I mean, that’s painting rather broadly? Perhaps there was one author who took too long to “get to a point”. Perhaps the reader missed the point in that 126-page journey. Who knows. But there’s all sorts of writers with all sorts of writing styles, and slow-as-molasses paced writing is not any sort of contemporary trend that I have noticed. If anything, to me, modern writing feels too breezy with the exception of, I dunno, Infinite Jest, but that’s already yea years old. (That’s actually one of the few I may prefer in the eBook format.)
I don’t know if Amazon still does it, but I really appreciated when they’d sell me a physical CD and the digital version would come along with it.
It’s not a Borders because they went out of business in 2011. They took Waldenbooks down with them, because it was a subsidiary. That’s why I’m surprised B&N has held on so long.
What is “an action step the reader could take”? Readers have limited options in the actions they can take: read, stop reading, hurl book forcefully against wall, write angry letter to publisher. What else?
There’s been an independent bookstore in South Hadley for the past 60 years. The presence of nearby Mount Holyoke College has undoubtedly helped it survive.
I miss new bookstores too. Anybody remember Borders Books? It had a nice balance between being a big-box B&N type store, yet with a friendly indie feel. They may have been just a local SE Michigan chain, I’m not sure. I used to love the smell of a new book— I’d open a new hardcover and just take a good whiff. Like a new car smell. Is that weird? Bet I’m not the only one. I love my Kindle, but it never smelled like much of anything.
I also miss used bookstores. Many years ago there was a little hole in the wall used bookstore nearby I would frequent. Maybe 30-40% of the books were shelved and categorized- the rest were in big stacked piles with no organization at all. I actually liked that- it was like browsing through someone’s attic looking for a hidden treasure or two. The owner, an old rumpled professor-looking type, was usually behind the sales counter, but sometimes his cute redhead daughter (granddaughter?) worked there, which was an extra incentive to visit beyond sheer literary pleasures.
I’m of multiple minds on new paper books. I have filled to excess all the shelves in the house long ago, and do appreciate being able to take a few hundred books on a long trip in a small tablet, as opposed to my youth where I had a literal duffle bag of books for two weeks.
I still like going to used bookstores, shopping for stuff that’s more rare, or that might be interesting, but not so interesting I want to pay full price or more (older stuff released in ebooks is either cheap, or fundamentally full new price, so frustrating).
But the problem (for me at least) with sellers of new paper books is the same reason I drifted away from B&N prior to ebooks - selection! Sure, they’ll have plenty copies of the most popular stuff in the various categories, and a good chance of having the most recent book or three by reasonably popular authors. But if it was released more than 3-4 years ago, and it wasn’t a blockbuster, no copies. Or they’ll have books 1-2, and book 5 of a 5 book series.
And then I’d have to ask them to order it, and wait for a call in a couple of weeks, and make another visit to the store to get it. Or I can have an ebook version for the same price in 30 seconds. With no other visits. Or a paper version delivered to my house in 2 days at the same or lower price.
So no, I appreciate the efforts to make B&N a more welcoming place, but LSLGuy already put it better:
Is there still a place for bookstores, new and used? Sure, for a while at least, but I agree that the market is slowly but steadily aging out. And years of some (there are proponents on both sides of the argument, so some is the best I’m going to do) authors and publishers demanding the death of used bookstores where they don’t get anything from the resale of used books isn’t helping either. With the death of most ‘lending’ options for ebooks for that matter, they may well be happy that each sold book is largely a single reader option. Although it creates quite a market for DRM breaking tools, which I do not use or endorse, but understand the arguments about.
I live in San Francisco, where there are a number of independent bookstores, mostly used books. There is one B&N in driving distance down in San Bruno, which I go to occasionally in passing. I’m glad they’re still open, and I hope any changes they make will help them stay open, but I don’t think the kinds of changes discussed are likely to get me to visit more often, or to buy more. Their book selections are bland and unadventurous, and I only go there to browse the bookshelves, and I usually end up buying one or two books that I wasn’t looking for. I like to read paper books as a break from my Kindle from time to time (most of my Kindle books I get for free from the library, or very cheap for books that are out of copyright).
I wonder what is wrong with the business model of e-books that makes them less profitable? The advantages in direct cost of goods sold, distribution channel costs, unsaleable production runs (“remainders”), etc., ought to make this a total slam-dunk.
Which middleman in e-books who’s not in deadtree books is getting rich so the publishers aren’t?
I can’t come up with a good other reason why every new book isn’t released in e-format too. And why back-catalogs aren’t being converted to e-format as fast as they can be fed into scanners for the real oldies or pulled off backup tapes for anything published in the last 40-50 years.
I have always been a bookstore guy. Borders, Waldenbooks, B&N, and in Phoenix, Changing Hands, Bookmans, Half Priced Books.
But one thing - let’s say I go to one, and I find a neat book I never heard of: “The World’s Greatest Tow Trucks”. So I buy it, it’s great, never knew such a book existed. So I want another! But I could travel to every bookstore in three states, and never find another one in the series.
But on Amazon, I can get most of them. And I find there is also “World’s Greatest Working Trucks”, and “Peterbilt Trucks of the 60’s” and a metric shit-ton of similar books. Do I feel the least pang of guilt for buying them from Amazon*? nope!
*to be fair, a lot of books like these are sold through Amazon, but come from used bookstores or public library book stores (such as the one right here in Mesa) throughout the country. So I am actually supporting “M&P” bookstores. But I would never find the books in a year of stomping through every bookstore in every town I travel through, especially if the staff decided they should be located between the My Little Pony and the Books in Sanskrit sections.
Have you listened to any podcasts lately? Hard to find one nowadays that doesn’t start with the hosts blathering on about what they had for lunch yesterday for 10 minutes.
As far as I know, they are released in e-format also. My wife’s books are, but the hardcover books sell more, though her stuff goes to a lot of libraries. E-books are cheaper, but they still have to pay their weight in publishing overhead, royalties, etc.
I don’t know what this means either. Not getting a reader involved quickly is a prime reason for your book not getting bought by a publisher. I’ve seen plenty of indie books with this sin.
But there is a trend to bigger books, that’s for sure. Maybe it is to make their high prices look more reasonable I’ve got many, many paperbacks from the '50s and '60s, and they are tiny compared to your average modern paperback. The original paperback of Dune was gigantic compared to its peers, now it would be average. And it seems that the word counts publishers are looking for are expanding also.
A new independent bookstore just opened in my town (suburb of San Francisco), much to my surprise. The local B&N and Borders both closed many years ago. It’s nice, but pretty small compared to those old big box bookstores. I do hope they succeed.
I’ve tried reading ebooks, I even had a Kindle device for a while, but I’ve gone back to paper books. Staying on an electronic device that long strains my eyes.
What makes you think there’s something wrong with the business model?
I also don’t understand how moving the café and the magazine section to a remote area of the store is better than having them in more prominent locations.
The piece was fairly vague about many of the changes.
Yes, there’s at least one. But there are very few chain bookstores in the general area, the B&N (sorry, I really avoid the Big Box Strip, I find being in all those kinds of stores a soul-destroying experience) being the exception.
Exactly why I click away from 95% of podcasts after two minutes. What happened to “tell them what you’re going to tell, tell them, then tell them what you told them”, the golden rule of speeches?
The thing about print books is that they have had 500 years of evolution. The look and feel of books change slowly but inevitably to fit the needs and likes of readers. Ebooks haven’t had this period of evolution. Publishers are still experimenting with the best look and feel and so are the companies that make screens.
People who love print books really love print. Reading on a screen of any sort does not compare. Books are special products whose love is inculcated early. The introduction to print books starts with the youngest children. The picture books and easy readers and my first books are predominantly print. Children are imprinted by print.
Assuming the article in the OP is meaningful - business puff pieces in business publications are always suspect - B&N is doing exactly the right things for book lovers. More books. More books presented with the covers showing. More books arranged with other similar books that might also attract. Bookstores work when customers are immersed in books… that are easily found. I’ve been in dozens of used bookstores where the shelves run floor to ceiling but the sorting is haphazard and signage limited. I love the idea of 100,000 books, but I don’t want to have to look at each one individually before I find what I want. Listening to customers. Better children’s sections. Better flow. Better retention. All the things that successful supermarkets do in their own way.
Comfy nooks? B&N has been doing that for decades. Cafes? They’re allied with Starbucks and people always sit at tables and read. Local and national authors? Yes, until Covid mostly killed them. Our local B&N had a room for book groups to meet in for free. Again, not any more. Local musicians are gone too. Getting people back to the stores for old comforts might be a path to success. No independents survive locally, except for a couple of boutiques. And they never last. Why would they? They don’t have 86,000 books. Look at the one below. Every book hand-curated. All 500 of them.
I believe Borders started in Michigan but it was certainly a national chain. As to why B&N is still around while Borders died, I think the Nook e-reader helped B&N to survive. Also they operated hundreds of college bookstores.
A new, new bookstore has just opened up a few blocks from me. The couple running it are in their late 30s-early 40s. They really know books, are happy to order stuff they don’t have, are right beside a popular ice cream store. I hope they make it.
Per the cites upthread, it seems that paper books are selling and e-books are not. Given their inherently lower costs e-books should be destroying paper, not vice versa. Something isn’t working within the business as one would expect but I’m not seeing what that something is, and not willing to research myself when somebody here probably already knows the answer from their own work in the industry.
My own reading is highly idiosyncratic, so hardly a good proxy for the whole industry. Nearly everything I want to read that’s current production is not even released in an e-format. Nor do any libraries buy them, other than universities. My history at my local, rather extensive, library is about 100 pleas to buy something they don’t have, and a dozen checkouts of something they did have.
I used to be a big fan of dead tree books. Now if it doesn’t glow and it can’t be zoomed, I’m not interested. Far too visually tiring to try to read a print book or magazine. I also read mostly while traveling and have no interest in lugging a few pounds of bricks along on a trip. Electrons weight darn close to nothing, even jillions of 'em.
I also view a book as something to read once and pass on. I used to own a couple thousand. Now I own zero I’ve read and about 5 I have not. Which will be donated or pitched when I’m done with them. They’re for borrowing or renting, not for owning.
That model is well-suited to e-books that are wear-free. But it’s not happening.