Death of the Local Book Store

Here was my comment to an article reporting the Borders Books was on the verge of going out of business because the e-book has killed them:

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What killed Borders for me is their decision to turn the store into a reading room.  I used to love buying books at Borders but all of a sudden I had to make my way through piles of people with no intention of buying anything, sitting in the aisles and spending their day reading.

I’d often see people with piles of magazines that they had taken off the rack, reading away like it was their living room.

One time I went in to buy a book on 3D animation and I couldn’t get into the aisle because a girl was sprawled on the floor with dozens of art books, copying the drawings.

Who needs this?

Now I sit at home, take my time looking through books online and end up buying on the Net; usually through Amazon.

As far as I’m concerned, Borders and Barnes and Noble lost my business when they decided to cater to the seagulls instead of the paying customers.

 

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Adding a bit to this:

It really was uncomfortable buying books at Borders.  Since I’m a software engineer, I’d often head straight to the computer books section.  In every aisle, they had installed chairs facing in both directions.  When I’d be trying to look at the books, my backside would be right in someones face as they were reading.  (Probably more uncomfortable for them, then for me but it didn’t seem to phase them.)  Most of the time these people weren’t even reading books from the computer section.

I wonder if Borders and Barnes and Noble ever did a study to see if the people taking up the space in their stores were actually ever purchasing anything.  From the little evidence that I have, my guess is they weren’t.

It will be sad when these places close down, but I don’t believe it had to be this way.  In my opinion, most of their troubles were self-inflicted.

Posted by Al on 01/02/11 at 08:34 AM in Unclassified