The Rise and Decline of Bookstores

[CalMeacham]

Cal, you should hang around with writers more. We’ve been talking obsessively about this for at least a dozen years. Bookstores are zombies, dead but still giving an appearance of life.

Well, I do, but this never came up when I was with them. I musta been out of the room, in the bathroom or somethjing, when they talked about it.

In any event, from the reactions yhere, especially the denials that this is significant, or that it’s even happenening, it’s pretty clear that it’s high time this issue was raised on this Board.

If it’s still there, there’s a good one right near by in Marblehead, Mass., Artists and Authors, formerly the Much Ado that moved to England a few years ago after 20 years in the same neighborhood. 50,000+ volumes, per their website. I picked up many volumes there in April, last time I was there but they were not buying any of the many books that I was removing from a late relative’s collection that I now have in storage. http://www.artists-authors.com/
Then there is also the new edition bookstore in the same town, The Spirit of Seventy-six, uptown.

Been there, done that. But I didn’t say all bookstores are closed. These are on borrowed time, I suspect. It’s their relative isolation that’s kept them alive – it’s 2.6 miles, according to Yahoo, to the nearest Borders, but they’re circuitous, and it’s over five miles to the Borders in Peabody. Clearly there are enough local readers to keep these places going. But that didn’t save the bookstores in Southbridge/Sturbridge. Aside from a couple of used bookstores and the shop at Sturbridge Village (which only sells history-related books), the nearest one to them is the Waldenbooks in Auburn Mall. Which they’ve just announced is going to close.

I don’t have any refs on who’s reading and if it’s increasing or decreasing, but I do know that our library is hurting – it’s been closed, has re-opened on a much reduced schedule, and still doesn’t have its certification (meaning no interlibrary loan, and we can’t go to nearby libraries with reciprocal borrowing). Some havew complained that the library’s hours are at the cost of layoffs in the police and fire departments – it’s an overall budget issue, and the library isn’t the highest priority. This isn’t only an issue with my town. So as the bookstores go down the tubes, the towns aren’t in a position to take up any slack.

By the way CalMeacham,l you do realize that what you are describing has happened in every area of consumer retail?

No, I don.t. Is it?

Certainly things are changing in many areas of retail, but there’s no reason for me to think they’re related. I’ve already complained about the closing of video rental stores, and I’ll add video sellers as well. Suncoast is out of business and record stores are in retreat — FYE has closed several stores. I’m glad Newbury Comics is still active in the Boston area – they sell plenty of weird stuff. If they ever close and Borders does as well, I’ll be stuck with the meager and bourgeois choices at Best Buy, Target, and WalMart. Yecch.
Electronics stores (of the sort that sell home hobbyist stuff) have been decreasing as well, as you note – Radio Shack has been closing stores, and the components sections of those stores have been evaporating. Yes, I do think that there are fewer people doing THAT sort of electronics. It used to be possible to walk into a mall in suburbia and buy a package of 741 op-amps, even as recently as 10 years ago. Try doing that now. People are certainly buying assembled electronics – but they can do that at Best Buy, Target, WalMart, and other Big Box stores. What they can’t get held of any more are soldering irons, packs of assorted resistors, potentiometers, and breadboards.
I could blame the decline of chemistry sets on litigation-wary companies, terrorist-fearing bureaus, and the like, but I can’t hold them responsible for the decline in low power and low voltage electronics hobby kits. There’s less interest in science hobbies and less impetus for them. This bodes well for our R&D future. But it’s Okay, because the R&D labs are moving to other countries, anyway.
I haven’t noticed a decline in clothing stores, Bed Bath and Beyond, or restaurants.

[What_Exit]

Just reporting in the the Borders at the Monmouth Mall is closing. This was a Walden’s. However there is a Big Box Borders a mile away and a big box B&N in the Monmouth Mall. The little Borders had little reason to exist by any standards and its selection was always poor.

My daughter has an electronics hobby kit. A 76 project lab and she did most of the projects. They are still out there, especially at Xmas time. Radio Shack has been a mostly useless store for more than 10 years. It was already becoming far more about finished goods 20+ years ago. The real loss is the small independent electronic supply places that disappeared 15+ years ago in this area. I think as IC circuits completely took over electronics, these stores just did not have enough business to continue. Their best years were the tube years of course when almost any handy person fixed their own stuff or at least tried. I saw a steady decline of these stores when I got out of the Navy and they disappeared. Even back then I was complaining about how crappy the Radio Shack stock was.

[CalMeacham]

My daughter has an electronics hobby kit. A 76 project lab and she did most of the projects. They are still out there, especially at Xmas time.

Mine, too. I got it at one of those disappearing Radio Shacks. You used to be able to get toys like this at ordinary department stores (I built scores of them as a kid), but not any more.

[Colophon]

I buy more books than ever, and I buy them from Amazon. It has most of the benefits of a real-world bookstore with none of the drawbacks. If they just increased the number of books you can browse inside, it would be perfect.

I don’t miss real world bookstores. They’re often crowded and it can be hard to find what you want.

[susan_foster]

@StarvingButStrong

I realize I’m part of the problem.

A few years back I finally started decluttering. Not that books are clutter, but there are limits, you know? Like I have seven bookcases in just my bedroom. All of them crammed full, with additional books piled on top.

Since I have a problem with disposing of books, I decided to be really restrictive on letting books get in. So basically now I get the vast majority of my books from the library. With today’s multi-library networks, and ‘order ILL from home’ options, it’s way easier to get anything you want than it used to be. (Hmmm. The improved ILL options might play a big part in the problem, too.)

Anyway, I get books from the library, and only buy books if I decide I’m highly likely to want to read them again, soonish.

Which doesn’t happen very often. Sorry, publishers and authors!

I’d be okay with instituting some sort of ‘fee’ for reading books, though. Say, $2 a book, $1 to the publisher, $1 to the author. How they’d handle the process, I dunno.

Hand up to this entire post. I am a prolific reader, but after my latest move, I decided enough was enough. I bought less than half a dozen books last year - down from goodness knows how many in the years before. My library is now my best friend.

I do go to bookstores to browse - and write the titles down to search for them later at the library.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@CalMeacham

Well, I do, but this never came up when I was with them. I musta been out of the room, in the bathroom or somethjing, when they talked about it.

Hmm. Did they start spelling things when you were around, like B-O-O-K-S-T-O-R-E-S are D-Y-I-N-G?

[CalMeacham]

Hmm. Did they start spelling things when you were around, like B-O-O-K-S-T-O-R-E-S are D-Y-I-N-G?

Well, now that you mention it…

[gaffa]

@CalMeacham

Electronics stores (of the sort that sell home hobbyist stuff) have been decreasing as well, as you note – Radio Shack has been closing stores, and the components sections of those stores have been evaporating. Yes, I do think that there are fewer people doing THAT sort of electronics. It used to be possible to walk into a mall in suburbia and buy a package of 741 op-amps, even as recently as 10 years ago. Try doing that now.

The colossal stupidity of Radio Shack management is a completely different rant - why they would toss away being the undisputed leader in one area for being an also-ran in another, rapidly consolidating one (cell phone service will be $25 a month for unlimited voice and text within 2 years).

But the truth is that electronics hobbyists are buying all their parts on-line, the same as a huge percentage of book buyers.

The point is, have you noticed that fewer people are watching TV or listening to music? Of course not. They are just buying them from the most “efficient” retailers. The music industry has been weeping crocidile tears over the decline of the traditional record store, but their policies killed them. That, and the ability to buy a single on iTunes rather than a whole CD, coupled with the recession, has resulted an a perfectly normal market contraction.

I have limited data on teenagers, having no kids. But my two nieces are both voracious readers, and both moved from pre-teen, to teen to adult books very smoothly.

People are certainly buying assembled electronics – but they can do that at Best Buy, Target, WalMart, and other Big Box stores. What they can’t get held of any more are soldering irons, packs of assorted resistors, potentiometers, and breadboards.

The problem with the big box stores is that it is virtually impossible to actually compare products. Also, the lighting is horrible for TV, having no relation to the lighting in an actual home. I was trying to buy a 15" LCD the other day, and I absolutely have to see the remote control, to ensure that the inputs are individually selectable so I can program them into a remote control, rather than a single “Input” button. Big Box policy forbids the remote leaving the box. So I had to go on-line to find a picture of the remote. And, obviously, once I’ve found it on an electronics retailer site, I may as well order it there.

When I truly need to compare products, I travel out to Nebraska Furniture Mart, where I can prevail on the sale-critters - most of whom used to work with me at Brandsmart - to let me play with the devices and figure stuff out. The smarter ones hang around and learn.

[ElvisL1ves]

And this younger generation doesn’t even know how to patch an inner tube or set their ignition points or even to retard the spark before hand-cranking a gol-dang car engine on a cold morning anymore, either. Used to was, you could even just hitch up Ol’ Bessie and have her pull the thing to the Esso station, there was one on every corner ya know, and those boys would take care of all that for you … But it’s a good thing nobody needs to anymore, either. Those things aren’t losses, and frankly neither are electronics shops or corner bookstores. To someone from back then, what we have today instead would seem like Paradise by comparison.

Sorry, Cal, you’re not defining a problem in a way that stands up to scrutiny, and you’re not proposing a solution at all, much less one that “someone” should carry out and why. If there were some reason to believe that people were reading less, or with lesser variation, or that barriers to publication were higher, or compensation for writers were lesser, or anything else specific, compared with the Wonder Years of your (and my) Sixties/Seventies childhoods, then I wouldn’t be imagining you using a Grandpa Simpson voice.

AIUI, btw, Heathkit electronics were popular mainly for their use of high-quality components, not their educational or geekery value. For a little time and patient investment, you could get a radio that would cost less and work more relitably than a mass-produced and expensive Zenith or RCA crapbox. But consumer electronics are much better and much, much cheaper now, and a kitbuilt would be more expensive and crappier now even if it were possible.

[Voyager]

@CalMeacham

Electronics stores (of the sort that sell home hobbyist stuff) have been decreasing as well, as you note – Radio Shack has been closing stores, and the components sections of those stores have been evaporating. Yes, I do think that there are fewer people doing THAT sort of electronics. It used to be possible to walk into a mall in suburbia and buy a package of 741 op-amps, even as recently as 10 years ago. Try doing that now. People are certainly buying assembled electronics – but they can do that at Best Buy, Target, WalMart, and other Big Box stores. What they can’t get held of any more are soldering irons, packs of assorted resistors, potentiometers, and breadboards.
I could blame the decline of chemistry sets on litigation-wary companies, terrorist-fearing bureaus, and the like, but I can’t hold them responsible for the decline in low power and low voltage electronics hobby kits. There’s less interest in science hobbies and less impetus for them. This bodes well for our R&D future. But it’s Okay, because the R&D labs are moving to other countries, anyway.

This is because you guys lost the computer business. Here in Silicon Valley you can walk into any Fry’s and get all that stuff, When I was thinking about cleaning out my heatsink, I got the special screwdriver needed and heatsink glue, no problem. I suspect most of the market is either too old to care or has moved out here.

I haven’t noticed a decline in clothing stores, Bed Bath and Beyond, or restaurants.

Linens and Things just went bankrupt. We’re not at the point where people can buy clothing on-line comfortably yet. As for restaurants, McDonalds is doing well, a lot of the chain sit down places are pushing cheap menus, and a lot of the nice mom and pop storefronts have gone out of business - but it is hard to distinguish that from normal times.

[CalMeacham]

Sorry, Cal, you’re not defining a problem in a way that stands up to scrutiny, and you’re not proposing a solution at all, much less one that “someone” should carry out and why.

I’m not defining a problem at all – I’m making an observation. Observations, actually – I noted the rise as well as the decline, and expressing some surprise at the brevity of the Reign of the Popular Bookstores.

As for the Grandpa Simpson-esque attitude, that’s precisely correct. I do like my bookstores, and am annoyed at their departure. And I’m clearly mnot alone, and it seems not to be limited to the old and crochety.

[An_Gadai]

@CalMeacham

As for the Grandpa Simpson-esque attitude, that’s precisely correct. I do like my bookstores, and am annoyed at their departure. And I’m clearly mnot alone, and it seems not to be limited to the old and crochety.

On the (European) continent, in various cities I’ve seen bookstores, antiques shops and the like that I can’t imagine would survive here. I don’t know whether it is because rents are that much cheaper, or more are stores long since paid for, or something else like that Mall culture isn’t yet as entrenched in these places.