4 ms·

I disagree. Some of the ideas in TFA are fairly novel. Hiring people who are actually knowledgable? What a concept! Imagine walking into a Barnes and Noble and

I disagree. Some of the ideas in TFA are fairly novel. Hiring people who are actually knowledgable? What a concept! Imagine walking into a Barnes and Noble and getting suggestions on a boom to read? Or there being a real actual community of readers congregating in B&Ns? These are huge holes in the market, where people are willing to pay more for an "experience".

VLM 13y ago
I would respectfully point out, being somewhat older, that we had local bookstores (and we had more of them...) before B+N arrived, and long after B+N closes we'll still have local bookstores. They're not doing that great financially, and the suggestions for B+N vaguely correspond to what local bookstores have already tried. I think I've pretty much seen it all WRT bookstores. The problem with "experience" is it takes up space where books used to be sold. So you end up with a coffee shop, and wifi, with live music, and D+D/Pathfinder RPG get togethers, and author signing visits, an internet cafe, wedding receptions, and dvd sales, and ... where's the books? Had to take them out to make space for the candle shop and onsite child care center... Not much of a bookstore anymore if walmart has a better quantity and selection. One good rule of thumb is to look up and down small town main street. If you're going to try 50/50 pirate shop and bookstore, you're not going to do better than the actual pirate shop store, and you already know 50% of the model (bookstore) doesn't work. Ditto candles, antique stores, herbal soaps, or chocolate candies... simply listing an inventory of small town shops is mostly going to result in lack of focus on multiple business models. None of which are doing all that well anyway. On a macro level, since I was a kid, total retail CRE square footage per citizen has roughly doubled, but median consumption patterns haven't kept up making aggregate brick and mortar retail per citizen drop, and the long term trend isn't looking good for retail. There's a lot of stores to close before we get back to long term trend for retail store CRE. It may very well be that nationwide big box booksellers simply don't "work" in a real economy. In a contracting market, aiming at shrinking holes is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

VLM 13y ago

I would respectfully point out, being somewhat older, that we had local bookstores (and we had more of them...) before B+N arrived, and long after B+N closes we'll still have local bookstores. They're not doing that great financially, and the suggestions for B+N vaguely correspond to what local bookstores have already tried. I think I've pretty much seen it all WRT bookstores. The problem with "experience" is it takes up space where books used to be sold. So you end up with a coffee shop, and wifi, with live music, and D+D/Pathfinder RPG get togethers, and author signing visits, an internet cafe, wedding receptions, and dvd sales, and ... where's the books? Had to take them out to make space for the candle shop and onsite child care center... Not much of a bookstore anymore if walmart has a better quantity and selection. One good rule of thumb is to look up and down small town main street. If you're going to try 50/50 pirate shop and bookstore, you're not going to do better than the actual pirate shop store, and you already know 50% of the model (bookstore) doesn't work. Ditto candles, antique stores, herbal soaps, or chocolate candies... simply listing an inventory of small town shops is mostly going to result in lack of focus on multiple business models. None of which are doing all that well anyway. On a macro level, since I was a kid, total retail CRE square footage per citizen has roughly doubled, but median consumption patterns haven't kept up making aggregate brick and mortar retail per citizen drop, and the long term trend isn't looking good for retail. There's a lot of stores to close before we get back to long term trend for retail store CRE. It may very well be that nationwide big box booksellers simply don't "work" in a real economy. In a contracting market, aiming at shrinking holes is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.