The dominance of larger bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders in many communities has sparked much outrage. The usual argument is that the large chain bookstores lack the human touch; their staff has little time to converse with the customer and recommend new books.
Personally, I think that is a good thing. Nothing annoys me more than going into a self-owned bookstore to get a book out quickly and having the proprietor ramble on about what I should read as if he intimately knows my preferences. In my opinion, the more satisfactory customer service is when the clerk quickly fulfills your every desire and doesn’t keep you a second longer than necessary. Barnes & Noble and Borders are superior because they don’t annoy the customer with geeky babble and can boast a selection that locally owned shops could never acheive.
Wal-Mart’s expansion has been perceived as negative because they tend to raise prices after they’ve squashed all local competition. Bookstores, on the other hand, usually sell books at the price decided by the publisher, regardless of whether they are a self-owned shop or a massive chain. The consumer, IMHO, doesn’t lose a thing.
So what does the Board think? Are friendly clerks important and local shops a valuable resource, or are chains the better option for the serious booklover?
I agree with you ** UnuMondo ** - I like the way big chains don’t bother me when I am browsing for a book. Of course, if I find a book I like, I can go back home and get it cheaper off the net, so I don’t buy much at book stores anyways.
I’m with you. But I’m like that with all stores. I think the best policy for a bookstore, grocery store, or any other store and their employees should be: Don’t speak unless spoken to. Except for a simple hello. They can smile all they want. I hate it when I go to the checkout stand at the grocery store and the checker starts up with small talk. Sometimes, I just want to be left alone. If I want to chat, I’ll start the conversation. Otherwise, just leave me alone to shop, browse, purchase, etc.
Really, I’m a friendly guy! It’s just that sometimes, I don’t want to be bothered.
I like the larger chains. I like that there are big over stuffed chairs that I can plop in to to read whatever I choose. I never have a problem finding help (although I have never asked for book recommendations)
In smaller bookstores you have someone following you around dying to make a purchase and you feel pressured not to linger.
I like both for different reasons and different moods. Local bookstores and Half Price Books are fun for browsing when I don’t know what I am looking for.
Barnes and Noble or Half Price books more often though, because I usually have a specific title in mind and find it frustrating to not get what I went for.
I had one helluva time when I started grad school because all the big bookstores around here are owned by the same person, it seems, and if that person decides not to stock a book, then that book is not to be had. And my grad school reading list contained a number of books that were not available.
I was snarkily told by one clerk that “We don’t carry textbooks.” What’s a “textbook,” arsehole? These were primary sources I was looking for. These big chains (or, more accurately, this big chain) can’t even be bothered to hire staff that know anything about books ! I hate being bothered as well but I find it most helpful if there is someone around (“around” = in the same place I am in, not “on break” or “upstairs” or “at the store down the street”) who can answer my questions.
In the end I had to get my books at my university bookstore (a few), at the Toronto Woman’s Bookstore (a few more), or not at all.
So Chapters ™ gets to decide what we all want to read. I haven’t been back to one of those stores since.
The issue isn’t the impersonal nature of big bookstores; it’s the elevation of the dollar to the sole criterion for a book’s shelfworthiness. Small independent bookstores are more likely to carry books by small independent presses, thus contributing the diversity of the available titles. The Big Box stores are contributing to the slow homogenization of published (by redefining what is publishable/saleable) literature.
A gentleman recently told me about a bookstore where each employee was required to read every book in a small section.
a) Dream job, unless you get stuck in self help.
b) That’s customer service B&N could never touch
c) San Diego sucks.
Two more store the Chains could never touch: Book People in Austin and Sam Weller in Salt Lake City. The comfy chairs in B&N have nothing on the barber shop chair in front of the third story window at Book People.
I have a friend who calls this the “Blockbuster Syndrome.” Meaning that when you go into Blockbuster Video, it looks like they have hundreds of videos on the shelves, but what they really have is 300 copies of “American Pie.” So your choices are limited to dozens of copies of the biggest release, biggest selling, most easily accessible selections. That’s the same way I feel about giant bookstores.
Sure, they have 120,000 titles in stock, but 20,000 of them are dictionaries. Or children’s books or cookbooks or bargain books that no one wants to read…that’s why they’re in the bargain section.
I’m a literature buff. It’s just a weird hobby of mine. I find that when I go to the Brookline Booksmith (I live in MA near Boston) I quickly find what I want. New literature by good authors is easy to find and readily available. No one bothers me or chats to me, but if I want to know who wrote something, they know. And they can tell me what else that author wrote.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to find something in Barnes and Noble and ended up at the smaller, privately owned Brookline Booksmith so that I could find it the instant I walked in the door. Not only that, but I’ve seen numerous authors that I enjoy at the Booksmith including Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and in September I’ll see Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote Fight Club).
I suppose if I wasn’t a literature freak and I wanted a dictionary or a cookbook, I might head to B and N or Borders. But for now, I’m loyal to my small store for a reason: They suit my needs better, plain and simple.
I shop at lots of independent bookstores (as well as big chain stores), and I’ve never, ever had that happen. Occasionally, the clerk might be reading something at the front desk/register, he or she might try and start a conversation. That’s about the extent of it, and even that happens only rarely, in my experience. In larger independent shops with more than a couple employees (Powell’s in Portland, for example, or Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle), the workers are usually too busy to initiate major conversations.
In short, where has this happened? I’ve never seen bookstore employees trailing customers around the store.
The biggest difference between independents and chains I’ve found is that the people in independent bookshops almost invariably know their stock very well, while chain employees don’t know it so well. Even this, though, is more of a general principle than a rule, as some independent bookshop workers are completely ignorant of what they sell, while some chain employees are incredibly enthusiastic readers, and they’re more than happy to talk to you about it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that characterizing the sales style of chains vs. independent shops as inherently different is an exercise in futility. I can think of many examples that disprove the rules people talk about here, too many. It really depends on the individual store, and more, the individual employee in each store.
On the other hand…
Cite?
I’ve found that the larger chains, because they have ample shelf space, carry quite a good variety of popular publications as well as independents. For example, here’s a book I found last year at Barnes and Noble: Georgia Under Water. Small publisher? Check. Little-known author? Check. Book displayed prominently on a table, as well as stocked on the regular fiction shelves? Check. Good book, too. I probably wouldn’t have seen it at Elliot Bay, because they just don’t have the floor space to display as they did at B&N. Though I found out later that Elliot Bay stocks it as well, when I bought it for a friend. In other words, I probably wouldn’t have bought this little-known book had I not seen it at Barnes and Noble, simply because I didn’t know it existed.
Anecdotal? Sure… but it’s not the only time it’s happened to me, and how many times do you suppose this happens every day in a Borders or a B&N? Both stores often display lesser-known works by new authors right up next to popular books. I’d be willing to bet that lots of people find new things to read because of this, and if they don’t, then that’s a choice they’re making.
The point here is that Barnes and Noble and Borders carry a pretty damn good variety of popular works and little-known stuff too. Just scan their shelves, there’s a lot of books on them. The idea that they contribute to the homogenization of literature is a pretty well debunked myth, I’d say, disproven just by taking a close look at what they carry. If anything, having the variety of books they have available at a single location encourages people to branch out.
The chains don’t carry every publisher, of course. But that has pretty much always been the realm of the specialty bookstore anyway. The only shop I’ve ever seen that carries Cemetery Dance books or Dark Harvest books, for example, is a local shop that specializes in science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction. I wouldn’t expect other shops, even independents like Elliot Bay, to carry those titles, as they are generally high-ticket items, and to allow tem to take up shelf space that other, faster-moving books could be utilizing is bookstore suicide. So, I head out to Stone Way in the U-District when I want to see what new sci-fi limited editions are out.
I worked at a bookstore for five years, and I’ve seen bookstores rise and fall. The failure rate of bookstores is righ up there with restaurants, mostly because it is very, very difficult to actually target your market accurately and find the right balance between what sells and what makes your bookstore unique (and thus a draw for customers). In the end, though, bookstores are businesses, and if they don’t make money for their owners, they die. Every bookstore (including Barnes and Noble, Borders, and any independent shop) has to find what books appeal most to their customers and sell those. Variety is king, but so is having the book your customer is looking for in stock when they’re looking for it.
I find the idea that B&N and Borders are killing independent bookshops, and thus independent publishing, laughable. A B&N opened up in Flagstaff about a year after I moved away, but Bookman’s (the independent store where I worked for 5 years) still thrives today. I see lots of independent bookstores open everywhere. The good ones thrive and continue, even with chain stores only a few blocks down the street. The crappy independents die out… which they probably would have done, anyway.
There’s nothing inherently better or worse when it comes to chain bookstores or independents… it’s all in what you like, and what you’re looking for on any given day. Despite the impression that one gets from Sleepless in Seattle, both types of bookstore can coexist quite peacefully, and generally do so.
Bullcrap. Now, I would say that about mall/shopping centre small bookstores like Waldenbooks and B. Dalton. I worked in a Waldenbooks some years ago and we ended up throwing away most of the poetry section to make room for Jewel’s shitty poetry book A Night Without Armor, and ended up having to minimise other sections because the easily marketable romance section needed the room.
But Barnes & Noble and Borders are a whole 'nother breed. They’re huge enough to stock pretty much everything. B&N will carry obscure university press books that rarely sell, and occasionally you’ll even see kooky cult literature or self-published books at one of the big-store chains.
Once one or two chains have a large enough share of the market, they are in the position to exercise a form of de facto censorship. Especially since most publishers have gotten so big and so greatly concerned with the bottom line. We’re not yet in the position where a book Barnes and Noble wouldn’t carry is unpublishable, but their opinion is already important enough to be a consideration when a book is considered for publication, and to have helped make a certain kind of book very difficult to publish. (I know this only for children’s books, but I would be suprised if it were not true for adult books as well.) There is a kind of book, quiet, well-done, but not flashy, that lives or dies on “handselling”–booksellers get to know the book, love it, and recommend it to customers. Barnes and Noble does not, as a rule, handsell books. So when we come across such a book now, we have to think, Can we really afford to take the risk of publishing it? What if the Barnes and Noble buyer hates it?
Suppose someone wrote a book about the very issue we’re discussing here, and it was extremely critical of the big chains. Suppose it even made some allegations of improper activities. Would it be publishable now? Probably, especially if it was by someone well known, and was prominently reviewed, so the chains couldn’t just ignore it. But what if the chains increase their market share (currently about 33 percent http://www.euromonitor.com/Books_in_USA_(mmp) up from 24 percent two years ago http://news.com.com/2100-1017-241575.html?tag=bplst ) to over 50 percent?
It becomes the same issue as having all your newspapers owned by the same person–he’s in the position to make it very difficult for anything he doesn’t want known to be published.
I like having as much choice as possible. B&N/Borders; Mom and Pop Books; Amazon.com. I like 'em all. What I do dislike is pretentious a-holes who rag on the large stores because they didn’t carry one obscure book they wanted. Hey, if you live in New York City, you can get any weird book you want. But if you don’t live there, the large stores do just fine.
I would say that the bookstores have a lot less to do with homogenization than the megacorporations that have swallowed the publishers and set the bottom line far higher than any other consideration. (Obviously, the bottom line is important. No one stays in business in the red. However, the current trend seems to be toward going for the highest possible profits, regardless.)
When I was working in B. Dalton, Bookseller, they had a corporate policy of finding and promoting new authors. They also made sure that local products were both carried and promoted. And carried en extensive line of university press publications. The people running B. Dalton at the time were committed to books as a culture, beyond just a commodity. (B. Dalton has been sold at least twice, since then, so I have no idea what their current policy is.) They also, at that time, had a different policy than Waldenbooks. An outstanding manager of a Waldenbooks could give a good B. Dalton a run for its money, but if both stores had mediocre managers, the B. Dalton would clobber the Waldenbooks in quality. B. Dalton had a spine-out policy to permit more books being placed on shelves and they carried far more titles than a similarly sized Waldenbooks. Waldenbooks also carried remainders as about 40% of its stock (much higher profit margin), while B. Dalton carried only 10 - 20% of its stock as remainders.
These comparisons are over 20 years old, of course.
I will quibble with the idea that Border’s or B&N never harm independents. Metro Cleveland had a superb independent in Booksellers, that carefully expanded to three outlets. They were set up to operate the way that the original Ann Arbor Border’s did and they were hugely successful until Border’s opened up nearby. The Border’s backers had the cash to get Border’s into a higher traffic mall and, eventually, the Booksellers owner simply gave up as traffic decreased. I don’t know that she ever showed a loss, but she did not have the capital to make the additional growth to stay in competition. That may be the breaks of the game, but it is not an example of being shoddily run.
Nope, completely different issues, unless the big bookstore chains are actually going around buying up the independent bookshops. Can you show that this is happening?
There are still plenty of independently-owned bookshops in every city I’ve ever been in. They can sell whatever they want, and limit their stock to whatever sells best for them. Should the little bookstore in Poulsbo not sell the new Harry Potter book because it is popular? The big sellers are the bread and butter for independent bookshops, just as they are for chain stores. It’s what enables both stores to stock more variety in other areas.
Down here we’ve had a visible contraction in the bookstore market starting in the '97-99 period – and Borders only only got here in Spring 2000. And what I’ve seen is not so much closings as scale-backs, downmarketing, and niche-narrowing. Our BigMuthaMall had two bookstores until around 96 – the 30+year-old Thekes and a second one that kept changing owners until the last one decided to go virtual rather than keep paying rent. Thekes survived about 2.5 years within the same mall wing as Borders, and a lot of the final demise was more related to how the HugeSuckerMall kept ratcheting up the rent while they did nothing to improve the Thekes experience. Sad, really, as some of my best loved books came from those shelves, but they just did not notice it was no longer 1973. Old San Juan’s two main new-bookstore/cafe’s of the 90s had to scale back after '96 and eventually one went away, which really did upset me as I had grown fond of them, but, again there is a problem with a dwindling market here.
My local independant bookstore will order any book for me, so their smaller selection on the shelf isn’t an issue. I usually make up a wishlist, and then send it to my local store.
Whenever I go book shopping, all I have to do is stop in, and they bring up a bin from behind the counter which has all of my ordered books in it. I buy them at my own pace. They know me as soon as I step through the door. They know my tastes, and let me know when something new has been released. I don’t feel like I could get that from a Big Chain bookstore.
B. Dalton was purchased by Barnes and Noble in 1986, and Waldenbooks was acquired by K-Mart (along with Borders) in 1994 (although, later, Borders and Waldenbooks spun away from K-Mart and into a separate Borders Group–which is where they currently are now).
I may be wrong, but my bet is that whatever Barnes and Noble decides for policy, thus sinks the ship of B. Dalton, too.
I personally like the big chain stores, but am thrilled to search (for hours) the unorganized racks of dog-earred paperbacks and dust cover-free hardbacks hiding in the shadows of most used book stores. Cheers me up, it does. Especially when I can walk away with stacks of books for a tenth of the price if bought new.
Friendly clerks are important whether you find them in a large store or a smaller one. Personally I don’t mind talking to some of the clerks so long as they’re not pushy and we seem to share a genuine interest in the same types of books. I feel the same way about other customers in the book store.
I can pretty much find whatever book I need at B&N. If I can’t find it there I can probably order it from them and have it delivered in a reasonable amount of time. I imagine that some of the smaller stores would be able to fill a niche that B&N or other large chains could not fill.
All in all I guess I’m indifferent to large book chains and indeed large store chains period.
