{"id":67,"date":"2011-07-06T03:26:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T03:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/why-you-soon-wont-be-able-to-find-a-good-book-in-a-store\/"},"modified":"2011-07-06T03:26:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T03:26:00","slug":"why-you-soon-wont-be-able-to-find-a-good-book-in-a-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/why-you-soon-wont-be-able-to-find-a-good-book-in-a-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Soon Won’t be Able to Find a Good Book in a Store"},"content":{"rendered":"
I was reading one of Kris Rusch’s columns over at The Business Rusch<\/i> the other day, the topic<\/a> being shelf space disappearing in book stores.\u00a0 At that reminded me of an unpleasant experience I had the other day in Wal-Mart, one that is now repeated every time I walk into the store (which isn’t nearly as often as it was a few weeks ago).\u00a0 If you haven’t read Kris’s column, please go read it now.\u00a0 I’ll wait.<\/p>\n

There, that didn’t take too long, did it?\u00a0 Ms. Rusch brings up some very disturbing points, and while some of them are negative, others are mixed.\u00a0 For what it’s worth, here’s my take on things, including why I’m not going to be shopping at Wal-Mart as much in the future.
<\/a>
For starters, I understand the point Kris makes about Barnes and Noble trying to drive customers online.\u00a0 It helps their bottom line for two reasons.\u00a0 First, in the short term, it provides an incentive for Nook purchases.\u00a0 Eventually that market will saturate, either because everyone will have one and the technology will mature to the point that repeatedly releasing an updated version will no longer be cost effective, or more likely that a new technology will come along and make the Nook obsolete.\u00a0 The second reason, and the one that bothers me, is that it will allow B&N to either close more stores to get out of expensive leases or devote more shelf space to non-book items such as toys, games, stationary, and greeting cards.\u00a0 Along with more floor space to sell the Nook.<\/p>\n

Borders, even before it declared bankruptcy, was undergoing this at a disturbing rate.\u00a0 When I started graduate school at UT Dallas back in the early 90s, the Borders at the intersection of\u00a0 Royal and Preston was one of the two go-to bookstores in the Dallas area, the other being the Taylor’s near Prestonwood Mall, although living at what was then the northern edge of the suburban sprawl, i.e, in the other direction, I tended to frequent the Bookstop in Plano near Collin Creek Mall rather than drive an extra hour.\u00a0 All three had excellent selections of science fiction and fantasy, mystery, and scientific and technical books, and all were willing to order titles not in stock (although Taylor’s charged to do so).<\/p>\n

Then Taylor’s closed, Barnes and Noble bought the Bookstop chain and closed the one in Plano to open a B&N on the opposite side of the mall, and suddenly Borders was the only good place to get almost anything in print.<\/p>\n

That didn’t last long.\u00a0 I’ve only been in that Borders a few times in the last five years, and usually it was to find a magazine I couldn’t get at the big B&N on Northwest Highway.\u00a0 I don’t know if that particular store is still open.\u00a0 I’ve bought very few books there in the last half decade or so.\u00a0 Each time I went in, it seemed the fantastic literature had been moved to a different area and had less shelf space.\u00a0 Along with all the other books.\u00a0 And there more titles turned face out, which is one of the points Ms. Rusch made in her essay.\u00a0 Books facing out take up more space, meaning the shelves hold fewer books.\u00a0 The last time I was there, it wasn’t worth the gas to drive over.<\/p>\n

So how does Wal-Mart figure into this?\u00a0 It’s simple.\u00a0 They’re committing the same type of stupidity as the major chains, but they don’t have the excuse of an ereader to fall back on.\u00a0 I live a little over two blocks from K-Mart, four or five blocks from Target, and about a mile and a half from the nearest Wal-Mart (there are four in town).\u00a0 I’ve been going to this Wal-Mart for one reason.\u00a0 They have<\/strike> had a section of their book department devoted to science fiction, meaning that the section was labeled as such.\u00a0 Now the selection was at least 50% fantasy, but I’m not complaining.\u00a0 I read considerable amounts of both. I’ve seen Wal-Marts that devote some shelf space to a few sf\/f titles before, but this is the only one with entire section devoted to the stuff.\u00a0 A number of them have sections for westerns, which I’m not knocking, except I don’t think westerns sell as well as sf & f.\u00a0 Maybe Wallyworld is different, because the westerns section in my local Wal-Mart is still intact.\u00a0 And none of the employees, excuse me, associates, I talked to could tell me who made the decision to remove the fantasy and science fiction.<\/p>\n

What did they put in its place?\u00a0 They moved the romance section over and put “Books” where the romance previously was.\u00a0 They’re still putting the display together (they’re anything but quick here), but it appears to be mostly children’s books and cook books.\u00a0\u00a0 All face out.\u00a0 I guess they think fewer titles with more visibility will sell more books.<\/p>\n

So now I have one less venue I can walk into, pick up any one of several books, and browse through them.\u00a0 As far as I’m concerned, electronic browsing isn’t worth the time it takes.\u00a0 I like to flip through the book.\u00a0 I’ve bought plenty of books at that Wal-Mart, some of which I’ve reviewed at Adventures Fantastic.<\/i> And I like a good selection, which, given its size, this one had.\u00a0 But it’s no longer worth the time and gas to drive over and put up with the crowd for the books they have now.<\/p>\n

My local B&N has a decent selection, meaning I can find something that interests me.\u00a0 But I can’t find everything, including much of the stuff I want.\u00a0 Kris Rusch wrote about not being able to find her latest science fiction novel, City of Ruins<\/i>, in a B&N but being told it was in the warehouse and she could order it.\u00a0 The local one here didn’t stock it either.\u00a0 Nor did they stock Howard Andrew Jones’ The Desert of Souls<\/i> or Scott Oden’s The Lion of Cairo<\/i>.\u00a0 They had a novel by Paul Finch which I wanted to review, only they sold it before I could buy it and didn’t order a replacement copy.\u00a0 It was a zombie novel; the replacement would have sold.\u00a0 I’m going to have to order all of these books.\u00a0 And that’s a hassle.\u00a0 I ordered the Oden, but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.\u00a0 The other three will probably get ordered sometime before the end of the summer.\u00a0 I want to review and discuss all four of them, but I’ll probably review other things I have at hand first.\u00a0 It’s easier and faster that way.<\/p>\n

I could go on.\u00a0 There’s a locally based chain with a number of stores in Texas called Hastings<\/i> I could write an entire post about, but this is negative enough as it is.\u00a0 The more I write, the grumpier and more depressed I’m getting.\u00a0 If you’re like me and like to spending time in book stores just browsing to see what treasures you can find, I don’t hold out a lot of hope of being able to do that much longer.<\/p>\n

This essay has been cross-posted at Adventures Fantastic<\/a>.<\/i> \u00a0 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading one of Kris Rusch’s columns over at The Business Rusch the other day, the topic being shelf space disappearing in book stores.\u00a0 At that reminded me of an unpleasant experience I had the other day in Wal-Mart, one that is now repeated every time I walk into the store (which isn’t nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,103,116,117,115,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barnes-and-noble","category-borders","category-howard-andrew-jones","category-kristine-kathryn-rusch","category-paul-finch","category-scott-oden","category-wal-mart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-15","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}