Slashdot Mirror
Barnes and Noble Bookstore Chain Put In Play
suraj.sun sends in word that the country's largest bookstore chain, Barnes and Noble, will put itself up for sale. "The news surprised analysts and alarmed publishers, who have watched as the book business has increasingly shifted to online retailers and e-book sales, leaving both chains and independent sellers struggling. ... For years, Barnes & Noble has been battered by large shifts in the publishing industry and the retail environment. Book sales have moved toward big-box stores like Costco, Wal-Mart and Target, and away from mall-based stores like B. Dalton, which Barnes & Noble acquired in the late 1980s. 'There's been a long series of pressures,' said David Schick, managing director at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore. 'The market has not been kind to bookstores, and it's for new reasons like competition with Apple and Amazon, and it's for old reasons, like what we believe has been a decline in reading for the last 20 years. Americans have devoted less of what we call media time to books.'"
I sure feel great about my Nook purchase this week.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
who have watched as the book business has increasingly shifted to online retailers and e-book sales, leaving both chains and independent sellers struggling.
Yeah, because piracy hasn't hurt it any. Riiiight.
over a pdf and whatnot on a ipad, kindle and the like... more comfortable near a pool too. There something about entering a book store. At least for me.
It is extremely hard for our kids to even have an opportunity to learn to love books! They are exposed to so many competing media at such an early age that books get relegated to schools as something they use. I teach and every year it gets harder and harder to get kids to read the simplest of texts. It is very sad as books offer a very personal relationship and intimate relationship with characters that no other medium can provide.
I've always sworn that I'd never become the old fart who's confused in the world of modern technology, but I really miss being able to walk into a record store and flip through the endless racks of LPs or CDs. I suppose I'm going to miss book stores too, when that day comes not too long from now.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I know that i will certainly miss the ability to wander through a bookstore and pick up authors or titles I might not have otherwise. I love brick and mortor stores and I for one am not ready to see them go.
Last time I went into a B&N store I was looking for something to read on an intercontiental flight, I found something but a quick check on amazon.com(not even bothering to look for anything that may even be cheaper) they had about a 50% markup and thats not even including the sales tax(shipping from Amazon was free). Now I understand having to pay a couple of bucks more for the convenience of walking out of the store with the book, but 50% is just insane. Their online store isn't much better, 95+% of the time they are considerably more expensive than amazon. They aren't dying solely because of factors outside of their control, they are dying because they feel entitled to margins that the more successful players in the industry have known to be unreasonable for a long while.
Monstar L
Sorry but I stopped buying books at B&N for one reason... Obscene prices. sorry but $69.99 for a book on Python programming is robbery. When I can get the same book on Amazon.com for $29.95.
Or how about the photography books ranging from $49.99 to $129.99 for an Ansel Adams coffee table book... Exact same books on Amazon.com for less than 1/4 the price.
I'm sorry. But I buy almost nothing from them.... Except their clearance books, those are honest pricing. Everything else I buy elsewhere.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And, with this shift, we will see the resurgence of the mom and pop bookstore that sells new and used books in a loving environment which was previously squeezed out by the mega chains. And I'm fine with that.
Sadly, we'll also see the resurgence of those bookstores with five cats wandering around the store making the place smell like stale cat urine. I'm less fine with that...
Norman Spinrad has some interesting points about how the publishing and book sales businesses operate. They're like the music industry, only a lot worse in how they calculate the acceptable level of risk... even if an author has proved to be a fairly safe bet.
I love reading, unfortunately I don't make enough time for it. I consider myself a very technical and electronic-savvy person. However, I have no intention of purchasing eBooks anytime in the future. There is something about owning a paperback and curling up with it as you flip through the pages. eBooks lack this personal touch. Browsing an online catalog doesn't compare to rummaging through the stacks and perusing a bookstore's inventory. It scares me greatly that we may, within my lifetime reach the point where we see the closure of the last brick and mortar bookstore.
I remember seeing B&N devote a rather substantial amount of space to toys, games, etc. around a year or so ago, figured the writing was on the wall.
It sounds to me that this is just an internal power struggle for control of the company. Barnes & Noble continues to profit from their stores, and have very good digital sales. It seems that the writer just wanted to do a piece about woe is me, the bookstores are failing, but it doesn't seem they are unprofitable, or planning on closing any stores.
There is a large free standing B&N up the street from me and a similarly large Borders not far down the road. The B&N has a Starbucks which probably draws a good number of people to the B&N on its own.
While book pricing isn't bad its not great. New releases usually can be found cheaper elsewhere and they lord over you the fact that you can buy into their membership with a low $25 fee to get books at better prices. This is where they lose me, I don't want to be badgered into being a member of their store, let alone pay for the privilege. Throw in the horrendous pricing in their DVD and CD section and suddenly I find myself comparing all prices or desiring to hit the net to see if I can find it cheaper. Membership "rewards" never come across as friendly, let alone one I have to pay for.
While I do laud them for having an atmosphere that encourages spending time there, reading, sipping coffee, and etc, they need to work on their pricing and ditch this pay for membership to get a discount routine. Just ditch the requirement to get a discount on books entirely.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I have a soft spot in my heart for B&N ever since I dug up an old volume II of a four volume set of some first hand accounts of the U.S. Civil War. They were out of print, and I couldn't find them in any new or used book store I searched at. A few weeks later B&N had them show up on their web-page. Somehow they had gotten some in stock. Now whenever I'm book shopping, I try to pick B&N over their competitors now. I have to admit though, it's a LOT easier to just go to amazon and click on things than go looking for a brick and mortar book store. Also, consistent with the summary, I do spend less time reading than I used to. This is something I've recognized and am trying to change. Of course, I have a lot more money than I did when I was younger, so I can afford to buy things like hardbacks of new titles rather than paperbacks in the bargain bin so I bet I spend more money on books than I ever did.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I think that there will be book stores around even in the future, but they need to be more specialized.
There is a difference between a book and an e-reader. If the book breaks it's still mostly readable, and it requires no power to be read.
Considering the amount of crappy channels on TV these days I'm amazed that not more people are reading books, but they are probably surfing the web instead.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
MSRP is just what the manufacturer says someone might like to charge. In some industries, it is a guideline, but in most cases it is deliberately inflated to make stores look good. Pro audio gear loves this. You'll see MSRPs that are double, sometimes more, what you actually pay. It isn't because the store is taking a loss or whatever, it is because the manufacturer has a stupidly high MSRP on purpose to let the stores pretend to give people a great deal.
Book MSRPs are additionally stupid because you'll notice they have a Canadian figure. Ok, but the dollars are just about parity right now and have been for some time. That means books should cost about the same. That higher figure is based on nothing but BS.
So if Amazon can make a profit (and they do make a good profit) charging half of MSRP, then B&N charging full MSRP means they are ripping you off. While stores do have to charge a bit more because of overhead, double is not acceptable.
Look at software. A new game on Amazon might run you $5, about 10%, under what it does at Target. That is what you'd expect. A slight difference.
Print is dead.
About 12 years ago Napster made downloading music easy. We had easy ways to take that downloaded music and integrate it with our existing habits via CD burners. Legal alternatives soon followed. Eventually record shops closed their doors. Not due to piracy but to due to uselessness. Now we have devices like MP3 players and iPods that let us enjoy our downloaded music in a more efficient manner than the old burn-to-CD method.
Thanks to codecs like Divx, movies became downloadable in a semi-reasonable amount of time. Later technologies like Hulu made streaming possible. Rentals stores are taking a beating and stores specializing in selling movies and TV shows have all but disappeared. Originally like CDs, you had to burn your movies to DVDs to watch them on a TV but thanks to HDTV and to set-top boxes, there are more efficient ways to enjoy downloaded TV and movies.
With books there was always a rub: There was no simple way to integrate them with out existing habits. You could print something but it would likely be on single-sided 8.5"x11" paper. You could read it off the screen but that's a lot less comfortable and convenient. With books, we had to wait for the more efficient device in order for electronic distribution to become feasible. I imagine we'll see a very rapid shift now that such devices exist and are becoming affordable. It'll be like the near-overnight industrialization that happens in nations these days compared to the slow, drawn-out process it was when Britain industrialized.
Barnes and Noble is in trouble and they know it. It's a good time to sell.
> suraj.sun sends in word that the country's largest bookstore chain, Barnes and Noble, will put itself up for sale.
uh, which country?
There is a large free standing B&N up the street from me and a similarly large Borders not far down the road. The B&N has a Starbucks which probably draws a good number of people to the B&N on its own.
While book pricing isn't bad its not great. New releases usually can be found cheaper elsewhere and they lord over you the fact that you can buy into their membership with a low $25 fee to get books at better prices. This is where they lose me, I don't want to be badgered into being a member of their store, let alone pay for the privilege. Throw in the horrendous pricing in their DVD and CD section and suddenly I find myself comparing all prices or desiring to hit the net to see if I can find it cheaper. Membership "rewards" never come across as friendly, let alone one I have to pay for.
While I do laud them for having an atmosphere that encourages spending time there, reading, sipping coffee, and etc, they need to work on their pricing and ditch this pay for membership to get a discount routine. Just ditch the requirement to get a discount on books entirely.
I can understand why they badger you into memberships. I have a good friend who had her hours cut severely (like from 35+ to way less than 15 per week), causing her to lose her health benefits (badly needed at that) because of a failure to meet an insanely high requirement for new and renewal of memberships.
They badger you because their incomes and benefits hang on it.
'Cause it looks like they might just be useful in the future after all.
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
The bookstores wanted a lot of repeat business, so they pushed frequent buyer cards and book clubs (like Columbia House records in the '80s). Because they gave a "discount" price to frequent buyers, the publishers were free to jack up the price to keep margins high. When a casual buyer came in to get a book, it was priced at $16-20, which is just on the edge of an impulse buy. This was to push you into signing up for the frequent buyer club (which as others point out, wasn't free at B&N), even though you had no intention of using the card enough to make it pay. You may have bought that $20 book, but you weren't likely to go back either.
As for WalMart and Target, well, they found a niche and filled it. Now the casual buyer has a place to get a book once in a while. The high end book addict will eventually head to e-books. Or maybe sooner than later. I basically haven't bought a book for years, but suddenly I have the Amazon Kindle app on my new phone, which I used to get 3 books on the first day without even giving it a second thought... that's slippery economics. The quality of the screen is just fine for reading, too (Samsung Galaxy-S). The hardcore reader will give up the "paper experience" when they realize they no longer have to trudge down to the store, stand in line, and all the other stuff to get books. And if Amazon keeps beating up the publishers on price for all books, not just the popular ones, we should see a resurgence of reading.
And I don't buy the story that people don't read. They may not read novels, but given that the guest on The Daily Show is an author, and the first step in running for president of the US is to publish a book of some sort, there are readers out there.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
that Barnes and Noble has a pretty significant "online only" discount on their books. The one book I wanted to buy was 28% off online, but in-store I'd have to pay full price. They wouldn't price match.
Another thing is that B&N is the class A example of the "Big Guy that Crushes the little guy". This is the company that the movie "You Got Mail" was based on. Why are we sad to see it go again?
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
MSRP is *suggested*. It's pretty much always inflated. It's a meaningless joke and an often-cruel one, too, in nearly every industry.
These days, charging MSRP for anything is almost always a way to drive away customers.
So, yes, I blame bookstores if they're stupid enough to charge MSRP.
The one thing that I will surely miss is being able to leaf through a book before i decide to put down my hard earned cash for it.
This is one thing that keeps me coming back to B&N when purchasing a book. Yes, there are time when I leaf through a book in the store, only then to note the title and then buy it cheaper through Amazon. But there are also times that I will use Amazon's reviews to narrow down my choices, then head out to B&N to leaf through the books before making my final decision, then purchasing it there on the spot.
I end up doing the latter for more expensive books. I'd rather spend the extra money knowing that I'm going to like the book, then send my money to amazon to purchase a book that I may find horrendous.
a coffee shop (not Starbucks) where people can sit and browse online catalogues, google books, but mostly talk with other knowledgeable people about books. The communication face-to-face will be much faster (and more civil) than the online discussion forums that Amazon tries to run under each books page.
People will be able to buy their ebooks there, but the place will also have one of those print-on-demand machines, for people who want to print off a hand held copy of a book. Either one bought from the store, or one they've prepared themselves via PDF on a memory stick.
There won't be any physical books in the book stores of the future.
will kill traditional paper books for good and I won't miss them. Over the past 15 years or so, I have been reading very few books (maybe 1 book every 3-4 years). Since I got my iPad recently, I have already read 5. The convinience is simply killer. I am sure I can't be the only one.
Parent was modded "Funny"?
WTF?
It's incredibly insightful is what it is. Personally, I'm not much of a book-browser. I've always found books to be too expensive for impulse buying. But the thing that I'm really going to miss about bookstores is the magazine rack. Magazines pretty much *must* be browsed because they rotate out every month.
I actually subscribed to Photo District News last week because the bookstore where I used to drop by and pick up a copy 2 or 3 times a year has recently closed. Now I'll get the next 24 issues which is more than an ex-photographer like me needs. Still, no place to browse means no place to pick up random goodness.
Criminy, I would have never discovered things like Utne Reader and a bunch of other weird little magazines if I hadn't had a bookstore to browse.
And just to head off the obvious, yes, I know there are such things as newsstands. In my part of the world, as real bookstores become quite rare, bookstores still outnumber reasonably sizable newsstands by 25-to-1.
If anyone at B&N had even the vaguest inkling of a clue, the "little guy" (Amazon) would have never even existed in the first place.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I love books. I love reading. I'm also the first to admit that a lot of what I read is crap (Science Fiction and Fantasy) but the mileage varies. At last count, since acquiring my iPod touch (with the "Bookshelf" app), followed by and iPhone (with the "Kindle" app) and most recently the iPad (again with "Kindle" - I finally gave in for the larger format) I've read about 300 e-Books in the last 3 years. Yes, it felt a little weird for a while, particularly on the small screen devices, but that didn't take long to get past.Meanwhile the convenience is/was totally addictive! Now I can find pretty much anything I want, anytime I want it. I never get caught short with nothing to read (well, once in a U.S. Embassy that wouldn't allow *any* electronic devices, but that's a different story). The only time I *have* to have a physical book is taking off and landing on airplanes, and hopefully they'll wise up soon, but I don't have to pack a dozen books to take away for a fortnight. Don't get me wrong, I still love reading "real" books, and I still browse bookstores when I get the time - but after having bought (and subsequently given away) something like 2,000 paperbacks over the previous 15years, I mostly only buy hard cover editions of a few authors any more. I'll sometimes be buying the e-Version of stuff while I'm standing at the bookshelf.
The people who watch those crappy channels are probably not reading much beyond weekly updates of the antics of Jordan and Peter Andre.
Specialisation and giving good advice count for a lot. I picked-up quite a few interesting books in a UK bookshop after a brief chat with one of the staff who had actually read some of the books and could offer a decent comparison between them. I suppose though that many people will go online these days when looking for book suggestions, and it's kind of difficult for a bookshop to retain staff who'd have broad enough interests to offer meaningful advice on the many areas. The guy who is well-read on his Christopher Hitchens is probably not going to be much in to Jordan's literature and angel-assisted healing shite.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I've always sworn that I'd never become the old fart who's confused in the world of modern technology, ...
It is neither you nor 'modern technology', it is the majority which is confused, e.g. believing to be able to 'multitask' with the help of friendly gadgetry while at the same time unable to read (and comprehend) simple texts (see post above) or to add one-digit nuimbers (as mentioned in some other post yesterday).
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I used to own Borders stock and sold it about 5 years ago. We go to a lot of bookstores and just yesterday I started reconsidering buying stock in Borders again. All of the stores I've visited lately (Florida, Washington DC, and North Carolina) have been really busy and a lot of people purchasing.
Every time I go to Half Price Books I can barely walk down an aisle they're so busy.
The real culprit is book PRICES are ridiculous
Here's the closed internet search I could turn up in about ten minute for it:
Cite
Borders. Borders Group (NYSE:BGP) lost the online and brick-and-mortar bookstore war years ago to Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) and Amazon.com (NYSE:BGP). The company’s stock is down to $1.20 from a 52-week high of $4.48 and its market value is less than $80 million. For the quarter ending in October, the company’s loss from continuing operations was $39.0 million,or $0.65 per share, compared to a loss of $39.0 million, or $0.64 per share, a year ago. Revenue was $595.5 million, down $86.6 million, or 12.7%. Border’s large Waldenbooks division has all but disappeared. That part of Border’s operations is down to 361 stores. With its debt net of cash at $375 million, a competitor like Barnes & Noble could buy $2 billion in annual revenue for a fraction of sales and cut general and administrative costs to improve margins. Borders has been dead for over two years, but no one has been able to dispose of the body.
FYI: green machine = Barnes and Nobel... Red = Borders... I realized not everyone may color associate like I do.
But is it available on amazon.com?
When I go to B&N it's full of people lounging in chairs/on the floor, reading books.
While I understand that initially B&N's browser-friendly policy made it very popular, there's a difference between reading 3-4 pages of a book to see if it is a worthwhile purchase, and reading it from cover to cover - which is what a lot of people are very obviously doing. This means that 1) the person won't purchase the book - why should they? and 2) I would be purchasing a "used" book. While being read doesn't fade the letters, there's a difference between new and used in terms of wrinkled pages, smudges, etc. If I'm paying for new, I want new.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm a heavy tech user and IT professional and you can pry my real books from my cold, dead hands. I refuse to shop at Barnes & Noble in favor of Borders simply because I will not pay a yearly fee to get my books for what they should cost to begin with. I spend a large amount of time and money at my local Borders, I also buy a lot of books from places like Amazon and Half.com. Everyone talks about how no one reads anymore yet people are buying eBooks apparently. I won't buy into eBooks because I love the tactile feel of a book and the go-anywhere, low-tech, nature that suits a million more uses than an ereader. I like to lend and share books with friends and family, I like a nice bookcase filled with inspiring and excellent works. I like buying used books for a small amount of money to take a chance on something new or different. I will not give in and I'm also here to say that I am a fairly young American male that reads close to 52 books a year in addition to technical books and comics/magazines (also in regular paper form).
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
By "little guy" I think he was referring to the small mom and pop bookstore where you used to be able to go and talk to an intelligent person who'd read a measurable percentage of the books on the shelf. Not that I've not encountered intelligent people in B&N (though I don't think anyone could read a measurable percentage of the books in there in any single lifetime); but I do sort of miss talking to booksellers who could talk about why they personally chose to carry author X after reading one of their books on a streetcar and getting so absorbed that they missed three stops and opened 15 minutes late that day (granted that bookshop was killed by Katrina, not B&N, but the point stands).
Sadly, it appears GP didn't read the FA, which suggested that the same pressures driving B&N out are making things even tougher than ever for small bookstores. I personally try to go to bookstores rather than using Amazon (partly out of a desire to help the local economy, partly because I hate waiting for a book to ship), but I know plenty of people that haven't been in a brick and mortar bookshop in years.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
So I hit the nearest town looking for a specific book ("Dragonflies of Surrey" - yes the town was in Surrey) last weekend, heck I would have settled for ANYTHING decent on the subject matter I was looking for. 3 book stores (2 large chains, 1 small specialist store) and not a single book on dragonflies let alone the specific title I was looking for. And I hadnt really expected there to be to be honest.
Now if publishers had actually grasped new technology by the horns and allowed bookstores to print (and bind) **on demand** titles, browse through their back-catalogue (which is several hundreds of times larger than any store could be reasonable anticipated to stock) etc. etc. then maybe we would be seeing a thriving book industry as book stores competed on the quality of their product (paper, binding, ink quality....smell) and facilities (user friendly search, cafe to sit down and browse in) rather than the almost absolute reliance that we now have on the internet to find any rare or unusual titles.
The book store industry isnt dying, the publishers are slowly killing it.
I still get most of my reading suggestions from friends and John Scalzi's blog; Whatever. He not only reviews several books a month, he posts essays from authors on how and why they developed a book. Is cool having some background info and knowing where the writer's coming from with their work.
I drank what? -- Socrates
They pick such awful things for the kids to read. Example: last summer everyone in DC was
supposed to read "A Lesson While Dying" (I think that was the title) about this black kid in the 30s
that was accidentally sentenced to death for involvement in a liquor store shooting. Great frikk'n
choice that one.
Your basic logic is why I believe that games of imagination... even constructed ones, like pencil-and-paper role-playing-games (more books!)... are possibly the best "toys" you can give your kid. My "block of wood" was RPG's... and I still have a fondness for them, even today. :-) Their value goes beyond just entertainment.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Nah, they just need to roll out Turbo grade Print On Demand.
They would crush Amazon if you could walk away with the book, rather than waiting for shipping.
For a long time the quality problems needed about 5 years of research, but they almost have it solved now. Harvard Bookstore has one. It's like Redbox on superhero stats. They just need a hardbound version to seal the deal. That would make the shelves "welcoming examples" and then experts could get their obscure texts in 15 min flat.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Print is dead.
Long live print!
Back when I was a kid my father used to buy us some books which contained smaller "filtered" versions of the classical stories (of authors like Jules Verne). Although they were aimed to kids, they were good text books (with very few pictures here and there).
As we grew a bit more we read Reader's Digest Condensed Books (I was ~11) and some full books.
I would love to find similar books/ebooks written in a language for children or condensed books online.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
When you pry them from my cold, dead fingers! I don't think we'll see the end of book stores or paper books anytime soon. I love reading paper books because the tactile feel and smell of paper causes the stories to stick to my memory MUCH better than any electronic media. In addition to the fact that I work on a computer all day long and the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is read from an electronic screen.
That being said, there are very few instances when I will buy books from B&N. Usually the books are either too expensive or they don't have the one I'm looking for at the store. I can find them easier & cheaper with a search of the internet than I can in the stores. Sure I have to pay shipping & handling, but I can end up getting 5-6 books for the same price as 1 or 2 from B&N.
When I do buy from a brick & mortar store, I tend to stick to a local chain shop that prices their books right and carries almost everything I want. I also wouldn't object to getting back to smaller stores where I could build a rapport with the owner/workers. If I'm there enough they would keep what I want in stock.
ages ago... So, no real "news" here. As an insider and veteran business he states for years now that the publishers are getting in trouble, see e.g.: (pretty recent, I know, but he wrote similar things long before) http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1568 http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1490 I guess, he is quite unloved by publishers because he teaches authors how to create & market ebooks... (For those who don't know him, he wrote e.g. for Star Wars & Battletech).
Have we forgotten about Books-A-Million? I'd say they are doing a good bit of business. It's my preferred book store.
I guess I won't be self-publishing via Barnes-and-Noble's PubIt! program. Ah well. c'est la vie.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
As a general rule, I don't let Nora Ephron dictate my likes and dislikes. I like Barnes and Noble. It's a good store. It offers a good selection. And for new books, they have decent prices. I've never seen them pull any shenanigans like Wal-Mart does where they'll lower prices until they drive folks out of town and then raise prices once the other guys are gone. B&N sticks to MSRP plus set discount rates based on clear metrics. The only real differentiation I see from that pricing model is the clearance section which is not enough by itself to put any competition under. Barnes and Noble has thrived thus far by offering a solid shopping experience to its customers. In places where they have driven out competition, they have maintained that good shopping experience. In my book, that's a "big guy" I have no qualms with.
As for reference books, there's no way digital stores can offer the same level of previewing the books that bookshops can, due to the obvious factor of the preview and their content, in the case of an e-book - being one and the same.
I'll be sad if traditional books go the way that newspapers seem to be headed. There's a lot to be said for good ol' paper. Actually being able to turn the page as fast as you like is a good start.
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
Maybe they wanted to spend more time with their ebook stores like Fictionwise. Hopefully their ebook stores, like this one, will stick around since they are some of the more open ones around right now.
Those hard to find books are typically at the funky local book store you might find in the "arty" part of town, and while they're feeling it as much as B&N, they've responded the same way I think a lot of local record stores have, focusing on having those hard-to-find books as well as readings, events, etc.
I stopped buying from B&N and similar stores years ago when they started stocking a bajillion copies of the latest tell-all of the celeb du jour, and relegated everything else to a couple of rows each. So I buy all my tech books from Amazon (still miss Fat Brain...), get my "classics" from Project Gutenberg for the iPad, and will happily walk in and spend an hour browsing and chatting with the local bookstore owner, and I never walk out without buying something; not as a "pity" sale, but because I found something genuinely interesting that would have been too obscure even for B&N.
You live in the wrong town. Here in Springfield we have two (count 'em, TWO) stores you can browse for music. There's Recycled Records with LPs, CDs, and DVDs, and there's the Elf Shelf with books, DVDs, VHS and CDs to browse through!
And there's two super WallMarts but they don't count.
Free Martian Whores!
Another thing is that B&N is the class A example of the "Big Guy that Crushes the little guy". This is the company that the movie "You Got Mail" was based on.
Why are we sad to see it go again?
Probably because it is being pushed out by an Even Bigger Guy (Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc.)
I went to several bookstores in UK asking them for E-Book readers. But only WHSmith seemed to sell one and that only on their website (not available in stores). So I bought a Bookeen Cybook from Bookeen directly.
The problem is that companies always have difficulties reinventing themselves when it means cannibalising their current stream of revenue. I think the book stores should sell E-Book readers and they should have terminals where you can plug in your reader and download books. Either you pay per file or you pay a monthly subscription (similar as with Last.fm). Also the books should be DRM free. And they should all sell coffee, tea, and muffins.
Finally authors should think about the new medium. I remember reading a book where you have to make a decision every page or two and depending on your choice you continue reading on another page. It was great in a similar way as the Infocom adventures. But the problem was that a 100 page book would only give you storylines of 15 pages. But with an E-Book reader "storage" wouldn't be a problem and with the Internet authors could work together and generate huge interactive novels.
It's very possible that old LIFE book came from a mom-n-pop store that also sells online. I know a woman who has a small bookstore in upstate New York and she keeps the actual storefront open to give her a place to go (she's pushing 80), as a place for book readings, but also as warehouse; she sells most of her stuff via Amazon, with apparently one or two really rare things going on ebay.
If anything, it was a brilliant move on Amazon's part to adopt this model; now lots of mom-n-pops can stay open and be more of a social place (if only for the cats) and still have give people the opportunity to browse.
I think that there will be book stores around even in the future, but they need to be more specialized.
They need to be more specialized, sure, but that makes their market much smaller. It's easy to stock specialized books when you've got the security of offering Harry Potter and Twilight et al. to keep the money coming in between the rare consumer of niche books. But once Amazon and Walmart start selling the popular stuff at your wholesale cost, it changes things. It's much harder to sell specialized books when you can't subsidize the lower turnover with mass-market books. So yeah, the book stores that remain in the future will be more specialized. But you won't find many of them outside of major cities where there are enough consumers of their chosen specialty to make it financially viable.
This is already the case with electronics. You can get low-end camera gear anywhere, even at drug stores now, but if you want anything beyond the basics you have to go online or to a city big enough to support one real camera store. Used to be a mom & pop camera store in every town more than 50,000, but now that they can't compete with Walmart for point and shoots, there's not enough high end business to keep them open.
I went in to my town's Barnes and Noble to buy a book. They used to have an entire nook of the store dedicated to science fiction and fantasy; the walls were lined with the newer releases and the classics, and right in the middle of it were two aisles of role playing books, manga, and graphic novels. This last week, the middle aisles had been replaced with romance novels! 300, Batman, Shadowrun, D&D - all GONE!
This was the cause of their corporate downfall. In podunkville, they took away a geeks most loved treasures and replaced it with something completely foreign.
This isn't a loss in my world. B&N in my area had 7 aisles of "christian inspiration" where "religious studies" should have been, "judaica" consisted of 12 books (of which 4 were holocaust history) "current events" (read sarah palin and rush books) where "political science" should have been, half the store devoted to the bargain section, two rows of way way overpriced journals, the most mainstream programming books that appeal to entry-level, and annoying cashiers reminding me how much i could have saved if i had their loyalty card. My god, I don't remember the last time they were even useful for me. Amazon, otoh, has received maybe 60% of my book purchases in the past 2 years. What can I say besides they have what I'm looking for?
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It's not all about price. I still buy books at my local B&N even though I can find the same titles cheaper at amazon.com. If price is your only criteria for where you shop then yes, B&N is not for you. I make enough where I don't mind paying more for a book at B&N. Shopping there I'm not just paying for a book but for the extras that go with it.
Others have mentioned the joys of browsing, something that's not as easy or as satisfying when you do it online. Running the store costs money...utilities, staff, upkeep. That's reflected in the price of the book. Browse at B&N's website and you can find out if your local store has the book in stock. If it is in stock, you can have the title pulled and waiting for you at the front counter. Or I can just drive there and have it in 10 minutes. Yes, sometimes it's nice to have a book in 10 minutes. I'm a programmer and still like to have books on different topics.
For my kids it's a treat to go book shopping. Sure, we patronize our local library often but for some series they like to own the books and re-read them. And sometimes my wife and I will drop our son off at scouts and go across the street to B&N. We'll have dessert, walk the aisles, and maybe pick up a book or two. It's a nice time for us, sort of a mini-date.
Sure, they charge more but I get value for what I pay, and that's what its all about, value. I'm willing to help cover the cost of their overhead just so I have a store I can go to. It's worth it to me...it's sometimes about the whole experience, not just the book. And for the times when it is about the book, I'll usually go to amazon.com. Amazon prime rocks.
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I can't believe that I'm writing to you in defense of one corporation against another but here I am doint it. Just a moment ago I read an article on my favorite technical forum about the fact that Barnes and Noble Bookstores is placing itself for sale. Apparently online places such as Amazon are squeezing them on price and they simply can't compete. Now I'm not one to sob over the profit margins or losses of a company but what struck me about the commentary of the article was that apparently Amazon is not paying sales tax in most jurisdictions in the United States. Surely it is high time that Amazon and other online retailers paid the same tax as brick and mortar stores? Fair is Fair. The reason that I even care about this issue is that I fear for the future of the paper (or at least physical book). Never in the history of the world have paper books been so widespread and freely available. Libraries are the lifeblook of Western and more particularly American democracy. We should do all that we can do nurture them so they flourish. Also now that electronic books have arrived we should be concerned. Electronic books, besides lacking a certain conforting and tangible human element of physicality - are fragile and easily destroyed or lost to History. Why? Because technology changes. Because devices require power sources. Because file formats change. Because most sinisterly of all - electronic books can be deleted remotely and en mass by any large institution that controls access to the device. Please change this situation post haste! Even the playing field. For all our sakes.
I think critical mass will come when there is a cheap and colorful device that can capture the childrens' market. Right now, there is no way I would hand a $140 device to my 9-year-old to carry around and read with. It would be lost within days, long before he could break it.
The current B&W displays of the eInk readers don't catch his interest, anyway. He and I have checked out the Nook in stores, and he just shrugs and wants to head to the kids' section to browse. I can tell by watching him that it's a very personal, sensory experience to him. I can't see that transferring to a device right now. Apple is closest with the iPad, but the idea of handing that fragile and expensive tablet to my son is ludicrous. He'd be more interested in what games it played, play until he got bored, then would put it down and go grab his copy of Artemis Fowl.
I think it will take quite a while to convince parents and kids to switch over.
You didn't watch the movie. The "little guy" wasn't Amazon, it was the small independent book store. B&N was a big fish that ate the little fish (Independents and smaller chains) , and is now poised to be eaten by bigger fish (Target, Walmart, Amazon).
School ruined reading for me because I was always being forced to see particular details, then I'd be tested on it. What was the moral of the story? Oh, I must have seen a different moral or had a different opinion, because I got a bad grade. This led to me essentially trying to memorize the entire book, reading each page several times, digging for something that might be hidden. I didn't discover the joy of reading for pleasure until my mid 20's, thanks to high school and uninteresting literature classics being shoved in my face.
Now that I don't have somebody telling me what books to read, or what messages to get from the books I do read, I can enjoy fat books like Anathem, 900+ pages, and enjoy almost every minute of it. Thanks for nothing, High School.
I mean the actual quality of the binding, etc..
I'd buy them more often if "premium" hardcovers didn't look like they wouldn't even last 10 years.
As it is right now I only buy hardcovers for authors I _really_ like.
Buying a hardcover for casual reading or the latest Clancy knock-off is crazy.
Absolute statements are never true
That sucks, you'll be forced to go to libraries
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
The closest Barnes & Nobel to where I live (in the Lansing, MI area) used to be located in the Meridian Mall in Okemos, MI.
As I recall, it was a nice, big store that was fairly easy to get to and had a lot of parking (because of the mall).
However, when a department store went out of business in the middle of downtown East Lansing, B&N moved there.
The newer store (which is about 10 years old now?) is even bigger than the old store (and takes up two floors of this building), but now requires you to fight downtown EL traffic to reach them and park in a city parking ramp. B&N will endorse your parking... but only if you buy something from them.
That was a huge mistake, as Schuler Books immediately bought up B&N's old location, had it renovated as part of the mall's renovation project for that wing, and moved in there.
B&N's store may be larger, but Schuler Books is much more convenient to get to and park.
Now, I don't buy expensive books from there (that's what Amazon is for), but when I just want a cheap paperback or 5, I just stop in at Schuler.
P.S. Schuler is a local chain, but their stores are still fairly large. They use all the space at their current location (B&N's old location). I understand why B&N moved; in order to be closer to Michigan State University, but Uni students aren't exactly the richest folks around while Okemos is the area's wealthiest suburb...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
My wife and I used to make regular trips to a Huge B&N that while out of the way from us (about 25 miles), we'd wander around the regular, bargain, and used sections and after 2-3 hours of this, we'd have a small stack of books we'd buy. Enter Amazon, with prices 20-50% less and free shipping.
We made fewer trips to the Bookstore, but when we did, we'd preview what we wanted, then head home and go online and order it from Amazon to a huge savings...
Here in Canada, we have Chapters as our local book megastore.
I rarely visit now a-days because I'm nearly 100% ebooked... however, the few times I have been in the store is always PACKED, with extremely long lines at the checkout counter.
The days of mom-and-pop bookstores will not be returning any time soon to Canada.
I tried to visit a few of my favorite Los Angeles bookstores at SIGGRAPH last week. Alas, they were all but gone. First was the UCLA technical bookstore. It used to occupy most of the first floor of the student union. Its now a tenth of its former size with mainly hosting best-sellers. Several other college bookstores have disappeared in recent years too- UT, CU ... Another bookstore was the Bodhi Tree new age store on Melrose in West Hollywood. It went under late last year.
I miss browsing books before I buy them. Hopefully pre-purchase browsing will be implemented in the e-book world. Now they mainly put the first chapter free online. I'd prefer viewing the WHOLE book for free for a limited time period, say ten minutes. I'd also like to se other pricing schemes: the library "read once" model say for $5 a book, all-you-can read a month for $50 etc, in addition to the $15 per ebook pricing they have now.
The inventory in my local BN has dropped dramatically in the past 5 years or so. They used to have EVERYTHING and I could go get whatever I needed. They opened a brand-new store where I live recently, with all-new inventory, and while it's big, there are significantly fewer books than there was in the old store. (Which had a huge close-out.) Now, if you're browsing for books, you'll find less to browse, and BN won't be any more special than Wal-Mart. If you're looking for books you need, you won't find them. I've gotten sick of going to the bookstore looking for something, them not having it, and then going online and ordering it. I skip the first two steps now.
Also, BN stocks many fewer editions than they used to of various classics, and they typically yank the Penguin and Oxford classics for their own Essential Reading series, which has one of THE WORST FONTS ever invented for print. It's almost impossible to read.
True. I love when I'm flying and the Flight Attendant announces to stow all electronic devices, and turn anything "with an off switch" off.
I watch all the people with e-book readers and laptops groan while I pull out my paperback. Uninterrupted reading pleasure during the trip.
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Nullius in verba
I view this change with regret
Barnes and Nobles has significantly helped me.
I remember saving up my allowance as a kid so that I could go to the bookstore in the mall (to be fair I think it was a Waldenbooks) and buy new science fiction. I remember the first time I read Dune by Frank Herbert, and more so the White Plague. Later I started buying programming books (no, they aren't cheap) and got a good job. More recently I needed books on business and management, and am now reading "Made to Stick - Why some ideas survive and others die". This was purchased as B&N.
I don't have the opportunities with e-merchants that I do with physical booksellers. I enjoy looking at the flyleaf (sometimes possible at Amazon) and turn to the middle of the book and see how I like it (not possible with Amazon). I like to heavily browse the book before I buy it, which is just not possible with Amazon. This book has been very informative, but I do not think I would have been able to know enough about it to choose it by going to Amazon.
Do I pay more by going to B&N? Sure. Will I be able to find useful books at Amazon? Maybe. Will I enjoy visiting a web site for a bargain basement book that I have to wait 3 days to get as much as seeing it, browsing it, buying it and reading it when I go to the store? Of course not. After I add shipping costs the price works out the same between me going to the bookstore and having Amazon ship it.
On a bigger scale I worry about the power of bookshops being reduced to just a few outlets. Washington has been vastly increasing its power and taking over major industries. Washington is not kind or tolerant to the media. Washington has been caught in altering experts reports to fit its pre-made conclusions. The government now has the power to pick up the phone, call Amazon, and strip books from the shelves. We will be told "It is for the public good".
Another alternative is to print and bind books well as burn CDs on premises.
I go to a book store for two reasons, kill time while in a shopping center or because I need a book now, not two days from now.
Also:
* All manner of publications, even out of print, could be available with minimal wait time.
* Nothing would ever be out of stock.
* Theoretically, the books would cost less after equipment costs are amortized because of less shipping.
* Custom mix CDs would be a big hit, but the music industry would probably have a major pantie wadding event at the thought of this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"Well-read on Christopher Hitchens"? Isn't that some sort of oxymoron? :-P
Libraries are themselves becoming a lot less about the books.
We're going to have to eschew DRM because there is no guaranteed survival for any content distributor.
The shift to ebooks will accelerate, whether anybody likes to read them or not.
The book and news publishing industry, a form of 1:N broad casting using paper as it's medium, is reaching the tipping point where the economic pressures on the content producers will make the old methods of production "not worth pursuing" because of the real devastation of the existing distribution channels by the internet.
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I recall many wonderful hours at the local B&N in college - they had a good selection, pretty good prices, and the bookstore was centrally located downtown so made a great place to hang out while waiting to meet up with friends/waiting for a movie/waiting for a table/etc. Many, many times went there without the intention of buying something and coming out with an impulse buy thanks to a pretty extensive in-store selection.
For the last few (okay, ten) years I've been going to the local Borders, which never had the same selection as I was used to w/ the B&N, but it was good enough. Plus, they had a selection of CDs and DVDs, which the B&N didn't have. Not too bad, but I did have a soft spot for B&N.
A couple months ago I had a chance to go to a B&N, I was out of town and looking for a specific book. Went in, wasn't sure which section it would be in (literature? foreign? mystery? could have been any of the above). There was a big line at the help desk, so I went looking for a computer to look up the book. Nothing. No computer terminal. No way to easily search the store, or determine which section the book might be in. Absolutely ridiculous - at Borders there seems to be a computer every ten paces so you can look up what you are looking for.
Fortunately I eventually found an employee who instantly recognized the title of the book and led me straight to it (which was pretty impressive, not exactly a mainstream book), but the whole visit really turned me off to B&N (yes, sadly, despite the staff being knowledgeable and helpful once I found a free one, the fact that I couldn't just walk in and look up the location really turned me off to it). Seriously, no computer to search the in-store stock? Never mind that the price was about double what I could have gotten it for online, at least give me the tools to find what I'm looking for (hopefully this idiocy is unique to that B&N).
> like what we believe has been a decline in reading for the last 20 years.
Actually, this might be part of a bigger problem: decline in thinking.
This is pretty sad news. I love visiting my local bookstore here in Canada - it's called Chapters/Indigo.
I find today that I am gravitating more and more toward books. TV has become an endless rain of banal reality shows and perpetual cliff-hanger-dramas. Movies are mostly sequels and fluff and even movies now are hopping on the cliff-hanger bandwagon.
Books so far have remained ad-free and satisfying, with a low cost per entertainment-hours.
even if 95% of everything on was crap, that would still leave 5+ channels with good stuff on at any given moment.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh, I think book and record stores will make a comeback one day, I just don't think you'll like the form they take: departments at supercenters in places like Wal Mart and Target.
Most Wal Mart supercenters have grocery stores that equal or beat other grocery stores. I don't think it's a stretch to see them subdivide other secions of the store up either. I can easily see a Wal Mart setting a corner of a supercenter aside as the "bookstore" portion, complete with a coffee and sweets bar. Same thing for music and video... set a coner of the store up, put up some snazzy looking partitions, and voila!, instant music store. It makes sense because they'll make the same ruthless pricing deals they do with all other merchandise, and so you can have your box set or your novel for less, and drink your mocha latte too.
But, you'll have to accept that it's evil Wal Mart that's doing it. Decisions, decisions.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The reasons book stores are going out of business is due to publisher policies that go back to the 1950s. dealing with returns, hiow much to buy, guarantees printing and so on.
When needs to happen is that the publishers needs to stop being so pissy about books on demand. for 500K you can get a machine that prints books as needs.
This is what should be going into book stores. removes sends covers back, removes excess inventory.
Until the publishers divest themselves of the hard cover/softcover attitude book store will suffer.
Now they are starting to realize this, and momentum is changing. However, getting entrenched authors to move to the new model is a pain in the ass. As it turns out, as soon as someone is a successful author, they become a whiny pain in the ass.
The whole business will change. This is going to happen. The only real question is will the industry be nimble enough to adapt, or will it all come wrecking down and need to be rebuilt?
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This is not a sign that B&N is in trouble. This is about a fight between Leonard Riggio (the founder of B&N and holder of the largest number of shares) and another investor. Mr. Riggio is facing challenges to his control of the company from another investor who actually wants to buy a bunch of B&N stores for his own company (and is trying to buy enough shares to force the issue). I think it is likely that he will be successful in taking B&N private.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
like, we don' 'no', eh?
But there it was.
The Miracle Of Back Bacon.
Holy Jeez. Makes ya feel kinda small an' insignificant, eh?
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Physical copies of books. Now with smugness!
The slacker hangout culture thing about Borders and B&N was always off-putting to me. Doing your homework in a store? What happened to the library? OK so we close those too. Mom and Pop's with a savvy focus, a plethora of used books, and a heavy reliance on E-bay is the way forward.
That's not an e-reader problem -- that's a social problem. e-readers would work fine on aircraft; aircraft are in no way inconvenienced by e-readers; there's no threat whatsoever. It's simply "terrorism theater" to keep the populace stirred up.
Just wait until someone packs something aboard an aircraft in/as a book; that'll be the end of your feeling of superiority.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I prefer the stores I can walk into and actually hold the merchandise before I buy, or spend an afternoon wandering the shelves with my (yes, Starbucks) coffee in hand and see topics/books I'd never actually look up in a search engine. They may be overpriced, but I also fall into the 'that looks good I'm going to buy it' frame of mind. Not the 'that looks good, I'm going to go home, order it, wait a couple days, etc' mindset. If I really need a hard book to find, or something more technical, then Amazon is great. But not for when I just want to spend some time in a real book store.
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Speaking as someone who owns a literary agency (a big one with lots of famous authors), I'm going to have to call you on that one.
It's not the authors. It's never been the authors. It's the publishers, and it has always been the publishers.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
wtf does "put in play" mean?
I sure feel great about my Nook purchase this week.
There's safety in numbers.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Language is the brush we use to paint our thoughts on other people.
You can create finely detailed, compelling images; or you can can jerk out a stick figure like some addled child.
Which do you think will be better received?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The problem with that is that B&N was simply a better book store than most of the independents. The independents simply didn't stock as many books. When I wanted something specific, it was more likely to be at B&N than McCawber's. If I wanted to browse, there was more stuff to browse than at Odegard's (sp?). Its prices tended to be slightly lower, too, so it was a net win unless you really liked the smaller store.
The bigger fish you mention don't do the same thing. Amazon is great if I know what I want, and don't mind waiting a few days. It isn't nearly as good for browsing. I bought a book a few days ago that I was really happy to see, and I hadn't realized it was out. It was sitting in the New History display at B&N, so I saw it at a glance. Target and Wal-mart have extremely limited selections. Given my tastes, there's usually little at those I want to buy, but plenty at B&N.
So, it isn't poetic justice. B&N succeeded by making something similar to their older competitors but better. I didn't lose anything by going to one big bookstore instead of several little ones with overlapping stock. I would lose something I value very much if bookstores in general closed down.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Perhaps it is true that people no longer want to spend quality time reading books, but book prices are not helping either. Michael Crichton's second to the last hardcover novel was released a year and a half before the paperback. Personally, I don't want to pay $40 for a hardcover that I only read once, maybe twice.
I'm somewhere between a freeloader and a regular purchaser for them.
I used to purchase a TON of books from them. I like popular sci-fi and fantasy.
I have always been there, a LOT, doing my on line classes in their coffee shop rather than doing them at home. I buy 1 or 2 coffees for several hours of free internet access.
I bought a Kindle DX, so a lot of the sci-fi / fantasy paperback purchases they were getting from me have dried up. Also, a lot of the classics - and I liked their classics series - are free to me now.
I have a membership card. I still buy books there, just not nearly as many, and with school and a full time job I don't have as much idle time as I did - plus I have a fairly substantial library of books I've already purchased.
HOPEFULLY whoever purchases them keeps them up and running. I'd like to see it where I can buy e-books from them that work on the Kindle...but I doubt that will happen. I'd buy them, even if they were a little more expensive, to keep the bits of the store going that I enjoy. (I like the physical book, but books take up space, and I'm seriously looking at cutting down the number of phsyical items I actually own.)
This isn't a problem with just B&N, of course. Every time we go to a retail outlet, peruse what they have, then buy it online we cause said retail outlet grief. I guess the same could be said if we bypass them all together, but the online retailers benefit from us being able to review things at an actual store without purchasing them from that store.
The flip side of that, unfortunately, is if the price is too high at the retail store...there's only so much of a premium most are willing to pay to support it.
But for people who *aren't* clumsy idiots, the Kindle can be a pretty great deal.
My thoughts exactly. I'll give up my paperbacks when the FAA decides its OK to use an e-book reader during take off and landing. Honestly I'm surprised they allow them to be used at all considering they have 3G transmitters. Do they have an "airplane mode" like most smartphones?
I think you're imagining groans. Everyone is fine waiting 5 minutes until the flight takes off to resume their reading/music listening.
Through my twenties I would browse through bookstores for the hell out if and casually pick up a paperback. Doing that now would cost me $6 - $8.
One of the essential points of books is that they are low cost easily handled methods of communication. They can be made out recycled tree guts or even help which grows fast. Even an average book can last decades if not centuries. Dropped from buildings, still usable ( try that with a kindle ).
I've gotten book printed by small nonprofit presses in the 3rd world that still deliver on these basics and they were *cheap*.
I don't think making books cheap again will solve American aliteracy ( being able to read, but choosing not too ), but it would remove a barrier.
I think this is a sad sign of the times and changing reading habits. I can imagine the writing was on the wall for some time. The increased competition from Best Buy and other more mainstream outlets added to the problem