Odd. The B&N in my town is always busy, and yes, I still go there regularly. They also have customer-use computer terminals to look up books (Someone on the first page said they don’t).
If we had a Half-Price Books or a Bookman’s - no, I don’t think I’d be a B&N regular.
If I’d known I could get Nookie at B&N I’d be there every day! 
It’s not! Read the thread!
I go to the local B&N regularly. It’s not exactly my preference, but the only other bookstore in town isn’t open when I can go to a bookstore–though I do try to give them my business when I can. B&N is effectively all there is. And they do stock the weird little sewing magazines I sometimes want to buy.
In the last few weeks they’ve pushed the books out to the edges of the store and put a whole lot of toys and games in the middle, especially expensive ‘educational’ toys and Star Wars Legos. There’s also a giant new ‘education’ area of shelving–Rosetta Stone software must be paying a good bit for the shelf space, since that’s all there is on two whole sections of shelving. I can’t quite see why they need that many displays of workbooks…
I see today that Borders is now going to offer a paid discount program. It is described in this article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38938603/ns/business-retail/
Perhaps Borders must feel that Barnes & Noble’s program has some merit?
The real news is essentially an admission of death.
Great. If Borders goes down, then two of the remaining Boston bookstores and the one across the river in Cabridgeside Galleria will go under, leaving the B&N at the Pru, the Trident on Newbury Street, and a couple of used book stores. In Boston*
I only go to Borders once a month, but I will truly miss that trip if they go out of business. I was there this past Saturday morning and they were fairly busy.
The New York Times is reporting that B&N is closing its store at 66th and Broadway in Manhattan, across from Lincoln Center. The article says of the people lamenting the impending closure of the store, “But many of those same people conceded that they have not bought as many books there as they did in the past. Some said they were more likely to browse the shelves, then head home and make purchases online. Others said they prized the store most for its sunny cafe or its magazines and other nonbook items.”
I think I was a pretty decent bookseller and I liked my job but six years is surely more than I could do. I left after three, despite the excellent health insurance, [mostly] entertaining co-workers and access to just about anything I wanted to read.
Oh, and I think I met your lady’s cousin. She didn’t eShop on her iPhone, but she did wave A Fine Balance in my face, ask me if it was any good and the very next second, before I could open my mouth, roll her eyes at her son and say “she hasn’t read it. Why am I even asking a salesperson?”
Since I left, I rarely shop at B&N anymore. I use the library, instead. But when I do go, I’m really, really nice. 
Location - there’s two closer Borders, and used to be a Books-A-Million within a few blocks of my house. I’m buying fewer books as well; typically I check online reviews rather than just buying any book that looks good. Now that I have an iPhone, I can be in a bookstore reading readers’ reviews off their own website or another seller’s website. Among other reasons, I need to limit the space in my house that my books use up.
I haven’t stopped going to B&N and I don’t see myself stopping as long as they maintain their college-bookstore franchises (and as long as my brother keeps giving me gift cards for Christmas and my birthday).
The nearest B&N to me is the University of Pennsylvania bookstore (they also run the Drexel U store, a few blocks further off). What with the textbooks, the pallets of notebooks and bins of other school supplies that appear and are emptied each new semester, the textbooks, the dorm room furnishings, the textbooks, the graduation gowns in the spring, the textbooks, the Penn-branded sportswear and gifts and souvenirs (and did I mention they stock the textbooks?), I don’t see this store going out of business any time soon.
^ I’ve seen campus bookstores change sponsorships. It’s not like they need to be sponsored by B&N to get textbooks, and especially not everything else. In fact, the only sponsored textbook store I’ve ever seen actually had the textbooks separate from the sponsored stuff.
Plus, how many people buy their textbooks at the actual school bookstore? Sure, you may have to with scholarships and grants, but otherwise, why? Very rarely is even the next edition going to be significantly different (as said editions are usually just money grabs), so you can buy used. And if you absolutely need a new textbook, you know about it enough ahead of time that you can get it on Amazon, where it will most likely be discounted. The only text books you have to buy from the store are school-made books, and why would those have to go through B&N?