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  • Tag: bookstores

    • 2014 Bookish Resolutions / 50 Books Challenge

      Posted at 12:12 pm by Laura, on December 31, 2013

      bookish resolutions

      Although I read nearly 70 books this year, I am not sure if I’ll be able to match that ever again. The thought of having a goal of more than 50 puts me into a paralyzing shock. This year’s number one goal is to begin my career!

      I have hopes for this blog. Not sky-high, but hopes high enough that, if I post something here at least once a week, I think it could be considered a healthy, active blog. Now it’s a matter of finding the time and figuring out the content…Any suggestions? What would you like to see on here?

      Because Quirk Books seems to like my sporadically submitted and published blog posts, and many ideas were tossed around and approved, it’s time I devote even more of my spare moments on researching and blogging for more Quirk content.

      The fourth goal is something I really need help with. Excuses can be made for everything, but now it’s a serious situation: lack of space for new books combined with my inability to read as quickly as I buy means I have way too many books I need to get around to reading. So any books that are going to be purchased this year, the books that can break this rule, are the next installments of trilogies/series that are forthcoming in 2014.

      Finally, because libraries are important and I do have several library cards, I plan to use the library more. I’m certain I made this goal last year and I failed miserably (apart from researching for my thesis, which does not count in this case).

      Let’s hope I can stick to these! What are your bookish 2014 resolutions? If you don’t have any resolutions per se, what’s your reading goal?

      Posted in books | 7 Comments | Tagged 50 book challenge, books, bookstores, library, personal, quirk books
    • Bookshop Goldmine

      Posted at 8:09 pm by Laura, on December 30, 2013

      One of my college friends visited me while I was home for Christmas and asked if I wanted to visit Von’s Books. I had heard him describe this place multiple times — a haven of used and new books, a miracle of bookstores, a goldmine — and not once were we free at the same time to visit. But a few days ago, we did just that, and drove an hour outside of my hometown visit this glorious bookshop.

      Do not be deceived by the poor website, because the store is heaven! I found several Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights editions I’d been searching for for eons. My friend shook his head and laughed when I snatched them off the shelves and held them close to my heart.

      IMAG0467 copy

      IMAG0468 copy

       

      Wuthering Heights (blue and black profiles) — Harper Design / HarperCollins
      Wuthering Heights (field of leaves) — Vintage

      Jane Eyre (fire) — Harper Perennial Modern Classics
      Jane Eyre (profile) — Vintage
      Jane Eyre (purple leather quotes) — Canterbury Classics

      What books can you not keep your hands from grabbing (and prevent your wallet from emptying) when you see it?

      Posted in books, Update Post | 5 Comments | Tagged authors, book hoarding, books, bookstores, genre: classics, genre: gothic, genre: romance, personal
    • Keeping Brick-and-Mortar Stores in Business: A FAQ

      Posted at 9:45 am by Laura, on February 28, 2013

      In light of the news that Barnes & Noble will be closing a third of their stores across 10 years, that Nook may be separating from B&N, that independent bookstores are few and far between, allow this bookseller to answer the age-old question, “How can I keep bookstores from closing?” (which, of course, stems from the statement, “I wish bookstores weren’t closing!”).

      The best and most obvious answer is purchase directly in the bookstore.

      Seriously. I’m sick of explaining to people why we sell books at the sticker price, why prices are “high,” why online is cheaper than in store. As I cannot take out my frustration on our patrons, I’m going to step up with booksellers everywhere — including independent and used bookstore booksellers — and explain all these questions.

      1. Why are online prices cheaper?

      If a bookstore, like Barnes & Noble or Waterstones, has an online presence, the prices for the products are generally cheaper. This is because the consumer is going directly to the vendor — which has far fewer employees — and ordering from there. Whether or not one is a special member of some sort for this online bookstore, there is still the expectation that one will pay for shipping. The price offered is the lowest price that can still be split among the publisher, the author, and the bookseller.

      When the consumer purchases in the store, they are paying for “overhead.” Overhead is payment towards the rent/lease of the venue, payment towards the helpful employees, payment for the upkeep and cleanliness of the venue, as well as the publisher, the author, and the bookseller corporation.

      If consumers continuously purchase online rather than walking into the store, the store’s physical presence declines and thus they close. Chain bookstores live with a double-edged sword: online presence can boost sales, but it can also aid in store closings.

      2. Why are so many indie/used bookstores closing?

      Most independent bookstores and used bookstores use a mathematical formula to lower the sticker price to it’s lowest possible value before harming their sales. Say you spot a rare edition of a book by an author you love. The original sticker price is $25, but the indie store is selling it for $15 and the used store is selling it for $10. The indie store will make a small profit from selling this book, but the majority will still be sent to the publisher and author. The used bookstore is barely making enough profit to keep the place running, but nothing goes toward the publisher or author.

      A lot of independent and used bookstores are closing because consumers still find cheaper prices online.   The stores’ prices are also heavily dependent on scraping by: keeping employees employed, paying venue rent, keeping the place in good condition and clean. If you want your mom-and-pop, independent, or used bookstore to stay in business (either because you like the cozy atmosphere, it’s location, the selection, or even it’s nice low prices), you need to walk into their store and purchase from them directly.

      3. But I like Amazon’s prices! Why should I, the consumer, not use Amazon?

      Mention Amazon to a bookseller and we do everything we can to not explode with anger. Those stiff smiles, blank stares, and suddenly curt speech are the only acceptable ways for us to express our dislike.

      Amazon never sells at the sticker price. They are an online presence, not a physical presence. They make enough profit off shipping and other products to keep themselves in business. [Refer to Answer #1 on online prices.] Great on them. They’re a monopoly.

      But the prices they offer, including the used ones, rarely — if ever — benefit the publisher, the author, or anyone else in the book business. Yes, the prices are miraculously cheaper and in this economy everyone wants the cheaper price. But consistently purchasing from Amazon only creates a larger monopoly, creates a business that will not help you in person, and drastically lowers the likelihood of a brick-and-mortar store staying in business near you.

      Sidenote: This is for all those cranky customers who say to booksellers, “Ugh, I had to drive 30 minutes out here just to get to this store and you’re telling me you don’t have this book?! This is why Amazon is in business; I’m ordering from them!” No, Amazon is not in business because we’re 30 minutes away — we’re 30 minutes away because consumers like you consistently purchase from Amazon and we have to close our stores closest to you.

      4. If booksellers frown on Amazon, what are some other online groups with low prices that booksellers don’t get angry over?

      I’m glad you asked!

      Better World Books “collect and sell books online to donate books and fund literacy initiatives worldwide.”

      Books sold on BetterWorldBooks.com help fund high-impact literacy projects in the United States and around the world. That’s why we commit to matching every purchase on our website with a book donation to someone in need.

      What sane bookseller would say no to that?! Literacy is something to support and celebrate!

      AbeBooks has some amazingly cheap prices on everything. They help those independent booksellers get their presence known. Small stores, nationwide and worldwide, advertise the availability of a new/used book they have in stock. When you purchase through AbeBooks, you’re benefitting this organization as well as the small seller.

      Alibris also helps independent sellers stay in business by connecting them across the globe and aiding in library collections.

      Biblio is also fantastic — a large selection of rare books, connecting indie and used stores across the country. They also help in non-profit organizations.

      —-

      So. You want your bookstore to stay in business? Go in the bookstore and purchase from them today.

      Posted in books, library, Link, publishing, technology, Update Post | 0 Comments | Tagged books, bookstores, library, news, personal, publishing
    • Barnes & Noble Nook HD and Nook HD+

      Posted at 2:57 pm by Laura, on September 26, 2012

      As a Barnes & Noble bookseller, I can tell you all about the new devices, the comparisons between each other, and comparisons with other tablets in the market.  As a struggling graduate student who loves pretty shiny things, I can also tell you how entranced I was by the ads and commercials and everything these devices will offer.

      So I’m pumped and ready to give you links to all sorts of information about the HD and HD+!

      1. New York Times — “The new devices are a seven-inch tablet for $199, called the Nook HD, and a nine-inch tablet for $269, the Nook HD Plus. Company executives promoted them as being lighter and faster than comparable tablets, a market that is crowded with competitors from Apple, Amazon and Google.” There are four devices. Nook HD 8GB, Nook HD 16GB (both available in Snow and Storm), Nook HD+ 16GB, and Nook HD+ 32GB (both available in Slate). Something to note.
      2. Shelf Awareness Pro — Information on the new tablets, the new Nook Video (“This fall, B&N is launching Nook Video, which will stream movies and TV shows from a range of studios, including Sony, Warner Bros., Disney, HBO, Viacom and Starz. The material can be watched on Nooks, TVs, tablets, smartphones as well as on a video app that will be released in the near future.”), and expansion in the UK.
      3. Publishers Weekly — “B&N’s head of hardware development Bill Sapperstein showed off the Nook HD and what he described as the “highest resolution display on a 7-inch tablet,” with 243 pixels per inch and pointed to wide viewing angles on both tablets. Both devices run on a customized version of Ice Cream Sandwich, the Android 4.0 OS optimized for tablets. The devices also just seem to get lighter—the Nook HD is 315 grams and Nook HD+ 515 grams—and more powerful with the NHD offering a 1.3GHZ processor and the NHD+ offering a 1.5 GHZ processor.”
      4. Barnes & Noble — As you can see, the Nook Color, Nook Tablet 8GB and Nook Tablet 16GB have sort of…disappeared.

      I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I’m already in love with the device and I haven’t even held one yet!

      Posted in books, Link, technology | 5 Comments | Tagged barnes and noble, books, bookstores, ereaders, news, nook, technology
    • 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults – PW

      Posted at 6:16 pm by Laura, on September 14, 2012

      New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults – Publishers Weekly

      More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. According to a new study, fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 — known as YA books — are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone accounted for 28% of YA sales. And adults aren’t just purchasing for others — when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78% of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading.

      This makes complete sense to me! YA is a growing market, the teens section of stores running out of space. I wonder what the resurgence is?

      They make the point that “Hunger Games” and “Harry Potter” are the drawing factor, but surely there’s more to it than that. Plus, this can be great news for teenagers as well, that reading is good and fun. In one of my graduate classes, we discussed the books that influenced us the most. The majority of us mentioned books from childhood and teen years, nothing fairly recently. This meant reading early and in the teen years marked important transitions in life.

      Keep it coming!

      Posted in books, Link, publishing | 1 Comment | Tagged books, bookstores, genre: young adult, news, publishing
    • Is She In a Coma? – ShelfTalker

      Posted at 2:21 pm by Laura, on June 22, 2012

      “Is She in a Coma, or Is She Dead?” – ShelfTalker blog – Elizabeth Bluemle

      If you’ve ever worked in a bookstore — or, for that matter, shopped in one — you’ll know that booksellers do a fair amount of detective work. Every day, we track down books people have heard about on the radio or from friends, cobble together titles from fragments of customer memory, and plumb our own reading experiences to make matches with the keywords our patrons conjure.

      It’s not exactly news, but something fun and quirky to read. I was thrilled to start working in a bookstore for this exact reason (heck, in came in handy when I worked at an architecture library!): to solve mysteries when someone could barely remember the book title or author.

      A funny one happened a few days ago, actually. A lady came up to the counter and said she heard a book on NPR with “cheese…or something” in its title. “Something so outrageously weird that I thought I’d remember the whole thing, but I can’t! I just remember cheese!”

      We have the ability to search for books talked about in the media, but only if it was discussed within the last two weeks. This lady told me it was recent. To our system, it wasn’t recent enough. I began to ask her other questions, such as “what was it about? What struck you, other than the title?” and put what she said as key terms. The book has absolutely nothing to do with cheese – it was actually a very serious novel – but the title did contain the word. We found it, which was a great eureka! moment, and also one of the most hilarious experiences I’ve ever had.

      Do you have any stories, as a bookseller or customer, that is similar to this?

      Posted in books, library, Link | 2 Comments | Tagged books, bookstores, library
    • Wasterstones Sells Kindles – Shelf Awareness

      Posted at 8:34 pm by Laura, on June 5, 2012

      Great London Fire: Waterstones to Sell Kindles – Shelf Awareness

      Although Kindles are sold in a variety of bricks-and-mortar retailers, this is the first time that the e-readers are available in traditional bookstores. The deal is all the more striking because there were long-running rumors that Barnes & Noble was seeking to make a deal with Waterstones to sell its Nook in the company’s stores and because James Daunt, who was appointed managing director of Waterstones last July, has been highly critical of Amazon (Shelf Awareness, June 6, 2011).

      Daunt told the Bookseller that the deal is a “no brainer” because the Kindle is the e-reader that most British consumers want. He added that Waterstones had waited too long to develop its own device and that negotiations with Amazon started only recently.

      I was a little stunned when I read this article, simply because of the previous news of a B&N arrangement. However, Daunt makes a great point: UK buyers have had access to Kindles for years now – it’s only logical that the final brick-and-mortar chain sell Kindles as well.

       

      Posted in books, Link | 0 Comments | Tagged bookstores, ereaders, news, publishing
    • This Week’s News!

      Posted at 8:29 pm by Laura, on May 3, 2012

      2012 Hans Christian Anderson Illustrator Award Winner: Peter Sis! This award is considered the most prestigious in international children’s literature, given biennially by the International Board on Books for Young People. Congratulations!

      Barnes & Noble Partners with Microsoft (Publisher’s Weekly). The new unit is called Newco, and it will hold B&N’s digital assets, college stores, and will be backed by a $300 million investment from Microsoft. Read on for the full story and more details.

      Target Will Stop Carrying Amazon Kindle (The Verge). Apparently there is a conflict of interest. According to an inside source, the Kindle Touch will be on sale the week of May 6. If you’d like a Kindle, I suggest getting it then.

      The Atlantic Attempts to Clear Up Confusion on the eBook Lawsuit. Remember the issues with the Department of Justice and the massive confusion with big five publishers and who prices what for ebooks? Well, even though The Wall Street Journal tried to clear things up, people were still left befuddled. The Atlantic attempts to clear the air. Buckle down: it’s going to be a long ride.

      B&N Teams with HMH for Student Reading Program (Shelf Awareness). “Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Barnes & Noble have partnered for a program in which schools can acquire HMH digital titles, categorized for students at each grade level, on preloaded Nook e-readers. Many of the titles are age-appropriate, International Reading Association-recommended selections.” Well isn’t that nifty!

      Posted in books, Link, publishing | 0 Comments | Tagged books, bookstores, ebooks, ereaders, magazine, news, newspaper, publishing, technology
    • An E-Book That Glows in the Dark – NYT

      Posted at 5:38 pm by Laura, on April 26, 2012

      An E-Book That Glows in the Dark – The New York Times – David Pogue

      As you may already know, Barnes & Noble has come out with a new Nook: the GlowLight, an e-reader with a backlight so one can read in the dark. Pretty nifty! But is it really that great?

      First, Pogue makes a very good point towards potential e-reader buyers:

      Because buying a reader isn’t like buying a car, a DVD player or a hair trimmer. All of those tools are fairly universal. You’re not committing to one brand of gas, one kind of movie or one style of mustache.

      No, when you buy an e-reader, you’re committing to that one company’s catalog of books forever, because their book formats are mutually incompatible. You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader, or a Sony book on an iPad. Sure, you can read Nook and Kindle books on an iPad, but when you buy an actual Nook or Kindle, you’ve just married its company forever. If you ever want to change brands, you have to give up all the books you’ve ever bought.

      He then continues to describe the various e-readers out there, their positive and negative qualities.

      Finally, he gets straight to the point of the article: what the GlowLight Nook is, and whether it’s good.

      All of that long-winded exposition is your introduction to the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. Basically, it’s an E Ink screen that self-illuminates. It gives the light gray background of your “page” a gentle glow for nighttime reading, much like the backlight on digital watches.

      …The reality lives up to the theory in every way. The GlowLight Nook offers glorious, clear, peaceful darkened-room reading. The illumination comes on when you press the N button beneath the screen, and detracts nothing from the natural E Ink reading experience. The factory-setting brightness is ideal, but you can make it brighter or dimmer using an on-screen slider.

      Click on the link and be sure to read the second page as well for more information! More comparisons for e-reader shoppers continue. I think if I didn’t already have the Nook, this article would really help me make my decision.

      Posted in books, Link, publishing | 0 Comments | Tagged bookstores, ebooks, ereaders, news, newspaper
    • Boutiques at Barnes & Noble – Wallstreet

      Posted at 5:26 pm by Laura, on March 12, 2012

      Boutiques at Barnes & Noble – Wallstreet Journal – Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

      Barnes & Noble Inc. is expanding a nascent effort to install boutiques within its stores selling books and other items associated with the Penguin publishing house, the latest step by the retailer to boost store revenue amid a shift toward e-books and sales of physical books online.

      200 sq. feet will be dedicated to Penguin titles, totes, mugs, and other merchandise! Personally, I’m very excited about this. I hope it expands to other B&Ns in the future (although apparently there aren’t any foreseeable plans at the moment).

      Posted in Link | 0 Comments | Tagged bookstores, news, newspaper, publishing
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    • Hello, I’m Laura!

      I'm a bookish bookworm and book hoarder. By day I'm a literary agent, and by night I'm forever rearranging my bookshelves. I could talk your ear off about Gothic literature, and in my past life people thought I'd become a professional musician. I have a fluffy black cat named Rossetti, I love to knit, tea is my drink of choice, British TV is the best, and I'm obsessed with popcorn. Welcome to Scribbles & Wanderlust! Grab your favorite hot beverage and let's chat books!
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