I can't tell if bookstores have gotten markedly worse or if I've simply become more discriminating in what I'm looking for. When Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al first swept through the US I thought it was wonderful. I've spent an inordinate amount of money and time in big-box bookstores.
I moved to Germany some 9 years ago. In my first trips back to the US a bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about. I'd typically return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my bag. My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&N gift certificates (a pattern that's continued to this day).
But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I can't say that I'm terribly excited about visiting the big box stores. I struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate. Struggled! I went looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in an upscale Houston neighborhood there were two books on the history of the most populous country in the world. There were huge aisles of random throwaway junk, games and other silliness and two books on Chinese history. Nor did they have Bertrand Russel's Principles of Mathematics or Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow.
I love books. Paper books. I have around a thousand of them. But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.
>But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.
There's likely some bad decision making behind a move towards a 'Wal-Mart-ification' of the big-box stores, but are you sure they could have survived if they tried to compete with the advantages of a warehouse full of diverse stock and shelf space that is virtual and costs nothing to expand by adding pages (ala Amazon).
It seems to me that they've acted more like fish in a pond that's been drying up. Struggling to stay in a deep enough spot to keep breathing.
I get a better price, better selection and more information browsing Amazon, but I'm not about to blame the physical book stores for going out of business because they changed, man.
I'll bring in another perspective. I'm in a huge dilemma.
I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run we're better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn't matter as much.
Because of this, I think book romanticism is pretty stupid. However, I can't help but feel captivated by it. I have a few theories on why this may be so:
I do like that my books are tangible possessions, that I can look back at the notes my father made into them in college, that I can find an old train pass I used as a bookmark that brings back memories. Or I know that that mark is from when I spilled coffee all over my theory of computation book when I fell asleep studying for the final. I associate my books with other things, thoughts. Currently this doesn't quite work this way with e-books. That's why they don't feel "personal". This can be remedied, but I don't know to what extent.
I don't give a damn about big box stores, but I care very much about my local stores. The difference is in experience. When I'm buying a book, I don't want to feel like I'm a standardized entity there to benefit a company whose sole purpose is to maximize profits. The alternative to this what I can only describe as "intellectual flirtation".
Example: Today I happened to have some free time and I wandered into my favorite bookstore. I looked around, grabbed a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and sat in a corner reading for an hour. No one nagged me to buy anything. The book was well written but it wasn't as comprehensive as I hoped, so I moved to the fiction section, and onto mathematics, dipping into books as I wished. Finally, I found a book about the role of Tea in Japanese culture and decided to buy it. While I was paying, the cashier struck up a conversation with me about the book itself and we had a small debate about the topic and he also recommended another author to me.
Now, as you can see the act of going to a bookstore is not a thing I do just to buy books. I do it so I can have a change of scenery and pace, relax, learn and have some personal time to just think (when do we do that, seriously?). I also do it because it's profoundly social (i.e. not web 2.0 style "me too" social). I like conversing about the things I find interesting, and it seems bookstores gather people like me, whether they work there or just visit to buy. Finally, the cost of all this is a possible few extra dollars on my book.
The interesting point is how little of the positive bookstore experience you describe actually involved taking the book home. It seems to me that there might be a niche for something that is a cross between a bookstore, a library and the old Edwardian gentleman's club - a space with books and coffee/bar that is supported by subscriptions (and drink sales) as much as actual book sales, and where the books are curated to some extent for their interest to the membership rather than commercial value. I'd pay a monthly fee to be able to go hang out in a nice space full of books that are selected to be interesting (to me!) rather than stuff like "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and the latest fad diet.
A bit old timey but they do have a great book and art collection, a reading room, a separate room to just read newspapers, discussion events. They also lend iPads and kindles to members.
There is something of a low brow version of this in Japan - manga kissa - But they evolved into a refuge for the working homeless, runaway teenager, salaryman wanting porn while out pretending to be drumming up sales... Very weird but a cheap place to sleep when traveling on a shoestring.
I would sign up for this! A gentleman's club sounds elitist - which is one way of keeping "community quality" up I suppose. But to me it's a rather ugly and exclusive way of doing it. Ideally, the audience would self select. The people who wouldn't fit the place and mindset wouldn't want to come in the first place. I don't even know how to begin to think about how one would come about doing that or how one would start such a community and expect people to come and socialize, though.
To clarify, I did not mean to indicate elitism by mentioning gentlemen's clubs - rather their social purpose, which is in fact close to how many people use Starbucks or other wi-fi coffee shops today: somewhere to go instead of going home, where you can get a drink and something to eat and spend some quality time with your laptop, or socialize if you are so minded. If you paid a subscription, you wouldn't feel bad about occupying a table as long as you wanted, and the bandwidth would be better :-)
Maybe a more literary, less alcoholic version of the Elk's Lodges and other fraternal organizations? I would love to see a revival of these groups, which are right now dominated by unfriendly old men getting wasted on cheap drinks.
The London Library, a private library in London's St James Square ( the heart of London's gentleman's clubland ) is a well established version of this ideal.
http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/
"
The London Library is now the world's largest independent lending library. It owes its foundation in 1841 to the vision of Thomas Carlyle, who in many ways remains its tutelary genius. But he was not alone in his desire to establish an institution which would allow subscribers to enjoy something of the wealth of a national library for use in their own homes: the Earl of Clarendon, that enlightened early-Victorian politician, was the Library's first president, Thackeray its first auditor; Gladstone and Sir Edward Bunbury were on the first committee. Early members included Dickens and George Eliot. The Library's long-standing role at the centre of the intellectual life of the nation is reflected in the roll-call of its past presidents and vice-presidents, which include Tennyson, Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Rebecca West and Isaiah Berlin. The Library's current president is Sir Tom Stoppard.
The Library stands at the north-west corner of St James's Square, as it has since 1845, after briefly occupying the first floor of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall
So this is me talking completely free form on a topic I know nothing about, but here is my conjecture anyway (because I find it interesting).
I think there is a tendency in people to totemize things. This makes a certain amount of sense -- they get attached to thier tools, because they are competent with them. But more than that, they attach memories to them, as you suggest. This is more than just with books: I certainly mourn the passing of keyboards, it takes a while to get the feel to even another one of the same model. I also have a certain affinity towards one old beaten up shovel I garden with, despite the abundance of better choices in the world.
An interesting thing I learned once, is that people are very good at learning by associating various bits of knowledge with places -- to the point that sometimes they only know some things in some places. This make sense, and there is plenty written on it.
I wonder if combining the two notions results in this affinity for books -- a combination of keeping knowledge and thoughts and feelings in the place (the book) and our love of our tools (I mean really, my new copy of APUE just doesn't do it for me the way my old worn in one did -- that one had a presence, this one just has some information, and I'm almost certain it doesn't know as much about ttys as the last one did :P ).
Anyway all that aside -- there is another aspect to physical book we must consider: scent -- books have scent and the brain is wired to respond subconsiously to various aromas. I am certain that if you grow up and love books, the smell of them has special place in your emotional processing centers. (seriously, a mysterious tome of arcane computer knowledge smells different than a well loved novel, and certainly a forgotten volume from the used book seller has a different aura than a new edition from B&N, which in turn is different from the same edition from Amazon).
Finally, maybe there is some aspect to books that comes from the refinement of the technology for a thousand years. The book is a highly polished technology - and it shows.
Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for engaging my thinker :)
I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run we're better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn't matter as much.
I disagree, at least until e-books get much, much better. Dead tree books are still easier for me to read in a number of ways (ranging from actual ease of transferring information from the medium to the brain to not having the ability to open up TVTropes on my dead trees to the easy visual indicator letting me know that I've only got a couple more pages or that I should maybe stop for the night). I can quickly and easily jot down notes in the margin that are both apparent and easy to read on further rereads (the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo I have annotated over the years is a dear treasure to me) and I've yet to see anything that works so well in electronic form. Perhaps the most difficult thing to fix, though, is simply the way memory works. It often happens that I will want to reread a certain scene (or bit of information, in the case of nonfiction) but I don't really remember any good keywords from the scene, so an e-book search wouldn't do much good. Nevertheless, a strong visual memory is very helpful here: I'm usually able to quickly turn to the appropriate part of the book and start investigating bottom halves of left pages or what have you. From my experience, this same sort of search is far more tedious and less effective on e-books as they are today.
Now, is any of this universal? I hardly think so. It's not really complete, though, and I'm willing to bet that a large number of avid readers have their necessary features where e-books are lacking, and these extend beyond simple romanticism. I mean, sure, there is a lot of romanticism also buried in there (ever notice how the olfactory experience is so much richer with books than with Kindles?), but it's hardly the whole picutre.
That's not to say that e-books can't catch up to alleviate some of these issues, but I find it borderline ridiculous to say that there's no inherent value in the tangibility of a book.
Romanticism is just that: a love for something because of what you believe it to be about: every nuance that makes an experience or thing what it is. Thus, romanticism is quite opinionated. To call it 'stupid' is a little harsh, but I won't rip you up about it like I wanted to (as someone who likes books).
To say books are an environmental detriment is incorrect; wood (paper) is one of the most renewable of resources, and when harvested responsibly (as is done in the US on the whole), it actually creates a net of more trees planted than would otherwise exist in our modern society.
Arguably, the plastics and battery chemicals of ebook readers is more damaging to our planet. Not that I think it's a particular concern.
In the grand scheme of things though, you're definitely better off trading in the SUV than worrying about the environmental footprint of your personal library.
I agree paper is a significant problem, but books are a really small portion of it, because they tend to be fairly durable goods. The vast majority of paper waste is in disposable things like newspapers, magazines, toilet paper, paper towels, advertisement circulars, etc.
Every week I probably throw out* a half-kilo of ads stuffed into my mailbox, one circular every week from every major grocery and department-store chain in the area. It would only take a few months to accumulate as much paper in grocery-store ads as all the books I've bought in my life.
* Well, I recycle it, but afaik the recyclability of glossy/coated paper is fairly poor/inefficient.
Something you might be interested is what happens with our recycling once it hits the curb. I was completely blown away when I heard about this (Toronto specific article, but I imagine you have a similar process south of the border).
I agree though, my common sense tells me that books are probably not a real contributor, but I couldn't say for sure without researching it a bit (I've been surprised before).
On romanticism: I guess I was being too harsh. My point was that it doesn't really make any practical or economic sense for me to romanticize about books, but I can't help it anyway. (Which now seems self evident when you point out the definition of romanticism like that.)
Interesting about the environmental aspect. What about all the waste though? I guess it gets recycled eventually.
I buy about 20-30 books per year and probably 100 rolls of toilet paper. If you haven't stopped using toilet paper, I wouldn't worry about your library. Not buying books for environmental reasons is for the overwhelming majority of lifestyles optimizing in the wrong place.
It's rare for a person to read more than a couple thousand books in a lifetime. That's under 2 cubic meters of space total. That's massively dwarfed by the amount of waste that we generate in a lifetime. I'd need about 3 years worth of books to fill up a trash bag.
Many stores have become worse in the exact same way, but the bookstores have been bitten by it sooner than some others. Stores started, even before the economic downturn, to not carry items that are niche or infrequently needed. Sure, many of the items that are still there were bought most, or brought better margin, but the reason people went there without question was because the niche items were there, too.
Electronic stores are another example of the same thing, and IMO, have been hurt because of it. There are a lot of short-term gains for long-term losses.
I think consumers warmed to buying on the internet because the local stores failed them. They were willing to pay the premium and were scared of and disliked online transactions. Now, the cat is out of the bag.
Some of this was due to commercial real estate prices shooting up but a good amount was their own doing.
Have you noticed that many brands, in many different markets, that had the biggest following 10 to 15 years ago are some of the worst now? They rid the brand to death for short-term gains. Now, I take a good look at the less-known brands before ever thinking of going with the big traditional names.
Borders was a revelation when it showed up on Rockville Pike outside Washington. I was delighted when it came to downtown at 18th & L NW. But during the last several years I could see (for example) the poetry shelves squeezing down from most of two free-standing chest-height shelves to part of one; the history section much compressed; the computing shelves progressively thinner and less organized.
I've only lived in the DC area for 6 mo. or so, but I've been to the Borders in Silver Spring, North Bethesda, Bethesda, and downtown and thought they were horrible, at least on price and probably on selection too. The B&N near Metro Center, on the other hand, had a much better selection when I went there for the first time last weekend. I found at least 4 books I wanted - however, I buy everything from Amazon (lower prices, or used books) and put them all on my wish list there.
It's been almost six months since borders filed for bankruptcy, and they were having cash flow problems before that. Many suppliers have been insisting on cash terms, which must have put a serious dent in their stocks. I was at a borders last week looking for a brand new Stross hardcover that I was willing to pay full price for but they didn't have it. An employee said they wouldn't be getting it, yet they definitely would have in years past.
I suspect bookstores are about the same (at least Borders & B&N haven't seemed terribly different to me than they were in the 90s). The difference is that alternative ways of buying books (Amazon, ebooks, etc.) have gotten much, much better, so bookstores look much worse in comparison.
The Wal-Mart model is what you get when profit margins are collapsing towards zero. There isn't the surplus sloshing around to support more than a few big players in the market, skilled staff, or worthy but unpopular products.
1) their buyers, who are the people that decide what each store stocks, deteriorated from "people who knew books" to "people who knew inventory control" ; as a result, the bookstore selection has gotten markedly worse as you have noticed.
2) they have suffered from a lack of seriousness in approaching what a good bokstore should be. Instead of being true to themselves and having an excellent book selection, they add "features" like a coffee shop, games, paper and pens, etc. all of which dilutes their original purpose.
It's not the stores as much as it's the publishers and editors. The good editors are long retired, and what's left are the MBA's that are creaming their jeans to find the next hot vampire / zombie / weresomething romance trend.
The current crop of publishers and editors are operating without the vaguest hint of a clue. We're in a slump, but I'm not sure when (or even if) we're going to see any kind of recovery.
I'm pretty sure I know how to solve the problem, but nobody would like the answer.
Borders is dead because the folks in charge of the corporation made bad decisions. They overextended themselves borrowing to expand. They failed to shutter money-losing stores quickly enough, not in small part because they signed off on long-term leases that made vacation a non-option in many cases. And of course their online presence was managed by Amazon from 2001-2008.
The failure of the chain isn't a commentary on the changing book market, it's a commentary what happens to businesses that abuse debt and make decisions for the short term than have negative long-term implications.
I have hundreds of books which fill multiple bookshelves (I've even read most of them) like some sort of trophy case for my intelligence. There are only a handful I have picked up more than once (except to move), and the only ones I pick up on a regular basis are cookbooks. Different books lend themselves to different formats and purchasing options. I buy tech books in electronic format, novels on my Kindle, and cookbooks I absolutely have to pick up and thumb through before buying a physical copy. It's time for the big bookcase to go, replaced with a small bookcase, a kindle, and a hard drive.
How do you read the tech books? I've purchased two books, one on Stripes and the other JavaScript: The Good Parts. I haven't started the JavaScript book on my Kobo, but the Stripes book fails all the time. It freezes the reader. But even when it doesn't, I find it hard to reference the material. I want to jump to a certain page, but find the jump to feature slow and tedious, especially when I don't know the exact page.
Most big box bookstores don't have as much variety or depth as we've come to expect from exposure to online book sellers. You have to go to a sizeable used bookstore to get that (famous examples being Powell's in Portland and The Strand in NYC).
The problem is that people have diverse interests (niches) and a typical brick and mortar retail operation simply can't afford to carry much depth in any particular niche. The result is a lot of niches shallowly represented, at most big box stores you can't even find all of the books written by a given author, even famous ones, unless they are insanely popular at the moment.
Ironically I think in the next few decades the pre-internet trend will reverse and independent used bookstores will stick around longer than the chains.
I don't think this was the problem with Borders. With Borders, the selection was just poor. There are canonical books on many topics. If you went into the computer section, you wouldn't find things like K&R, Stroustrup, etc., but the latest and crappiest C and C++ books. The same thing was true of books on most topics -- music, photography, sewing, etc. -- there are classics, and instead of carrying those, Borders would carry Dummies and other books.
If you went into the sci-fi section, you wouldn't find Philip Dick, Stanislaw Lem, or even a decent selection of Asimov -- you'd find a bunch of sci-fi books written the previous couple of years, and in many cases, sequels without the originals.
Finding books of quality at Borders was hard. I'd often want a book, go in there for half an hour, and find nothing. The value-add of a good bookstore is that they will have pre-selected the best books for you. If I go many of the little used book shops in my area, it will be a rotating selection of excellent books. Not every book will necessarily be my style, but every book on the shelves will be great, and there will be books on most topics. This is much more useful.
I don't really understand why this was the case. Borders ought to have economies of scale, and really ought to be able to have some central office somewhere picking out good books. Somehow, the selection was random and crappy instead.
I think part of the problem was that Borders probably went the route of overusing metrics, and providing more books similar to the ones that sold, which lead to a bunch of crappy books on popular topics (where it's much more useful to the customer to e.g. have the top 3 books on videography than the top 3 books, hidden in a bookcase of crappy books, where the good ones take an hour or two to find).
It's strange - when Borders came to our town (Corvallis, OR) I was excited. In the end, though, the number of full price books I bought I could probably count on my fingers. The CD listening stations are now no longer needed and the location wasn't convenient enough to stop in for a coffee.
Our independent bookstores are still alive, luckily.
Music stores have suffered similar fates. The big, generic chains have been destroyed by ecommerce but smaller shops that provide expertise in a distinct niche have survived and even flourished. I think there's a lesson for software businesses in this too.
Border's demise, at least in Australia, was investing too much in the CD business. That lead them to renting much bigger space that they needed and increasing cost. When the CD years faded, they felt it hard on the balance sheet.
The CDs and DVDs were also horribly expensive compared to local competition, even if you used coupons. I honestly don't know why they thought they were in that business.
Our Borders had a tolerable collection of CS texts, diminishing in quality over the past couple of years. When they stopped getting new SF in on release days, I stopped buying books there.
It's also amazing that Borders beat its competitors on technology. Apparently the founders developed some really innovative inventory software in the 80's/90's that allowed them to keep low prices and a wide selection. This allowed them to expand all over the nation.
definitely going to suck to have a world where you can't go chill out somewhere and check out some new books and magazines. Not to mention 10,000 more jobs gone
Borders closing != no more bookstores. They'll survive and morph into even more fun places to hang out and browse content. The reason why borders closed is because the atmosphere wasn't conducive to just hanging out. I always wanted to leave as soon as I walked into one. I don't get that feeling at cool local bookstores or even Barnes and Noble.
I personally preferred our local Borders stores over the Barnes and Nobles. They usually had more titles in stock and were a little nicer furnished. But they started to go downhill about 2 years ago, with more and more empty space, damaged carpets, trashed bathrooms, etc.
I don't know why anybody is voting this comment down. This describes my local library to a "T". You wouldn't dare allow your children to use the restroom unescorted for fear of what they might encounter. Also, the furniture and carpets are infested with fleas. At least with a commercial establishment the owner has some control over the environment.
I like the idea that someone would downvote a comment based on the idea that "my library isn't like this, therefore these guys are trolling". Who knows. I've mostly seem wonderful libraries in the US, especially in Pittsburgh, but I'm sure plenty of places have their problems. There would always be a few bums asleep in the Carnegie (discretely, mind you).
Yup. The downtown library in my town is the same way; my wife refuses to go inside. I usually just have books transferred down to the library close to my house rather than deal with that branch.
It says something about our culture that we don't even consider going to the library to get a book. I think we are so demanding and particular, that the thought of not getting what we want, when we want, is too much to bear and we would rather spend the cash.
40+ million books and other media loaned each year and 10 million things to loan. All with a single library card at almost any library. They're even talking about adding Kindle books to the collection.
Interesting thought, but I don't agree. Maybe I'm selfish but never once have I thought about the author when I'm buying a book. Nor have I heard or read anything from anyone saying "You know what, I'm not going to get that book at the library. I'm going to pay for it so the author is fairly compensated."
That was the same for me until social media came along and I was able to talk with authors I liked. Either way, I'm not sure going to a bookstore and buying a book says anything about culture other than people are used to buying things so they can keep them.
The library in my city (in the Netherlands) is open from 10am until 5 pm on weekdays (one evening a week until 7 pm), on Saturday from 10am until 3 pm and on Sunday from 1 pm until 5 pm. With budget cuts coming, they're going to close completely on Sunday soon.
With opening hours like that, who can go to the library? Pensioners, and every now and then a lost student who needs something from the local history archive. It's ridiculous, it's a huge, fairly beautiful building too, and 75% of the time it's empty.
Oh and coffee (tiny, 4 US fluid ounces! be sure not to pay attention when you drink because it's gone before you know!) costs 2 euros (2.8 USD). Don't spend an afternoon there, it'll set you back a tenner.
That last part of your statement is important. B&N and Borders drove a pretty large # of indy bookstores out of business (and Wal*mart killed a few more as I understand it, going out of their way to increase stock in certain areas until the Indies bought it, then going back to normal book habits).
I hope this event helps cause a resurgence in the indy stores. I need to make it to the local Tattered cover soon, though I plan to make it for GRRMs signing end of this month.
Good to see a mention of the Tattered Cover, as they actually have 3 locations. There was a Talk of the Nation segment[1] that covered independent bookstores, and how they are coping today just a few weeks ago (the Tattered Cover owner was guest).
For me, growing up in Ann Arbor, Border's was the locally owned, independent bookstore. Then one day in the 90s, living in Palo Alto, I read that a local, independent movie theater (the Varsity) was closing down to make room for -- wait for it -- a Borders. That was the first I knew they had become a chain.
A strange journey: from local indie, to indie killer, to dead.
I'm really concerned about the Varsity now that Borders is going for good.
I don't know whether the building has any historical protection, however, I wouldn't be surprised if it disappears given the suddenness of the Cal Ave tree snafu a couple of years back.
For those that don't know, California Avenus is part of 'old' Palo Alto, and has a bunch of boutiques, restaurants, and cafes. It was lined with shade trees that had been there since the city had been founded, and was overall a very nice place to be.
A few years back, the city decided to, uh, beautify the area by cutting down all the trees, and this happened almost overnight. The street now feels like a seedy part of LA, and is nowhere as nice a place to be, thanks to the local government.
Off-topic, but there's a fantastic bagel shop near the corner of California and El Camino that I highly recommend.
There's usually a really good indi book store right where the borders are(or used to be). Their tactic was to move in near the best, most popular store in each areas. I'm glad they're gone.
That's what they did here. The indy looked at what he was facing and didn't even bother. He sold his inventory and closed down before he lost his shirt.
That was over a decade ago; now that Borders is gone, closed last fall. B&N is the only real bookstore left in the area. There are a couple of independents but they have very limited inventory and seem to make their living selling a lot of accessories, pens, and stationery.
I wouldn't worry. First I think Barnes and Noble is more likely to survive with Borders out of the way. But even if the local book market disappeared completely I think someone would pop up and fill the need for "a place to chill out" (as you put it).
You already see that now with Coffee Shops, Internet Cafes and so on. We have a free market system and a free market system is based on there being an entrepreneur for every need.
Though I had to drive over an hour to get there I still patronized Border's orignal store in Ann Arbor. After the crash they were the only store to still stock a fair inventory of tech books, though fewer with each passing year.
I would hope that maybe Schuler's might buy the Ann Arbor store. Still would be an independent bookstore downtown but it definitely wouldn't be the same.
My father told me about a time when the big cities were plagued with cinemas, some of them really really spectacular. This time exist no more.
The cinemas of today... they are totally different like those circus with 20 elephants and tigers you just can't see it again.
Maybe it is time for people like google guys to enter and record with the street view tech what is like a bookstore of today because maybe it is obvious for us but our children will not know what is it.
I'm digitalizing all my books with the fantastic Fujitsu S1500 so I don't have to carry a metric ton of books around with me. Ebook tech will only improve, it is in its infancy today.
Sorry for OT, but regarding the Fujitsu, do you cut the spines off your books and throw them away afterwards? And do you read them from PDF's? On what, a regular computer? That seems to be quite a step backwards; I love epub on my ebook, but reading non-reflowable formats is hardship on it. Or do you have an A4/letter ebook?
But does the OCR recognize things like page numbers or chapter names at the top of the page, chapter headers etc? If it just makes searchable pdf's with the same layout as the original pages, it still wouldn't help much. But if OCR software does do that, that's be great - then I can convert also 'normal' pdf's into html/epub.
From my own perspective: my wife and I love going to the local big-box bookstore, grabbing a few books or magazines off the shelf, buying a few coffee/bakery items, and sitting for an hour or so. Judging from the crowd that accompanied us on most weekends, I don't think we're unique in that regard: the only money we're spending there is in the coffee shop, or through impulse purchases.
The fact is, we buy most of our books on Amazon or other online retailers; the bookstore is a form of cheap entertainment for us, not a serious place to shop. Their variety of inventory simply wasn't good enough to rely on (I paint Barnes and Noble with this brush as well, and the last time I was in a Chapters, it was similar), and overnight shipping is close enough to instant gratification for us.
Yea, I know that legacy MBAs and "shareholder value" based on stock price is horrible and certainly helped the demise. Ackman (a activist shareholder who specializes in takeovers) once proposed that Borders takeover B&N, which of course would have been horrible.
I've noticed that borders has made some moves at diversification (they have Legos on the shelf now, etc.) but I think it was pretty clearly too little too late. The history of the company is just one poor move after another once the original owners got out.
And, from my experience with at least the downtown Boston store, they also diversified into CDs and DVDs--which turned out to be a diversification into something in even worse decline than their core business.
I wonder if barnes n noble would pick off the highest sales locations from the liquidators and convert them for markets where they weren't dominant yet.
Wonder what type of place could survive and be profitable at the size of the typical borders stores (20-30k sq feet)?
In my area, every Borders was built quite close to an existing Barnes and Noble location. It's pretty frustrating because there are other perfectly viable locations with no bookseller or a tiny Waldenbooks.
I've spent some time trying to come up with good uses for empty big box stores. I now have an empty Circuit City, Borders, and grocery store within a few miles of my house. They get used seasonally for fireworks or Halloween or calendar retailers ("the hermit crabs of the retail industry") but nothing else.
I'd love to see someone go into one and open a laser tag / trampoline / rock climbing / indoor playground type space, especially one with tables and wifi.
Where I am in the UK the stores are mainly owned by rich landlords who couldn't apparently care less if there's a store open or not (they don't lower their rates). About half of our city centre locations are vacant (for real!) and no-one can afford the rental rates being charged. Local gov taxes are (roughly speaking) a multiplier (< 1) of rental rates.
In my neighborhood, a touristy area of miami, 25% of the retail spaces are empty and have been empty for YEARS. Landlords refuse to lower rents to draw new tenants. There must be a tax incentive to "lose" money on these units.
Many new developments in suburban areas further outside of the denser areas are offering tenants the first year free to get their feet settled. I think this is a smart move, and wish more landlords were that forward thinking.
Here in Miami the borders and b&n were all built fairly far apart from each other. However our old Circuit cities are all seasonal halloween stores as well. They are truly the hermit crabs of the retail industry.
I'd love to see what types of retail is succeeding right now. I'll have my virtual assistant do some research on this and get back to you. Which retail sectors are growing in this economy, etc.
The local Borders store had a big going out of business sale here about a month ago. It was really sad walking inside and seeing all the shelves empty. It was even more depressing walking out having seen nothing that looked interesting to buy.
Don't expect the discounts to be that good the first weekend...I mean, the first weekend I went to one of the closing stores I could get most items cheaper on Amazon still. By the time they got to sufficient discount numbers anything I was interested in was already gone.
A couple months ago I was at a Borders store that was closing down in a few days. They had ridiculous discounts (80% off and such) on everything.
When I buy books, I usually buy how-to books to teach myself something. Even though they were dirt cheap, I kept thinking to myself: "I could easily get this information for free online." I ended up leaving not having bought anything.
Instead of thinking only about the money, think about it like this:
Book costs $5, but I could get it for free online. Hrm... If I have a physical book sitting on my nightstand staring at me, am I more likely to actually read the material? If yes, is the difference between not reading and reading the material worth $5 to me?
Wow. When Borders closed the store closest to my house, I understood why since the only people who ever seemed to go there were vagrants getting out of the heat and people using the wifi(I used the wifi). But there's a flagship store here that always hosts author signings and events located 5 minutes south of the Strip in Vegas. I hope Barnes and Noble buys the space since there's no existing stores near it, and the place is always packed with people. I'd hate to see my favorite hangout become another overly self important clothing store.
Kinda sad, but for my book-buying habits, used books on Amazon have killed my fiction buying, and NoStarch, Manning etc., have killed my bricks&mortar tech-book binges.
I've heard similar things. I don't totally understand how the Nook exists in a world where the Kindle and iPad exist. My only explanation for why people are buying these things is that they want a cheap tablet (closer to the price of a Kindle rather than the iPad) and don't want to buy it online. If that's the case, Amazon dropped the ball big time wrt distribution channels. Anyone have a counter theory?
I use the Nook iPad app and I have an original Nook as well.
Originally, I bought a Nook over the Kindle because there was a rather large number of free public domain books that I wanted to read and the Nook supported open formats. I pulled down hundreds of books from Project Gutenberg.
Barnes and Noble pushes them in all their stores and believe it or not, Amazon doesn't have every customer in the world. Physical stores can still push a product better than an ad can.
Steve Jobs said they weren't getting into the eBook business because people don't read any more. He was wrong. The Kindle has thrived where a good many people said it would go away after the iPad was released. With the Nook as a strong #2 in the market I think it's obvious now that reading will continue to be a popular hobby. Barnes & Noble has the retail presence that allows customers to try out their product in the store before buying.
My wife works for bn.com, and I've met a lot of their employees at after-work functions. Slowly but surely they've been hiring strong talent, and based solely on what I hear from my wife and see at events, morale seems high. No one I've talked to seems concerned about bankruptcy.
Given their share of the e-book market, vs. their current $1B market cap, B&N certainly looks undervalued. There's a reason why firms like Liberty Media have been making bids on the company -- they see money to be made there.
Things can always change, but from my (limited) vantage point the two companies aren't on the same path at all.
Does this mean they will stop spamming me now? I mean, it just goes to my spam folder now, but they went from occasionally sending me something useful to junk almost every day, no matter how many times I unsubscribed.
Same problem as Tower Records. If you can only physically stock 60,000 titles there is no way to compete with an online company that can simultaneously offer all of them.
I read a lot more now.
Before ereaders, I used to read a book a week.
I now read between 4 to 5 books a week.
In addition, the books I read are of higher quality ( less trash, more mathematics, medicine, philosophy, political analysis and finance ) now that I mainly read from a e-reader. Multi-volume books are so much easier to carry around in a ereader.
8-track tape has few (if any) aficionados, due to its self-destructive media and scarcity of quality playback devices.
Physical books, on the other hand, require no special playback technology and are arguably one of the most perfect user interfaces ever devised. I have century old books in my library that are still fascinating and useable, in contrast to my collection of audio tape, floppy disks, and even some CDs that can no longer be read reliably (my vinyl still works, though). It feels a bit premature to declare the end of physical books.
I moved to Germany some 9 years ago. In my first trips back to the US a bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about. I'd typically return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my bag. My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&N gift certificates (a pattern that's continued to this day).
But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I can't say that I'm terribly excited about visiting the big box stores. I struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate. Struggled! I went looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in an upscale Houston neighborhood there were two books on the history of the most populous country in the world. There were huge aisles of random throwaway junk, games and other silliness and two books on Chinese history. Nor did they have Bertrand Russel's Principles of Mathematics or Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow.
I love books. Paper books. I have around a thousand of them. But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.