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thewayneIt's been bugging me for a long time.
My wife and I have been members for MANY years. I frequently get complimented on the age of my membership card. Yet I am very disappointed at something that happened several months ago: the removal of the New section from apparently all book sections, yet not from your video section.
I read A LOT. On average, I read a book about a book a week. I also follow a lot of different authors, and some post photographs of the ARCs that they receive. This gives me a heads-up of what I can expect to see on shelves in the near future. Except I can't see them on your shelves because the new releases are now intermixed among all the old releases and I have to dive deep, author by author, to find specific titles. And that's assuming that they're in the specific section that I'm looking for: many has been the time that I've looked for an author in science fiction only to find that they've been put under YA.
You have created a losing proposition for me. I avoid buying books on Amazon because I want physical book stores. We just lost our two local book stores, now I have to drive 90-120 minutes to get to one, and that means three of your stores in Las Cruces or El Paso. And that means frustration of not being able to easily see what's new. So where's the advantage of being able to easily see what's new? There is none. There's nothing prominently displayed to whet my appetite and lure me in to opening my wallet for a $30 hardback.
You've made your stores no longer a destination. Before, when I drove to Phoenix, I ALWAYS made it a point to hit one or two of your stores to see what's new. But that's no longer true, because you no longer display what's new. So what's the point? If I have to go online to find out what's new, THEN go to a store to buy it, I might as well buy it online.
I avoid buying books online to support local book stores and jobs. I don't buy my medications by mail to support local jobs. These are things that are important to me. But what you've done is encouraging me to channel money that I reserve for books in to online venues, and that may not go to B&N.
I've been shopping at B&N since the 1970s at B. Dalton in Christown and Metrocenter in Phoenix. The stores back then had sections for both Science Fiction and Fantasy, then ultimately merged them. I used to buy old copies of Analog magazine by the grocery sack. I am a book hound. I am not a casual reader, I am a ravenous reader, and you are frustrating me.
As I said, you've made it so that your stores are no longer a primary destination. I still stop there if I happen to be in the area and have other places to go, or obviously, if my wife wants to go. But now my personal itch must be scratched online.
I really hope that you put the New Releases area back in your stores. That would make me quite happy indeed.
My wife and I have been members for MANY years. I frequently get complimented on the age of my membership card. Yet I am very disappointed at something that happened several months ago: the removal of the New section from apparently all book sections, yet not from your video section.
I read A LOT. On average, I read a book about a book a week. I also follow a lot of different authors, and some post photographs of the ARCs that they receive. This gives me a heads-up of what I can expect to see on shelves in the near future. Except I can't see them on your shelves because the new releases are now intermixed among all the old releases and I have to dive deep, author by author, to find specific titles. And that's assuming that they're in the specific section that I'm looking for: many has been the time that I've looked for an author in science fiction only to find that they've been put under YA.
You have created a losing proposition for me. I avoid buying books on Amazon because I want physical book stores. We just lost our two local book stores, now I have to drive 90-120 minutes to get to one, and that means three of your stores in Las Cruces or El Paso. And that means frustration of not being able to easily see what's new. So where's the advantage of being able to easily see what's new? There is none. There's nothing prominently displayed to whet my appetite and lure me in to opening my wallet for a $30 hardback.
You've made your stores no longer a destination. Before, when I drove to Phoenix, I ALWAYS made it a point to hit one or two of your stores to see what's new. But that's no longer true, because you no longer display what's new. So what's the point? If I have to go online to find out what's new, THEN go to a store to buy it, I might as well buy it online.
I avoid buying books online to support local book stores and jobs. I don't buy my medications by mail to support local jobs. These are things that are important to me. But what you've done is encouraging me to channel money that I reserve for books in to online venues, and that may not go to B&N.
I've been shopping at B&N since the 1970s at B. Dalton in Christown and Metrocenter in Phoenix. The stores back then had sections for both Science Fiction and Fantasy, then ultimately merged them. I used to buy old copies of Analog magazine by the grocery sack. I am a book hound. I am not a casual reader, I am a ravenous reader, and you are frustrating me.
As I said, you've made it so that your stores are no longer a primary destination. I still stop there if I happen to be in the area and have other places to go, or obviously, if my wife wants to go. But now my personal itch must be scratched online.
I really hope that you put the New Releases area back in your stores. That would make me quite happy indeed.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 05:30 pm (UTC)For me, my tastes have changed through author death, series ending, and acquiring new authors that aren't big enough names for chains to carry. My biggest change in authors has been in reading everything for this year's Hugo nominees: picked up several authors from that! Add to that the fact that I'm switching from dead tree editions to ebooks. Part of that is the desire to reduce my physical space, part of that is the fact that we may be moving out of the country in a few years. Yesterday I took four banker's boxes of books and Analog magazines to the thrift store, previous trip it was six. Comic books are going to be the tricky part as I may have to take those to Phoenix.
The reality is that book stores are no longer a core need for me, but visiting them is still something that I like to do. And a lack of a New just takes the joy of discovery out of it.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 06:11 pm (UTC)They have a business model built on scarcity of resources and curation, and they never managed to figure out how to curate if the resources weren't scarce to begin with.
They're running on inertia. As the Gen X and younger crowds become mainstream consumers, that'll collapse, because the younger crowd doesn't think of "bookstore" as where you acquire entertainment or information content. (I miss bookstore browsing - but what I'd really want is the ability to browse, and then buy digital. And none of the big bookstores wanted that; they were firmly attached to the notion that paper is the way books should be.)