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Brick & mortar bookstores- R.I.P. & good riddance

oh man! im all over this thread! haha

i work at borders ^_^ mmyap, im glad the manager recognized you.

i do have to say that 50% of the employees at the borders i work at don't read... BUT the ones that dooo KNOW.THEIR.POOP. taker claudia for example.. i could vaguely describe some story line i remember from years ago and she has three books it could be and one she is almost positive it is-- and then she just TAKES me to where the book is and wont touch a computer..

but anyway, i was part of invventory processing before and now i work in the cafe which is a seattles best coffee... borders as a corporation doesnt take the best care of their employees but whatever... the fact that the manager starting discussing books and recommending is a REQUIREMENT for any customer.. they give us a certain book to promote calling it a "make-book" and regardless of whether u like the book or not u get scored on the number of copies of the book u sold... so its forcing books we dont even think u will like onto ur shelf for $14 dollars.. i freaking hate it.

we are scored on a daily basis on saying hello to every customer that comes in the store... points off if we dont use our name. they are forcing us to be pushy and over assertive and i dont like that either

they DO however have constant way to get money off for free... borders rewards used ot be better with holiday spending but now they are having a thing where if u sign up -- which is completely free-- u automatically get $5 off... just for getting a free card... so i like that.. every receipt printed has a coupon of some sort on it... and the emails constantly have ways to get money off or buy one get one free or whatever... those who open their emails get benefits for sure.

they have been eliminating "positions" not people (so they can sleep at night) and cutting hours like crazy and having what should be called a close out sale but is just called a sale... i dont doubt borders and barnes and nobles and all the other corporate books stores will go out of business... borders and b&n have already claimed bankrupcy... it does upset me though because i love being able to browse new books and read a couple pages and yes- sit in the cafe for a minute with some books - before i choose what i wanna buy.. employee discount never hurts lol... i hate shopping for books online because i dont know what im buying necessarily... and i dont have enough money to just be buying books.. because i work at borders! hahahaha... they pay crap...

but one last thing to end to my little rant (sorry for that btw)... is that if borders goes under, i would LOVE to still work in a seattles best... they are the most customer friendly business i have ever worked for... all the things we are graded on when we get mystery shopped and what not is all for the customers benefit and there are only the small things like "would that be a large" or "would you like to try our new peach raspberry cobbler cake with that?" thats annoying but they dont make us push and its like u are required to remember anyones name that comes in twice so that they know we care which i LOOOOVE cuz i love being able to say "hey don, are u have a medium or a large capp today?" i love regulars... SBC gets a big thumbs up but borders has always been a disappointment for me on the business side.. i still dont want us to go out of business tho...

sorry again for my rantings
 
OH! and im sorry one more thing-- if we find a book thats expensive, we look it up and let the customer know that yes - you will save money if u get this through amazon.com... which i think is awesome.
 
For publishers to have thier books in the big stores, they have to have a buy-back agreement. If a book does not sell within a time frame(which is short) the publisher has to buy them back...thus the price of books is high. It's bad for readers, and bad for writers.
 
I completely agree with you. A book store online offers a wide variety of books at massively discounted prices in comparison with local bookstores. Apart from that, you don't have to drive all the way to a local bookstore or library for buying books. Online bookshops offers you to buy books online from the leisure of your home. It would certainly not be wrong in saying that they offer better value and convenience as compared to the brick and mortar stores.
 
Ahhh, the memories of this thread.:) Great points John, I more than agree. Having started taking classes again, I am now big into buying textbooks online. I saved a ton of money and it reminded me of the parasitic college bookstore that I went to during college. They charged an exorbitant amount of money and would then give you pennies to turn them back in. If you did and the book was in great shape, then they would then charge a slightly lesser, but still a highway robbery price for the next sudent. With the internet and more competition, these unnatural monopolies will be pushed to the brink. The market still needs to improve in regards to buying textbooks online, I'd like to see an amazon like company really stick it to university and private textbook specialty stores. Compete or perish. :cool:
 
Well, I'm in college and I will heartily agree that I am done with buying books in the university store. It's a horribly exploited industry, I know a lot goes into those books but the high prices are horribly unjustified, even the professors say it's ridiculous.

As for more general book-buying... I've seen a lot of good points on this thread I hadn't previously considered, yet i still love bookstores as opposed to online shopping. One thing is that I can't make sure the book is in good condition when I buy online; once I got a new book from amazon that was badly packed that the dust jacket ripped in half as a result. A fluke, I'm sure, but still.

Ah, poor bookstore staff. Anyone who is in retail knows how hard it is when the customer expects you to be an expert in whatever you're selling. I think it lingers in bookstores especially because once they were run by people who did know everything about the pages. All the same, I do wish the staff had a bit more knowledge sometimes...

So, will bookstores die? I don't know, maybe the way things must go, they can't offer the same services anymore and books will be an online resource. But I do not like the direction huge corporations are taking us, whether it's how they get prices so low or how they absorb everything and make it lifeless. (Walmart book sections.:sick:)
 
At the bookstore I usually shop at, the employees always have something that they can suggest to me. I find that more helpful than taking my chance purchasing online, unless I already know the author.
 
beer good said:
25 Depressing Portraits Of Closed Bookstores

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Click to expand...

Are those shelves still in the store? Usually one can purchase them once the inventory is gone...The Borders on my side of the county that just closed their doors remodeled just a year or so ago, and had the discards out in bins on the sidewalk. If we'd had our truck, we'd have asked to take one or two home with us. They were beautiful; whoever bought the new ones during the liquidation sale got some NICE shelves as well.
 
As of this morning we are down to two book stores here on Oahu, only one of which carries novels. The other is a co-op that caters to protest group type of literature. So basically there is only one book store left for my interests. Since they are the only game in town I'm guessing Oahu readers will all patronize them and hopefully keep them going. Ironically they have announced recently (coincidental timing?) that they will expand and provide for a more cafe style book store (a la Borders.) We shall see how that works out. The cafe style is part of why I quit patronizing the Borders stores.
 
Yeah, cafe-style book shops can be a fail - unless the cafe is really tucked away from the rest of the store and fairly small. That's ok. But when done badly (i.e. large/at the top of the store and then noise carries down everywhere else) then that sucks. That said - if it does keep the store alive, maybe it's worth the sacrifice.
 
Waterstones have thought hard about it and come up with a way to get more people to come to their shops:

Get rid of author signings. Because, y'know, it's bad business to have people who are interested in books come and talk to the people who write them. Or something like that.

I expect the next step will be to get rid of books as well.
 
Both Waterstones in Glasgow now sell coffee, even the Oxfam bookshop sells machine coffee, what I want to know is when will Starbucks start selling books?
 
I bought a few, back in the day.
But yesterday, in the Starbucks in Harrah's Casino in New Orleans, the didn't seem to have any.
Still great coffee, 'though.
 
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