"Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog Intermittently."
02 April 2011
Borders and bookstore karma
There is an interesting observation by Commander Q at Reddit; he notes that Borders was one of the chain book-megastores that helped drive mom-and-pop bookstores out of business in many towns, and now it in turn is going down, in part because of online retailers.
One such bookstore has recently closed down where I live, which is a bummer since I used to come there to read books and check out new ones (the libary in my town doesn't really get many new books). At least it wasn't as crowded as the other mega-bookstore in my town.
The sad irony is that most of the mom and pop stores in my town weren't nesecarily run out by big megastores ( of which there are barely any, we don't have a walmart or kmart), but by rental prices for rent space. I knew the owners of an artstore I went to regularly a few years back that had to move because they couldn't pay the rent on their rental space. They had to move back to one of their other stores (it was a small family based art store), which is bad for me due to gas prices soaring. I could literally walk there at times to check out the stock and buy sketchbooks and pencils for my art classes. Now I have to either get it online (which I'm starting to hate since the prices for shipping have risen a dollar, making it somewhere up to $8 to get something under $100 shipped to you and you can't judge the quality of paper or other materials) or go to the only other art store, which is expensive. The other thing that irks me about online shopping, for books as well, is that I usually like reading the book before I buy it. I know Amazon has that option, but it's not on all books, and it only shows a small portion. Also reviews aren't necessarily good to rely on. I have seen reviews on stuff that say negative things, when I haven't had the problem the critic described about the product at all; or they just say "very nice, good" which doesn't help at all. I like to check out the product before I buy it, it's not good at least to me, if I can't judge the product or the book in real-life.
One such bookstore has recently closed down where I live, which is a bummer since I used to come there to read books and check out new ones (the libary in my town doesn't really get many new books). At least it wasn't as crowded as the other mega-bookstore in my town.
ReplyDeleteThe sad irony is that most of the mom and pop stores in my town weren't nesecarily run out by big megastores ( of which there are barely any, we don't have a walmart or kmart), but by rental prices for rent space. I knew the owners of an artstore I went to regularly a few years back that had to move because they couldn't pay the rent on their rental space. They had to move back to one of their other stores (it was a small family based art store), which is bad for me due to gas prices soaring. I could literally walk there at times to check out the stock and buy sketchbooks and pencils for my art classes. Now I have to either get it online (which I'm starting to hate since the prices for shipping have risen a dollar, making it somewhere up to $8 to get something under $100 shipped to you and you can't judge the quality of paper or other materials) or go to the only other art store, which is expensive. The other thing that irks me about online shopping, for books as well, is that I usually like reading the book before I buy it. I know Amazon has that option, but it's not on all books, and it only shows a small portion. Also reviews aren't necessarily good to rely on. I have seen reviews on stuff that say negative things, when I haven't had the problem the critic described about the product at all; or they just say "very nice, good" which doesn't help at all. I like to check out the product before I buy it, it's not good at least to me, if I can't judge the product or the book in real-life.
Sorry for the long rant.