And Then There is The Big Box Bookstore

June 20, 2014December 20, 2015 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

I wrote yesterday about my visit to a wonderful little independent used and antiquarian bookstore. As it happens, I also had a chance to visit our nearby Barnes and Noble store, incentivized by a 20% coupon I’d received by email. Turns out I was able to score a copy of Capital by Thomas Piketty (my BIG summer reading project) at under $20 (retailed at $40) using my Barnes and Noble membership, the coupon, and the discounted price they were selling it at. Perhaps they knew that sooner or later potential readers would figure out this is a LONG book even if it is a best-seller.

It is interesting to reflect on how my experience compared to my visit to the Indie bookstore. Both certainly offered the experience of browsing long aisles of books and discovering books of interest I was unaware of. Barnes and Noble occupies far more space of course, and one of the big differences is no floor to ceiling bookcases and much wider aisles. There was no Norman in the basement lovingly preparing books for the shelves because there was no basement.

Still, the booksellers were friendly and I was asked if I needed any help. So were the people at checkout, but with a big difference. It was all very inefficient, and impersonal. No one knew any names. The customers by and large didn’t know the booksellers or each other. I suppose there are times we want it that way. But the feeling was, as I reflect on it, that this was just a big box store for books and media–and pastries.

Our local Barnes and Noble. Picture from B& N website: http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/store/1968

That was the other thing. At checkout, we were given a coupon for $10 off cheesecake from their cafe’. And we were really encouraged to go buy one. So we wandered over, only to find out that the starting price was $40. We didn’t need cheesecake that badly. But we were given plenty of reasons why we could need it. It was plain that they really wanted to sell us a cheesecake.

It was interesting that the greatest effort to engage me as a customer in a bookstore was to try to sell me a cheesecake. In the other store, what they cared about were what kind of books I was interested in. It is fascinating that there is something of a resurgence in the Indie stores, at least according to this Salon piece. What I wonder is whether this season of discontent with Amazon over its treatment of Hachette might be an opportunity for Barnes and Noble stores to take a look at the Indie stores and how they might operate more as a “third place” than as a big box store for books, media and pastries. I don’t say ditch the pastries– a cup of coffee and a scone are wonderful adjuncts to leafing through newly purchased books! But thinking about how to make this like the neighborhood bookshop might be worthwhile as well.

What strikes me is that the Barnes and Noble booksellers I’ve met also know and love books. And my observation is that most of what people are actually buying in the stores are books. In the small Indie store I wrote about yesterday, they help foster a community of booklovers. It occurs to me that there are many members of the same tribe frequenting Barnes and Noble–and working there. I can’t help wondering if working on that connection could make Barnes and Nobles a more enjoyable place for booksellers and customers alike. And I can’t help wondering if it would enhance sales. I could be totally out to lunch here. What I do know, and maybe this is a function of age, is that I am increasingly attracted to the places where that connection happens.

What do you think? What do you value most about going to a brick and mortar bookstore?

In Praise of the Indie Bookstore

June 19, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

I’ve been seeing lots of posts decrying Amazon’s recent conflict with the Hachette Publishing Group. I don’t intend to add to that outcry with this post, other than to say, if we think Amazon is a monster, then it is one we have helped create and it is just doing what it thinks are in its best business interests. There is a brutal, bottom-line logic to how these companies (Hachette as well as Amazon) operate. I suspect in the end they will come to some kind of compromise — neither wants to kill the goose laying the golden eggs. My son did a post on his blog that argues this point in far more detail, so I don’t need to.

Acorn Bookshop

What I would rather talk about are the great brick and mortar Indie bookstores, whether selling used and collectors book, or new. I was reminded these treasures during a visit this week to the Acorn Bookshop in Grandview Heights, a couple miles west of Ohio State’s campus. Acorn sells used and antiquarian books. George Cowmeadow Bauman is the co-owner and known widely as “bookstore George”. His love of collecting books and selling them came from his aunt, to whom the store is dedicated. He tells the story wonderfully!

This was my second visit to the store (I mentioned it in a post early in this blog’s history). I was in the neighborhood and decided to use a gift card a kind friend sent because she liked some of the posts on this blog! Who was I to complain? I hadn’t explored the basement before and in the process came across Norman. George calls what he does “Normanizing”. Before books are shelved, Norman repairs, cleans, and for books with dust jackets, puts a protective sleeve like those you see on library books over the dust jacket. I think for this reason, the store doesn’t have the musty, dusty feel I encounter in most bookstores of its type. I’ve not been to a bookstore before that did this and I thought it was quite a nice touch!

My purchase. Notice the protective sleeve on the Modern Library edition

One of the things that marks this store is the friendly relations between all the booksellers and the customers, those who are selling books and those who buy. I was looking for a hardcover copy of the first installment of Rex Morris’s biography of Teddy Roosevelt but could not find this. They had a paperbound copy which I ended up buying but they searched downstairs to see if they had it. On their website, they speak of this store as having an atmosphere kind of like the old comedy, Cheers, where everybody knows your name.

There is an experience in wandering around a bookstore like this, not only of discovering things you’ve not heard of before that are interesting, or finding that book you’ve been looking for. There is also the experience of being among a community of book lovers, of people you don’t have to explain your quirkiness to, because they get it. While I’ve not decided to boycott Amazon, I want to patronize places like this as often as I can because these people genuinely care about the love of books (as well as making a living at it), and fostering a culture where books and ideas and conversation about them are valued. It seems to me that places like this are part of what make a good city and a good society.

I’d love to hear your stories of the physical bookstores you love and value.

[Acorn Bookshop is permanently closed]

Bookstore Cats

February 8, 2014August 27, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

I am not a cat lover. But for some reason I found myself thinking this morning about bookstores and cats and why they go together. Of course, you will not see a cat in any of the bookstore chains. They probably worry about liability issues. Maybe the group of people frequenting the indie bookstores where you tend to find these cats are more respectful of the cats–keeping their distance and treating them as simply another book browser.

Orinda Books in Orinda, California features their bookstore cat right on the website’s home page. They welcome you to come in and pet Ginger, who is accustomed to customers. Here you see her drawing attention to a table of books for sale. Photograph by Karen Lile.

Why is it that cats and bookstores go together? Maybe the question is why cats and indie bookstore operators tend to go together? Maybe independent is the common thread. Indie booksellers have always struck me as very much their “own” persons, similar to the personality of cats who seem to allow you into their lives very much on their terms, if at all.

Why do cats and books go together? Is it that we wish we had the mythical nine lives of cats to read all the books we would like? Or is it that cats seem to represent the all-knowing creatures we are tempted to think we can become through our books?

Perhaps it is much simpler. Somehow the presence of a cat wandering the shelves or perched atop a stack of books makes these stores seem a homier, more welcome place. That’s the impression we had at one of our favorite book haunts of the past, Twice-Loved Books, an indie used book store that occupied a former homes in Youngstown, Ohio. The store is no longer. But the memories of wandering the rooms with the store cat remain. The cat just added to the whole feel of the store as a place for an unhurried browse.

I hope the bookstore cat indeed has nine lives, because it will mean the stores it inhabits will as well. I’d love to hear about your favorite bookstore cat!