The thing I learn, but already knew, is that advertisers and discounts are not something there to help the buyer. They are there to earn money. Companies to not spend thousands or millions on advertising just for fun, they do it to get you to buy something that you normally would not buy. We are all aware of McDonalds or Coca-Cola but they spend millions to make sure their products are at the front of your brain. I like what this guy at B&N is doing, cutting the junk out. With books it is a huge thing not to see what the publishers are trying to force as the next best seller placed at the front and instead books that people actually like.

>Of course, there’s a lesson here. And it’s not just for books. You could also apply it to music, newspapers, films, and a host of other media.

>But I almost hate to say it, because the lesson is so simple.

>If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.

Preach it! There was a time when bookstores were run by booksellers, not MBAs. When newspapers were run by newspapermen, not corporate mercenaries. You've got people in charge of these companies who look at their assets (including century-long reputations) and see a bunch of junk that should be turned into cash, rather than a business that accomplishes a service or provides goods and pays well those who do it.

I didn't think it was that surprising.

Barnes and Nobles always had the best atmosphere of the big chains. Borders felt like a Kmart, no surprise when they closed. Books A Million had that Kmart feel too back in the day, but, they ripped a page out of BN's book and now look like Barnes on the inside.

People aren't just there for the books, they are there for an experience. Barnes and Noble got it in a way the other chains didn't.

If it feels like you are shopping in a Kmart, why not just shop online?

I go to Barnes and now Books a Million for the fun of walking through a predictable bookstore experience. I'm more likely to frequent my local bookstore, but, sometimes those big corporate places can be fun.

Shit, they dont even see people as people

Thats why the department is called "Human Resources." And those are the people who work for them!

Interesting article. I’m disappointed he doesn’t know how to spell tchotchkes.

I thought it was kind of cool they brought up how the staff run their own stores. And this does show. When I go to Barnes and Noble and they have staff picks or I can chat with the staff about what books they like, that’s a good sign of a great store.

Incidentally, I’d be curious to see what ebook sales look like to the average consumer. I don’t discount them as a market, especially among heavy readers, but I personally see less ereaders out there these days than I used to and I see many more books. And my personal preference is for books as I just don’t enjoy the format of ereaders. So I’d be interested to see if that market is dipping or not.

I'm sticking with the Indy bookstores

wish they'd let medical professionals run medicine too.

Barnes & Noble is a decent experience, but for me, Kindles are a far better reading experience. If there was a way to buy Kindle books from a bricks and mortar store I would consider it.

I think it’s hard to judge ebooks based solely on e-reader frequency. The kindle and Libby apps both work great, and let me read anywhere on my phone without having to carry a second device or a physical book around. It’s entirely possible the person next to you on the subway is reading The Count of Monte Christi, to Reddit’s great delight.

Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy a physical book from time to time, and the act of walking through a library or a brick and mortar store and getting recommendations from people who work there leads me into things I may not otherwise try. There are also things that don’t work well electronically, like House of Leaves or How to Survive in a Science Fiction Universe, or books with a lot of foot notes (eg Pratchett). But I probably read 90% on my phone, from disposable stuff to comics to literature.

I live on Libby and Hoopla.

I tend to stand in the middle of Barnes and Noble looking up books on Libby!

> I think it’s hard to judge ebooks based solely on e-reader frequency. The kindle and Libby apps both work great, and let me read anywhere on my phone without having to carry a second device or a physical book around. It’s entirely possible the person next to you on the subway is reading The Count of Monte Christi, to Reddit’s great delight.

Yep. As another anecdote, 90% of my reading is on my phone these days. I have an eReader and I do use it in certain circumstances. I haven't bought a dead tree book since the Bush Administration and I don't know that I ever will again.

My wife, who reads probably 5 books a week on average is phone, tablet, or PC and would never be seen with an ereader as such.

Yeah, I think the market is balancing out a little. There will always be demand for both mediums because they're not perfect replacements for each other. They fulfill different needs.

There are still issues with both industries but I don't see either one ever totally dying

Whilst tchotchke is the most common spelling, chachka is one of the many accepted alternate spellings, along with tsatske, chotchke, tshatshke (a direct transliteration from the Yiddish טשאַטשקע), chatchka, and chatchke

My local bookstore put little notes on books with the reader’s comments; most were on books I already read and loved. I bought 4 new books :)

Your on the money I think plus they also tend to have the biggest variety of manga and vinyls of any major store which gets in 2 devote niches to their stores. Plus with a membership they have some of the cheapest toys as well.

When you have a bunch of corporate busybody number crunchers making the decisions on what to sell... it should be no surprise that the product is bland and soulless.

It is just too bad they didn't turn it around sooner. My husband left after being there over a decade, as head of a department, about a year or so before the surprise firing of most of their full time employees who weren't management that's mentioned in this article. He ended up at the library, which is also where a couple of coworkers landed. B&N lost a whole lot of incredibly knowledgeable career booksellers who were passionate about the job with that decision to just fire them all. Not employees who were there for a random retail job, a lot of those full timers were the "true believers" Decades of industry experience just gone. Glad they're turning it around but that's all I can think about all that. I worked there way back in 2001-2003 but that was an entirely different sort of retail environment.

>You've got people in charge of these companies who look at their assets (including century-long reputations) and see a bunch of junk that should be turned into cash, rather than a business that accomplishes a service or provides goods and pays well those who do it.

Yes! I feel like this goes for just about every industry these days and it's frustrating.

I was devastated when Borders went out of business. I never understood why Barnes and Noble didn't (and still doesn't) have the computer kiosks throughout the store like Borders did. I liked being able to find books without having to ask the help desk.

That's silly. People who study medicine for decades have no more knowledge than my google search. /s

Glad they are doing this. I was at Borders near the tail end of the business.

When I started it was very bookseller focused. Store managers had a big say in inventory and could cater to local interests. I for awhile was in an area with a large African-American demographic and we had a very large African-American fiction section. It quite literally rivaled in shelf space to our fiction and genre fiction sections.

Corporate buyers took the reigns and the section was reduced to about 3 cases cause that was the company average and our sales started to really suffer and the complaints came rolling in.

Don't even get me started on Borders "Make Books" sales strategy. Vendor provides us with a title at a huge discount for all booksellers to now push onto every customer no matter what. "Oh you're here looking for sci fi titles? have you thought about this book about dying of cancer instead? real page turner!" It was awful

I worked at B&N for over a decade. It's because for any given title, there are likely 3-4 places it can be (section, endcap, table, maybe a second endcap) but only 1-2 copies on hand.

The system they used to manage inventory must have been coded by the same people who made Southwest's scheduling software.

What do you have against Kmart, homie

If its a novel, I use a Kindle. For reference books, coffee table books, books with timelines and visuals and maps I like physical copies. I can go through these books for hours.

Sometimes I get a coffee at the pseudo-Starbucks in the store and then sit and read a magazine.

Thats nice you got money. I am sticking with my local libraries. Kindle and Libby rule.

Eh the yellowed originally white vinyl floors, the flickering fluorescent with every third bulb dead. The smocks. The dismal feeling of a retailer on the way out.

So the trick is selling good books they think the readers might actually want to read, rather than accepting money from publishers to hawk subpar « bestsellers » that the corporate overlords have decided should sell ? Amazing ! Who would have thought it ? /s

Something I have noticed here in France is that the bookshops that are successful are the big independent bookshops like Gibert Joseph in the Quartier Latin in Paris. They tend to be huge, with a lot of nooks and crannies full of books on various esoteric subjects. They can give Amazon a run for their money when it come to the variety and availability of the books they sell, and there is always a great atmosphere in these bookshops. They are paradises for bookworms. Even as someone who almost always read on my Kindle now and buy ebooks on Amazon, this is still the kind of places I love to go to and buy books from. And I am not the only one : Gibert Joseph is not only thriving, but also opening subsidiary bookshops in other big towns of France. By contrast, FNAC, the main chain bookstore in France, switched over the years from mostly selling books to mostly selling electronic devices, and only survived the pandemic thanks to a loan from the government.

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It helps that a lot of the "Picks of the Month" come from other Booksellers from other stores and not just corporate picks.

Very cool story! I used to be in publishing sales 20 years ago, when mom and pops were still holding their own against ‘the chains’ of B&N, Borders & Waldenbooks in the malls. It seems now the only chain in town survives by acting like an independent bookstore. So basically we’ve come full circle! Hysterical. The old quote ‘do what you love, the money will follow’ seems appropriate.

I also like to believe that as the article mentioned, even in this highly technological society, nothing beats the overwhelming power of the written word on a physical page. Hope that urge never dies out.

Haha I read on my phone, laptop, and ereader too. I have eyesight issues so I do prefer a screen where you can enlarge text. It is an accessibility preference for me, but it’s also because I love reading multiple books at once too. Like your wife I probably go through around 3-5 books a week simply because I always halfway thru one book or the other.

Also, if a customer interacts with a bookseller they’re more likely to have a positive experience and possibly purchase more.

Overdrive and Libby are a great resource especially if you can get library cards from some good libraries.

I would agree with that. E-Readers are pretty awful at displaying that type of material.

Legit haven't thought about FNAC in reference to buying books in over six years and didn't even realize it until this moment

In my industry, many firms have switched to "Human Capital" which seems even more dehumanizing and kinda creepy lol

Don't forget the nicely mixed scent of mildew and urine lurking down every isle, waiting to assault your nostrils.

When I worked at B&N they actually piloted those. I guess they weren’t happy with the results because it (clearly) didn’t last. Anecdotal, but it also didn’t seem to help all that much. The kiosks would benefit some people, but you’d still get a ton of people coming to an employee because they still couldn’t find the book where it was supposed to be, or they couldn’t find the actual section itself, especially if it was a smaller one. The kiosks didn’t help at all for the “what’s the book with the dog who becomes an astronaut?” type questions, or the “I’m looking for something for my niece who is thirteen and having a birthday next week, what do you recommend?” ones.

Interesting, I worked at Barnes & Noble for years in the early 00s and I always preferred Borders as a customer. I tried to get a job there over and over but was never able to.

BN was a great place to work years ago. I did 7 years in the 00s at one of the largest locations and loved that so many of my coworkers were career booksellers. It's so sad that so many of them who stuck around lost their jobs during that purge.

Mine has a big section of employee recommendations, with little comments from each person as to why and what they loved about the book. Is it more expensive than other places? Sure. But it’s an amazing store, and I did a lot of my Christmas shopping there.

This is the problem in the video game industry as well.

Moronic suits who don't get it.

I liked the comfy leather chairs that were here and there to just sit and read a bit. To see if that particular book is for me.

And it REALLY worked in their favor , imo. The longer someone spends in your space , the more they may purchase.

It goes for every industry because the people at the top are essentially the same - to them ultimately a widget's a widget, and the point of a widget is to transfer as much money into their pockets from as many people as possible

I believe it was because Borders was late to adopt an online sales presence. Plus they over expanded and did so too rapidly.

Hey, these vaginas ain’t gonna regulate themselves!

I was just at the B&N store in my city, and the staff picks were all stuff that I already loved. It was nice to see that we were on the same page.

(The "staff pick" for Project Hail Mary had me giggling what they had written. I'm paraphrasing, but it was "best book I've read in a while and I would literally die for the co-protagonist." )

My wife was looking for some book (I can’t remember what now) a few months ago and couldn’t find it even though it said it was in store on their site. I told her I’d ask the girl at the information desk and she was like “awesome! I just read that book! It’s so great!” She excitedly asked one of the guys to check the back and he was just as excited and said “[book name]! Nice!” and retrieved it for me. Maybe they were just trying to be really customer service forward but they seemed legit excited to get that book for me so someone else could read it too.

Same with educators!

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What does that mean?

I prefer physical books and I wish lol

But my one source from this sketchy pop science website one step removed from a blog post surely outweighs your years of studying medicine and decade of practical experience.

Mine used to have them for close to a decade, but they got rid of them a while ago.