They had seven stores at one point. The one on Monroe Avenue was their original store (and the last to close). They also had a store in Greece and Victor in the Rochester area. Three in Buffalo, Amherst, and Hamburg in Erie County. And one in Canandaigua.
Less than three blocks to the nearest branch of the Toronto Public Library. Nearest Spanish language specialty bookstore just over three blocks, nearest afro-centric bookstore just over four blocks away, Seekers used bookstore is about six blocks away, and Book City is seven blocks away. Why, yes, I am rubbing it in a bit - but the bookstores are part of why I loved this neighbourhood when I first moved here.
I’m another one with a strong preference for a real bookstore instead of Indigo/Chapters or Amazon. The online places are okay when you know exactly what you want, but I don’t like them for browsing at all.
I lived in Laredo for five years. The main library (there are several branches) was pretty awesome, they had a lot of series with ALL the books in them, not just one or two like some. They had a great mix of everything, scifi, mystery, general adult, etc.
Laredo is a last-to-get things city, they didn’t have Olive Garden or Red Lobster til (IIRC) 2005, PetCo til about the same time. They did have 3 WalMarts at last count.
I am currently in the town of Bancroft, Ontario (pop. 3500) and it has a rather good independent bookshop. Transport connections may be wretched, but by all the gods we can read!
I’m only about 80 miles from the nearest bookstore <that isn’t either Christian or pron>.
Thank goodness for the internet 
I REALLY miss being within walking distance of Powells 
[quote=“Taomist, post:25, topic:526642”]
I’m only about 80 miles from the nearest bookstore <that isn’t either Christian or pron>.
Thank goodness for the internet
“pron>” ?
Porn.
There are two small bookstores in the town I live in one specializes in local history and geography and they don’t carry anything I want to read the other is a used bookstore that is about 150 sqft and I’ve never made it in. There is a Hastings about 50 miles away but 3/4 of that store is movies and music so I don’t count it as a bookstore.
Ever since I’ve moved I’ve missed going into a bookstore and spending hours just roaming around and finding things that look interesting but I’ve done a lot more online shopping and Amazon is my friend.
It’s tough for me to mourn the demise of bookstores when I spend most of my day at a computer with Web access, where I’m just a few clicks away from a computer.
And as far as browsing goes, I’ve got a good public library much nearer than any bookstore. Plus, as others have pointed out, there’s many ways for finding about books in one’s areas of interest on the Web.
Huh. There are three Borders in my town (plus the Borders HQ; it was founded here), plus at least one independent bookstore (although another one closed down recently), plus I don’t know how many used bookstores.
But it’s a college town.
Obviously not enough people in a city of 250,000 were buying books from the store to keep it afloat, so most don’t really care. That also doesn’t mean the general retailers don’t have books for sale. A new shop would take it’s place if there was a demand.
I’d be curious what this does to the property values. When house hunting, I would never have thought to ask a real estate agent how far it is to the nearest bookstore - now I know to ask. And in the case of Laredo, that means I want a house 150 miles from there. It isn’t exactly like finding out that it’s downwind from a pulp and paper mill, and it’s a little better than finding out it’s built on a toxic waste dump that was cleaned up by the developer’s brother-in-law, but I’m not buying a house in a town of 250,000 people that can’t keep a bookstore going.
We’re in rural eastern Kentucky, and I’m pretty sure the nearest bookstore is in Lexington, just over 100 miles away. There may be some small stores closer than that, but none that I’ve ever shopped in.
It kind of sucks, since our idea of a good Friday night when we lived “in town” was a nice dinner and a couple of hours at Borders. But a decent library and an Amazon Prime membership make it pretty tolerable.
Incidentally, Lexington is a town of about 250,000 and it supports not only a Barnes and Noble, but Joseph-Beth Booksellers, which was a mega-bookstore before they were cool. (They were attached to a small mall, and when the mall was failing but they were outgrowing their space they just assimilated the rest of the mall.)
I think the Monroe County Library System had plenty to do with the demise of bookstores in the Rochester area as well. They’re all heavily trafficked and since the Central Library doubled in size in 1997 that’s been a huge hit with patrons.
I don’t know. I’ve seen too many cities where the local independants start closing within a year of the big chains moving in to think that’s just a coincidence. The Village Green stores in Buffalo certainly weren’t competing with the Monroe County Library system but they closed down along with the Rochester stores.
And Toronto lost a lot of independent bookshops after Chapters and Indigo appeared (and then merged). Lichtmanns (more of a newsstand, but a lot of books), Britnell’s, Librarie Champlain (Toronto’s only French bookstore), Pages…
There’s a store called The World’s Biggest Bookstore which is a two-storey affair located in a former bowling alley. If there was ever such a thing as an independent big-box bookstore, this is it. But it’s now an arm of the Chapters/Indigo conglomerate, along with Coles, SmithBooks, and The Book Company (essentially all the mall chain bookstores in Ontario). And at the bottom of the market, there are the remainder resellers that pop up in vacant stores for a time and then disappear again.
Toronto still has quite a few independent bookshops, though: Seekers, This Ain’t The Rosedale Library, Book City (a small chain), Bakka (science fiction), others…
Toronto also has an excellent public library system (which is also known for its architecture, interestingly), but it hasn’t expanded hugely in recent years. IMHO, it’s the arrival of the big box stores and online retailers that did in a lot of the mall bookstores.
Toronto was one of the first library’s to jump into DVD collecting in a big way. And whether you believe it or not, a good DVD collection encourages increased use of the print collection.
I agree. It’s been a couple of years, but I recall that their library was quite nice. They always had a pretty good selection of new books. Their movie collection, though, left much to be desired.
I haven’t been in Rochester for many years, but I find it hard to believe that a good library had more to do with the decline of bookstores than the domination of the Big Box bookstores and the rise of internet shopping. In fact, I’d be surprised if it would have had a noticeable effect even if those factors had been absent.
Libraries, for one thing, don’t necessarily stock the same kinds of books people read (Go to a used bookstore and you’ll be overwhelmed by the thick pink tomes of Romance Novels. On a recent stop at a used bookshop my daughter asked why there were so many). Libraries also tend to be lighter in Science Fiction, Mysteries, and Westerns than bookshops (yes, even mysteries). That’s why fans of such genres tend to accumulate their own private libraries. So, even when I lived in Salt Lake, with its admirable collection of mysteries and Fredric Brown novels, I was still buying books at the bookshops – including mysteries and Fredric Brown novels.
During the dark time in which we lived in Thompson, MB, the closest bookstore was in Winnipeg. 450 miles (700 km) away.
I’m not kidding when I say that that was one of the reasons we left.
Going to McNally Robinson in Winnipeg was like a glass of cool water after weeks in the desert! (I hope they get their financial situation sorted, great store!)