I just came back from a Waldenbooks store in the local mall and was shcoked to see a “Going out of business” sale!! Turns out that Barnes & Noble wanted to buy a large, unused section of the mall, but would not sign a lease unless mall management severed Waldenbooks’ lease!! Waldenbooks has been in this mall almost from the first day (sometime in 1969). Even though the new B&N store will be over 200,000 sq.ft., I will not be shopping there. My wife and I spend several hundred dollars a year on books and magazines (for ourselves, the kids, my wife’s work (she’s a teacher), and as gifts).
There is another WB here, but it’s at the other mall about 5 miles further out.
Of course, I just renewed my Reader’s Club card last month!
So B&N, BITE ME!! You’ll not get my hard-earned bucks. ROT IN HELL AND DIE AND THEN ROT SOME MORE!! Can’t stand a little competition? Oh, and don’t forget to crush the B. Dalton store while you’re at it.
And to the mall management, I hope you enjoy the kickback/bonus you have to had gotten to agree to this.
Well, it depresses me that so many little independent bookstores are being forced out of business.
But B. Dalton and Waldenbook hardly deserve my sympathy. One corporation is the same as any other, IMNSHO. The diff between B&N and Walden is just scale.
Now, the corner mom and pop used bookstore? That I’ll fight for.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no corporate shill. It’s just that an injustice is an injustice. Is B&N afraid of a little (both physically and financially) competition?
As for the mom & pop operation, a small grocery store I used to work for has closed its doors after SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS in business!!! They were just unable to compete with the big guns (Publix, Food Lion, etc). Also their clientele (mostly upper-middle and upper class) have decided to pinch a few pennies. The store offered the best customer service in town. Something that is horribly lacking in nearly every national chain.
Oh, don’t worry, they’ll crush the B. Dalton too. Barnes and Noble is by far the best bookstore around (around here anyway). There is a Borders near where I used to live - they’re second best. I don’t know why they’d even care about Walden being in the mall with them. Walden can’t hold a candle to B&N. I always have a very hard time trying to find any book I am looking for in Walden’s, their selection is so poor. That and the dim lighting, the tight aisles, and the unhelpful salespeople (I’ve been to many a Waldenbooks - and thay are all the same) all contribute to, IMO, a very poor book shopping experience. I know it was a pretty crappy thing for them to do, but, you might as well just keep your chin up and go to Barnes. They have a much bigger and better selection, better sales personnel, a large selection of national and international newspapers and magazines, comfy chairs to sit in while you browse through your selections, nice bright lighting, clean bathrooms, all that and a coffee shop with some kick-ass food - what more could you ask for?
Personally, I prefer to hit the used book stores first. I feel like I’m giving a little orphan book a second chance for a good home. That, and I collect old and rare books - it’s hard to find those at a place that only sells new books.
OK, we have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart. =^…^=
I’m the “a pox on all their houses” camp. B&N is marginally better than B. Dalton and Walden, but they’re all the Walmarts of the book world. They are destroying independent booksellers and making life just that much more homogenized and bland.
They all have a lousy track record for hiring, or least retaining, sales people that read. (And yes, there are happy exceptions, but all too rarely.)
That said, I buy from Amazon, so I’m part of the problem too. But at least Amazon offers an ecclectic selection–and better prices.
In her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel writes some very funny and scathing satire about “Bunns & Noodle” and “Bounders”. Up here in Canada we have a similar problem with stores like Chapters (which even serves Starbuck’s) and Second Cup.
There’s Second Cup in Canada? (I bet I sound stupid, huh?) How funny… I’d heard it was owned by a Canadian, but I’d never thought about, cause the first, last, and only place I’ve ever seen Second Cup is in Israel. There are a bunch of them there. I hated it, because all the people who hung out there were horrid American yeshiva students. But they have good hot cranberry cider, very nice on a cold day.
That was too nice for the Pit. Now that I know they’re a soulless corporation, I’ll never go there again! (It’s easy to say that, cause I doubt there’s one within a thousand miles of here…)
First off, I’m not crazy about Starbuck’s coffee. (I have NO idea why I felt the need to tell you that)
Secondly, I would LOVE to shop at a local independent bookstore (I think I even mentioned my preference for used bookstores), unfortunately, there are none in my area. There was one, once, a long time ago, but it went out of business. It’s a shame because you can usually find the greatest, most unusual books in a privately owned shop, but since there are none, I’m stuck with the major chains. And, out of the chains, I find B&N to be far and away the best.
Dig this. We have another book/movie/music chain up here called Media Play. I was in there one day looking for Mythology books. I didn’t see any. So I ask the kid behind the counter where they were, so he shows me. They have one, count 'em one copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology. That’s the entire mythology selection (hidden in with the poetry books, I might add). I said to him that there had to be other books in stock and do you know what he said to me? “Oh, we don’t get those - nobody reads that crap”. I nearly died right there on the spot. Although, looking back on it, it’s pretty funny, and not surprising in a store where the first books you get to are the “romance” novels and the classics and non-fiction are hidden in the back corner of the store.
Unfortunately, the days of little independent stores, of all kinds, are ending quickly. This is truly a shame, because I hate malls with a passion.
OK, we have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart. =^…^=
When our new B & N went in here a few years ago they closed the B Daltons down. When I asked the Dalton workers why they said that B & N and B Daltons are owned by the same company. If that’s true and you don’t want to give the noble people your money don’t shop at daltons either!
Oy, don’t get me started. As an author, I have to admit that B&N is now necessary to my survival (they still carry my 1991 book, in paperback, which is pretty impressive).
But I still hate 'em, as a reader. “Homogenization” is right—did you know that some publishers actually consult B&N buyers now, before signing on to publish a book? “Will it sell to the average Joe off the street?”
And this is the first time since 1911 that there are no bookstores on upper Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: B&N put Scribner’s and Doubleday out of business, as they tried (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) to put Gotham out of business.
They are also over-extending themselves, which means in a few years they will have to start shutting down loacations, leaving many towns with NO bookstores.
Use Amazon to look up the books you want. They’re very handy for that…“Cookbook…Lithuanian…Vegetarian…My GOD, there are FOURTEEN of them!”
Phone your local independent bookseller and ask them to order the books for you (if they’re not already in stock…and believe me, the sort of books I buy? They’re never in stock).
The bookseller’s happy to do it for you, s/he appreciates the support, and the sales tax you’re paying is almost always cheaper than the postage you’re paying Amazon.
Yeah, but Ike, there ARE almost no “local independent booksellers” anymore! Thanks to both B&N and the Internet.
And—oh, I know you—don’t you love going into a dusty old bookstore and suddenly coming across a musty copy of some 70-year-old Tiffany Thayer, or somesuch? B&N can’t compete with that, and as handy as Internet book-shopping is, it ain’t as much fun as Bookstore Archeology.
But, it’s the wave of the future. I’m just glad I won’t be around to see what book-buying will be like in 100 years (I hear old folks telling me of the golden days of the second-hand bookstores on 4th Avenue, and sigh . . ).
I, for one, absolutely LOVE my local Barnes and Noble, and HATE the local independent. I had a friend tell me he called there the other day to see if they carried a particular book, and they refused to look it up for him. Told him they were “too busy.” They don’t carry a large selection, and I’ve been there many times looking for a particular book that I consider a basic in whatever genre it’s in, and they don’t carry it. The salespeople are rude, and they honestly don’t know any more about the books than the people working at Barnes & Noble. Books there are never on sale, and the parking sucks.
If the independent was truly better than Barnes and Noble, I’d probably be spending the $100 or so that I spend on books every month there. As it is, that money is split between Amazon.com and B&N. After the third or fourth bad experience at the independent, I go out of my way now NOT to spend money there.
This same independent is currently one of the big advocates of a new law they’re trying to get passed in Boulder - something about protecting local businesses by refusing to allow more chain stores to move into the town. They want to be protected because they’re small, cute, and were there first. Sorry, boys, but capitalism just doesn’t work this way. Prove to me that you’re better than B&N, and I’ll go buy books from you. Pass a law that protects your shitty selection and rude clerks, and I guarantee you I’ll never shop there.
I have to agree somewhat with Athena. When the last “big” independent bookstore closed here, the TV stations and newspapers made a big thing out of it. The customer reminiscences all sounded like “Well, it was dirty and cramped, they never had what we wanted, the hours were lousy and the clerks were rude, but it’s the end of an era.”
If that’s what we’re nostalgic for, God help us all.
hehehe, exactly! One of the big concepts that the people advocating the Boulder law are pushing is that it will bring Boulder back to its roots as a small town, “homey” feeling place, filled with independently owned shops. This was all fine and good, until someone pointed out that fifty years ago, the main street in Boulder was populated with Sears, Woolworth’s, and JC Penney’s. So much for historical accuracy.
Of course, the problem is that often the chains are just as rude or ruder, because they don’t need your business, they got 100 other shills to work on.
That is not entirely true I know, but I will say that is usually the trend I see. When Books and Co. was bought out by BooksAMillion a few years ago I saw a drop in service and really was disappointed by it. Same when the local hardware store was bought out by true-value, service dropped. I think a large part of it is, the clerks aren’t there for the same reasons anymore. At the hardware store, the people running the counters were there a long time, now it seems they change every third week. Is sad.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
Sure there are, at least in Montreal, they’re all over the place. I could name ten off the top of my head. Argo, Paragraphe, Champigny, L’Androgyne, Melange Magique, Nebula, S W Welch, The Alternative, Black Rose, and that little store that’s right next to Argo.
In fact, I much prefer to go to Paragraphe than Chapters if I can.
And I’ve never been treated rudely in an indie place, and they’re less likely to have Muzak, which I consider a rudeness in itself.
Gee, Matt, that almost makes me want to move to Montreal—if only it weren’t for the cold winters and the hideous public sculpture.
As for crappy indies; yeah, there are some. But I have seen lots of wonderful small bookshops in PA and NY run out of business by B&N—as well as larger stores like Scribner’s and Doubleday. Great, irreplaceable treasures.
