# I mostly treat Barnes & Noble like a big comfortable library. Is that so wrong? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 26, 2005, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735 "2005-08-26T14:59:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/41 "2005-08-27T03:51:12Z")
I’m in the “It’s Wrong” camp. Do you go to the grocery and taste the food before you buy it? I believe the only reason B&N “allows” it is because it’s their twisted idea of customer service. We, the consumer, have forced retailers to kiss our collective asses to the point where they have to take a bath on their profits. If I am paying retail for a book, I don’t want to have to deal with other peoples goobers. The library is not a fair comparison. Your tax dollars purchase the books that are in the library so that you can borrow them. B&N is not tax subsidized. It’s a _retailer_, fercryingoutloud. ---
**Author:** ![pokey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pokey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pokey)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/42 "2005-08-27T03:51:41Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > You’ve made a faulty assumption. B&N cares about profit, whether that profit comes from book sales is irrelevant. They sell music. Most stores contain a Starbucks. If a store sells only five books in a month, but makes a sizable profit from music sales, and their cut from Starbucks, they consider it a good month. If they sell five books in a year but make a good profit from music and Starbucks, they consider it a good year. > > Not if Barnes and Noble isn’t trying to make a significant profit from the books. It’s been about 5 years since I’ve been to one, and I could have it mixed up with Borders. I am probably picturing B&N wrong. I am imagining it is like Chapters in Canada. On the other hand, my experience has been that the profit margin on a backlist book is about 40-60% and pretty much all consignment. CDs I’m not so sure about but I think it’s tighter than for books. Aside from arguing about whether it’s right or wrong to read in the store, I find it interesting to think about where Barnes and Noble is making their money and what’s in it for them to let people read their merchandise. In Canada, Chapters started out almost all books and letting people read in the cafes and with plentiful seating on the floor. Over time, they stopped letting customers take unpaid merchandise into the Starbucks and they started to take away the upholstered chairs. Some stores have a music and DVD section, but it’s slim. Other locations just have CDs and DVDs by the cash with very nominal discounts off list price, as impulse/gift buys. 1/3 of the store floorspace is gift items. I’ve met a lot of Chapters associates, and they all tell me that they don’t sell much gift stuff, and a lot of them don’t understand why the floorspace devoted to gift stuff keeps growing. Others say it’s the margin and the fact that they have to fill up with something since they are always trying to skimp on book inventory. Since Chapters opened, they have stopped letting unpaid for merchandise into Starbucks because their shrinkage was so far out of control. The comfy chair issue might be related to the loss problem or it might be because they stopped seeing any benefit from it. I don’t really know. They still have chairs and they still let you read, but it’s not like it was when they first opened. I really suspect that they just didn’t see the benefit to replacing them as they wore out. Maybe they experimented with taking them out and found it had no significant effect on sales. Books are expensive though. You wouldn’t devote a lot of floor space to books if you didn’t care to sell them. That’s a lot of money to tie up just to provide a fancy lounge adjacent to a record store. I’m not sure now if Barnes & Noble even have a big selection of books. I assumed that they did. But I am pretty sure that if you were making all your money on the CDs, you’d just get rid of the books. They can’t return a hardcover or trade paperback if it’s not in saleable condition. Mass markets are okay, but who goes in and reads a whole book if it only costs eight bucks to buy it? Aside from mass market paperbacks, stuff that gets damaged, stolen and lost because of letting people read in the store, Barnes and Noble has to pay for. It’s totally their problem. They’ve basically provided a gift to the customer and they have paid the publisher for it. So it’s actually going to be better for the author if you do ruin the book while you’re reading it. If you leave it in returnable condition, Barnes and Noble will get a credit for it. If you spill coffee on it and tear the dust jacket, they will have to pay for it. Which is something they choose to put up with, because they find some benefit in it for them. ---
**Author:** ![TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/43 "2005-08-27T04:01:10Z")
I’m with people in the “it’s not wrong since it’s part of B&N’s policy” camp, but it does annoy the _piss_ out of me whenever I go to one of their stores. The final straw for me was seeing a guy in there not only doing all of the aforementioned - hogging an entire table with tons of books spread out, some lying split open/face down (ugh!), with coffee that he had already spilled on the table and some of the books, but **he had a fucking cooler** next to the table from which he was removing and eating food. Come on! ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/44 "2005-08-27T04:02:54Z")
> [@Ruby](#): > > I believe the only reason B&N “allows” it is because it’s their twisted idea of customer service. We, the consumer, have forced retailers to kiss our collective asses to the point where they have to take a bath on their profits. Again, they don’t just allow it. They encourage it. They also seem to be doing well for a company taking a bath on their profits. Casinos give out vast amounts of free alcohol, and still make boatloads of money. For B&N, the books are loss leaders. They do not expect to turn a profit on them. (I could be wrong on this. If I am, the stores policies are amazingly stupid and all board members should be fired.) Red Lobster expected customers not to gorge themselves until bursting when they offered an all you can eat crab leg deal. Customers gorged. Red Lobsters lost money. The deal was discontinued. Barnes And Noble has had the read without buying policy for years now. If they hemmoraging cash, they would have discontinued it. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/45 "2005-08-27T04:14:39Z")
> [@VCO3](#): > > The final straw for me was seeing a guy in there not only doing all of the aforementioned - hogging an entire table with tons of books spread out, some lying split open/face down (ugh!), You should have killed him. I mean literally ended his life. Bookmarks! Book-freaking-marks! BTW-In case people have not figured this out, I have no problems whatsoever personally sitting in B&N and reading for hours. Back when we had a booth at a local antique market, mom and I would use B&N for research and to help figure out what to price some of the items. The only things I’ve ever bought were things I saw on the discount table. I’ve never bought anything from Starbucks. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/46 "2005-08-27T14:18:17Z")
B&N Likely lose very little money to destroyed books. Nearly all books are sold on consignment. Any books that do not sell get their covers stripped and shipped back to the publisher for a refund. As long as B&N make sure there are always enough pristine copies lying around, patrons could destroy a million books and it would not affect their bottom line. ---
**Author:** ![Burrido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@Burrido](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burrido)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/47 "2005-08-27T14:37:03Z")
I don’t think that wrong. If you are allowed to do something, why feel guilty about it. I think in this era of computer games, young people or new readers need an incentive to actually go to a book store and read. Their model must be to gain New Readers. Have them come into a non-threating atmosphere, read a book, and maybe even buy one. Hopefully they get turned onto reading thus creating a new customer in the future and maybe for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Dragonblink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Dragonblink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragonblink)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/48 "2005-08-27T18:06:41Z")
I don’t know exactly how the B&N/Starbucks relationship works, but what you have in your average Barnes & Noble is not a “real” Starbucks – it is a B&N-run cafe that is licensed to sell Starbucks products and use Starbucks signage and logos. The people behind the counter are B&N employees, not Starbucks employees. They also cut some corners that aren’t cut at “real” Starbuckses (like using frickin’ Redi-Whip). I think the way it works is that B&N doesn’t get a cut from Starbucks; they buy the supplies and then the profit from the cafe is all B&N’s. As for the librarying, speaking as a former Borders employee, my opinion is that it’s perfectly fine as long as you don’t damage the merchandise, make a mess, or get in other peoples’ way. There’s a huge difference between taking a book or two and chillin in a chair to read, and plunking your butt down in the middle of the aisle, leafing through a huge stack of books for several hours, and then leaving them creased and scattered in a heap when you leave. You would not _believe_ the huge, massive piles of magazines that are left around when the store closes. Often the magazines are scattered about the store like Easter eggs. It’s a game of “find the porn” for the employees (my best find was three porn mags hidden in a copy of PC World stuffed into a Fiction/Lit shelf). ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735/49 "2005-08-27T18:19:46Z")
> [@VCO3](#): > > I’m with people in the “it’s not wrong since it’s part of B&N’s policy” camp, but it does annoy the _piss_ out of me whenever I go to one of their stores. The final straw for me was seeing a guy in there not only doing all of the aforementioned - hogging an entire table with tons of books spread out, some lying split open/face down (ugh!), with coffee that he had already spilled on the table and some of the books, but **he had a fucking cooler** next to the table from which he was removing and eating food. Come on! I’ve seen this kind of thing, too. Bringing provisions from the outside, as if one is camping out. I haven’t yet seen a sleeping bag or a pup tent, but I wouldn’t be surprised. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-mostly-treat-barnes-noble-like-a-big-comfortable-library-is-that-so-wrong/318735.md?page=2)