"Bookstore Chains Are Undergoing a Final Shakeout" Topic

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APPLETON, Wis. — This fall, at a moment when retailers traditionally look forward to reaping holiday profits, the owner of the fourth-largest bookstore chain in the country surrendered to the forces of e-commerce.

Book World, founded in 1976, sold hardcovers, paperbacks and sometimes tobacco in malls, downtowns and vacation areas across the Upper Midwest. It had endured recessions, the expansion of superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, and then the rise of Amazon. But the 45-store chain could not survive the shifting nature of shopping itself, and so announced its liquidation.

"Sales in our mall stores are down this year from 30 to 60 percent," said Bill Streur, Book World's owner. "The internet is killing retail. Bookstores are just the first to go."

As e-commerce becomes more deeply embedded in the fabric of daily life, including for the first time in rural areas, bookstores are undergoing a final shakeout. Family Christian Stores, which had 240 stores that sold books and other religious merchandise, closed this year, not long after Hastings Entertainment, a retailer of books, music and video games with 123 stores, declared bankruptcy and then shut down.

"Books aren't going away, but bookstores are," said Matthew Duket, a Book World sales associate waiting for customers in the West Bend, Wis., store.

Emptied shelves at the Book World in West Bend. It was the nation's fourth-largest book chain. That ranking now goes to Amazon. Credit Lauren Justice for The New York Times
Here is one way to measure the upheaval in bookselling: Replacing Book World as the fourth-largest chain, Publishers Weekly says, will be a company that had no physical presence a few years ago. That would be Amazon, which having conquered the virtual world has opened or announced 15 bookshops, including at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.

In a famous passage in Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," a novel that Book World used to sell, a character is asked how he went bust. "Two ways," he answers. "Gradually and then suddenly."

That more or less mirrors what happened to Book World

Wow. This is bad.

Dan

One more reason to hate Amazon.

I found a lot of new authors over the years browsing the shelves of bookstores.

Not likely to happen online…

+1 for Winston Smith. I have to drive 20+ miles to get to a Barnes and Noble. Browsing the books as noted above is important to appreciating them. Otherwise its just Kindling.

Blame the publishing world, the big publishers and distributors that failed to support small bookstores against the big chains (B&N, Borders), then failed to support the big chains, and now faces an ever-shrinking number of stores.

They chose to squeeze every bit of juice out of the system, never tried to keep a flourishing book ecosystem alive, and still have you blaming someone who HAS opened up the market in a million places.

Shame, Winston, you drank the Koolaid and not only bought the lie but spread it.

Bull.
Amazon is naturally despicable.
Bezos is power mad.

Yeah. Says the Comcast shill. Servant of the Evil Empire much?

Amazon is just a store. Except it isn't there for you to walk through. They get stuff from suppliers, you order it, you get it. Not despicable.

I do not work for them, I do not own stock in them, I do not understand the Amazon Derangment Syndrome that so many folks like my esteemed colleague have developed.

Sergeant Pepper +1!

For someone mostly house-bound (like myself), Amazon IS the place to shop for books etc..

If b&m stores are going to Dodo Land…

Sad, but…

Charlie

Sgt Pepper +2.

Evolve or die.

I enjoy killing hours in bookstores but they generally only had the basic fare. Do I really need to page through an Osprey book for an hour before distressing to part with the princely sum of about $15 USD?

I also enjoy being able to get a book – almost any book – in 48 hours or less and at a competitive price.

Between December 1st – December 20th I went to four bookstores from Chicago burbs on down to Peoria, IL area. Three of them were Barnes & Noble's and one was a used book store. Barnes & Noble is full of coffee table books but when it comes to fiction (any genre) they all had the same things.

Everything I needed, I found in the used book store or online. When more than half your store is large hard bound coffee table books, that are nice to look at once or twice a year. Then I'd expect they don't sell a lot of books.

Sorry "Sergeant Paper"!

(Not Sergeant Pepper as I originally typed).

Still +1 though.

I think it's been over two years since I last stopped in the local Barnes and Nobles. It about 1/2 mile away.

There are two other uses book stores much farther away that I get to every couple of months. They are impulse buying exercises.

I buy most books online. It's a question of interest.

Actually, when I poke around on Amazon it is quite similar to browsing bookshelves in a book store. The AI shows you related books, it shows you other books interesting to the people interested in the book your looking at. You can also read reviews of all kinds of people, many of whom are idiots (and good for a laugh) and some of whom are genuinely helpful. I have most definitely stumbled upon great stuff on Amazon in a very similar manner to how I stumble upon stuff in a bookstore. Except on Amazon I can read other reader's opinions, not just the opinions on the back selected by the publisher. You can often read the first chapter. It's not the same as handling a book and flipping through it, but if it lacks in some areas in exceeds in other areas – their inventory is, obviously, nearly comprehensive. And you can do it from home, all night long, while you snack.

Bezos may be power mad, being a billionaire is not good for you. Amazon's scope is more than a little scary, but remember that their retail operations are not profitable, and they could fail, most likely getting sold off in sections. It's not clear what's going to happen here, and I expect at the opportune moment a competitor will appear. They're already in something of a slap-fight with Google.

Amazon represents genuine change, and that is scary. That doesn't mean their evil. Brick and mortar will likely survive, but it will have to change. In the real world you have to deal with change.

In the meantime Amazon is definitely making my life easier, and Bezos is spending a lot of his money developing space technology which may not make him any money, but will benefit us all in the long run. If he's successful there, which is also up for grabs.

I don't think brick and mortar is going away, but it's not going to remain the same, and it's essentially silly to hope that it would stay the same. "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in allis."

I suppose I should now put on my flame proof hawaiian shirt…

I'll wear the shirt with you, Andrew.

I don't tend to buy from Amazon because I get discount coupons from B&N, and can also get B&N e-gift cards with my Discover rewards, which makes my book (and game) purchases almost free. But that's my choice, and if Amazon has a product, I'll buy from them (assuming the shipping is reasonable).

I've got gripes with B&N and Amazon over their influence on publishers, but then I've got gripes with publishers over their own dumb decisions, so that's a wash. And that's me coming from an author's POV more than a consumer's.

As an author and librarian, I'm in a community that just loves independent bookstores with a nostalgia that is absurd, approaching parochialism and bordering on snobbery. It's a book, y'all. People can get it anyway they want, and what they want is to get it cheaply and quickly. Match or beat the price, or match or beat the convenience, or offer some superior form of service or experience that Amazon can't do, or quit whining. Change comes. You can adapt to it and win, or you can whine and lose. But either way, it's *your* choice that brings about the result. Don't think it's any other way, because it's not.

By the way, substitute any product or service in that paragraph; it makes no difference. "Wargame" fits in there as aptly as "book."

Ive been to Book World stores in fact Ive been to several of the stores mentioned in the article. Their selection was not very good as the stores tended to be somewhat small. The ones Ive been to were probably a quarter the size of your average Barnes and Noble. They would offer to order things but why do it at the store when I can get it online for cheaper?

I do like browsing in person though. I found so many good books just walking up and down the isles that I probably wouldnt have found otherwise.

The relationship between the publishers and retailers has always had unhealthy aspects. But now the reduced up front cost of ebooks and publishing options like BookPatch et al and the possibility of getting exposure through blogs or vlogs (i.e. YouTube, does anyone use "vlog" anymore) the options for authors are much better than ever and the *relative* power of publishers (including Amazon) and retailers (including Amazon) is less than ever.

I do Discover -> Barnes & Noble as well, and in fact have a B&N MasterCard for the places that don't take Discover. That's as much about my personal finance as anyone needs to know.

But since I have to make quite a drive to get to a B&N in any case I have to admit Amazon is my first stop. It's also the first stop for cat food and cat litter, because why make a stop and carry it home when I can get it delivered to my front door for less? Of course, if you try to slip out th forte door without letting the cats out and there's a forty pound box of cat litter right there that you don't know about you stand a good chance of falling down, and subsequently being run over by cats.

This year we did about half our Christmas shopping from local artists, friends of my wife or friends of friends. Most of the rest was done through Amazon. You want a quadracopter for the nephew? I walked into Fry's and they had just a couple in the price range (a *lot* out of the price range), but no customer reviews, inadequate info on the box, etc. Amazon had a million, with reviews, with more complete information.

So Amazon is a little scary. They are destroying some businesses. They know what kind of car I drive, what I watch on their video service and listen to on their music service, what mental health issues I'm interested in, how much I spend at Christmas, and they can probably deduce how many cats we have. "One-Click" and "Dash buttons" put them closer to the decision making process inside our heads than any retailer ever – they're not just on the computer, they're in the laundry room with you and, to be candid, they're in the bathroom with you. They want to deliver your groceries within hours. They are taking a swing at being the ultimate source of everything. They'll succeed in some areas and fail in some areas and forge the path for the companies that follow.

It's definitely a little scary, and there's definitely room to mourn what is being lost, but some of it will be lost. The best we can do is make sure the anti-trust people keep an eye on them and then use the services the way *we* want them to work so that they evolve to suit consumers.

The result should be better for consumers – better, cheaper access to books and everything else.

Amazon is, obviously, the biggest of the online retailers but certainly not the only one.

Opining for books stores is like wistfully remembering the Five and Dimes like Woolworth's. They had their time and then it was over for many reasons. Not least of which was more and better transportation, movement of retail to suburbs from town centers, large department stores, malls, and, yes, Walmart. Bookstores and many retailers are experiencing the same sort of change in shopping habits.

Is it objectively bad, of is it simply nostalgia that drives negative comments? I have great memories of the basement of Woolworth's where my meager allowance could buy a couple boxes of Airfix soldiers, a bottle of Elmer's, and a couple sheets of balsa in the 60's. The result would be hours of building forts with balsa and fighting over them with the soldiers. Or I would buy model airplanes which would end up added to the squadrons hanging from my ceiling. But these are childhood memories.

Now as an adult with a job and responsibilities, I find that I enjoy sitting at my desk at home perusing the online sites for miniatures and terrain. A click of a button, a Paypal transfer, and a few days later there's a box on my porch. I then spend hours building forts and fighting over them with toy soldiers.

Bookstores are much the same. I've spent hours and hours in bookstores. These days, however, I find that I need to keep track of time when shopping bookstores online lest I lose an entire evening. Sometimes I order actual books which arrive on my porch in a box which an happy smile emblazoned on it. More than not, though, the book lives in the cloud and magically arrived on my iPad when I need it. It's certainly a boon to be able to carry my library with me to work, the coffee shop, or while I'm stuck in a airport.

In the end analysis, I wouldn't give up those childhood memories for anything. They surround me like a warm comforting blanket and contributed to the person I am today. At the same time, I don't want to give up my iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, or MacBook any more than I would give up my automobile that doesn't need tune-ups or carborator adjustments.

For my part, I *choose* to treasure memories and embrace change. I choose to remember how much pleasure I had in bookstores *and* embrace online shopping where I'm not restricted to what a shop owner had room to stock or what a corporate buyer thought would interest customers.