Writing last week's post about Barnes and Noble and my love of bookstores reminded me it was time to poke the interwebs to see if any new bookstores have opened in my area. I do this every once in a while, usually with only the smallest glimmer of hope. I mean, I do read the local paper, and our city being a pretty small one, they do report pretty thoroughly on new businesses opening up. (Our paper is cutting edge, shut up.)
But lo! This time there was a hit for a store I hadn't heard about. I clicked some links, waiting to find out it was the kind of specialty shop I have no interest in: antique guns and old local maps and every book on military history ever written! ...Actually, that sounds kind of interesting, now I think on it, but it doesn't really fall in the same category as a general interest bookstore.
But no! New and used books, the links said. Downtown, the directions said. I grumbled a little about the downtown part (one way streets, hassle-y parking), but I girded my endsheets and screwed up my French flaps and set out to find this newcomer. After getting "lost" (I knew where I was, just not where I was in relation to where I wanted to be) and navigating the narrowest parking garage in Virginia (probably), and walking in the wrong direction for half a block (I'm more of a country kind of a person, okay?), I found the bookstore!
Ya'll, this is the tiniest, most excellent bookstore I have ever seen. If this space was larger than my living room, I'll eat my blog. (Shh, I don't know how I would do that either. Shhh.) So their depth of stock was, like, not, but what a delight it was to browse their shelves. Classics, picture books, YA, thrillers, general fiction, sff, local authors, and general nonfiction all had their little sections of the store, and the books on offer were both highly desirable titles and in excellent shape. (I broke my book-buying ban, guys. I had to. Local store, must support. That I broke it about 2.5 times more thoroughly than was probably necessary is a fact we just won't linger over.) Only one person was staffing the store (I don't think there would have been room for anyone else), and we had the best chat about the books I'd selected, the store itself, and events they had coming up.
After the not-great news coming out of B&N Land, this was such a nice little lift up. While this store wouldn't could replace a Barnes & Noble-shaped hole in my life, it goes a long way to making me a wee bit less verklempt about the apparently (?) impending (?) doom (?) of Barnes and Noble. I will be doing my level best to brave the wilds of downtown and use some of my monthly allowed book purchases to support them with my dollars.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Ominous Changes Come to Barnes and Noble
If you are elbows-deep in books news like I am, you've almost certainly heard about the recent layoffs at Barnes and Noble and the subsequent speculation about what they mean for the future of the bookseller. The news doesn't seem to be bubbling up too far into the mainstream, however, so here's a quick summary of what's happened, a round-up of pieces about it, and a few of my thoughts about the situation for your very much perusing pleasure.
The Sitch:
Reports are that last Monday (12 February 2018), full-time Barnes and Noble employees across the country arrived at work to learn that they had been laid off. Reports differ about whether/how good severance packages offered were, and some laid-off employees have said that they were told they would be welcome to apply for part-time positions in a few weeks. Consensus seems to be that the lay offs came without warning. The first articles I read about the lay offs identified the jobs cut as lead cashiers, digital leads, and receiving managers. As more information came out, it sounds like B&N has fired all or nearly all of their full-time store employees nation-wide.
The Links:
*At Fortune, Barnes and Noble Is Laying Off Workers Amid Declining Sales
*At Publisher's Weekly, B&N to Save $40 Million Following New Layoffs
*On Tumblr, by a former employee, The Entirely Unnecessary Demise of Barnes & Noble
*From Book Riot, podcast episode 248, No Heroes, from 12:59 through 38:00
My Thoughts
Ouch, you guys. I don't see any way to look at this where it isn't bad news for book lovers. First, and most importantly, there's the human cost of the lay off. I know that lay offs aren't a new thing and that it's a reality for many, many people that they show up for work one day and find out there *is* no work. Knowing that doesn't make me feel any better about the several thousand people who just lost jobs that I valued them doing. Just, jeez.
Beyond that, my thoughts basically boil down into three main categories.
First: What does this mean for Barnes and Noble?
Of the many things I am not, near the top of the list is a business person. I wouldn't have the first notion how to run the business of a bookstore, never mind a bookstore chain, but I think any time a company dumps near-as-makes-no-difference all of their full-time, experienced employees, that's bad news bears for the company.
Specifically, the employees that B&N has fired are the most knowledgeable employees, the employees most likely to be able to help customers choose books or help them solve problems on their Nooks. The people who are gone are the people who knew the most about helping customers in a bookstore. You can train just about anybody to look up inventory, point someone in the right direction, and run a cash register. You need knowledgeable, experienced people to help you find the perfect read for your aunt Sally who likes to knit and read about murder. The people who would have been best situated to do that at B&N are the people they just fired.
That being the case, I'm expecting B&N as we know it will not be around much longer. Either they are in a spiral into failure and will be gone entirely in the near future (in this scenario, I assume these lay offs are a last gasp, not something anyone thought was a good idea in terms of how to run a bookstore) or they are looking to reinvent their stores, making them into something more like the grocery store, maybe. "We have stuff, we can point you to the stuff, but don't ask me how best to do up a Sunday roast."
Second: What does this mean for book selling in America?
I mean, again, this is not my bailiwick. I envision some scenarios, though.
Maybe B&N carries on much as it has and it turns out not that many people were using the experience of those employees after all. (I doubt it, though. I think this is one of the primary reasons people go to a bookstore rather than ordering online.)
Maybe B&N reinvents themselves into a leaner version of what they are now and they become a more robust competitor for Amazon. Depending on what that leaner version looked like, this might be all right. More competition is good. Keeping brick and mortar bookstores open is good.
Maybe B&N goes out of business and that sparks a resurgence in independent bookstores, causing already existing ones to thrive and more to open. Thumbs up. I'm not holding my breath on this one, though, honestly. I'm trying to imagine being a prospective small business owner and saying, "The chain failed in this market so obviously I will do great!" and I'm having a hard time picturing it.
Maybe B&N fails and another existing chain jumps in to take over many of their stores. Eh? Better than a stick in the eye, I guess. Also, how enthused I was about this would depend a lot on which chain did the jumping in.
Maybe B&N fails and Amazon has less competition and the brick and mortar bookstore becomes even rarer. *sigh* I fear this is the road we are on, and I'm not about it. I think Amazon has a place in a robust book-selling market, but the fewer other choices we have, the worse off we are, I'd say. Also, while I imagine a lot of Barnes and Nobles are located in neighborhoods that have other options for book-getting (libraries, Targets, easy delivery by UPS or USPS, etc), book deserts are a thing, and even if closing stores aren't in places that most need better access to books, losing 600+ stores nationwide certainly isn't going to help.
Third: What does this mean for me?
Obviously I'm not an impartial observer here. I'm hugely invested in there being a bookstore in, if not my neighborhood, then at least my town. In my town, B&N is the only store selling primarily books that are primarily new. (Target has books; we have a used bookstore; we have no independent.) Going to the bookstore is a major thread in the fabric of my life. I don't just like to read, I like to go to the bookstore. I like to browse the shelves, I like to look at what's new, I like to pick up a book and read a little of it before I buy it, check out the font, the feel of the object in my hand. I know I'm not alone in this, but I know I'm almost certainly not the average book buyer either. But it isn't just those of us who are into the objectiness of the books who will lose out if there aren't any bookstores to go into. Browsing, in the way one can do in a store, cannot be replicated online. Or at least it has not yet been done so. You can browse online, but it is not browsing, it is not the kind of discovery that I revel in when all the books are lines up before me in neat, real rows. Is that a romanticized view of the bookstore? Yes, definitely, a bit. But it is also true.
And While I'm Wishing, I'd Also Like a Pony
As a book lover and a bookstore lover, this is what I'd love to see Barnes and Noble do. There may be a floppity gillion business-y reasons why none of this would work, but it's what I'd like, in my dreamland bookshop of bliss:
*Give the books pride of place in the store. Don't make me walk through umpty-dump displays of stuff before I get to them. Especially get the Nook display away from the front door. I have no problem with ebooks or with a bookstore having an ereader and staff who can sell it to customers and help them use it or troubleshoot it. But let the bookstore be a bookstore, not an electronics store. Put the Nook counter off to the side somewhere easy to find. Don't make me walk around it to get to the physical books.
*Continue to sell coffee but reduce the cafe seating. Use some of the saved space to maintain a better depth of stock and to...
*Provide scattered clusters of comfortable seating throughout the store. You want people to browse and stay a while looking at your products. Give them somewhere to rest a moment and further consider their potential purchases. Allow customers to take their covered drinks into the stacks to seek out that comfortable seating. Now they are enjoying their coffee in eye-line of a book they might buy instead of segregated in a separate section of the store where they might not see another thing for sale other than the drink they are sipping.
*Provide an easy-to-access, customer-friendly in-store computerized method of checking the store's stock. Include a way within this system for customers to see where the book is in that store. If the employees can see that the book is supposed to be on an end-cap in Fiction, customers should be able to see that too.
*Bring back New Releases Shelving. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: shelving the new releases among all the stock instead of separating them out is a terrible idea. The fastest way to make me click a button on Amazon rather than coming to your store is to make browsing in your store hard. Shelving the new releases this way makes browsing in your store hard.
*Reduce the amount of stuff in the store that is not books. Fewer toys, fewer games, fewer puzzles, fewer gifts, less stationary. Not none. A nice selection of unique items in all of these lines seems like a perfect accompaniment to books. But streamline it. Make it take up less space.
*Increase depth of stock. Obviously some titles are never going to be worth keeping in stock because it is so unlikely that anyone will buy them. But do better. Expand the romance, mystery, and SFF sections. Consider splitting SFF into separate science fiction and fantasy sections. Make it a policy to keep the first book of any series you carry in stock at all times. Get in stock backlist titles by authors who have new books coming out.
*For the love of all printed matter, get new releases on the shelves by opening time on Tuesday mornings. Nothing is worse than dropping by to pick up a new release you've been waiting for for months only to find that you don't have it yet.
*In short, be a bookstore above all else. I feel a little flippant here, I'll be honest, but I wonder if the answer to competing in the current bookish marketplace isn't trying to be a little bit of everything but being the one thing bookish people can't get online: a pleasant, quietish place to browse and discover and linger.
I don't actually want a pony don't nobody give me a pony.
The Sitch:
Reports are that last Monday (12 February 2018), full-time Barnes and Noble employees across the country arrived at work to learn that they had been laid off. Reports differ about whether/how good severance packages offered were, and some laid-off employees have said that they were told they would be welcome to apply for part-time positions in a few weeks. Consensus seems to be that the lay offs came without warning. The first articles I read about the lay offs identified the jobs cut as lead cashiers, digital leads, and receiving managers. As more information came out, it sounds like B&N has fired all or nearly all of their full-time store employees nation-wide.
The Links:
*At Fortune, Barnes and Noble Is Laying Off Workers Amid Declining Sales
*At Publisher's Weekly, B&N to Save $40 Million Following New Layoffs
*On Tumblr, by a former employee, The Entirely Unnecessary Demise of Barnes & Noble
*From Book Riot, podcast episode 248, No Heroes, from 12:59 through 38:00
My Thoughts
Ouch, you guys. I don't see any way to look at this where it isn't bad news for book lovers. First, and most importantly, there's the human cost of the lay off. I know that lay offs aren't a new thing and that it's a reality for many, many people that they show up for work one day and find out there *is* no work. Knowing that doesn't make me feel any better about the several thousand people who just lost jobs that I valued them doing. Just, jeez.
Beyond that, my thoughts basically boil down into three main categories.
First: What does this mean for Barnes and Noble?
Of the many things I am not, near the top of the list is a business person. I wouldn't have the first notion how to run the business of a bookstore, never mind a bookstore chain, but I think any time a company dumps near-as-makes-no-difference all of their full-time, experienced employees, that's bad news bears for the company.
Specifically, the employees that B&N has fired are the most knowledgeable employees, the employees most likely to be able to help customers choose books or help them solve problems on their Nooks. The people who are gone are the people who knew the most about helping customers in a bookstore. You can train just about anybody to look up inventory, point someone in the right direction, and run a cash register. You need knowledgeable, experienced people to help you find the perfect read for your aunt Sally who likes to knit and read about murder. The people who would have been best situated to do that at B&N are the people they just fired.
That being the case, I'm expecting B&N as we know it will not be around much longer. Either they are in a spiral into failure and will be gone entirely in the near future (in this scenario, I assume these lay offs are a last gasp, not something anyone thought was a good idea in terms of how to run a bookstore) or they are looking to reinvent their stores, making them into something more like the grocery store, maybe. "We have stuff, we can point you to the stuff, but don't ask me how best to do up a Sunday roast."
Second: What does this mean for book selling in America?
I mean, again, this is not my bailiwick. I envision some scenarios, though.
Maybe B&N carries on much as it has and it turns out not that many people were using the experience of those employees after all. (I doubt it, though. I think this is one of the primary reasons people go to a bookstore rather than ordering online.)
Maybe B&N reinvents themselves into a leaner version of what they are now and they become a more robust competitor for Amazon. Depending on what that leaner version looked like, this might be all right. More competition is good. Keeping brick and mortar bookstores open is good.
Maybe B&N goes out of business and that sparks a resurgence in independent bookstores, causing already existing ones to thrive and more to open. Thumbs up. I'm not holding my breath on this one, though, honestly. I'm trying to imagine being a prospective small business owner and saying, "The chain failed in this market so obviously I will do great!" and I'm having a hard time picturing it.
Maybe B&N fails and another existing chain jumps in to take over many of their stores. Eh? Better than a stick in the eye, I guess. Also, how enthused I was about this would depend a lot on which chain did the jumping in.
Maybe B&N fails and Amazon has less competition and the brick and mortar bookstore becomes even rarer. *sigh* I fear this is the road we are on, and I'm not about it. I think Amazon has a place in a robust book-selling market, but the fewer other choices we have, the worse off we are, I'd say. Also, while I imagine a lot of Barnes and Nobles are located in neighborhoods that have other options for book-getting (libraries, Targets, easy delivery by UPS or USPS, etc), book deserts are a thing, and even if closing stores aren't in places that most need better access to books, losing 600+ stores nationwide certainly isn't going to help.
Third: What does this mean for me?
Obviously I'm not an impartial observer here. I'm hugely invested in there being a bookstore in, if not my neighborhood, then at least my town. In my town, B&N is the only store selling primarily books that are primarily new. (Target has books; we have a used bookstore; we have no independent.) Going to the bookstore is a major thread in the fabric of my life. I don't just like to read, I like to go to the bookstore. I like to browse the shelves, I like to look at what's new, I like to pick up a book and read a little of it before I buy it, check out the font, the feel of the object in my hand. I know I'm not alone in this, but I know I'm almost certainly not the average book buyer either. But it isn't just those of us who are into the objectiness of the books who will lose out if there aren't any bookstores to go into. Browsing, in the way one can do in a store, cannot be replicated online. Or at least it has not yet been done so. You can browse online, but it is not browsing, it is not the kind of discovery that I revel in when all the books are lines up before me in neat, real rows. Is that a romanticized view of the bookstore? Yes, definitely, a bit. But it is also true.
And While I'm Wishing, I'd Also Like a Pony
As a book lover and a bookstore lover, this is what I'd love to see Barnes and Noble do. There may be a floppity gillion business-y reasons why none of this would work, but it's what I'd like, in my dreamland bookshop of bliss:
*Give the books pride of place in the store. Don't make me walk through umpty-dump displays of stuff before I get to them. Especially get the Nook display away from the front door. I have no problem with ebooks or with a bookstore having an ereader and staff who can sell it to customers and help them use it or troubleshoot it. But let the bookstore be a bookstore, not an electronics store. Put the Nook counter off to the side somewhere easy to find. Don't make me walk around it to get to the physical books.
*Continue to sell coffee but reduce the cafe seating. Use some of the saved space to maintain a better depth of stock and to...
*Provide scattered clusters of comfortable seating throughout the store. You want people to browse and stay a while looking at your products. Give them somewhere to rest a moment and further consider their potential purchases. Allow customers to take their covered drinks into the stacks to seek out that comfortable seating. Now they are enjoying their coffee in eye-line of a book they might buy instead of segregated in a separate section of the store where they might not see another thing for sale other than the drink they are sipping.
*Provide an easy-to-access, customer-friendly in-store computerized method of checking the store's stock. Include a way within this system for customers to see where the book is in that store. If the employees can see that the book is supposed to be on an end-cap in Fiction, customers should be able to see that too.
*Bring back New Releases Shelving. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: shelving the new releases among all the stock instead of separating them out is a terrible idea. The fastest way to make me click a button on Amazon rather than coming to your store is to make browsing in your store hard. Shelving the new releases this way makes browsing in your store hard.
*Reduce the amount of stuff in the store that is not books. Fewer toys, fewer games, fewer puzzles, fewer gifts, less stationary. Not none. A nice selection of unique items in all of these lines seems like a perfect accompaniment to books. But streamline it. Make it take up less space.
*Increase depth of stock. Obviously some titles are never going to be worth keeping in stock because it is so unlikely that anyone will buy them. But do better. Expand the romance, mystery, and SFF sections. Consider splitting SFF into separate science fiction and fantasy sections. Make it a policy to keep the first book of any series you carry in stock at all times. Get in stock backlist titles by authors who have new books coming out.
*For the love of all printed matter, get new releases on the shelves by opening time on Tuesday mornings. Nothing is worse than dropping by to pick up a new release you've been waiting for for months only to find that you don't have it yet.
*In short, be a bookstore above all else. I feel a little flippant here, I'll be honest, but I wonder if the answer to competing in the current bookish marketplace isn't trying to be a little bit of everything but being the one thing bookish people can't get online: a pleasant, quietish place to browse and discover and linger.
I don't actually want a pony don't nobody give me a pony.
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