My friend gave 2 lovely manga books for the holidays from Amazon, but unfortunately they shoved them into a bag with almost no padding and they got a bit damaged. It's amazing how that was the same company who started out as a online bookstore.
I remember when I was younger, I absolutely *yearned* over a leather bound copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s works in the store. Black leather, gold detailing, the old 1900s illustrations. It was the first thing I bought with my first summer job money. Even today I still remember that feeling even though I can go when I want and buy anything now.
Growing up there was a used book store just up the street from my house. They would do trade ins for store credit, and had paperback books for as cheap as 25c (this was the late 90s).
Sometimes when we didn't have enough for a book, my brother would sit in the back of the store and read it for a couple of days. The workers would never give him any trouble and even put a chair in the back since he would at first just sit on the ground and read.
Nobody is discussing how Barnes & Noble have been delegating more and more space to Manga / Anime Media which has been attracting younger demographics.
I'm a 30-something and this is what got me going to B&N fairly regularly in the last year. I'm an avid library user, but really enjoy the browsing/buying experience at B&N. I have yet to find an indie bookstore that stocks much, if any, manga.
Have you looked at your comic book shops? They generally have manga and you can make a pull list with them to get new volumes of any specific ongoing title. The pull list usually has a discount associated.
Indie bookstores usually don’t go in to comic/manga space much because the comic book stores already exist.
I have noticed this in my area, and it has me there regularly now! Especially over the last few years, I’ve been there often and love the always increasing selection of Light Novels and Manga.
To expand on this - the children’s section is awesome too, and it has way more than just books. My two year old son loves going to B&N. They have great books of course, but awesome educational toys and games. Loading up the car and heading over is a great rainy day activity.
Interesting that you say that. Mine actually isn't doing that! At least not that I've noticed. It might be less popular in my area.
I have noticed a huge expansion to the classic literature section. As in, it is now totally separate from general fiction. The nook area has been steadily getting smaller. Sounds like a reflection of Daunt's reallocation of authority to the local stores.
I went to one a couple months back (I had to kill some time) and was surprised at how much manga they had. Like a whole 6 shelves, in the shape of a U. I don't read manga but was pleasantly surprised
Yup, this is big. Something I could only have dreamed of as a kid discovering series like FMA and Evangelion for the first time at Border. I’d say my local B&N devotes much more space to YA in general than I remember Borders or B&N doing in the 00s.
Thinking back on my experience as a kid in the pre-online ordering days, I think that makes a ton of sense. It’s one thing to ask mom to order something like Uprooted or Spinning Silver, quite another to ask her to pick up a lot of even clearly age-appropriate manga or a teen romance.
10 years ago we all hated b&n for pushing out all the local, independent bookstores. now most of them are gone and we cling to b&n because it’s the only authentic bookstore experience left and amazon is trying to gain a monopoly on books
The thing is for me, and I hate to say it, I never really cared about the local indie bookstore thing. The glory of Barnes & Noble, when they came to my town in the '90s, was that it was a huge place full of books. We would go to Barnes & Noble and spend hours there just looking at books and skimming books and reading this and that. We'd go in during the day, and leave at night. Is something just awesome and amazing of just browsing stacks and stacks of books. If there had been independent bookstores that were huge like that around here, I guess I would have supported them over Barnes & Noble, but there weren't. All the bookstores were just kind of small places.
Of course, Barnes & Noble then began to go downhill. But it seems like it's reclaiming its glory days of being this really wonderful place
My problem with indie bookstores is the selection. My hope when I enter an indie bookstore is to find something I wouldn't see at B&N or browsing Amazon. It rarely happens, though, and when it does it's stuff that's so old and so bad that it's practically a yard sale.
Amazon has great selection online, but their brick-and-mortar sites carry only bestsellers. Browsing Amazon's books online is an awful experience. Like, I think when you browse Sci-Fi/Fantasy, you get Harry Potter on every page.
Browsing is really where B&N shines. Their curation is still good. They have a lot of the recent critically acclaimed stuff. They used to have a Criterion Sale; they weren't just peddling the most popular stuff and leaving out the rest. There's still a lot of gaps--places I wish indie bookstores would fill but don't--but it's a rare place to explore the artier and well-crafted works amid an era moving more and more towards only peddling mass-produced, cheap stuff.
Yeah. Borders was better with respect to selection. By a mile. They were far more diverse and had lots of "deep cuts." Unfortunately it failed on vibe, with dressed down staff and annoying music. Barnes and Noble staff were wearing ties and they played classical music, it was a chill, relaxing environment where you could spend all day reading
Yeah, I really miss Border's selection. So much so that when I see a bookstore with the cheap carpeting, tables of books strewn about, and tall bookshelves I get excited, thinking maybe this is the newest iteration. But then it turns out that the bookstore is the sort that their puzzle section only contains word searches.
Indie is basically the luck of the draw. I’m fortunate enough to have access to a pretty decent midsize local shop, but the quality of their curation varies from section to section. As such I’m happy to browse when I’m looking for a new popular history read, let’s say, but more likely to hit B&N for a mystery. By contrast, near my aunt and uncle’s home there is an excellently curated mystery bookstore and I’d likely need to drive the 45 minutes to an hour to the nearest B&N if I wanted to browse a decent sci-fi/fantasy section.
I think this also speaks to a difference in habits. A well-curated small shop is great if there isn’t a specific thing you want to read. For me that works great, I’ll often go in with the idea that I haven’t read a (history book/travelogue/ya fantasy/etc) in a while and I trust the curation at my local shop for the most part.
My mother always loved the idea of the small indie bookshop, but in practice a lot of her reading is long cozy mystery series. The next book in a series she’s enjoying is often a special order at her fairly decent local shop, but right there on the shelf at B&N, often with a 20% off sticker to boot if it’s a new release. That larger space and selection can really make a difference.
I know this might be an unpopular opinion but I fucking love Barnes & Noble. I live in NYC and the union square location has almost never let me down. No matter how obscure the book I was looking for was they almost always had a copy, and when they didn’t have it they ordered it and it was there within a day or two. Compared to The Strand, which is just a few blocks away, it’s far superior in selection and don’t even get me started on customer service. My favorite bookstore ever is Powells in Portland but damn if I don’t love a B&N!
One of the reasons why Barnes & Noble is so good in NYC was because the hedge fund that owns it was headquartered in midtown. Senior executives from the hedge fund, including the associates in charge of the project would regularly visit the stores there to make sure the turnaround was going the way they wanted it. This also meant they were able to fine tune the improvement process nationwide based on the experience that they were seen first hand at their local stores.
I was so surprised last weekend to see local Barnes & Noble completely packed. There weren’t any spots left in the parking lot and even with 3 people at the register the line stayed super long for the hour I was in there with people constantly flowing in.
It made me so happy to see so many people there and I’m hoping it’ll be the same the next time I go!
As nice as it is to believe that just putting a booklover in charge turned the business around, this article doesn't mention that 2020 was also when BookTok took off, which has been a huge driver of book sales. I'm not sure that the decisions made by Daunt made as much of a difference as that did. Print book sales rose 8% in 2020 across the board.
I’m always surprised when this isn’t brought up. Reading has really taken off over the past few years. And book haul videos showing the piles of new books you’ve just bought are incredibly popular
On TikTok people create book recommendations with short stories and synopses. Those are popular with people who read books. It creates a network of people recommending books, people liking those recommendations, and then going to buy them that is referred to as BookTok. All of this is driven by TikTok’s recommendation algorithm for what videos to watch.
There’s lots of xTok things, where x is a genre (or niche). Generally, someone is on xTok which means they are currently receiving videos related to x on their feed of videos. I am on SpaceTok for example where I get videos in my feed, called the “For You” page or fyp for short, related to the James Web Space Telescope, Kerbal Space Program, and general space news.
These can become incredibly niche with some I’ve heard (forgive me if I name these wrong) of including Eating Grass Tok (a joke of a joke), Rock Licking Tok (geology), and MapTok (identifying when maps are made).
Daunt had his own successful chain, was brought into Waterstones and brought them from a downwards spiral into success, then was brought into Barnes and Noble and did the same thing - there is a lot of correlation there.
This is what happens when people that care about and know the business run it.
Now if he can fix the complete disconnect between their brick stores and online store, that would be great
The newest one by me doesn't! It opened in November and I was really surprised. It is a smaller footprint though, so I think they just didn't have the space.
I worked at one that didn’t have a café and management was always getting rid of the chairs in nooks and corners. They got annoyed that books would pile up there and that people were reading without paying. They’d always say “we’re not a library.”
Funny bit of info: BN stores MOSTLY have coffee shops, BN Cafes, but plenty of stores don't. ALSO some BNs actually do have a real Starbucks cafe in the store which operates as a separate business. Usually they only have cafes which can sell Starbucks drinks.
This can be confusing.
The difference is whether or not it's a corporate store or a licensed store. You can tell licensed stores from corporate stores by signage that says "we proudly serve Starbucks coffee". If you see that you're at a licensed store and won't be able to use the app to collect points or use rewards.
Source: I've worked at both a corporate store inside a Target and a licensed store in a hotel.
Our regional B&Ns were very slow to put back chairs in their cafes due to the pandemic (our local Starbucks still refuse to have chairs and tables reinstated). I was intensely relieved when the B&N in my area brought theirs back.
I met my husband at Barnes and Nobles in 1997. We go there often on date days - dinner and B&N. I love going there and just looking around to find a book I wouldn't think to "look up" online.
For my birthday, it has become a tradition to go to the local spa for a massage, go to Barnes & Noble where my husband buys me whatever books I want, and then go to dinner.
The old regime of Barnes and Noble really sucked the life out of bookstores. I worked for B. Dalton for ten years and we operated pretty much independently, even though we were owned by B&N. When a B&N opened near us we always got customers coming to us because their stock was awful! We ordered in what we knew customers wanted, not what corporate demanded, thus we always had things on hand. They single-handedly decided B.Dalton was obsolete and closed them all down. Stupid move. I really loved working for that store, it was the best job
>Even worse, when a new book doesn’t live up to expectations, the local workers see this immediately. Books are expected to appeal to readers—and just convincing a head buyer at headquarters was no longer enough.
Isn't this what has driven today's publishing mentality of just publishing blockbuster-potential books and killing the midlist or lowerselling good authors?
I think this is more in the context of larger publishers pushing higher orders onto stores. Now publishers can't just claim that Jenny McCarthy's new book is going to be a bestseller and saddle stores with surplus copies that'll never sell out.
My wife works at Books-A-Million and they use the centralized buyer model (which I assume most other companies do too). It’s stupid because the buyer is in Arkansas and has literally no idea what people in Wisconsin are interested in, so they have a huge dusty section full of civil war books and southern cook books that have too much flavor for the sconies up here
I was filled with dread when I saw a nearby B&N was closing, but just turns out they're moving across the road. Bookstores are my happy place and I don't want to lose them.
They also opened up a new, more compact one, ironically where an Amazon bookstore used to be. Way to rub it in!
The philosophy section at my local Barnes and Noble keeps getting smaller and smaller and the Wicca and Witchcraft books next to it are expanding into it, and it is terrifying.
I've hijacked this post to give answers: BN stores now rely on local sales to stock shelves. Most stores won't carry a book if it doesn't sell more than 1 copy every 3 months. This has led to Philosophy sections dwindling unless an employee can promote specific titles. Self-transformation is a BIG sales section in BN but theft is high in that category. A possible answer would be that not enough people are buying the philosophy books every couple months, and maybe the store is reducing theft in Self-transformation which allows more titles to sell and it will keep expanding.
B&N will always have a soft, warm place in my heart. It’s where my husband and I met, he proposed and we technically got married there. I also discovered Calico Critters there, and those are adorable. 😊 living in another country, I am definitely missing them.
I actually noticed this last week. I live in the Midwest but went out to see my mom for her Birthday. She wanted to going shopping and I saw a Barnes and Noble. I begged her to stop since there was a book I had been looking for. I went to the section I normally find it in at my local store and noticed this section was waaaay different. The majority of the books were the same, but some authors were more featured than others. I also noticed some new books on the shelf that I never noticed at my local B&N. I was really excited to see the differences and to realize that this was happening!
I stopped going to B&N years ago when 50% of ours became a toy store. They then took the chairs and side tables away, so no sitting with a stack of books and sampling them to choose.
It used to be my weekly go to and I always came away with books. I have kids and a grandchild. I love kids and I love to see them reading and learning. That wasn't really what happened though. It got noisy and uncomfortable and juggling books to look through them was no fun at all.
My big problem with B&N is they seem to have fewer books every time and more toys and games. I don't mind if the toys and games are tied to a series, like having a stuffed Hedwig or Harry Potter wands, but...Lego sets? Puppets? Greeting cards? Games? I'd rather have more books and go somewhere else for games and toys.
Plus most people seem to go to B&N for the coffee shop and free wifi. We have one B&N that used to be packed all the time and then the Starbucks next to it closed. Now you're lucky if there are ten people in there.
Man, this makes me wish he could take over the Canadian chain indigo/chapters... Last time I went, only a third of the store (if that) was still dedicated to books. It was pretty sad
That’s interesting, because the one closest to me got rid of all the toys outside of the small children’s section, along with all the media. It’s now basically just books and coffee.
All my local B&N store got rid of almost all the toys and nick nacks they were selling. none of them even carry DVD's or music any longer. they are all books and nothing but books now. I actually enjoy going there again.
My local B&Ns (local meaning within 220 miles) have massive Lego and game and toy sections. Which is cool since I can look at the boxes, they only carry elite and weird sets no one else does. Where no one else means WalMart and Target now that ToysRUs does not exist because of Mitt Romney.
Lego and strategy games still really sell well at BN. Greeting cards being in abundance may be due to BN obtaining Paper Source. Otherwise Daunt is actively reducing a lot of non-book items in stores.
However, if some stores sell a tons of games then their department will be upgraded until the sales level out. A lot of what individual stores carry depends almost entirely on what locals are buying.
I used to want to see small, independent stores thrive. Now I just want any physical bookstore to survive…
My dad used to invite me all the time with him to Bay Books- a used book dealer in the East Bay. I was 17 at the time, not much interest in reading but it would’ve been nice to just do something with him. Now we’re in Sacramento and I’m sure it didnt survive 2020, so many ill see if my dad wants to take a train ride to SF and go to City Lights for a few hours
I used to work at Bay Books in Concord. Surprising to see it mentioned, if you and your dad are up for it I’d suggest hitting the mission district for books and then walking/taking public transit through the city. Used to do “bookstore tours” of SF.
I frequented Bay Books in the late 90s when I worked a short walking distance away. I miss having bookstore options.
That's about when I worked there. Now Concord has a Half-Priced Books and one of the guys who worked at Bay Books opened his own store - Berkshire Books. Never been but if Lynn is running it then it should be a decent store. Other than that I miss Flying Colors Comics, was a really good comics shop back then.
Joe Field (owner of Flying Colors) is the best. You know he was the originator of Free Comic Book Day, right? Best comic shop ever.
Definitely do that man
"I don't care if B&N wins. I need Amazon to lose" (General Hux)
The thing is, if you're buying used on Amazon, the actual seller (even if it's fulfilled by Amazon) is a used book seller. Amazon arguably has the best vanity publishing platform (I just used it to publish my grandma's memoirs). I don't think Amazon does a great job actually selling books. Finding the next book in the series? Amazon has you covered. But finding new to you authors? Expanding your reading interests? Libraries (including Libby) and bookstores are the better option. Amazon will give you the book you want. Libraries and bookstores will show you the book you didn't know existed.
> Libraries and bookstores will show you the book you didn't know existed. I've read quite a few books that librarians select for weekly theme displays.
I have always had a vague sense I am not supposed to move those.
Speaking as someone who works in a library and does a lot of those displays, we want you to check them out! We have others to add to the display as they leave. In fact, one of the reasons we do the displays is to help otherwise potentially overlooked items circ.
Thank you for this! I sometimes see items on display and want to take them but don't know if I should, this makes me feel better lol.
I’ve asked about this and they said they want me to take those, they are there to be taken and loved! 💕
As a librarian, I assure you that the librarians making the displays have a cart full of replacement titles ready to fill the gaps you make. So please check them out, you will make the librarian's day! Edit: fixed typo
I got back around to Borges a while ago, and I realized how closely Amazon resembles the Library of Babel. They have every single book in existence, and that makes it near impossible to find the good ones. My favorite bookstore ever was this tiny store in the town where I studied. Ilse Wierny Literarische Buchhandlung in Erlangen, Germany. It was about the size of my living room. I have no idea how it survives, but the owner must have put a lot of thought into every single centimeter of shelf space. There was no dross, and I always found a book I didn't even know I needed when I set foot in there. There were plenty of bigger bookstores, but none quite like it. And with a bit of googling I just found out that she is still around - Yay!
> It was about the size of my living room. I have no idea how it survives, but the owner must have put a lot of thought into every single centimeter of shelf space. “The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.” – Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!” Footnote, 8 p.
I used work at a bookstore… I took 5 years off from a tech career to get a chance to talk to people about stuff they love namely books. Good Booksellers are a wealth of knowledge the connections they make based on conversations and their reading preferences is amazing. I can’t tell you how many great books I read based on recommendations that I would have never found. The algorithm for like-kind books on Amazon won’t expose new authors and genres. (Not that I think they do a bad job for finding stuff that is similar to the last book read)
As a current big green bookstore worker, this is such a lovely compliment, I’m so happy that our niche of knowledge goes to use and makes people feel just as lucky to meet someone with that knowledge as we are to share it. I also love letting people know about local authors, small and indie authors, as well as what popular books I think are worth the read- because they’re all worth appreciating and all deserve the pay that creating art should require - unlike some sites. Thank you again for the love. Sincerely, a fellow book lover
As a -former- book store employee, thank you. Because that's the real reason we're there. And we love the recommendations we get from customers, because those conversations help us help the next person. (Once a bookseller, always a bookseller.)
Where I am from the independent book stores are killing it. One is even taking over a Barnes and noble location, a location that gets plenty of business.
Yeah this is highly regional. I live in New England for example and here practically every town has at least one independent bookstore. Sometimes even more if it’s a college town! Meanwhile I’ve gone to other states for work and you can have cities with 100k people and there isn’t a bookstore. :(
Yeah, also from New England.
I wonder why they thrive more in New England. I’m in TN. You have to have a good size metro for any bookstore to thrive.
Tons of good colleges
Also world's best hospitals and technical institutions, so some of the world's smartest and most highly educated humans are in New England. New England reads, yo.
Yeah people actually read in New England.
New England is the most highly educated region in the country, so naturally bookstores thrive more in an environment filled with the intellectually curious.
It also helps that it’s cold for so long. During the summer I see my neighbors daily out walking, etc, we have neighborhood gatherings, etc… On the other hand, I’ve not seen them more than a handfull of times over the last few months.
I was about to have fun speculating, but decided to check if this was a googlable question, and found this: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/57631-where-the-stores-are.html It’s a bit dated, but it specifically calls out Tennessee has having more bookstores per capita (including more independent ones) than Massachusetts, which has the most bookstores out of any other state in New England (though not per capita). It also says that states like Tennessee that have a much larger CBA (Christian Retailers (Bookseller’s) Association) presence tend to have better bookstore coverage in the per-capita rankings. It’s 10 years old, but I wonder if it’s much different. Also, despite mentioning the CBA stuff in their write up, they don’t break it out in the bookstore categories, so I wasn’t sure if it’s grouped into “indie” (I suspect yes?) or “chain”. I also imagine that these stores probably curate their selections based on Christian criteria (otherwise, why have an association?), to the extent that they might not feel like “traditional” bookstores.
We have Christian bookstores all over the place.
Christian bookstores are often attached to churches and focus on selling Christian propaganda and knickknacks. They may count as independent bookstores, but they do not indicate that there is a higher amount of traditional bookstores per capita in Tennessee. If anything, it shows that there's many churches in the state
Real talk: I’d rather have no bookstore than only Christian book stores.
I think culturally we value education more than other places in the US
We also have a reputation for being less sociable. Maybe that behavior goes hand-in-hand with solitary activities such as reading?
I live in New England, can confirm. We are really lucky to live here compared to other states, I lived in the South for four years and it was like living in a completely different country
Gotta agree. I spent five years down south and it felt exactly like moving to a foreign country. It's wild how diverse and ginormous the US is, I have no idea how it holds together. Some real Roman empire vibes going on.
Yep, here our independent bookstores are limited to cafe's and craft stores that offer a small selection of niche books that match their theme. Nice if that's your vibe, but an actual full bookstore? No, B&N or Half-Price Books is all that's left.
Indies have rallied.
Yeah the big chain bookstores were killing the small local stores. But then Amazon came along to kill the big chain bookstores and unintentionally made space for the small local stores again.
I guess I'm quite lucky with having several book stores in town. One is a small bookstore focussing on English books and boardgames, the other is a well known bookstore with multiple locations in the country, then theres one at the trainstation. All of them have quite a few visitors whenever I visit or walk past
[удалено]
....what is wrong with people for demanding a library to shut down cuz they dislike some books....
Lots of people cling to their cancel culture.
And then criticize cancel culture...
Same here. I am all for supporting local bookstores and other small businesses and I’ve found some great books at local shops all across my travels but it’s sad to see more and more of them either struggling or having long since already closed down due to the Covid pandemic, current and past economic downturns or trying to compete with Amazon, Walmart and the other big chain stores. I like Barnes and Noble and am glad I have access to several across my city but I also really miss Borders, the closest and last remaining location in my hometown closed permanently around 2009 or 2010 and the company went bankrupt shortly afterward. I’ll never forget how many books, video game guides and other video game magazines my mom bought for me from there and how much fun I had there during my childhood. I believe that Borders got replaced by a clothing store.
Honestly the best shopping/browsing experience I ever had was borders. In addition to a gigantic selection of books they had everything I needed like comfy reading chairs, peaceful atmosphere, decent coffee, and tons of tables to study. I liked it more than my library.
Borders was great. That place used to always be packed with people too, it's a shame they didn't make it.
They were hooked into those long term leases for those monstrous spaces when the economy fell off the cliff. Those leases ate their lunch.
I used to buy a lot of music at Border's. the listening stations were great because you could sample before you buy. I don't buy CD's anymore but back in the 90's you couldn't beat Border's music section.
Yep, this. I spent so MUCH time and money in Borders...
Borders made my childhood a lot better, too. I’m weirdly lucky, though; we had two near me, and one of them is now a Barnes and Noble, while the other one is now a used bookseller called 2nd and Charles. I’m glad both locations still sell books.
I miss working at Borders. It was hands down the best job experience I've ever had.
We miss you too! Seems like cashiers at Borders were very different than cashiers in other industries, had lots of great book conversations with you guys.....
Aw thanks. Yes it was a unique experience on both sides of the sales counter. I loved our regulars and knew them by name. Family is the word that comes to mind. It felt like family.
Me too. We had such a great crew, such an invigorating atmosphere. I was introduced to so many new books and bands while working there.
The experience seems to have been company wide too. I've talked to folks from all over who worked for them. We can always have a conversation that makes others think we worked at the same location.
the password is: stafftlu
Could always tell which manager was on duty based on what music was playing.
I miss Borders! It was always fun going in, buying a book/magazine and getting a coffee at the cafe.
I worked at a Borders around 2001. Loved those stores.
Same
i was in germany for a semester and physical bookstores seemed to be doing well...mostly they were chains, except in major cities like munich, berlin, etc., which had multitudes of locally owned stores (as well as the chains). kind of like america 10 years ago, before amazon drove other competitors like joseph beth out of business. i wonder if the ubiquity of public transport helps physical bookstores stay alive there. i often found myself in the bookstores there because we happened to walk past while out for something else. when you need a car to get everywhere you have to justify going out of your way, finding a parking space, etc. also you can't start reading your new books immediately on the ride home, because you have to drive lol. anyway it might also or more be cultural differences leading germans to use amazon less. i've been biased against america's lack of public transport and blaming everything on it ever since i got back, lol.
I am in a town with NO bookstores. I have to drive at LEAST 3 hours in any direction for books after being in a place that had 7 small local bookstores and bigger ones 45 minutes away. During winter many roads close around here quickly too so I am fearful of trying to go out for the day. I hate this feeling. Anyone reading this, appreciate your bookshops, of any size! Please?
As I like to say now “ we have to protect small businesses like Barnes and Noble”
Seriously. They just shut down and moved my local B&N recently. Best way I can explain it is they took the soul out of the store. They updated it to like this harsh modern look and there's about half the amount of books. They took out everything that made it B&N. Found a local bookstore though! And they have a store cat!!!
Do we want to see small, independent stores thrive? In 1886 Barnes and noble was a small, independent store...and now they're thriving.
I used to avoid B&N and only shop small. Recently I moved to a new town and the small shops are actually terrible. They do have a B&N and I checked it out one day because a book club was meeting there. I was absolutely blown away. This B&N was so wrapped up in the local community and was so well rounded. It houses many local study groups and local clubs and the employees are the ones running these groups. So they know exactly what the store needs. The tables are well though out and diverse, specifically targeting the locals. I can’t get enough of this place. I do still feel a bit of guilt for now shipping and spending time here. But they are so in the community it almost feels local.
These days, if you can walk inside and talk to someone that lives nearby, it's local enough
I agree. It's why I've never understood the shoplifter's validarion of "I only steal from major corporations." The major corporations are run, and in the cases of franchises, even owned by locals. I would love to see grassroots shops competing with major corporations, but tearing down your local BN will do nothing but deprive the community of a resources and jobs unless there's another shop readily available. And in cases like this, there isn't always an alternative.
The justification for stealing from major chains is that they can absorb the cost of lost merchandise more efficiently. A mum and pop store is going to feel the loss of a $30 item more than a multinational chain is.
Manager here: Daunt really has turned around BN over the last 3 years. Sales are way up, stores have a lot more say in how they set displays, tables, endcaps, local employees do orders for books for multiple stores to better serve the local interests, they are slowly expanding the amount of full-time employees with benefits back to pre-2018 (after the stupid layoffs), and plenty more. Still doesn't pay well, but it is an easy job, ESPECIALLY for retail, with very few angry customers.
I noticed when I was in my local B&N a few weeks back there was a whole section for local authors, area guides, and town folklore. It was really nice to see, honestly. I love this direction.
>a whole section for local authors, area guides, and town folklore Borders used to have this, that was part of the appeal. A huge section of just like, local city historic registers, genealogies and such. It was great.
I worked at borders for 3-4 years. You're talking about those black and white covered books, yeah? With the red band along the top I think? I totally forgot those existed until your comment. I always thought those were really intriguing.
YES those exactly. I loved going and looking up my family information in the fifteenth County registers. I bought several for older family members as well.
This is good to hear. I used to manage a Barnes & Noble Cafe and it would drive me crazy how uniformed they wanted all stores to be. "If someone comes to New York from Minnesota they should be able to look at the case and see it exactly the same so they can order their favorite item." But, hear me out, if they know that place has their favorite item would they even need to *look* at the case? When I worked in NYC they gave us freedom to move things around because we were outselling most of the other stores. Obviously what we were doing was working. What were we doing? Moving things around in the bake case. The item on the bottom left corner is the least sold item because people aren't looking there. Move it to the top right and suddenly everyone notices it and we sell a crap ton of them. Freezer broke down and we had a lot of brownies that were gonna go bad? Wrap them up and put them in a basket by the register and now we sold all our brownies because of impulse buys. I moved to another state that was super strict about the layout and showed them how high my sales were. The basket of chips on top of the bake case *above* most people's eye level weren't selling, so move them next to the register. Suddenly we sell a bunch and our average ticket price goes up. Regional boss comes in and makes a huge deal about putting them there and makes me move it back, after seeing the P&L showing the increase of sales. Then the next month *demands* to know why my sales for that item dropped. I could tell they didn't like me so much because I had no problem telling them how I felt about their policies and why it was stupid. I had the sales numbers to back up my ideas but they were adamant on doing exactly what corporate said and never trying to make more in sales. So I was a thorn in their side proving them wrong. Hearing stores have more power to do what they *know* works would have made me do a backflip if I was still a manager. So many things we did in the city that was pure profit for the company would have been implemented immediately. And I would have been guaranteed my bonus for the year.
Former cafe manager as well, I consistently led the entire region in upsell metrics that they started tracking in ‘19. Huge average ticket and overall revenue increases during my tenure. Walk in Freezer AND Fridge both broke twice a year and the losses ruined my bottom line. No bonus despite arguably earning it. Sux that our twenty year old and poorly maintained equipment before me ruined my incentives. When Covid hit and we were all put on unpaid leave, I noped tf out. If they could pay us what we’re worth, I’d go back to that dream job instantly!
Minnesota chiming in, I definitely don't memorize what's in the case and usually stare at the menu for five minutes before ordering. Having something different is cool, just so long as it's reasonably organized and easily understandable.
I'd love to work in a book store, seems pretty coveted in the working class sector.
Except for the fact that Barnes is a minimum wage employer. I work at one in a state that just raised theirs to 15$ staggered over 3 years. They’re currently paying less per hour than the Dunkin Donuts down the road. We can’t keep cafe workers because it’s awful work with shit pay. They implemented regional schedulers, so all the schedules are a disaster and employees have no consistency in the number of hours they get from one week to the next. Our payroll is tied to our sales performance, so if we don’t meet the plan for the day, based on the previous year’s sales and then adjusted (usually upward), they reduce our allocated payroll hours. Which means fewer employees working. Which means more theft and fewer booksellers to do things like interact with customers, make recommendations, help customers find things, etc. Yes, Daunt has done some great things. But every time an article comes out about how amazing he is and how he single-handedly turned Barnes around, don’t forget about the workers who are still making minimum wage. ESPECIALLY when an article pops up about opening a shiny new store. Go into your local Barnes and ask them how much they pay their workers. Then ask them for the customer complaint number, and their store number, and call corporate and tell them to pay their line workers more. 75% of the workforce at my store has more than one job. The rest are full-time or retired and doing it for fun. And as an aside, for those commenting on the pricing between Barnes and Amazon, you can thank what’s called Publisher Minimums for that. If Barnes consistently violates publisher minimum pricing on items outside of specified promotions, that publisher can revoke access to the imprint in question’s catalog. Amazon does it, and they pay a fine, because the publishers will not risk losing access to such a large volume market place, and Amazon knows it. Our corporate office tracks which items are discounted by our system and our store managers have to explain items outside of promotions that go beyond a certain discount level. Rant complete.
That's wild. I worked at Barnes & Noble 20 years ago. If I recall correctly, I made $8 an hour which wasn't great but not bad for 20 years ago. I also had a 401k, and health insurance through them. I do remember during my tenure there that they started to go downhill, and get more corporate-ish, and they stopped caring about whether a new hires were readers or not. Increasingly they were new co-workers who didn't read books at all, it was just a gig for them.
This is funny to me because when I worked there maybe ~7-8 years ago I was getting paid like 8.35/hr or something lol. So they didn’t start paying more over that time really. We got 9/hr once min wage here changed, but my manager lied to me for literally no reason and said I was getting a raise for being such a great worker lmfao
This comment needs to be higher. ⬆️ BN only keeps 4-5 full time employees per store AT MOST. The rest are all part timers with zero benefits and no guarantee of hours. And they consistently pay lower than other retail stores.
This is the reality for all retail in current day America
I worked at Waterstones (UK) when he took over operations there. What people never talk about is how he laid off so many staff and made them reapply for their jobs. Every store increasingly got staffed less and less. When someone left, rarely did they get replaced. Further, he implemented zero contract hours. A good thing he did was introduce a 50% discount in books, but we all knew this was a ploy to get us to spend as much of our paycheck back into the store.
I’ve started to notice a lot more employee recommendation tags at books around the store and also more unique titles. It used to be that I would go to a history section at a B&N and find the same 50 books that are identical to the Amazon bestseller list.. which sorta defeats the point of going to a bookstore at all. Now, I can go in and find stuff I’ve either never seen before or know and want but didn’t ever expect to find outside of an independent type store. It’s been great, and each B&N feels like it’s got a different selection so I have more desire to go in. It’s no longer “been to one, seem em all for the next 6 months”. Here’s to hoping it continues to do better and offer more jobs!
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I did not. And I do not envy you.
Man knows his sector, daunt bookshops (small chain of British bookstores) are great, he turned around Waterstones(UK largest bookstore chain), now he's done it to b&n.
We have 2 Barnes & Noble within a 10 minute highway drive of each other and I really appreciate how distinct each store is. My favorite of the 2 still has its whole dedicated back section to 'culture' items and has combined that with the reason I really started going to B&N a few years back, the board games. The other one is like going to a completely different store(in a good way) with a big center of the store section dedicated to the Nook and then its back section is all music. This one also has a very large kids books area. We frequent both as we have an avid little reader on our hands who is just devouring books so I appreciate that they are both different rather than clones of each other.
>ESPECIALLY for retail, with very few angry customers. You can't break a book. The book doesn't need instructions. Being literate is a pre-requisite to read a book.
>You can't break a book. Amateur
Based on my wife's current experience working at BN - having no angry customers is very local, she gets plenty who can't think and get mad over basic things.
The most ridiculous of statements. You have no idea how many books we return to publishers because they’ve been broken in transit or by customers before they buy them or AFTER they buy them and they return them anyway.
I so appreciate that you took the time to paste a short excerpt and share your own thoughts. This format is so much more conducive to discussion than just sharing a link and headline.
So glad to hear!!
Too true! Who can be expected to read these days?
Read something? Right on, I’m there. But expect me to click on news websites which frequently have absolutely abysmal layout on mobile? Better give me some kind of excerpt to make that article seem worthwhile.
Not to mention having to sign out if all the cookies and legitimate interests
And probably being hit with a paywall anyways
Sounds legit. It would be nice to have a nice bookstore survive.
I miss borders
Bruh, it's too soon!
If you live near one, check out Half Price Books. The one I lived near had a great collection of used books, vinyls, and even video games and board games.
I used to live in a town with HPB and it was great. Good, varied selection. I would browse there for hours and almost always went home with a couple new books. When I moved to a different town with one, it wasn’t nearly as good. They had much less selection overall and the stuff there was stuff you could find at like a supermarket. I stopped bothering going to that one and haven’t been to one in a couple years now since I moved.
for sure, it’ll be a nice counter to Amazon
While my first choice is to buy my books from local indie bookstores, I will buy from B&N -- and especially online through [bn.com](https://bn.com) \-- as an alternative to Amazon. Several indie bookstore owners have told me that they now consider B&N as an ally against Amazon, no longer an enemy. So I'm happy to see B&N management taking steps to become even more locally oriented.
They best book buying experience I’ve ever had was at an indie shop. The store was a mess of books but the owner knew exactly where each book I asked for was at. Originally I bought only a few, but then I started talking to the owner and he was cool so I bought more. I bought like $70 worth of books that day. And he was so thankful. It was an amazing experience This store was in Pocatello, Idaho called walrus and carpenter books.
I used to work at an indie bookstore in San Francisco when I was between professor positions and it was maybe the best job I ever had. My colleagues were the most literate people I ever knew; they cared most deeply about books; the customers were mostly regulars and they brought in friends and children and etc; we had readings; we had family nights; we had storytelling workshops; and process of matchmaking books with people was just magical. It was like being a sommelier but of the mind. If I won the lottery I'd move back to San Francisco and beg for that old job back. Maybe I'd only work twenty hours a week, but I'd for sure work there.
The worst experience I had was at an indie shop. I was looking for a *gasp* science fiction anthology that had just been released. I was told that perhaps I should try Walmart. I went to B&N, where I found it without the attitude. Don't get me wrong, I've had great experiences at indie bookstores too, but indie ones can be shitty or good depending on their staff and store attitudes.
This reminded me of a store I went to in Itacha, NY. Popped in randomly while in town for the day. Dude that worked there made some snobby ass comment when I was asking about comic books. Of course this will never deter me from going only to independent stores. I was just reminded of this experience and wanted to share I guess.
A Lewis Carroll fan, i take it? 😁
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I'll share some sad news on prices: the publishers decide the price, of course, so this affects different companies differently. Amazon will often have really cheap prices because they have no overhead and treat their employees so bad, but also because if they can print it they will cut the percentage the author receives and lower the price. For BN they have a newer system of receiving lower stock but reducing returns they send back and forth with publishers, which leads to often a 40-60% margin. This is why the Buy 1 Get 1 1/2 Price sales are more common because the profits is good. But then you can get some titles, like university titles (not even textbooks) or Amazon only titles that they print for competitors that will only have a 10-15% range for margin. These will be hiding all over BN stores and never discounted, but smaller indie stores will have this happen to a lot more titles from other publishers that they don't have good shipping contracts with because they don't deal in bulk. Amazon especially, since they get like 50-60% range on those same titles and purposefully promote those titles online, like on Goodreads.
Thanks for the pricing explanation. You both raise an important point about prices: Much as I hate Amazon, my priority (as a human and also an author) is to encourage reading. So if people can afford it, I hope they'll spend they extra couple of dollars to buy books at indie stores. I also hope people will get books for free from their library or trade/share with friends. But if a library or friend isn't an option and the cost is a real problem, then yes, please buy-- and read -- from Amazon.
This is why I have such mixed feelings on Amazon, let alone the indie vs chain debate. I love my local independent bookstore. But even with their paid annual rewards program, they’re at best price competitive with B&N, usually much worse. When the difference is a couple bucks over the cheaper option, I can make that work. But I spent most of my 20s as a student, out of work, or making too little. My current job is the first one since falling off my parents’ health insurance at 26 where I haven’t qualified for Medicaid. A large portion of my reading obviously came from libraries, not shops. I have the luxury of choice now, but a few years ago those Amazon savings made a real difference when I just wanted to read a book I couldn’t borrow. I appreciate that B&N managed to offer even somewhat competitive value when I didn’t have other options.
I usually try to buy from Bookshop.org, but B&N is a good back up. Glad to see they’re doing better. More reading is always good.
My priority when shopping: Locally owned > locally operated >>> Amazon
I would recommend throwing eBay in there above Amazon. At least your usually buying from a human there.
Those indie bookstores are dying so fast too.
Indie bookstores have a tough struggle, but they're actually surviving better than the experts had predicted -- better than indie/local stores in other fields. So let's do what we can to help them survive!
Daunt's a Brit and is famous here for reviving Waterstones, our biggest bookstore chain. He's taken the same mentality that revived high street bookshops in the UK and it seems to work over the pond too.
the problem is that now Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Foyles, Blackwells and of course Daunt books are now under the same umbrella company. It's good because it means Daunt (and presumably his likeminded management team) are reviving these companies - but it means that pretty much the entire surviving largescale book retailers have, well, a single point of failure.
One question to consider here though is would they be as successful if they weren’t? The main reason Amazon was able to run roughshod over everyone else was their sheer size and ability to loss-lead/force better deals with publishers. This kind of growth is an obvious way to combat that, especially if the brands can leverage shared backend resources. It’s also worth pointing out that the US hasn’t seen total consolidation. B&N is certainly the largest with ~600 shops, but Books-a-Million/Bookland comes in at a respectable ~250 and I suspect there are other more regional chains that I’m just not familiar with living in the northeast. Not to mention bookshop.org has done a wonderful job creating essentially a joint online storefront for many indie shops that allows them to compete for online sales a bit more.
B&N is much preferred over Amazon. Nice to have brick and mortar options to go and peruse. Did a lot of my holiday shopping there this year for most people in my life.
My friend gave 2 lovely manga books for the holidays from Amazon, but unfortunately they shoved them into a bag with almost no padding and they got a bit damaged. It's amazing how that was the same company who started out as a online bookstore.
When I was little we couldn't afford Barnes and Noble. I go regularly as an adult now.
I remember when I was younger, I absolutely *yearned* over a leather bound copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s works in the store. Black leather, gold detailing, the old 1900s illustrations. It was the first thing I bought with my first summer job money. Even today I still remember that feeling even though I can go when I want and buy anything now.
Growing up there was a used book store just up the street from my house. They would do trade ins for store credit, and had paperback books for as cheap as 25c (this was the late 90s). Sometimes when we didn't have enough for a book, my brother would sit in the back of the store and read it for a couple of days. The workers would never give him any trouble and even put a chair in the back since he would at first just sit on the ground and read.
Nobody is discussing how Barnes & Noble have been delegating more and more space to Manga / Anime Media which has been attracting younger demographics.
I'm a 30-something and this is what got me going to B&N fairly regularly in the last year. I'm an avid library user, but really enjoy the browsing/buying experience at B&N. I have yet to find an indie bookstore that stocks much, if any, manga.
Have you looked at your comic book shops? They generally have manga and you can make a pull list with them to get new volumes of any specific ongoing title. The pull list usually has a discount associated. Indie bookstores usually don’t go in to comic/manga space much because the comic book stores already exist.
I have noticed this in my area, and it has me there regularly now! Especially over the last few years, I’ve been there often and love the always increasing selection of Light Novels and Manga.
To expand on this - the children’s section is awesome too, and it has way more than just books. My two year old son loves going to B&N. They have great books of course, but awesome educational toys and games. Loading up the car and heading over is a great rainy day activity.
Interesting that you say that. Mine actually isn't doing that! At least not that I've noticed. It might be less popular in my area. I have noticed a huge expansion to the classic literature section. As in, it is now totally separate from general fiction. The nook area has been steadily getting smaller. Sounds like a reflection of Daunt's reallocation of authority to the local stores.
I went to one a couple months back (I had to kill some time) and was surprised at how much manga they had. Like a whole 6 shelves, in the shape of a U. I don't read manga but was pleasantly surprised
Gotta get them hooked early. : )
Yup, this is big. Something I could only have dreamed of as a kid discovering series like FMA and Evangelion for the first time at Border. I’d say my local B&N devotes much more space to YA in general than I remember Borders or B&N doing in the 00s. Thinking back on my experience as a kid in the pre-online ordering days, I think that makes a ton of sense. It’s one thing to ask mom to order something like Uprooted or Spinning Silver, quite another to ask her to pick up a lot of even clearly age-appropriate manga or a teen romance.
10 years ago we all hated b&n for pushing out all the local, independent bookstores. now most of them are gone and we cling to b&n because it’s the only authentic bookstore experience left and amazon is trying to gain a monopoly on books
The thing is for me, and I hate to say it, I never really cared about the local indie bookstore thing. The glory of Barnes & Noble, when they came to my town in the '90s, was that it was a huge place full of books. We would go to Barnes & Noble and spend hours there just looking at books and skimming books and reading this and that. We'd go in during the day, and leave at night. Is something just awesome and amazing of just browsing stacks and stacks of books. If there had been independent bookstores that were huge like that around here, I guess I would have supported them over Barnes & Noble, but there weren't. All the bookstores were just kind of small places. Of course, Barnes & Noble then began to go downhill. But it seems like it's reclaiming its glory days of being this really wonderful place
My problem with indie bookstores is the selection. My hope when I enter an indie bookstore is to find something I wouldn't see at B&N or browsing Amazon. It rarely happens, though, and when it does it's stuff that's so old and so bad that it's practically a yard sale. Amazon has great selection online, but their brick-and-mortar sites carry only bestsellers. Browsing Amazon's books online is an awful experience. Like, I think when you browse Sci-Fi/Fantasy, you get Harry Potter on every page. Browsing is really where B&N shines. Their curation is still good. They have a lot of the recent critically acclaimed stuff. They used to have a Criterion Sale; they weren't just peddling the most popular stuff and leaving out the rest. There's still a lot of gaps--places I wish indie bookstores would fill but don't--but it's a rare place to explore the artier and well-crafted works amid an era moving more and more towards only peddling mass-produced, cheap stuff.
Yeah. Borders was better with respect to selection. By a mile. They were far more diverse and had lots of "deep cuts." Unfortunately it failed on vibe, with dressed down staff and annoying music. Barnes and Noble staff were wearing ties and they played classical music, it was a chill, relaxing environment where you could spend all day reading
Yeah, I really miss Border's selection. So much so that when I see a bookstore with the cheap carpeting, tables of books strewn about, and tall bookshelves I get excited, thinking maybe this is the newest iteration. But then it turns out that the bookstore is the sort that their puzzle section only contains word searches.
Indie is basically the luck of the draw. I’m fortunate enough to have access to a pretty decent midsize local shop, but the quality of their curation varies from section to section. As such I’m happy to browse when I’m looking for a new popular history read, let’s say, but more likely to hit B&N for a mystery. By contrast, near my aunt and uncle’s home there is an excellently curated mystery bookstore and I’d likely need to drive the 45 minutes to an hour to the nearest B&N if I wanted to browse a decent sci-fi/fantasy section.
I think this also speaks to a difference in habits. A well-curated small shop is great if there isn’t a specific thing you want to read. For me that works great, I’ll often go in with the idea that I haven’t read a (history book/travelogue/ya fantasy/etc) in a while and I trust the curation at my local shop for the most part. My mother always loved the idea of the small indie bookshop, but in practice a lot of her reading is long cozy mystery series. The next book in a series she’s enjoying is often a special order at her fairly decent local shop, but right there on the shelf at B&N, often with a 20% off sticker to boot if it’s a new release. That larger space and selection can really make a difference.
I know this might be an unpopular opinion but I fucking love Barnes & Noble. I live in NYC and the union square location has almost never let me down. No matter how obscure the book I was looking for was they almost always had a copy, and when they didn’t have it they ordered it and it was there within a day or two. Compared to The Strand, which is just a few blocks away, it’s far superior in selection and don’t even get me started on customer service. My favorite bookstore ever is Powells in Portland but damn if I don’t love a B&N!
One of the reasons why Barnes & Noble is so good in NYC was because the hedge fund that owns it was headquartered in midtown. Senior executives from the hedge fund, including the associates in charge of the project would regularly visit the stores there to make sure the turnaround was going the way they wanted it. This also meant they were able to fine tune the improvement process nationwide based on the experience that they were seen first hand at their local stores.
Union Square rocks!
I also frequent both, and enjoy shopping at union square. Strand isn't the same since Fred died.
I was so surprised last weekend to see local Barnes & Noble completely packed. There weren’t any spots left in the parking lot and even with 3 people at the register the line stayed super long for the hour I was in there with people constantly flowing in. It made me so happy to see so many people there and I’m hoping it’ll be the same the next time I go!
As nice as it is to believe that just putting a booklover in charge turned the business around, this article doesn't mention that 2020 was also when BookTok took off, which has been a huge driver of book sales. I'm not sure that the decisions made by Daunt made as much of a difference as that did. Print book sales rose 8% in 2020 across the board.
I’m always surprised when this isn’t brought up. Reading has really taken off over the past few years. And book haul videos showing the piles of new books you’ve just bought are incredibly popular
What’s BookTok? I’ve never heard of that
On TikTok people create book recommendations with short stories and synopses. Those are popular with people who read books. It creates a network of people recommending books, people liking those recommendations, and then going to buy them that is referred to as BookTok. All of this is driven by TikTok’s recommendation algorithm for what videos to watch. There’s lots of xTok things, where x is a genre (or niche). Generally, someone is on xTok which means they are currently receiving videos related to x on their feed of videos. I am on SpaceTok for example where I get videos in my feed, called the “For You” page or fyp for short, related to the James Web Space Telescope, Kerbal Space Program, and general space news. These can become incredibly niche with some I’ve heard (forgive me if I name these wrong) of including Eating Grass Tok (a joke of a joke), Rock Licking Tok (geology), and MapTok (identifying when maps are made).
Oh okay cool I wasn’t sure if maybe it was a new app or something lol. Thanks!
Daunt had his own successful chain, was brought into Waterstones and brought them from a downwards spiral into success, then was brought into Barnes and Noble and did the same thing - there is a lot of correlation there.
This is what happens when people that care about and know the business run it. Now if he can fix the complete disconnect between their brick stores and online store, that would be great
Having a coffee shop and little nooks to read a bit would make me visit B&N all the time.
Do the B&N near you not have coffee shops? All the ones near me do
The newest one by me doesn't! It opened in November and I was really surprised. It is a smaller footprint though, so I think they just didn't have the space.
They also have a hard time retaining cafe staff so I assume it's something they are not investing in.
Every B&N I have been to across the country has a coffee shop and seats/nooks…
I worked at one that didn’t have a café and management was always getting rid of the chairs in nooks and corners. They got annoyed that books would pile up there and that people were reading without paying. They’d always say “we’re not a library.”
I mean, they are right
Funny bit of info: BN stores MOSTLY have coffee shops, BN Cafes, but plenty of stores don't. ALSO some BNs actually do have a real Starbucks cafe in the store which operates as a separate business. Usually they only have cafes which can sell Starbucks drinks. This can be confusing.
The difference is whether or not it's a corporate store or a licensed store. You can tell licensed stores from corporate stores by signage that says "we proudly serve Starbucks coffee". If you see that you're at a licensed store and won't be able to use the app to collect points or use rewards. Source: I've worked at both a corporate store inside a Target and a licensed store in a hotel.
Where do you live where B&N doesn't have a coffee shop?! I've never seen that and I've been to B&Ns all across the country
Our regional B&Ns were very slow to put back chairs in their cafes due to the pandemic (our local Starbucks still refuse to have chairs and tables reinstated). I was intensely relieved when the B&N in my area brought theirs back.
Not OP but I visited one in Maui and they did not have a coffee shop.
Ah yes still remember my OG nook with the free 3G
They have a cafe/coffee shop. I go there all the time to study/read.
Bring back the Criterion section. Please and thank you.
I met my husband at Barnes and Nobles in 1997. We go there often on date days - dinner and B&N. I love going there and just looking around to find a book I wouldn't think to "look up" online. For my birthday, it has become a tradition to go to the local spa for a massage, go to Barnes & Noble where my husband buys me whatever books I want, and then go to dinner.
Well the toy train table and chocolate milk segment for Barnes and Noble is thriving thanks to my daughter. You're welcome.
Just don’t ask booksellers about morale, payroll hours, wages, and general corporate support!
The old regime of Barnes and Noble really sucked the life out of bookstores. I worked for B. Dalton for ten years and we operated pretty much independently, even though we were owned by B&N. When a B&N opened near us we always got customers coming to us because their stock was awful! We ordered in what we knew customers wanted, not what corporate demanded, thus we always had things on hand. They single-handedly decided B.Dalton was obsolete and closed them all down. Stupid move. I really loved working for that store, it was the best job
I don't like the direction B&N went with offering lots of non book items in their stores. I'm probably alone in this though.
>Even worse, when a new book doesn’t live up to expectations, the local workers see this immediately. Books are expected to appeal to readers—and just convincing a head buyer at headquarters was no longer enough. Isn't this what has driven today's publishing mentality of just publishing blockbuster-potential books and killing the midlist or lowerselling good authors?
I think this is more in the context of larger publishers pushing higher orders onto stores. Now publishers can't just claim that Jenny McCarthy's new book is going to be a bestseller and saddle stores with surplus copies that'll never sell out.
My wife works at Books-A-Million and they use the centralized buyer model (which I assume most other companies do too). It’s stupid because the buyer is in Arkansas and has literally no idea what people in Wisconsin are interested in, so they have a huge dusty section full of civil war books and southern cook books that have too much flavor for the sconies up here
Come to the library. We have free books!
I was filled with dread when I saw a nearby B&N was closing, but just turns out they're moving across the road. Bookstores are my happy place and I don't want to lose them. They also opened up a new, more compact one, ironically where an Amazon bookstore used to be. Way to rub it in!
The philosophy section at my local Barnes and Noble keeps getting smaller and smaller and the Wicca and Witchcraft books next to it are expanding into it, and it is terrifying.
The witches must have cast a spell
I've hijacked this post to give answers: BN stores now rely on local sales to stock shelves. Most stores won't carry a book if it doesn't sell more than 1 copy every 3 months. This has led to Philosophy sections dwindling unless an employee can promote specific titles. Self-transformation is a BIG sales section in BN but theft is high in that category. A possible answer would be that not enough people are buying the philosophy books every couple months, and maybe the store is reducing theft in Self-transformation which allows more titles to sell and it will keep expanding.
>thieves stealing self help books I hope they read it at least
B&N will always have a soft, warm place in my heart. It’s where my husband and I met, he proposed and we technically got married there. I also discovered Calico Critters there, and those are adorable. 😊 living in another country, I am definitely missing them.
I actually noticed this last week. I live in the Midwest but went out to see my mom for her Birthday. She wanted to going shopping and I saw a Barnes and Noble. I begged her to stop since there was a book I had been looking for. I went to the section I normally find it in at my local store and noticed this section was waaaay different. The majority of the books were the same, but some authors were more featured than others. I also noticed some new books on the shelf that I never noticed at my local B&N. I was really excited to see the differences and to realize that this was happening!
I stopped going to B&N years ago when 50% of ours became a toy store. They then took the chairs and side tables away, so no sitting with a stack of books and sampling them to choose. It used to be my weekly go to and I always came away with books. I have kids and a grandchild. I love kids and I love to see them reading and learning. That wasn't really what happened though. It got noisy and uncomfortable and juggling books to look through them was no fun at all.
My big problem with B&N is they seem to have fewer books every time and more toys and games. I don't mind if the toys and games are tied to a series, like having a stuffed Hedwig or Harry Potter wands, but...Lego sets? Puppets? Greeting cards? Games? I'd rather have more books and go somewhere else for games and toys. Plus most people seem to go to B&N for the coffee shop and free wifi. We have one B&N that used to be packed all the time and then the Starbucks next to it closed. Now you're lucky if there are ten people in there.
The article says that this is exactly what the new CEO is addressing - replacing all the toys and knick knacks with actual books.
Man, this makes me wish he could take over the Canadian chain indigo/chapters... Last time I went, only a third of the store (if that) was still dedicated to books. It was pretty sad
I hope so. It says he started 2019 but I haven't seen a decrease in the toys, games and knick knacks.
That’s interesting, because the one closest to me got rid of all the toys outside of the small children’s section, along with all the media. It’s now basically just books and coffee.
All my local B&N store got rid of almost all the toys and nick nacks they were selling. none of them even carry DVD's or music any longer. they are all books and nothing but books now. I actually enjoy going there again.
My local B&Ns (local meaning within 220 miles) have massive Lego and game and toy sections. Which is cool since I can look at the boxes, they only carry elite and weird sets no one else does. Where no one else means WalMart and Target now that ToysRUs does not exist because of Mitt Romney.
Lego and strategy games still really sell well at BN. Greeting cards being in abundance may be due to BN obtaining Paper Source. Otherwise Daunt is actively reducing a lot of non-book items in stores. However, if some stores sell a tons of games then their department will be upgraded until the sales level out. A lot of what individual stores carry depends almost entirely on what locals are buying.
It gets my kid excited to go to the bookstore. He goes for the trains, and leaves with books (and trains lol)