Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/09/a-chain-of-indies.html
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Let’s hope he can repeat the magic. I try to hit up Barnes and Noble every year when we go visit the in-laws at Christmas.
I miss Borders (although less now after hearing how it was a bad place to work). I moved to Toronto a couple of years before they went belly up. We had lived essentially within a block or two of the one in Madison for several years.
Having said that, I buy 90% of my physical books at your former employer.
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I gave up on B&N years back when I “bought” a stack of carefully-selected-to-not-be-DRM’d epubs from them (for my Linux laptop) only to discover that they might not be DRM’d but they were only readable online from the B&N site, with no legal [1] way to read them. Scalzi got his royalties and B&N lost a customer forever.
[1] Yeah, I know that there are ways to crack them. Never mind, I know when my business is not wanted.
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As Al “Grandpa” Lewis once said, “what’s wrong with dat?!” Man, I miss Daedalus.
While I’d rather have B&N bookstores than no bookstores at all, I don’t imagine this bodes well for what’s left of the independent stores. (Man, I miss Vertigo.)
Me too, I always preferred visiting their stores to B&N’s, although I couldn’t specify why (maybe only because I visited Borders first). (About a year or two after the Borders stores closed in the U.S., though, I found one still operating in Oman)
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I like B&N except for a few minor issues (IMO)
- Too many pop toys and figures. Leave that to the Newbury Comics of the world.
- Not enough board games. Yes we all know you have the original Dominion boxed set. Try having some of the xpacs or new/different games available for purchase
- fix your distribution issues with DC and Marvel so you have full stocks of new issue comics. And also have a bargain bin for graphic novels. I find the same ones you are selling for the cover price $29.99 and comic/toy shops for $5.99 because they are 10 years old.
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borders had more depth.
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However things work out, I’d like to have two or three things:
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- Don’t mix science fiction and fantasy unless that is explicitly how the author(s) intended.
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- Offer a place to preview audiobooks so I can see whether the narrator’s voice is intolerable.
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- Offer bundled packages at a discount with paper, e-book, and audiobook versions together. (Do any bookstores already offer this?)
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I do most of my book shopping at Heffers Booksellers, but I also have no qualms about shopping from Waterstone’s. The café in my local Waterstone’s is lovely. The staff are knowledgeable, and do a great job. This will be a good thing for B&N, I’m sure.
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What’s he gonna do, take off and nuke all the Amazon sites from orbit?
Indigo separates science fiction from fantasy and it drives me crazy when I do go there. BMV has a weird division between literature/literary fiction and popular fiction which is even worse.
Having said that, it’s a hard problem to solve. Bigger sections are harder to browse and smaller, specific sections can make it easier to find things. But there are a lot of books that fit into multiple categories!
I personally find more specific sections most useful with non-fiction (i.e., separate 19th century history from WW2, etc.) but even that can be a pain in the ass.
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Wow, B&N still exists? Best of luck to them!
We have Powell’s Books here, both new and used books, but you don’t have to live near Portland to shop there - they are online, and you can put in alerts for used titles they don’t already have.
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Really? Am I the first to make the following horrible pun?
Saving Barnes and Noble will be a truly Daunting task.
I’ll see myself out, and take my smug expression with me.
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I used to work at B&N in high school and a bit in college. As a source of teenage income, it was a great place to work, though I can’t vouch for full-time folks.
I continue to love wandering its labyrinthine stacks, and I hope that Daunt can make it a better place for booksellers and visitors.
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I’m originally from Michigan so Borders was the first big book store I set foot in. Barnes & Noble didn’t come until later.
I may have set foot in the original Borders store in Ann Arbor but I am honestly not sure–I lived there for a year when I was in middle school and my mother lived in Ann Arbor for many years. I do have fond memories of the public library downtown.
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I’m spoiled because my city of Pittsburgh has lots of niche bookstores, but I live far away from most of them.
Barnes & Noble feels like walking into a Starbucks- the same crap everywhere I go. Nothing unique so much so to the degree that I feel every one I go into is so devoid of meaning, I leave. Even though I can see a sea of books, I automatically assume it’s all worthless crap because of the image the store gives off.
It feels like everything I see there isn’t a book but yet another politician Memoir or talking head memoir or something mindless of the moment but no actual books, surrounded completely by the boring bits of a pop culture Toys R Us, every little knick-knack in the world and pop culture figurine that has nothing to do with books.
Basically they feel like if the people who created Spencer’s toned it down a little and ran a bookstore.
I hate it
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Waterstones pays roughly $10 an hour in London. Just barely the official ‘London living wage’, but really not enough to live on your own anywhere within an hour of their main stores, barely enough for a couple of booksellers living together to afford a one room flat in Zone 3, 30-45 minutes commute away.
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