An observation on readers being sold - or not

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by rleguillow

... when I go to Barnes and Noble, I'm there for pbooks. I've been very disappointed, the last few times I went to my local B&N, to find that major amounts of geography have been given over to excessive Nook displays (like, 10-12 tables of Nook displays), all of the salespeople seen are seen in the Nook area, and books in this bookstore have been shoved to one side, crammed into the reduced space, and reduced in number because there is no room for them.

I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything other than a single table for Nooks at my local B&Ns, one worker posted by it (sometimes there are two, answering questions), and the rest of the store is... well, filled with all the other things you mentioned. I'd almost like to see a store that has allowed the Nooks to crowd out everything else... just for the experience, mind you.

Originally Posted by rleguillow

One more thing, besides that prices online at BN.com are generally lower than prices in the store, to make me not go into the store. And (pardon my soapbox) it is when I'm in the store that I spend way too much money on books. Online, I find the one I went for and close the sale. I am all for ebooks and ebook readers - but the booksellers sure are shooting themselves in the foot trying to compete with Amazon. IMHO.

If you buy one thing online and walk away... but in the physical store, you buy the one thing and then a few others along the way... I'd say the booksellers are doing a pretty good job at competing with Amazon!

[elizilla]

B&N is generally a disappointing bookstore, in person. They build these massive big box stores, three stories tall with giant columns like a temple of reading, and you imagine you'll go in and browse for hours, it'll be fantastic, right? Then you go inside and it turns out that while the place is three stories tall, the depth doesn't match the width, and it's just a giant hollow atrium, all this empty air above you. All the books are tucked away on a teeny tiny balcony running around the second floor. There's a dramatic stairway leading up there. On the first floor, there's a Nook display in a temporary fairground style booth in the middle of an echoing empty space, and around the perimeter of the first floor, there are coffee shops, toy displays, and a few tables filled with "bargain" coffee table books.

It's all presentation and very little actual bookstore. You can find more depth of selection in bookstores with a quarter of the square footage.

Thanks goodness for the "long tail" of the internet.