“The Entirely Unnecessary Demise of Barnes and Noble”

[jaycat]

@CalMeacham

. . . The New England Mobile Book Fair (a misnomer – “mobile” it’s not) has had to close down its monumental warehouse-like building because it can’t afford it anymore, and has moved into a very seriously reduced storefront in a mall a few blocks away. I don’t know how long it’ll be able to survive there.

I’m sorry to hear of the demise of the Book Fair. I spent many happy hours browsing there, the perfect place on a rainy day.

They offered a blanket 20% off the cover price of all books. The most fun was - the books were organized first by publisher, then alphabetically by title! If you wanted to browse all the books by a particular author, you had to look in one of a couple of huge reference books with minuscule type and then write down the different publishers and titles and then go find them… quite the adventure!

[ftg]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Those are essentially vanity stores in upscale shopping locales …

I don’t think the University Village one in Seattle is at all an upscale shopping locale. In fact, it’s not even a good choice in terms of being near UW. Being on the other side in the University District would seem to be much smarter.

[pulykamell]

@SamuelA

(tongue in cheek, just saying, for most people the advantages of the new way are so much better than the old way that the old way is unsustainable. You might have a point in that physical bookstores have some advantages, but in general Amazon beats them all for most people. I can search parameters for genre and popularity and find titles that suit my interest far faster than in the store. There’s no human standing around to give advice, but that person had to be paid, and thus it makes Amazon/Netflix much cheaper.)

I tend to be of this mind. I mean, I still far prefer dead tree books to digital ones (I think I’ve only bought two eBooks so far), but I’ve bought dozens times more books on Amazon than I have in brick & mortars in my entire life, because it’s far easier for me to find books that interest me there. And the reviews are fine if you know how to read them. It’s pretty easy for me to figure out if I’ll like a restaurant or movie or book by skimming through a half dozen reviews at the most and seeing the scoring histogram.

About the only thing I prefer brick and mortar bookstores for in terms of the buying experience is when I want to buy an art book. (Yet I still end up buying more sight unseen online.)

[ISiddiqui]

Besides on quite a bit of books on Amazon you can “Look inside” and read the first 10 pages or so to see if it sings to you or not.

[Chronos]

There’s an Amazon store across the street from one of the universities here in Cleveland, in what’s hardly an “upscale shopping district”. There, though, I think the business model is to stock the same textbooks the university bookstore is stocking, and undercut the price.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

Amazon is killing off its physical bookstores, after killing everyone else’s

Amazon to Close All Bookstores

Stranger

[CalMeacham]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Those are essentially vanity stores in upscale shopping locales that just serve to reinforce the brand image in the public mind (as if that is necessary), and like B&N, probably make the bulk of their revenue on foodstuff and novelty items rather than books. It’s not a chain of hundreds of stores in every shopping mall and plaza, and Amazon certainly isn’t reliant on them as a significant part of their revenue stream. Even if they are a complete loser, the operating costs is a rounding error on Bezos’ accounting ledger, and the ability to have a physical location to host ‘events’ like book signings that bring awareness and push sales is justification enough.

They put an Amazon store in near me, and a few months later (for what appears to be unrelated reasons) the Barnes and Noble had to shut down. Now I’m pissed, because the Barnes and Noble will carry books by a local author (me). At first the Amazon store said that they would, too, but they aren’t.

Now if I want the closest bookstore to carry my book I have no choice except to become a famous author.

I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

And now they’re closing their stores, anyway.

[fedman1]

not to mention the usual Amazon restriction/control as to who can post reviews

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Fortuitously, Publisher’s Weekly just had an article on B&N.

Barnes & Noble's 'Solid' 2021

Daunt said book sales were strong in 2021, and that sales of toys, puzzles, and educational games were also up. The café and newsstand businesses, though, have still not recovered from the impact of the pandemic. Sales at physical stores improved over 2020, and while online sales dipped, they did not give back all of the ground they gained over the past two years.

Backlist titles drove the overall sales increase, sparked by the impact of BookTok, according to Daunt. The success of BookTok in getting young people interested in books is in keeping with a trend he said he has been seeing for years: teenagers and young adults are the main drivers of book sales. “I don’t make money from old people, I make money from young people,” he explained.

This is the first time in my life I have heard of BookTok. How the hell do vampires keep up with change?