Trumpy–why are you made at B&N? All they did was make a counter-offer to the mall’s leasing agent. You should be mad at the mall instead. They’re the money-grubbing weasels that caved in and allowed B&N to get away with squashing a rival.
I don’t mean to sound like a shill, but those who like small, independant used bookdealers- have you tried www.bibliofind.com ? You can search the inventories of a gazillion of them. Not quite the same as browsing through the actual stock, but still damn near addictive IMHO.
Eve:
I know you’re hip to Academy books in Chelsea, but do you know the Mercer Street bookshop, just around the corner and north of the Angelika Theater…between Houston and Bleecker? That’s where I picked up the Lytton Strachey I told you about, and a couple of other nifty out-of-print volumes, too.
And how about Drougas Books, the used-and-remaindered shop on Carmine Street, just off Sixth Avenue? Their sign reads “Unopressive, Non-Imperialist Bargain Books.” Got a nifty book on onions there the other day.
To all you guys who are declaring “I just love the comfy chairs and discounts at B&N…I hated my old independent,” I have absolutely nothing to say.
Uke
That would be me!
I think we may be talking about two different types of independent bookstores. I suspect that most of you living in large, older cities have access to many, many independents. They compete with each other, and may specialize in certain kinds of books.
For those of us living in smaller, newer towns, we don’t have this kind of diversity. My home town still has nothing close to a decent bookstore, and the best one there is is an independent used bookstore. The town I live in now has a prominent independent that’s been here since I moved here, so that makes it at least ten years old. From what I can tell, it’s doing nothing except trying to be a Barnes & Noble, and it’s failing at it. Cripes, it even opened up a cafe! It has high prices, low selection, and the same harried staff and cushy chairs you get at B&N. It’s not some quaint discount or used shop that actually has some sort of character.
There are some used bookstores out here, but they all have the same problem. They are barns full of books - no attempt has been made to organize the books, so there’s no way in hell I can walk in and expect to find a particular book. Add in the bulk of the selection seems to be Harlequin Romances, and there’s no wonder why B&N does so well in small town America.
I have been to good independents, and I like 'em. But they are few and far between in middle America. Amazon.com and B&N have done us the great service of getting books to the masses - you can’t tell me that’s not a good thing.
First a link:
http://www.abebooks.com
If you like both independent booksellers AND amazon.com, you’ll like abebooks.com, an association of 5000+ independents that computerize at least some of their stock and specialize in mostly out-of-print books.
Second, excellent independents aren’t limited to large, “sophisticated” cities. My town is small (pop. <5500) and isolated, but we’ve got a fantastic independent that handles new, used, and special ordered books. I am, of course, biased since I’m a former employee and the bearer of a lifetime 10% discount on new books. Even still, if amazon.com can get it to me faster and at a better price (sometimes it happens), I’ll go with them.
One dark omen for the future of our local independent: as of last semester, Barnes and Noble runs the university bookstore. Previously, the local independent and the school had an “unspoken understanding” that the school wouldn’t sell fiction and the local store wouldn’t sell textbooks. The new university bookstore (B&N) is stocking fiction…
Another small town, Archer City, TX, is the home of Larry McMurtry and his personal bookstore–one of the largest used bookstores in the country.
A pox on box bookstores!
I sympathise for those who are in places without weird, dusty, bizarre and obscure used/antiquarian bookstores.
If you are visiting this part of the world, or want to do your arcane bookshopping on the net:
http://www.munrobooks.com/ : new books, but very cool. Restored a heritage bank as their store. Have live harpists (harpies?) at Xmas.
http://www.bolen.bc.ca/ : new books, supports many local authors
http://www.wellsbooks.com/ : my favourite bookstore in the whole world. Used, antiquarian, nautical, first editions, etc. Hooked me up with S.J. Perelman 1st eds.
If you’re going to the UK, don’t miss Maggs, in Berkeley Square: British eccentrics at their best. Say hi to Uriah Maggs for me.
Damn you Chapters!
Launcher may train without warning.
Geez, big corporations kicking out little bookstores. Someone should make a movie. It could star Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and – Oh, wait…
Anyway, here are some of my favorite independent bookstores and some recommendations from friends.
R.J. Julia is a small bookstore located in Madison, Conneticut. My friend that lives up there loves to shop there, and says that they will even deliver books to her home in Guilford, 15 minutes away.
R.J. Julia
768 Boston Post Road
Madison, Conneticut 06443
1-203-345-3959
1-800-747-3237
She also recommended some bookshops in New York that might be of interest. The Strand, located at 13th and Broadway, has a large selection of used books. Shakespeare and Co., located at lower Broadway, near Downtown, is another independent bookseller she recommends.
Now, my personal faves:
In Minneapolis, the Paperback Exchange, located at 52nd and Penn, has a large selection of used and new books. Here in Sanibel, the Sanibel Island Bookstore also has a good selection of new and used books, and can order any books currently available. They are located at Periwinkle and Casa Ybel, right across from Jerry’s.
SanibelMan - My Homepage
“Step away from the bell curve, sir.”
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult anyone who doesn’t have access to independent bookstores. Personally, I don’t have access to a chain. My hometown doesn’t have any large chain bookstores at all. I doubt there are many at all in the area (North Bay Area/Sonoma & Napa Counties in CA) because there is a very popular local bookstore, with about six locations - one about five blocks from my parents’ house. It’s wonderful. They have successfully fought off attempts by B&N to close the shop out, incidentally.
I go to school about 100 miles away, and there is another excellent independent bookstore here. Its survival is pretty remarkable. Its building was completely destroyed in the 1989 earthquake, and operated for years out of a tent. Also, for the first couple years I was here, a SuperCrown was across the street. Last year, they went out of business. It didn’t matter that their prices were marginally lower, apparently. Borders is opening a new branch a couple blocks away pretty soon, but I doubt they will do particularly well.
Both towns are old by CA standards (both are well over 100 years old), but neither is particularly large - both have about 50,000 residents.
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
Ike—
Sad news; I hear Academy is closing. And remember James Carr, up on the Upper East Side, also long-gone? And Books Friends’ Cafe? Sigh . . .
There are, happily, still a tiny handful of wonderful little NYC bookshops; my two faves are the incomparable Gotham Book Mart, and Argosy. But I bet they’ll be gone in a decade or so . . .
—Pessimistic Polly
Ooo, Eve, a sensitive soul, ma petite fleur! cold winters? mwahaha I’ve lived in Winnipeg, dear, you can’t scare me with winters.
And our public sculpture is not hideous! No more hideous than that elephant in front of the UN.
Oh, please, Matt! Montreal is a lovely city, I have nothing against it. But I am pretty widely traveled, and you guys have the most HIDEOUS outdoor sculptures I have ever seen! And I have seen some real corkers right here in NY (my fave is the giant dog turd at Park and 46th).
True story: I met a gal in Montreal who told me, “I can’t stand the winters here anymore. Next year I am moving down south where it’s warmer.” I asked her where and she said, “Minneapolis.”
OK, back to the booksy-wooksy thread!
Damn you, Athena, this is the Pit! How dare you come in here with your rational, reasonable, good-natured arguments?
Yeah, if I lived out there somewhere where B&N was my only option, I’d be damn glad to have them, too. And I do abhor the movement on the part of the independents to go into the latte business to make themselves MORE LIKE B&N, using up valuable bookspace with espresso machines.
(If you are a Boulderian, have you ever shopped at Rue Morgue Books, the independent mystery-specialty bookshop? The proprietor, Tom Schantz, is a flaming asshole, but he has fairly good taste in crime fiction. And his wife Enid is very nice, and smart.)
Being a spoiled New Yorker, I loathe watching all the cool little bookshops go down the toilet when a chain store opens four blocks away. And now Eve tells us that ACADEMY is folding? DAMNATION! When? I gotta get downtown and buy those out-of-print Mosaic box sets of Shorty Rogers and Serge Chaloff CDs in their record section before they close!
Uke
Eve: I’m not too worried about Argosy …their stock tends toward the collectable and the valuable. There’ll always be room in Manhattan for the expensive, the exclusive, and the snooty.
Gotham’s survived the B&N juggernaut just around the corner on Fifth Ave…so far. I’d say their legions of loyal customers would keep them in business, but that’s just naive.
– Uke, still nostalgic for the Brooklyn Dodgers
Ukulele Ike, sorry 'bout that. Do you assholes have a brick in your head?!? Don’t you know that 99.5% of America has NO bookstores, and B&N is the savior of literacy in most small towns? Get your head out of your ass! Not everyone wants to live in a dirty, crowded city!
(whew!) OK, back to the subject. Yes, I have been to Rue Morgue. They look pretty good… unless you aren’t really into mysteries, like me. Interestingly enough, I never hear them arguing about whether or not B&N is unfair competition. They have their niche, they seem to be doing quite well, and I’m betting that B&N doesn’t hurt them at all. And, btw, if you’re browsing the mysteries, and you want a latte, you have to go somewhere else to get it.
Damn… I meant, “Do you assholes have bricks in your heads?”
I hate when I do that. Please use your grammar filter when reading the above post. I’ve been working too many hours lately.
[stepping back, barely avoiding being hit by bricks]
Whew!
Ike, a friend told me he saw Academy having a “going out of business” sale, hope he was mistaken. Remember when there was a cluster of stores on West 17th? Now I think there’s, what, one?
Gotham is safe, for the time being, because they own the building they’re in, so rent’s not a problem. I will leave NY the day Gotham closes—I am still recovering from the loss of the B&N Book Annex, Doubleday and Scribner’s (not to mention Altman’s and Bonwit’s, but that’s for another thread . . .).
Personally, I have to speak up for B&N. They certainly carry more than B. Dalton or Waldenbooks–I’ve found copies of the Red and White notebooks by Wittgenstein,the Loeb classical library, Ritter’s “The Glory of Their Times,” and a lot more. while there are problems with the chains, I haven’t found independent bookstores in the Twin Cities that have the range of books that B&N has. Lots of the (rapidly closing) indies around here claim that their advantage is a superior author reading series. No, thanks. Most authors who I’ve heard read believe that their words say it all, so monotones and poor delivery are okay.
To me, B&N preserves more writers, and that is what I think a bookstore should be about.
Bucky
While I lived in Nashville, I went to MediaPlay. What a farce!! You can barely focus on the book selection cause the Metallica that the Music area sales clerk is playing is blasting. Or it has the atmosphere of a warehouse. Ugh!
One thing I must say in defense of B&N is that I think one of their subsidiaries, BookStar (correct me on this if I’m wrong), buys up old “vintage” theatres and such and converts them to bookstores while maintaining their cool atmosphere. I’ve been in two of them, one in Nashville and one in San Diego.
If you’re ever in Lansing, head to Shuler Books (actually in Okemos). What a great store! Small independent, GREAT variety, clerks are helpful, they’ll order any book in print for you, plus get some good sale books. It’s my favorite. Of course, I’m assuming it’s an independent…someone may have to quash my dream!
I live near Rochester, NY, a city of over a million people without a single independant bookstore (the last one, Village Green, closed its doors last April). Fortunately, several of the smaller cities and towns in the area surrounding Rochester still have good independents; LiftBridge in Brockport, Poppy’s in Dansville and Olean, The Canandaigua Bookstore in Canandaigua, Page One in Corning, Sunrise Books in Geneseo, and four independants in Ithaca (where ironically a B Dalton’s closed in the same neighborhood).
BunnyGirl -
B&N’s BookStop division (this is what they call BookStar in Texas) has a store in the old Alabama Theater in Houston. It’s a pretty cool place to book shop.