B&N closes store in Manhattan. Customers confuse bookstores with libraries

I go to this store two times a week and probably buy three or four books a week (rarely hardcovers; usually paperbacks, often stuff from the discount pile). The line's always long, seems like a lot of other people are buying, though obviously a lot of people simply relax all day and never buy a thing. I love this store because we'd often spend a whole day in the area, hitting the bookstore, then going to a movie two blocks up. The Daily News story said it would probably be turned into a clothing store. It also had a real estate person speculating that they were being charged $300 a square foot. 60,000 square foot store. This place also has the best guy for bitching people out who sit in the cafeteria without buying anything from the Barnes and Noble cafe. It does look like the employees will be placed at other stores in the city, until those stores close too.

 

I cringed at these graphs toward the end of the NYT article:

Don't count me among that crowd. Corporate stores like Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster drove the small, independent book and video stores out of business -- you know, the people who weren't the best businessmen or women, but loved books and loved movies and tried to make a living at it.

Now a bigger fish has come to chew up and spit out these soulless corporations. I'm not shedding any tears.

 

Interestingly enough, it seems to me that we may be on the verge (at least up here) of more independents opening up and filling a much needed vacuum in the retail market.

I don't know if it will every return to the boom years of the 70's and early 80's when independents controlled about 40% of the retail market but I think the pendulum will swing back.

Let's face it, saving a few bucks by ordering onlinei is nice but at some point, the experience of browsing in a bookstore where there's an apparent intelligence behind the selection of the books is far more appealing. and you can actually discuss the books with the owner or staff who care about what they're selling.

It's a bit like the locavore food movement. People will spend more on food by buying locally rather than buying unhealthy food churned out by the food factories.

 

My wife's in the book business and has been saying that exact thing for the last few months. I just want books - the physical version - to survive and thrive. I underestand e-books might be the thing that keeps publishers alive and I understand all the benefits of the Kindle or the Nook or any other e-reader, but I will always need to hold one and I always want to be able to wander around a store - whether it's a Barnes & Noble, The Strand, or a tiny independent shop tucked away.

 

You're taking my comparison a little too literally.

The comparison is about relationships you have with the companies you purchase your products from. There is a justifiable backlash against large corporations whether it's the food industry or, in this case, the book industry.

It's about having a relationship with the person or business who's providing the product, not just the product itself. The locavore movment is much more than just going into a grocery story and buying organic food--a designation that has now been co-opted by retailers like Wal-Mart. It's about knowing where your food comes from and the person who grew it or produced it.

Granted it's easier to buy a book online but if you tried really hard you could probably buy everything online and never have to go out of your apartment.

And if you know exactly what book you want, sure it's a way of saving a little money but it doesn't replace the experience of browsing in a bookstore and coming on a book that you never knew existed. And there are a lot of people who are willing to put a premium on that.

And most bookstores sell themselves more than just on service. They offer knowledge and advice and most of them are an integral part of the community. Last time I checked Amazon doesn't offer author readings or events.

The funny thing about the big box stores is that they stole the idea of making their bookstores a community based operation from the independents but they had no clue how to go about it. So they figured throw in some comfy chairs, offer coffee and let people use their stores as public libraries. As they say, hoisted by their own petard.

 

You're missing the point. And to some people, price is everything but it's not THE overriding consideration to a lot.

If you could buy the exact same product cheaper at Wal-Mart than at Joe's Hippy Trippy Health Food Market, a lot of people would choose to pay extra to 1) support their local retailer 2) not allow Wal-Mart or any other big box retailer to appropriate the locavore movement for marketing purposes.

B&N and the other big box stores offered the illusion of choice. They thought that by ordering every single title in a publisher's backlist, they were giving their customers more selection In fact what they were doing was cluttering their shelves with unsaleable titles that were an obstacle to choice. At the same time these stores didn't offer anything that you couldn't find--or special order-- in an indie bookstore, not to mention that your independent had esoteric titles from small presses that the big boys couldn't order. The chains had better remainders--that also gave them the illusion of cheaper prices when 99% of the books were the same price as the indies.

The indie will fill a gap left by the big box stores who (at least up here) aren't in the book business at all. They're in the candle and home decor business. They won't come back the same way as when they were driven out of business by the carpet bombing marketing strategies of the big boys, but they'll be back.

Yes, people will continue to buy books through Amazon and some of us will buy both online at independents.

But the book business isn't dying (we get those predictions every twenty years or so) but it will have to adapt to the challenges from Amazon and e-readers.

 

When I think about the book business adapting (to anything), I think about elderly gentlemen who still can't figure out how to use the remote control on the TV. Lovely, classy, dignified women who still keep a rotary dial phone by the bed. There's a record player in the living room. They keep track of their money by hand, in the big binder on the dining room table. They know there's a better way, but, well, you know.

The business model of publishers and booksellers is so messed up, so archaic, it's almost impossible to see how it can be restructured. Publishers have no current means to sell their product without bookstores, either mortar or electronic. But as fewer people make their purchases in bookstores, those bookstores are taking fewer titles, smaller quantities, or as we have seen on this thread, closing altogether. So publishers' revenues plummet, they publish fewer books, for smaller advances, with less dollars for promotion and marketing.

And before we look to the rise of eBooks as a way to offset the loss of paper-and-ink dinosaurs, please note that the revenues from eBooks is (as of now) puny and insignificant compared to traditional books, and the royalties are a joke. Which means your advances are going down.

So for now, we need those bookstores, until the publishing business figures out how to operate without them, selling their own products and creating an entirely new business model. Just as soon as they figure out how to plug in that Betamax.

Much reporting has been done on the actual math, here's just one current account of the situation:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7151629.html

 

Oh, and as for the indie vs. Big Box debate: Publishers can't survive on sales derived from the small merchants; they don't take big quantities, nor do they take all the titles. They are a lovely option for those who enjoy chatting with knowledgeable book folks, but they can't sustain the industry as we know it.