I’m semi neutral. I go in a bookstore maybe once a year in order to buy last minute Christmas gift items. I say last minute because usually I will just order books online to save money.
Growing up I remember being in the library all the time as well. I loved the kids section of the library, heck I still do! I have no memories of going to a bookstore because even then (the late 80’s) my mom didn’t want to spend money on buying a book when she could just borrow it for free. I still go to the library far more often then to a bookstore.
Plus the library always had such a community atmosphere or at least mine did. I went to summer reading camps and classes and events all with my family and the rest of my community. The library wasn’t just a place to get books. A bookstore however is just a place to get books and there are other places in the world I can get books.
Went into the local Borders store on Friday hoping to use my gift card and get some crazy deals due to the store closing sale and boy was I ever dissapointed…again. Everything was shoved everywhere. There was no order to the chaos whatsoever, especially in the DVD section.
At first I was looking at some copies of classics that I should probably own but even with a 50% price cut they were still $40-50. That’s way out of my price range. So I decided I would take a gander at the movies but they were just jammed on the shelf willy-nilly. There was no way I was going to spend two hours rummaging through the dvds especially with the heat blasting at 80 degrees. Why the hell did they have to keep that store so damn hot!
I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this in an earlier post but they were also selling the furniture! It was like 28 days later in there! Weird.
So when I got home I decided I would browse their website but it was so frustrating. It may have been just that particular day or maybe my computer was being slow but it took two clicks of the back arrow every time I wanted to go back a page and all the book covers and photos of the product were so small I had to look at a larger image of every single one which also took two clicks of the ‘view larger image’ button. It was just so slow and combersome. I’m going to try again later today and hope that it’s better.
I went to my local Borders Saturday to see what they had left at 40-60% off. The place was pretty well stripped but what was left was still in the same place as usual. The DVD box sets were still locked up, which meant I had to find someone to unlock the cases; this wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I also didn’t have to wait long to check out, unlike the last time I went on Saturday when the line went halfway through the store (although with all five registers staffed the line actually moved pretty quickly).
I did see that they were selling some of the displays, although there was also a sign outside the entrance stating that sales of displays was temporarily suspended.
This was the scene at Borders on the north side of Columbus, OH last Tuesday, too. I picked up a couple books at 40% off, though the pickens were slim. I’d say the place was about three quarters empty. Two employees, one wandering the store, one at the cash register. They put a line through the barcode of the books I bought so they couldn’t be returned. (Does that work?) Even the shelves were priced to sell.
It may work if that is their policy (to not accept any book with a line thru the barcode). But it will not make it impossible to scan and read the barcode correctly unless the entire length of any one bar or space is significantly altered, like widening one entire bar or narrowing one entire space. A line from one corner to the opposite corner will make it unreadable, too (because now there’s no path thru the data bars that is pristine), but just putting a thin line mostly perpendicular to the data lines won’t hurt the reading much.
My Borders isn’t doing anything to the barcode on the books, but they are marking the backs of the receipts. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been able to return a book I’d bought at Borders without the receipt.
My personal experience confirms this. I read a lot of history. I can remember it used to be possible to buy regular paperback editions of popular general history works. That hasn’t been the case in years. The only history you might ever see in regular paperback nowadays are biographies or military books - and both of these are uncommon.
The Borders here in Australia appear to have announced they are no longer accepting Gift Vouchers after April 3rd, at least according to the sign in the window I saw at one today.
Agreed, entirely. In fact, the independents are closing first, so that when Borders and Barnes and Noble die, there will be no bricks-and-mortar bookstores left.
This is what annoys me. When I was growing up, unless you went quite a distance to the City (like New York City), there were practically no bookstores. I bought most of my books at newsstands or department stores or (oddly enough) hardware stores. Slim pickin’s, all, although I did get a steady stream of good stuff. The local college bookstore was pretty dismal, and the closest decent bookstore was three or four towns away. When Waldenbooks started opening bookstores in shopping malls near us circa 1970, I was overjoyed. When one opened in an accessible mall near me a couple of years later, I was in heaven. Thereafter followed a Renaissance where bookstores were open all over the place, including multiple bookstores in malls.
Of course, the bookstores made those bookracks in hardware stores disappear. And although independent bookstores thrived for a long time while “big box” stores were open, online bookstores (mostly Amazon) hit them hard first, then impacted the big stores. Now almost all of the independent used bookstores and new bookstores are gone, Borders and B&N are in trouble, and now there aren’t any books for sale at hardware stores, newsstands, and most department stores (the only one around us that seems to have books is Target). Drug stores and supermarkets, which used to have a somewhat broad selection, either have nothing or a small collection of pretty disposable bestseller fiction.
Are you really lamenting the disappearance of hardware store books? The successor to the hardware store is Costco, Sam’s Club, Target, and Walmart. They all have a book section that is admittedly very narrow, but still has hundreds of titles.
I think we need to maintain a historical perspective here. Yes, it sucks that bookstores are disappearing, but the current situation is better than at any time in history. I can get any title in print (and many that aren’t) on my doorstep in three days, usually much cheaper than list price. Yes, I can no longer browse, but I’ll take that over the situation in the 80s and early 90s any day.
Near me there’s only Target. And the book sections in the warehouse stores appear to be dismal collections of random books. They’re successors only in the sense that they’re where you can actually obtain some books.
Me, I’ll take the situation from the 80s and 90s.
The hardware store had a thoughtful collection of books? Did Bob from hacksaws put it together?
Anyway, I think you’re shortchanging the selection of Costco and Sam’s. They have a fair selection of popular new trade paperbacks and hardcover. You’d really give up Amazon just to have a few more bookstores with the same narrow selection? I think that’s crazy, but that’s just my opinion. More books are always better, just like more free speech.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in one, but I’d take the selection I used to have in the hardware store over what I saw the last time I was in a modern Big Box store. It was more balanced. I suspect they got a selection that came in from some supplier, rather than having Joe from hacksaws do it.
Aside from Target (and possibly walmart, although the ones I’ve been in didn’t have book sections), department stores don’t seem to carry books anymore. K-Mart and Macy’s and the big department stores used to, but don’t anymore. In fact, some of them had pretty big and well-stocked ones.
Yes, I do like the ability to get a huge selection from Amazon. But there’s nothing like the fortuitous browsing that brought me up against things I hadn’t heard of (and no amount of their suggestions and on-line searching would have produced). And I really don’t like that they are becoming the Only Game in Town. Really – aside from individual presses and used-book places like Alibris, how many other book stores are there online? B&N? Borders? But they’re attached to those troubled companies.
You don’t actually believe that a big box store is assigning a random employee from the stockroom to actually choose the books, do you? Costco goes out and buys whatever is cheap and popular. Other big box stores rely on book suppliers to choose the range of books, and those suppliers do it on the basis of what they believe will sell.
