5 ms·

I wish they sold BOOKS. My local B&N (15 miles north of Philly) has converted 25% of shelf space to toys. The tradeoff: just 2 shelves of computer-related boo

I wish they sold BOOKS. My local B&N (15 miles north of Philly) has converted 25% of shelf space to toys. The tradeoff: just 2 shelves of computer-related books, now titled "Technology", most of which are about using Windows or Office. Does this trend reflect the dumbing down of B&N or its customers?

LordN00b 3y ago
....or does it reflect how we consume our information about technology these days? How quickly are tech-books out of date?
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  VLSI design books written in the 1990s/2000s are still relevant today. This is one of the areas which are arguably at the forefront of knowledge advancement, and yet the tools of the trade, concepts, languages are still the same.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Okay, but who actually walks into a physical book shop and expects to find a highly technical book relevant to less than 0.01% of the population? Unless it's attached to the CS/EE campus of an university.
  - varjag 3y ago
    How many Verilog books an average bookstore branch is going to push monthly you think?
dageshi 3y ago
It reflects the reality of the internet existing and it being the year 2023 not 2003 I think? Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays?
- simpaticoder 3y ago
  >Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays? Because books can explain concepts better than any other medium. Books aren't great for reference/howto because that info goes out of date quickly. E.g. I'm not going to buy a book about browser APIs, I'll use MDN. But I will buy a book about SPA design or HCI. I'll certainly buy a book about a topic like performance analysis or comparing different approaches to ORMs or practical cryptography. The specific libraries will go out of date quickly, but the concepts will be useful for a very long time (and even the specifics will be at least somewhat correct for longer than you'd expect). Like everyone else, technical people have had their attention span removed, segmented, and captured by capital such that "sitting down and reading a book (about a technical subject)" is met with horror. There is hope: the brain is quite plastic and even if you've let yours soak in the sensation stew of your phone 8 hours a day for years now, you can regain this important function soon enough. A well-written tech book is such a pleasure! A long narrative, coherent and filled with nuance...it's an important style of communication and I don't think we want to lose it.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. The people most interested in computer related technical books are those who most heavily use the internet and therefore are most likely to be the ones who buy via amazon or directly from the author. That's before we consider that such technical books are going to be a niche within a niche, in other words, not something to put in a mainstream book store. Historically you might have even needed to find out specialist bookstores for such books or had them ordered specially via the bookstore.
    - simpaticoder 3y ago
      >I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. Oh, sorry. It's because book stores want to carry books that are relevant. There is a catch-22 in what you say, because you're right that we've gotten used to buying books online (alibris, not amazon please) which makes bookstores carry them less, which makes us less likely to buy them in bookstores... The spiral downward is real; the opposite, a spiral upward, can also be real with a little effort. Bookstores are filled with books about niche interests, why not ours?
shiroiuma 3y ago
It probably reflects the reality of trying to sell computer books in 2023, and what kind of people are willing to buy those books in a mainstream bookstore. Computer books lose relevancy quickly as their information becomes out-of-date, and people who buy them are more likely to look online for the lowest price.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Books on the latest office version lose relevancy quickly. However there.are timeless books on things like algorithms as well.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    Booksellers rarely understand which those are though.
    - macintux 3y ago
      I’ve considered volunteering my services to small used bookstores to help them decide which computer books to buy. Seems like a win-win: I’d get first shot at anything interesting that arrives, and they’d have a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- ikomrad 3y ago
  Good point. I mostly buy fiction or self improvement/productivity books. Technology can work if it’s not application specific like a book design patterns for software. if it’s about how to use MS Word, a google search or youtube video will probably tell me what I need to know.
- aworks 3y ago
  I still miss the Computer Literacy stores in Silicon Valley but that era is long gone.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I thought the same recently, but tech changes so quickly that I don't think, except for a place known to be densely tech oriented, have a market for books that go out of date in 1-2 years.
rsynnott 3y ago
Mentioned in the article; this was their previous hail-mary strategy, which the new guy is now dismantling.
dale_glass 3y ago
Makes perfect sense to me. I used to have a lot of computer books on my shelves. They're all gone. Internet access is just a given these days, so there's very little reason to have reference documentation in print. And for more complex matters, a good youtube video is superior. Modern software can have extremely complex interfaces. It's much easier to follow along with a Blender video than to gain the same knowledge from a book.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  I'm finding myself slipping back to books again now. It's very hard to sift the wheat from the chaff with online stuff.
  - b3lm0nt 3y ago
    Agree —- as someone who previously only owned software books for coursework in the early ‘10s, I’ve built up a growing collection over the past 3 years. The quality of book content is generally much higher than blog posts and SO answers, and I’ve never been one for eBooks / PDFs. Plus, it makes my home office feel more in tune with my profession. I like to see the books on the shelf and leaf through them while waiting for my CI to build.
ja27 3y ago
Mine still has an iOS 5 book on those two shelves. 11 years old.
mleo 3y ago
At my B&N they replaced the music and movies section with the larger toys section and added more writing products. They didn’t take away any space for books. Having the toy section is actually nice since the demise of Toys R Us. I used to buy computer books there, but I mostly buy Manning ebooks now.

LordN00b 3y ago

....or does it reflect how we consume our information about technology these days? How quickly are tech-books out of date?

AshamedCaptain 3y ago
VLSI design books written in the 1990s/2000s are still relevant today. This is one of the areas which are arguably at the forefront of knowledge advancement, and yet the tools of the trade, concepts, languages are still the same.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Okay, but who actually walks into a physical book shop and expects to find a highly technical book relevant to less than 0.01% of the population? Unless it's attached to the CS/EE campus of an university.
- varjag 3y ago
  How many Verilog books an average bookstore branch is going to push monthly you think?

dageshi 3y ago

It reflects the reality of the internet existing and it being the year 2023 not 2003 I think? Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays?

simpaticoder 3y ago
>Why on earth would a book store carry any relevant computer technical books nowadays? Because books can explain concepts better than any other medium. Books aren't great for reference/howto because that info goes out of date quickly. E.g. I'm not going to buy a book about browser APIs, I'll use MDN. But I will buy a book about SPA design or HCI. I'll certainly buy a book about a topic like performance analysis or comparing different approaches to ORMs or practical cryptography. The specific libraries will go out of date quickly, but the concepts will be useful for a very long time (and even the specifics will be at least somewhat correct for longer than you'd expect). Like everyone else, technical people have had their attention span removed, segmented, and captured by capital such that "sitting down and reading a book (about a technical subject)" is met with horror. There is hope: the brain is quite plastic and even if you've let yours soak in the sensation stew of your phone 8 hours a day for years now, you can regain this important function soon enough. A well-written tech book is such a pleasure! A long narrative, coherent and filled with nuance...it's an important style of communication and I don't think we want to lose it.
- dageshi 3y ago
  I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. The people most interested in computer related technical books are those who most heavily use the internet and therefore are most likely to be the ones who buy via amazon or directly from the author. That's before we consider that such technical books are going to be a niche within a niche, in other words, not something to put in a mainstream book store. Historically you might have even needed to find out specialist bookstores for such books or had them ordered specially via the bookstore.
  - simpaticoder 3y ago
    >I didn't say technical books were irrelevant, I asked why a book store would carry them. Oh, sorry. It's because book stores want to carry books that are relevant. There is a catch-22 in what you say, because you're right that we've gotten used to buying books online (alibris, not amazon please) which makes bookstores carry them less, which makes us less likely to buy them in bookstores... The spiral downward is real; the opposite, a spiral upward, can also be real with a little effort. Bookstores are filled with books about niche interests, why not ours?

shiroiuma 3y ago

It probably reflects the reality of trying to sell computer books in 2023, and what kind of people are willing to buy those books in a mainstream bookstore. Computer books lose relevancy quickly as their information becomes out-of-date, and people who buy them are more likely to look online for the lowest price.

bluGill 3y ago
Books on the latest office version lose relevancy quickly. However there.are timeless books on things like algorithms as well.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Booksellers rarely understand which those are though.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I’ve considered volunteering my services to small used bookstores to help them decide which computer books to buy. Seems like a win-win: I’d get first shot at anything interesting that arrives, and they’d have a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
ikomrad 3y ago
Good point. I mostly buy fiction or self improvement/productivity books. Technology can work if it’s not application specific like a book design patterns for software. if it’s about how to use MS Word, a google search or youtube video will probably tell me what I need to know.
aworks 3y ago
I still miss the Computer Literacy stores in Silicon Valley but that era is long gone.

unethical_ban 3y ago

I thought the same recently, but tech changes so quickly that I don't think, except for a place known to be densely tech oriented, have a market for books that go out of date in 1-2 years.

rsynnott 3y ago

Mentioned in the article; this was their previous hail-mary strategy, which the new guy is now dismantling.

dale_glass 3y ago

Makes perfect sense to me. I used to have a lot of computer books on my shelves. They're all gone. Internet access is just a given these days, so there's very little reason to have reference documentation in print. And for more complex matters, a good youtube video is superior. Modern software can have extremely complex interfaces. It's much easier to follow along with a Blender video than to gain the same knowledge from a book.

tonyedgecombe 3y ago
I'm finding myself slipping back to books again now. It's very hard to sift the wheat from the chaff with online stuff.
- b3lm0nt 3y ago
  Agree —- as someone who previously only owned software books for coursework in the early ‘10s, I’ve built up a growing collection over the past 3 years. The quality of book content is generally much higher than blog posts and SO answers, and I’ve never been one for eBooks / PDFs. Plus, it makes my home office feel more in tune with my profession. I like to see the books on the shelf and leaf through them while waiting for my CI to build.

ja27 3y ago

Mine still has an iOS 5 book on those two shelves. 11 years old.

mleo 3y ago

At my B&N they replaced the music and movies section with the larger toys section and added more writing products. They didn’t take away any space for books. Having the toy section is actually nice since the demise of Toys R Us. I used to buy computer books there, but I mostly buy Manning ebooks now.