Word last week that Barnes & Noble had put itself up for sale gave me a bittersweet feeling.
As a long-term proponent of the independent and local, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of vindication that this giant slayer of independent bookstores across the nation was now itself in enough hot water to feel the need to shop itself. At the same time, I remembered when the Barnes & Noble opened back more than a decade ago in Myrtle Beach, where we lived at the time.
I remember how excited I was—how enchanted I was to enter that store with its racks of hard-to-get small magazines, the smell of Starbucks coffee wafting through the air, all the newspapers from the New York Times to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. And then there were the books, racks and racks of beautiful books, so much more variety than one could hope for at our local mall store.
The place was a palace for me. I remember how my then six-year-old son and I used to drive to the Barnes & Noble on special outings, the Counting Crows’ August and Everything After playing on the car stereo because for some reason my little boy had fallen in love with that album. I remember turning him loose in a child’s section of books that was as big as many entire bookstores I’d been in.
So, the place had and has an emotional connection to me. I still love walking into a Barnes & Noble, or a Borders, or any other big bookstore.
But it appears they’re on their way out. Just as they endangered the independent bookstore, the big box bookstores are endangered by a new business model, a new way of reading.
I’m speaking, of course, of the advent of Amazon.com, first as a business model capable of delivering print books more cheaply. And now, with the rise, finally of e-readers like the Kindle and game-changing tablets like the iPad, and the absolutely unbeatable price points of books for such devices, the whole premise of the Barnes & Nobles of the world are coming under question.
After all, who needs to go to a bookstore like that when you can get infinitely more delivered to your e-reader or tablet, instantaneously and more cheaply than buying the physical item at a store, even if that store is a palace of the printed word.
When word came out about Barnes & Noble, I asked the question whether trouble for the big booksellers could be a boon in disguise for the small, niche, independents.
After all, small record stores are making it, and record labels continue to come up with innovative ways to sell their product, despite the dominance of digital. And if anyone’s used to countering price competition with service and a local flare, it’s the independent, niche bookseller.
After all, they’ve had to battle Barnes Noble and Borders for so long that Amazon, Apple and their e-books are just another conglomeration of faceless corporate America joining the onslaught.
Here's what one of those independents is doing to stay alive, with thanks to Chris Porter for the tip. In the Detroit area, one of the last of the independents, John King of John King Books North in Ferndale and the Big Bookstore has cut prices to the bone, hoping to boost the revenue he needs to stay in business.
So, good luck to him, and here’s hoping I’m right that there’s a future at least for those independents.
Because it would be a shame to entirely lose that excitement of finding just the right tome on a shelf, perhaps with the help of someone who actually knows a little bit about books.
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