I am really bummed to read that the Nook is dying. I've had one for I don't know how many years now. I've spent quite a bit of money to buy books to read on it - in fact, I've spent far more buying books since I got it. If the Nook ecosystem goes away, i.e. if I can't buy books for it anymore and it's not supported anymore, I guess that investment in ebooks lasts only as long as my device keeps working. I like to reread books that I've enjoyed. Maybe I should stop buying ebooks and just order physical books for delivery the "old fashioned" way. That's delayed gratification, though.
Our local Barnes and Noble closed a year or two ago. The nearest ones are a half hour drive. It's definitely a gap. I really like buying books as gifts (when I could find what people asked for). I can order them from Amazon, but that's not the same experience as browsing a bookstore.
One of the nice things about the State of Indiana , at least back in the 70’s, was that you could borrow books from Indiana University, and I guess other publicly funded universities, with only an Indiana driver’s license (I think there was a reasonably large limit to how many). Since I lived only a half hour from the University and had Wednesday free from teaching, I spent my day at the library (and my evenings at the free concerts by the music faculty and students.
One of the nice things about the State of Ohio is that most of the higher education institutions public and private are linked so that a student at any one can borrow from any other and have the books delivered to their home institution. A further nice thing is that that persons over 60 can audit courses at community colleges for a very low fee. So ever since I retired I have audited a course in the fall that allowed me unlimited borrowing privileges. It also allowed my access to all the electronic journals.
I think some public libraries also have similar interlibrary loan privileges, although when I tried to use the one locally it was more complicated and more limited than the Ohio Link higher education system.
So I think our first priority as citizens should be get books readily available to everyone to read everywhere, rather than intervening in the marketplace for those who want to purchase books for their possession, and underlining, etc.
What David Leonhardt neglects to say is that B&N, which always felt like a department store to me, took up more space but had a narrower selection than Waldens or Borders, which it managed to damage while outlasting. And B&N, Borders and Waldens were all disappointments to anyone who had ever experienced a really good bookstore, like Books and Books in Miami (still!) or Brentano's in its heyday in Chicago. So, in one way, Amazon represents the soulless bottom we were racing to.
On the other hand, it never has to back order what you want.
If I can order from Alibris, I do. If I have to go to Amazon (especially for shipping to multiple addresses), I do what I have to do. Mostly, though, I use the public library for my personal reading these days. We disgorged case after case of books (In my prime I belonged to three book clubs and had tons of books from reviewing) when we were going to move to the Old Catholic Farts' Home in Milwaukee. I am firmly trying not to refill the shelves.
I love books and bookstores. My favorite mother-children activity was reading to them, and taking them to the library. All three became quite literate, two with "perfect" SAT verbal scores, and the third just missing it! Now, none of them read much that is not online. However, they do buy books and read them to their own children, so not all hope is lost.
The small, high quality, independent stores disappeared years ago. Then the chains like Walden, Brentano's, and Borders. But I did believe that at least B&N would survive. I buy most of the books that I pay for (rather than get at the library) after discovering them while physically browsing the shelves at B&N. There used to be three, each about 15-20 minutes from my home. Two are closed now, just during the last year. The B&N location that closed a few months ago was sort of a neighborhood center with a prime location in an upscale neo-urbanization area of a long-existing neighborhood - now full of shops and restaurants and cafes etc. It was always lively and full of people, the children being read to in the children's area, people at tables, reading or with their laptops and coffee and muffins. The problem was that not enough users of the store's amenities were actually buying books. They might browse there, and decide on books to buy, but they would go home and buy them online, either from B&N or Amazon. Amazon is often cheaper for "real" books.
Many of the local libraries are actually throwing away paper and binding books in favor of beefing up their computer areas so people can read online instead.
Several years ago, cleaning out books, I put aside several dozen "reading list" books my children had bought (private school kids) over the years, books that are required by most schools, public and private, in the DC area. I tried very hard to give them away - offering to pay shipping costs to a Jesuit high school that had been heavily damaged in New Orleans after Katrina, offering to ship them to some schools on Native American reservations, etc. Nobody replied. I also contacted the local Cristo Rey school, offering to donate them to their library - I was told that they didn't have a library.
Jim, I use my ipad for digital books. I can use Nook or Kindle (free apps to download) and I download my escape reading from the library to the ipad using something offered by many library systems - Overdrive. There is also Cloud Library. But, the library selection is very limited. Then I may be forced to go to the library and check out a hard copy book, or pay to download one from B&N or Amazon
Anne, many thanks, I hadn't heard that there is a Nook app. I will check it out.
We also took our kids to the library when they were younger, and it's a pleasure to see that they (or at least nearly all - I'm not certain about one of them) continues to use it now that they're independent of us (for stuff that is free, anyway). Even then, they are as likely, or more likely, to come back with videos and music rather than books.
Brentano's was Kroch's & Brentano's in my day. Sorely missed.
I agree about the narrow selection at Barnes and Noble. As you say, selection is not an issue with Amazon. Amazon basically offers unlimited selection and very good reliability for prompt shipment. At a low price. For the consumer, it's awesome. So those of us downstream from Amazon arguably have benefited, but Leonhardt calls out that Amazon has done damage upstream, with the authors and publishers. Not sure how to feel about that. There is a lot of stuff published and sold that doesn't target me and that I wouldn't read or pay a red cent for (the women's romance-and-steaminess category, which I suppose is the largest category for fiction). And as I've mentioned before, I rely on reviewers like Tom to do the really hard work of reading lots of stuff and separating wheat from chaff so I know what to read. I suppose the pile of wheat+chaff which reviewers need to wade through is smaller now than it was pre-Amazon.
I also read and buy theology and religion books, the types of books that Commonweal and First Things review - not the peer-reviewed journal heavyweight academic articles, but books that bring the fruits of serious scholarship, reflection, prayer etc to grass-roots ministers like me. Whether that category (and similar categories) also has been injured by the rise of Amazon, Leonhardt doesn't really address. What think all ye who know more about the inside baseball of this stuff than I do?
Jim, I am not a deacon, obviously, (nor married to one)but I too buy a lot of religion-spirituality books. I seldom buy heavy academic theology. I have some NT Wright and Raymond Brown, but that's as "heavy" as it gets for me. Currently I have seven shelves of the bookcase filled with spirituality-religion books, and, over the years, I have given away many boxes of books to make room for new ones.
I use the library for "popular" books - fiction, and current event/politics type books.
I have found that when I re-read some of the books, especially the spirituality books, it is as though I am reading them for the first time. I "see" ideas and concepts that escaped me on earlier readings. I attribute this to being in a different "stage" of life than during earlier readings - the journey is lifelong, and as we age,our understanding and perspectives change - maybe not to being the "right" ones, but to somewhat different understandings than we had at younger ages..
"There is a lot of stuff published and sold that doesn't target me and that I wouldn't read or pay a red cent for..." That is certainly true. It is interesting just to walk around B&N and see what some of the categories are. There was actually one called "Gay Paranormal Fiction". I guess we shouldn't assume that vampires and werewolves are all straight. Jim, have you tried Bookfinder.com? I bought my husband an out-of-print book on spirituality that he wanted, by a Carmelite priest (who was O.Carm. rather than the more familiar O.C.D.). I was pleased with Bookfinder's service, and the wide selection. Not all the books are in perfect shape, but they don't have to be.
Back in the day, Kansas City had an excellent Catholic bookstore, run by some Sisters. Chicago had two -- Dan Herr's Thomas More, and Nina Polcyn's. But that was back in the day. I think most of us who read Catholic books have been ordering direct from the various publishers for many years. I am currently reading two from Orbis Books along with (from the library) Steve Coll's Directorate S, which mentions Gina Haspel, but not by name.
B&N pushed out the local book store in East Lansing, Jocundry's, which had a staff of misfits and weirdos wholly unfit for retail work. They'd ask you why you wanted a certain book or comment witheringly about your selection ... assuming they could be bothered to wait on you. I found it vastly entertaining and frustrating at the same time.
B&N ran them out. They had coffee and a better selection, and a very attentive staff (plus an escalator that kept The Boy busy for hours). Then B&N died.
A small state chain, Schuler's, had great staff, collection, coffee--the best of all worlds, local and helpful. They are down to one regional store in our area, though, and they told me the cafe, which is a separate biz entity, does more business than the book part of the store.
Jim's question about books for very small markets (Catholic deacons) is interesting. We have a statewide interlibrary loan system. Raber usually finds everything he wants. Part of the problem, though, is what happens when those books, many of which are old and beat up, are culled from collections? I guess Google Books has some of these digitized, but, man, that is an ugly reading experience.
" Part of the problem, though, is what happens when those books, many of which are old and beat up, are culled from collections?" Jean, yes. It drives me crazy that our library, and I assume most libraries, aggressively cull their collections. They only keep what gets checked out a lot. People who work there tell me that of course part of the problem is space, but that also there is a rating system, and if you keep a bunch of "moldy oldies", they downgrade you. Some of those moldy oldies (I would call them vintage) are better than a lot of popular current literature. It is aggravating if I want to revisit one that I liked years ago to find that it is missing in action. However if I really want them I can usually find used copies online for fairly reasonable cost. A couple times a year our library has sales of the culled books, and ones that people donate. It is disheartening to be there, usually on the first night, when the dealers hit the joint. They have handheld scanners and shopping carts. They know what they are looking for and scarf it up like a vacuum cleaner. I guess the library people feel that their money is as good as anyone else's.
Katherine: I showed up once at the local public library with a few boxes and doubled-up grocery bags filled with books and DVRs to donate. I had the naive belief that they'd all end up on the library shelves. Silly me. The volunteer who encountered me said, "Come this way, I'd like to show you something." He unlocked a service door that opened up into this vast room of donations like mine. Apparently the twice-yearly sale is to sell off that stuff.
Hmm, I wasn't actually donating DVRs to the library, but rather VHS's. Sorry, I'm acronym-challenged sometimes. On the scale of execrable neologisms, I rank acronyms below business jargon but above the strings of random syllables they run together to name prescription meds these days.
I used to be a library trustee. If you want to help your library, give them a monetary donation or ask if there is a magazine subscription you can provide. Maintaining shelf space is a big problem for many libraries, especially if they were built 100 years ago, when the population of your town was a fraction of its current size.
I give most of our physical books to prison libraries that have almost no funding for books. These usually have to be paperback. The ALA has a list of prison book projects here: http://libguides.ala.org/book-donations/bookstoprisons
When I buy books anymore (I have shelves and shelves of them already and have been reduced to culling and putting in a box on my front steps marked "Free Stuff") I buy used through a clearing house Addall.com. It's a lot cheaper than buying new. Not all of the best buys are from Amazon, either.
No, that's true! I tried selling on Amazon once, but people expect books in pristine shape and gripe and want you to give the books to them free if they have any foxing or creases, even if you minutely describe the condition. It wasn't worth the hassle.
Yeah, Katherine. And the neoliberals let these monsters grow. As far as I'm concerned, once something succeeds in becoming a monopoly, it should be nationalized. It's no longer capitalist since the element of competition is gone.
My favorite book store: https://www.bookculture.com/ The store on 112th has gazillions of remandered books that once sold for gazillions too much and so you wouldn't buy them, but now $4.95, etc... They also have new books, 10 percent discount if you join their book club (was once free, now I think they charge), and they'll order anything you want, but don't really need. And the staff is friendly and funny. They also have a ad sign outside the store showing how bad it is to buy books from Amazon!
B an N is strange. The comments above don't sound like the two (now one) that I have shopped in. The one now closed was right near Fordham, Lincoln Center (now occupied by a knock-off women's clothes store). It was very handy at lunchtime and going and coming from Frdhm. It was two stories, crammed with books, and had staff who could find you anything (it was very good--I guess that's why they closed the store!). The one still open at 84th Street is also full of books (great children's section) but it is not the same. And it is faster to walk to 112th St. than 84th!
Really old stuff, I can usually find at Alibris, and if there are several offers, I triangulate between price and distance. Powell's in Chgo sells through alibris. A couple of times I've ordered books that come from the UK (though the store is in the U.S.--probably part of our special relationship with MI6). I am on a pretty amateurish espionage (Anthony Price) series that plays off WW1 and WW2 events in the post-war Cold War (the previous one).
But it's true: Too many books, too little time! I'm guessing they are among the things you can't take with you, but who knows?
The Union Square (17th Street) Barnes & Noble is an excellent bookstore, very large (4 floors, including the café on the 3rd floor), and a place to browse. The employees are very helpful. However, just a few days ago I bought a number of books there, and when I got home I noticed that two of the computer books that I had bought for $35 and $29.99 (minus my 10% member discount) were available on Amazon for $17.66 and $20.95. So I returned them to B&N and ordered them from Amazon, saving about $20. It's my usual rule to buy only inexpensive paperbacks and heavily discounted (say 40%) hardcovers in a regular bookstore, because the savings online are quite substantial.
I usually prefer to buy new books either in a bookstore or online, but I have gotten some great bargains buying used books through Amazon and occasionally through Abebooks.com. I got a used copy of Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars through Amazon, a book from a series I had loved as a kid, and also a book called Mangled Hands: A Story of the New York Martyrs. (It is not such an ugly title if you know the story of St. Isaac Jogues.)
David's anecdote illustrates an aspect of businesses that fail: we shouldn't assume that their failure is strictly the doing of aggressive competition. Businesses can make poor decisions that cause them to decline. My takeaway from what David reports is that Barnes and Noble has a pricing strategy that makes it uncompetitive. I don't know whether Barnes and Noble would need to match Amazon's price to the penny in order to prevent a cost-conscious consumer from returning the merchandise, but presumably it could come closer than twice as expensive(!) on items like computer books.
I've mentioned before that I don't like buying clothing online. I'm willing to pay more in order to be able to look at the clothing on the rack and try it on, and possibly get help from a knowledgeable worker. But there is a limit to how much more I'll pay.
Location! Location! Location! Population density must have something to do with the viability of big B and N stores. And in NYC, rents are probably an off-setting factor. The store near Fordham was replaced by (??? can't think of it's name) a high volume clothing store at discount prices. They can pay the rent. The B and N at 84th is probably in a somewhat lower rent district.
David Nichol had the benefit of examining, touching, and smelling those books. He really wanted them! But being able to return them and get a cheaper price at Amazon! Best of both worlds!
I suppose what I should have done was return the books to Barnes & Noble and then ordered them through their web site. I would have gotten nearly the same discount as I got from Amazon. I used to order from B&N quite a bit, but if I order from Amazon, I accumulate points, and I love points!
I am really bummed to read that the Nook is dying. I've had one for I don't know how many years now. I've spent quite a bit of money to buy books to read on it - in fact, I've spent far more buying books since I got it. If the Nook ecosystem goes away, i.e. if I can't buy books for it anymore and it's not supported anymore, I guess that investment in ebooks lasts only as long as my device keeps working. I like to reread books that I've enjoyed. Maybe I should stop buying ebooks and just order physical books for delivery the "old fashioned" way. That's delayed gratification, though.
ReplyDeleteOur local Barnes and Noble closed a year or two ago. The nearest ones are a half hour drive. It's definitely a gap. I really like buying books as gifts (when I could find what people asked for). I can order them from Amazon, but that's not the same experience as browsing a bookstore.
One of the nice things about the State of Indiana , at least back in the 70’s, was that you could borrow books from Indiana University, and I guess other publicly funded universities, with only an Indiana driver’s license (I think there was a reasonably large limit to how many). Since I lived only a half hour from the University and had Wednesday free from teaching, I spent my day at the library (and my evenings at the free concerts by the music faculty and students.
ReplyDeleteOne of the nice things about the State of Ohio is that most of the higher education institutions public and private are linked so that a student at any one can borrow from any other and have the books delivered to their home institution. A further nice thing is that that persons over 60 can audit courses at community colleges for a very low fee. So ever since I retired I have audited a course in the fall that allowed me unlimited borrowing privileges. It also allowed my access to all the electronic journals.
I think some public libraries also have similar interlibrary loan privileges, although when I tried to use the one locally it was more complicated and more limited than the Ohio Link higher education system.
So I think our first priority as citizens should be get books readily available to everyone to read everywhere, rather than intervening in the marketplace for those who want to purchase books for their possession, and underlining, etc.
What David Leonhardt neglects to say is that B&N, which always felt like a department store to me, took up more space but had a narrower selection than Waldens or Borders, which it managed to damage while outlasting. And B&N, Borders and Waldens were all disappointments to anyone who had ever experienced a really good bookstore, like Books and Books in Miami (still!) or Brentano's in its heyday in Chicago. So, in one way, Amazon represents the soulless bottom we were racing to.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it never has to back order what you want.
If I can order from Alibris, I do. If I have to go to Amazon (especially for shipping to multiple addresses), I do what I have to do. Mostly, though, I use the public library for my personal reading these days. We disgorged case after case of books (In my prime I belonged to three book clubs and had tons of books from reviewing) when we were going to move to the Old Catholic Farts' Home in Milwaukee. I am firmly trying not to refill the shelves.
I love books and bookstores. My favorite mother-children activity was reading to them, and taking them to the library. All three became quite literate, two with "perfect" SAT verbal scores, and the third just missing it! Now, none of them read much that is not online. However, they do buy books and read them to their own children, so not all hope is lost.
DeleteThe small, high quality, independent stores disappeared years ago. Then the chains like Walden, Brentano's, and Borders. But I did believe that at least B&N would survive. I buy most of the books that I pay for (rather than get at the library) after discovering them while physically browsing the shelves at B&N. There used to be three, each about 15-20 minutes from my home. Two are closed now, just during the last year. The B&N location that closed a few months ago was sort of a neighborhood center with a prime location in an upscale neo-urbanization area of a long-existing neighborhood - now full of shops and restaurants and cafes etc. It was always lively and full of people, the children being read to in the children's area, people at tables, reading or with their laptops and coffee and muffins. The problem was that not enough users of the store's amenities were actually buying books. They might browse there, and decide on books to buy, but they would go home and buy them online, either from B&N or Amazon. Amazon is often cheaper for "real" books.
Many of the local libraries are actually throwing away paper and binding books in favor of beefing up their computer areas so people can read online instead.
Several years ago, cleaning out books, I put aside several dozen "reading list" books my children had bought (private school kids) over the years, books that are required by most schools, public and private, in the DC area. I tried very hard to give them away - offering to pay shipping costs to a Jesuit high school that had been heavily damaged in New Orleans after Katrina, offering to ship them to some schools on Native American reservations, etc. Nobody replied. I also contacted the local Cristo Rey school, offering to donate them to their library - I was told that they didn't have a library.
Jim, I use my ipad for digital books. I can use Nook or Kindle (free apps to download) and I download my escape reading from the library to the ipad using something offered by many library systems - Overdrive. There is also Cloud Library. But, the library selection is very limited. Then I may be forced to go to the library and check out a hard copy book, or pay to download one from B&N or Amazon
Anne, many thanks, I hadn't heard that there is a Nook app. I will check it out.
DeleteWe also took our kids to the library when they were younger, and it's a pleasure to see that they (or at least nearly all - I'm not certain about one of them) continues to use it now that they're independent of us (for stuff that is free, anyway). Even then, they are as likely, or more likely, to come back with videos and music rather than books.
Brentano's was Kroch's & Brentano's in my day. Sorely missed.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the narrow selection at Barnes and Noble. As you say, selection is not an issue with Amazon. Amazon basically offers unlimited selection and very good reliability for prompt shipment. At a low price. For the consumer, it's awesome. So those of us downstream from Amazon arguably have benefited, but Leonhardt calls out that Amazon has done damage upstream, with the authors and publishers. Not sure how to feel about that. There is a lot of stuff published and sold that doesn't target me and that I wouldn't read or pay a red cent for (the women's romance-and-steaminess category, which I suppose is the largest category for fiction). And as I've mentioned before, I rely on reviewers like Tom to do the really hard work of reading lots of stuff and separating wheat from chaff so I know what to read. I suppose the pile of wheat+chaff which reviewers need to wade through is smaller now than it was pre-Amazon.
I also read and buy theology and religion books, the types of books that Commonweal and First Things review - not the peer-reviewed journal heavyweight academic articles, but books that bring the fruits of serious scholarship, reflection, prayer etc to grass-roots ministers like me. Whether that category (and similar categories) also has been injured by the rise of Amazon, Leonhardt doesn't really address. What think all ye who know more about the inside baseball of this stuff than I do?
Jim, I am not a deacon, obviously, (nor married to one)but I too buy a lot of religion-spirituality books. I seldom buy heavy academic theology. I have some NT Wright and Raymond Brown, but that's as "heavy" as it gets for me. Currently I have seven shelves of the bookcase filled with spirituality-religion books, and, over the years, I have given away many boxes of books to make room for new ones.
DeleteI use the library for "popular" books - fiction, and current event/politics type books.
I have found that when I re-read some of the books, especially the spirituality books, it is as though I am reading them for the first time. I "see" ideas and concepts that escaped me on earlier readings. I attribute this to being in a different "stage" of life than during earlier readings - the journey is lifelong, and as we age,our understanding and perspectives change - maybe not to being the "right" ones, but to somewhat different understandings than we had at younger ages..
"There is a lot of stuff published and sold that doesn't target me and that I wouldn't read or pay a red cent for..." That is certainly true. It is interesting just to walk around B&N and see what some of the categories are. There was actually one called "Gay Paranormal Fiction". I guess we shouldn't assume that vampires and werewolves are all straight.
DeleteJim, have you tried Bookfinder.com? I bought my husband an out-of-print book on spirituality that he wanted, by a Carmelite priest (who was O.Carm. rather than the more familiar O.C.D.). I was pleased with Bookfinder's service, and the wide selection. Not all the books are in perfect shape, but they don't have to be.
Back in the day, Kansas City had an excellent Catholic bookstore, run by some Sisters. Chicago had two -- Dan Herr's Thomas More, and Nina Polcyn's. But that was back in the day. I think most of us who read Catholic books have been ordering direct from the various publishers for many years. I am currently reading two from Orbis Books along with (from the library) Steve Coll's Directorate S, which mentions Gina Haspel, but not by name.
DeleteB&N pushed out the local book store in East Lansing, Jocundry's, which had a staff of misfits and weirdos wholly unfit for retail work. They'd ask you why you wanted a certain book or comment witheringly about your selection ... assuming they could be bothered to wait on you. I found it vastly entertaining and frustrating at the same time.
ReplyDeleteB&N ran them out. They had coffee and a better selection, and a very attentive staff (plus an escalator that kept The Boy busy for hours). Then B&N died.
A small state chain, Schuler's, had great staff, collection, coffee--the best of all worlds, local and helpful. They are down to one regional store in our area, though, and they told me the cafe, which is a separate biz entity, does more business than the book part of the store.
Jim's question about books for very small markets (Catholic deacons) is interesting. We have a statewide interlibrary loan system. Raber usually finds everything he wants. Part of the problem, though, is what happens when those books, many of which are old and beat up, are culled from collections? I guess Google Books has some of these digitized, but, man, that is an ugly reading experience.
" Part of the problem, though, is what happens when those books, many of which are old and beat up, are culled from collections?" Jean, yes. It drives me crazy that our library, and I assume most libraries, aggressively cull their collections. They only keep what gets checked out a lot. People who work there tell me that of course part of the problem is space, but that also there is a rating system, and if you keep a bunch of "moldy oldies", they downgrade you. Some of those moldy oldies (I would call them vintage) are better than a lot of popular current literature. It is aggravating if I want to revisit one that I liked years ago to find that it is missing in action. However if I really want them I can usually find used copies online for fairly reasonable cost.
DeleteA couple times a year our library has sales of the culled books, and ones that people donate. It is disheartening to be there, usually on the first night, when the dealers hit the joint. They have handheld scanners and shopping carts. They know what they are looking for and scarf it up like a vacuum cleaner. I guess the library people feel that their money is as good as anyone else's.
Katherine: I showed up once at the local public library with a few boxes and doubled-up grocery bags filled with books and DVRs to donate. I had the naive belief that they'd all end up on the library shelves. Silly me. The volunteer who encountered me said, "Come this way, I'd like to show you something." He unlocked a service door that opened up into this vast room of donations like mine. Apparently the twice-yearly sale is to sell off that stuff.
DeleteHmm, I wasn't actually donating DVRs to the library, but rather VHS's. Sorry, I'm acronym-challenged sometimes. On the scale of execrable neologisms, I rank acronyms below business jargon but above the strings of random syllables they run together to name prescription meds these days.
DeleteI used to be a library trustee. If you want to help your library, give them a monetary donation or ask if there is a magazine subscription you can provide. Maintaining shelf space is a big problem for many libraries, especially if they were built 100 years ago, when the population of your town was a fraction of its current size.
DeleteI give most of our physical books to prison libraries that have almost no funding for books. These usually have to be paperback. The ALA has a list of prison book projects here: http://libguides.ala.org/book-donations/bookstoprisons
When I buy books anymore (I have shelves and shelves of them already and have been reduced to culling and putting in a box on my front steps marked "Free Stuff") I buy used through a clearing house Addall.com. It's a lot cheaper than buying new. Not all of the best buys are from Amazon, either.
ReplyDeleteNo, that's true! I tried selling on Amazon once, but people expect books in pristine shape and gripe and want you to give the books to them free if they have any foxing or creases, even if you minutely describe the condition. It wasn't worth the hassle.
DeleteWalmart believes it's in a life-and-death tussle with Amazon, too. It's not just the books category.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-09/walmart-s-flipkart-deal-is-right-move-despite-investor-qualms?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=180509&utm_campaign=sharetheview
So Walmart vs Amazon;King Kong vs Godzilla?
DeleteYeah, Katherine. And the neoliberals let these monsters grow. As far as I'm concerned, once something succeeds in becoming a monopoly, it should be nationalized. It's no longer capitalist since the element of competition is gone.
DeleteMy favorite book store:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bookculture.com/
The store on 112th has gazillions of remandered books that once sold for gazillions too much and so you wouldn't buy them, but now $4.95, etc... They also have new books, 10 percent discount if you join their book club (was once free, now I think they charge), and they'll order anything you want, but don't really need. And the staff is friendly and funny. They also have a ad sign outside the store showing how bad it is to buy books from Amazon!
You can also get them to ship!
DeleteB an N is strange. The comments above don't sound like the two (now one) that I have shopped in. The one now closed was right near Fordham, Lincoln Center (now occupied by a knock-off women's clothes store). It was very handy at lunchtime and going and coming from Frdhm. It was two stories, crammed with books, and had staff who could find you anything (it was very good--I guess that's why they closed the store!). The one still open at 84th Street is also full of books (great children's section) but it is not the same. And it is faster to walk to 112th St. than 84th!
ReplyDeleteReally old stuff, I can usually find at Alibris, and if there are several offers, I triangulate between price and distance. Powell's in Chgo sells through alibris. A couple of times I've ordered books that come from the UK (though the store is in the U.S.--probably part of our special relationship with MI6). I am on a pretty amateurish espionage (Anthony Price) series that plays off WW1 and WW2 events in the post-war Cold War (the previous one).
But it's true: Too many books, too little time! I'm guessing they are among the things you can't take with you, but who knows?
The Union Square (17th Street) Barnes & Noble is an excellent bookstore, very large (4 floors, including the café on the 3rd floor), and a place to browse. The employees are very helpful. However, just a few days ago I bought a number of books there, and when I got home I noticed that two of the computer books that I had bought for $35 and $29.99 (minus my 10% member discount) were available on Amazon for $17.66 and $20.95. So I returned them to B&N and ordered them from Amazon, saving about $20. It's my usual rule to buy only inexpensive paperbacks and heavily discounted (say 40%) hardcovers in a regular bookstore, because the savings online are quite substantial.
ReplyDeleteI usually prefer to buy new books either in a bookstore or online, but I have gotten some great bargains buying used books through Amazon and occasionally through Abebooks.com. I got a used copy of Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars through Amazon, a book from a series I had loved as a kid, and also a book called Mangled Hands: A Story of the New York Martyrs. (It is not such an ugly title if you know the story of St. Isaac Jogues.)
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DeleteDavid's anecdote illustrates an aspect of businesses that fail: we shouldn't assume that their failure is strictly the doing of aggressive competition. Businesses can make poor decisions that cause them to decline. My takeaway from what David reports is that Barnes and Noble has a pricing strategy that makes it uncompetitive. I don't know whether Barnes and Noble would need to match Amazon's price to the penny in order to prevent a cost-conscious consumer from returning the merchandise, but presumably it could come closer than twice as expensive(!) on items like computer books.
DeleteI've mentioned before that I don't like buying clothing online. I'm willing to pay more in order to be able to look at the clothing on the rack and try it on, and possibly get help from a knowledgeable worker. But there is a limit to how much more I'll pay.
Location! Location! Location! Population density must have something to do with the viability of big B and N stores. And in NYC, rents are probably an off-setting factor. The store near Fordham was replaced by (??? can't think of it's name) a high volume clothing store at discount prices. They can pay the rent. The B and N at 84th is probably in a somewhat lower rent district.
ReplyDeleteDavid Nichol had the benefit of examining, touching, and smelling those books. He really wanted them! But being able to return them and get a cheaper price at Amazon! Best of both worlds!
I suppose what I should have done was return the books to Barnes & Noble and then ordered them through their web site. I would have gotten nearly the same discount as I got from Amazon. I used to order from B&N quite a bit, but if I order from Amazon, I accumulate points, and I love points!
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