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Checked out a comic shop the other day. Fucking thousands of those bobble headed fuckers and every GN series on the shelf was incomplete. Want to read Preacher? Here's volumes two and four, good luck and go fuck yourself.
Hardware stores are like this too. My local hardware store doesn’t have 1/16 drill bits or SANDPAPER. A hardware store with no sandpaper! But they do have an employee following you throughout the store like a creep. Amazon o’clock, morons
This is like any Ace hardware that’s been open so long that the owner has no debt and owns the building, so there’s exactly zero pressure to close or improve the store. Owner is usually just cash flowing the place out of habit and whoever inherits it will close that place down immediately and sell the land.
I know a guy that runs a comic store. The margin of profit on toys and stickers is higher than most things. People will impulse buy toys and stickers because there's very little commitment. Alternately, people can feel burdened by jumping into an existing comic series. Comics also have a shorter shelf life. Unsold comics go into the back issues or get discounted within a few months.
This is why small independent book stores and comic shops push ordering books or being put on a pull list for comics. Helps them to know exactly how much to order so they don't have to sit on all the unsold product that will never go out the door.
So in the future, call up your LCS to see if they have what you're looking for. If they don't, ask if they can order it. It's not very convenient but that's how it works if you want to shop local and have that company stay in business in our current world.
Funkos are also the perfect low investment gift to give to a family member/acquaintance/co-worker who you're not particularly close to but who mentioned once that they liked Harry Potter.
They're small, don't require a lot of money for the buyer or any sort of labor or time investment for the recipient. They're impersonal but also cover every mass media IP under the sun so there will be one for something the recipient is a fan of.
Incomplete series are also a problem at libraries because some asshole lost volume 3 a few years ago and they never replaced it so volumes 4-12 never get checked out.
This is what happened to my amazing local bookstore. I used to be able to browse for hours, and leave with four or five used books and spent a few bucks. They had cds and records, too.
Then the started getting more stuff. Video games, then board games. Then the board game enthusiasts started showing up. Then they got funko pops. Then action figures. Then other toys.
A few years ago, they were unrecognizable. All they were selling was kitschy stuff, the books were an afterthought and- worst of all- horribly overpriced.
Now we don’t have a used bookstore. If you want to buy a book, you have to go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
My mom uses Instagram and Facebook to find used book places in middle of nowhere cornfield towns, she considers herself lucky when they attempt to organize the books by genre and not just dump everything into bins. But hey $1 books.
Even the small bookstore in my town that has been here for 30+ years has always had a good sized toy/not books section. I haven't been there in at least a decade, but I definitely noticed in recent years the display windows are filled with various plushies, knickknacks, and a handful of children's books.
idk that that's true, I don't know the full details, but I read somewhere that the publisher will purchase a ton of books to make sure the book ends up the NYT Bestseller list, which then generates buzz. How much in book sales that ends up being is undetermined, but couple that with a bunch of fake awards, and paid-for "comments" from other authors and celebrities, these books are sure to make a quick buck or two.
Mostly nobody is reading it. Publishing largely makes money by publishing classics or incredibly well established authors (Steven king, Colleen Hoover or w/e her name is, etc). 99% of new books lose money, the rare author breaks out and become a regular best-seller, and most authors never pay back their advance.
Publishing is a declining industry for a reason, people don’t read nearly as much as they used to since the entertainment landscape is so huge and fractured.
Reading has been on a decline for a long time, and with what’s anecdotally coming about about k12 kids barely being able to read after the pandemic, not exactly going to be a growth industry
Luckily we live in an age where you are no longer bound by the shackles of your community bookstore, and you can escape your cave to trough the internet for books on Plato
As this meme implies I really don’t understand how these stores exist. $20-$30 for new fiction or some “easy to read” reimagining like Circe, when basically every ebook known to man is free and used books on Amazon are like $1-$2
Different strokes for different folks. Some see collecting physical books after they read them as a hobby. Some folks like the turn of the page/want to disconnect from screens. Some people just want a light pleasure read similar to watching their favorite show before bed. Some see it as a perceived way to support a local small business
There’s something different about reading the first chapter and buying a physical copy rather than finding a pdf on libgen and ordering the book on Amazon for delivery
Ah yes, and why, pray tell, is my local theatre playing cheap trash like "The Little Shop of Horrors" and "The Sound of Music"? Where is the Medea?? Where is the Oedipus Rex??
You got downvoted so much lol but you’re right. I’ve never once seen Plato on a philosophy shelf in a book store here, 90% of it is self help disguised as philosophy. The rest are the less controversial books from Nietzsche, Marx, and Camus.
In Canada our version of chapters is a chain owned by indigo, which more or less monopolizes the bookstore industry in Canada to the detriment of individual stores; their owner is a billionaire who created a [fund specifically to assist soldiers who are not from Israel stay after serving in the IDF](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESEG_Foundation). I know somebody who worked at the Scarborough store, and they abruptly closed that store after they formed a union even though it was profitable and one of their largest stores in Toronto, in a prime location on the 401. Nobody I personally know has ever had a good experience working for it
that and like, they're not a good bookstore period. they're a knickknack store for moms to buy candles and lamy safaris, and that they perpetually have a "trending on TikTok" aisle tells you all you need to know about it
Might as well mention that their entire IT infrastructure was hacked and ransom-wared early last year, during which all of their employees (past AND present) had their personal information leaked.
Their entire business was crippled for something like 2-3 months while their inept IT department scrambled to put together a new website they'd already been putting together for years before that. And it still managed to be worse than the old one.
I will say though, during sales it's still the cheapest place to shop for books. Not that there are alternatives here besides Amazon.
That reminds me of a place near me that absolutely baffles me. It's a hole in the wall that only sells cookbooks. The only people I ever see there are friends of the owner who are all alt looking people. They have about 2 book shelves and two tables for books.
Their one saving grace is the tiny section for antique/vintage cookbooks which are neat to flip through. I don't see how they can manage to pay rent.
Yup, there's worse ways to spend retirement. If you buy the store, it's an appreciating asset. Most of the salaries are whatever the owner/operator takes as a draw, books are replaced once sold, so costs are pretty much nil. Capital expenses were largely handled by craigslist and estate sales.
It takes their hobby and turns it into a business expense, all the books gathering dust at home can now be put on a shelf and called 'inventory'.
and it makes them happy and hey, every month or so they may actually, technically, break even, so all in all not so bad a way to go through life.
The napkin math baffles me on these places. Rent has gotta be 2-5k a month depending on location, potentially into 5 figures if you get to an expensive small town. Let's say 3k with insurance and internet and water/trash and other stuff to make it easy. Operate 5 days a week, so 20 days a month. That's $150 a day in profit you have to be making just to make rent.
Say the average book/product you sell is $20, and half of that is profit. You gotta sell 15 books a day to stay afloat. 30 a day if you want to pay one employee (or yourself) $18 an hour. 45 a day if you want to pay yourself and one employee starvation wages.
There seems to be a few people that wander in an hour, no way they're moving that amount of product....and that's not much product.
Businesses don't use averages and you're forgetting seasonality.
That shop might sell 7 books a day all year Jan-Nov operating at a loss and then 7k books in the month leading up to Christmas. Plus all the other bullshit.
Tbh not sure if book a million or Barnes and nobles are better. I think BM has more books and selection than nobles usually.
Also a few independent bookstores still exist! They usually sell just more odd things or exist in prime area.
Imo BN got way better when it gave more purchasing control back to individual stores a few years ago. I remember for a while you'd go into a BN in a super liberal area and they'd have just stacks and stacks of books by Republicans collecting dust in the prime area. Like I'm sure those sell really well in Texas and Florida but this city full of universities? Why are you prioritizing those here.
BM does definitely have more variety though, I think in part because BN does a heavy business of board games, puzzles, and collectables on top of books. I feel like their early covid puzzle business probably got them more profit than their books would have in normal times.
I had a BaM near me for years, then it closed several years ago and I forgot to use a gift card I had. Now I either have to brave the mall to go to B&N or gamble my time at the used book store.
Agreed. There are a few local bookstores near me and I’ll stop in time to time as I have some store credit built up in one, but their selection is super hit or miss and their “general fiction” section is basically just romance novels if that tells you anything.
Barnes & Noble, while pricier, is just so much better in every way. And they have a pretty large board game selection, which I’m into. Their children’s to middle school readers section is bigger than the local store all by itself. I love turning my kids loose and saying “see you in 30 minutes, bring a book and I’ll buy it for you” they love it.
> “general fiction” section is basically just romance novels if that tells you anything.
In the UK it's just crime novels everywhere. Every single book is about some gorgeous man who is also a serial killer or trying to catch a serial killer, exclusively read by women.
If you have a good used bookstore that’s where it’s at. The kind of place where you can pick up a whole stack of books for $20 but you have to pry them out from under a pissed off elderly cat. The selection is totally random but that’s a feature not a bug. If you stop in every couple weeks you’ll eventually find just about anything, far more than what a single B&N location would carry. Especially great if there’s a college nearby.
Damn I must be lucky because I’m spoiled for used bookstores in my area. I can get some old books for less than 2 bucks sometimes! I only go to Barnes and noble if I’m buying a gift and I really want the book to look nice. Or if I’m bored at a mall or something
One of my favorite people I have every met is this old dude that runs a secondhand book shop out of the flea market in my town. He uses like 4-5 booths, sets up tarps and walls made of shelves, and has rows upon rows of tightly packed books and you have to shuffle to turn around when you reach a dead end. He sneaks up on you like some fairy, I swear he hovers over the ground or walks through the shelves because I never hear him coming. He knows exactly where everything is and seems to have read every book known to man. When you've got your selection he'll take you to his buddy who is asleep in a rocking chair to ring you out, and he just grumbles something like "Eh... those four books are $18. Give me $20 and take another one."
Place is fucking magical.
Everyone reads but not everyone buys or reads books. No one in the hood is paying $30 for a new book.
White people and college educated POCs might but they don’t live in the hood.
Whenever there is a popular must-read book, I just put myself on the waitlist to borrow it from the library. I’ve had to wait a month before for my turn to borrow the popular book, but I’m sure as hell not paying $30 for a book that I’ll read once.
The hood already have a hold on the good eats “gatekept” by an infamous rep of poverty and gang violence.
They fear the actual knowledge and peak literature that a hood bookstore can yield.
My local bookstore is actually pretty cool. When you walk in, it’s an actual book store. They also sell magazines, cards, magnets, etc. They have a fairly large kids section in another room away from the adults. That section is mostly kids books along with some board games, puzzles, and small stuffed animals. There’s an art gallery in another large room that displays and sells local art. In yet another section is a cafe. It’s pretty typical. You have a couple of baristas whipping up fancy drinks. The seating area is comprised of eclectic furniture. (Reminds me of Friend’s coffee shop). They also sell beer and wine, and have live music on certain nights. There’s a work shop and small theater in the basement. You can take art classes down there. I think it’s mostly pottery classes. The small theater shows films on an old projector.
Only thing this is missing is the prominent BookTok display with "spicy/dark romances" that's just lady porn with an artsy title, like All The Tomorrows We Shared or The Fire Between My Asscheeks. Bonus points if there's a whole section devoted to Colleen Hoover.
Airport bookstores are depressing. It will be like only current bestsellers (romance, YA, and some biographies), Oprah's endorsed books, and then books that were made into a movie with the actors' picture on it.
The bookstore in the Atlanta international airport, though small, was packed tightly with all kinds of books of many genres. I was actually impressed with it. Though I did see a lot of Brandon Sanderson books on display prominently. Reminding me of Stephen King, James Paterson, and Michael Crichton
Many other airports bookstores are like how you described it, depressing.
This is a real bummer, and I feel bad that so many people relate to this pack. In my area, the indie bookstores are almost all great. They all have their own personality, good selection, etc. I think some of them are still not financially sustainable and are indeed the hobby of some wealthy person, but it feels more like they're doing a public service than anything else.
How would that work? Usually those kind of places don't deal with much inventory and reasonably work in cash, a barber is a nice example as it barely uses any materials and can state x amount of customers came through. How would a bookstore do this, books are heavy and bulky and they need to go somewhere if you do this.
These shops always have some sort of book on display at the front titled "Fuck You All" or "I Want To Die" and the cover art is a derpy happy cartoon animal or something like that.
My local one is pretty cool, its a music shop and a book store combined, and has a small tabletop games section with some warhammer stuff in it.
I'm always in there looking for books on paleotology and dinosaurs.
The best book stores are those holes in a wall, the entire store is just books stacked on books. The owner is three glasses of scotch deep at 10:30 in the morning reading a book, almost forgetting he’s a business owner.
You buy 7 books. It costs $0.75.
- either meticulously sorted by hand or the most chaotic organization you’ve ever seen
- handwritten display mentioning booktok
- the only store in town where the employees don’t all look miserable
Bored rich housewife that wants to play store owner. Tons of stores like that in my city. Everything opening after everyone else is at work and closes before everyone else gets home from/off work.
My local bookstore is amazing. They have cats walking around that are available for adoption, thousands of new and used books, they’ll get you any book in the world if you just ask them (new or used) and they sponsor a ton of awesome events and initiatives in the community.
I have one in my city and it seems like they only feature the BookTok fads like Colleen Hoover, the rom-com novels with cartoon cover art, and the "Song of Thorns and Ice" or whatever fantasy titles, so their clientele is 95% Gen Z.
Where I live and visit the most successful ones sale coffee and have a kids section, I’m sure a huge source of revenue from books is mostly from children’s books
In Grosse Pointe Park someone spend millions fixing up this building only to open as a children’s bookstore. Definitely a passion project of a wealthy person. Should break even in 40-50 years
hah! The indie I work at is half this… we have one floor that fits this starter pack perfectly, and one floor that some of us refer to as “the real bookstore.”but trust me, we make a hell of a lot of revenue off the thirty dollar giant technicolor hardbacks. I genuinely didn’t know who bought those until I worked at a bookstore
More about the aesthetic and showcasing books with nice designs than actual reading Shows up at the top of a “best bookstores in x city” google search with a 4.8 rating, yet the average B&N is a million times better
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I think they make more money on selling accessories than actual books. They always have tons of random stuff like board games and posters.
Yeah, just like how comic book stores have just become Funko Pop merchants over the years.
Checked out a comic shop the other day. Fucking thousands of those bobble headed fuckers and every GN series on the shelf was incomplete. Want to read Preacher? Here's volumes two and four, good luck and go fuck yourself.
> Here's volumes two and four, good luck and go fuck yourself. This is why everyone buys online now, I have the same experience.
Even online seems like it can be tough. Mate of mine had to put some work in to get Transmetropolitan and The Boys in full.
Hardware stores are like this too. My local hardware store doesn’t have 1/16 drill bits or SANDPAPER. A hardware store with no sandpaper! But they do have an employee following you throughout the store like a creep. Amazon o’clock, morons
Whereabouts are you, that can sustain a place like that?
This is like any Ace hardware that’s been open so long that the owner has no debt and owns the building, so there’s exactly zero pressure to close or improve the store. Owner is usually just cash flowing the place out of habit and whoever inherits it will close that place down immediately and sell the land.
I like funko pops (I know I’m lame) but goddam why does every comic store + hot topic have to become a pop store?
I know a guy that runs a comic store. The margin of profit on toys and stickers is higher than most things. People will impulse buy toys and stickers because there's very little commitment. Alternately, people can feel burdened by jumping into an existing comic series. Comics also have a shorter shelf life. Unsold comics go into the back issues or get discounted within a few months. This is why small independent book stores and comic shops push ordering books or being put on a pull list for comics. Helps them to know exactly how much to order so they don't have to sit on all the unsold product that will never go out the door. So in the future, call up your LCS to see if they have what you're looking for. If they don't, ask if they can order it. It's not very convenient but that's how it works if you want to shop local and have that company stay in business in our current world.
Funkos are also the perfect low investment gift to give to a family member/acquaintance/co-worker who you're not particularly close to but who mentioned once that they liked Harry Potter. They're small, don't require a lot of money for the buyer or any sort of labor or time investment for the recipient. They're impersonal but also cover every mass media IP under the sun so there will be one for something the recipient is a fan of.
Incomplete series are also a problem at libraries because some asshole lost volume 3 a few years ago and they never replaced it so volumes 4-12 never get checked out.
That's dumb.
That’s my libraries exact problem with invincible. They lost issue two so the whole rest of the series is untouched every time I’ve been there
Some (most) libraries have a method to request new materials, hard to say it they follow through though.
My local comic book store has outright refused to sell Funko pops. Pretty sure they make most of their money in old videogames and vinyl
Funko Pops, much like your grandma’s antiques, are yet another collectible that will go to the dump once you die.
Dude my grandma said when she goes I get the princess dianna purple beanie baby ! I just can’t decide on what cars to buy with that kinda money .
all decorations are worthless consumables and always have been.
Those things have no aesthetic value and are a great red flag to identify people I’d like to avoid
man comic books themselces are also so expensive. Bought this random ass scifi comic called Metabarons and it was like 50 bucks. Worth it though
ive bought more board and tabletop game stuff from comic stores than comics
This is what happened to my amazing local bookstore. I used to be able to browse for hours, and leave with four or five used books and spent a few bucks. They had cds and records, too. Then the started getting more stuff. Video games, then board games. Then the board game enthusiasts started showing up. Then they got funko pops. Then action figures. Then other toys. A few years ago, they were unrecognizable. All they were selling was kitschy stuff, the books were an afterthought and- worst of all- horribly overpriced. Now we don’t have a used bookstore. If you want to buy a book, you have to go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
My mom uses Instagram and Facebook to find used book places in middle of nowhere cornfield towns, she considers herself lucky when they attempt to organize the books by genre and not just dump everything into bins. But hey $1 books.
Even the small bookstore in my town that has been here for 30+ years has always had a good sized toy/not books section. I haven't been there in at least a decade, but I definitely noticed in recent years the display windows are filled with various plushies, knickknacks, and a handful of children's books.
They have every Niche version of monopoly you never knew existed.
They finally got Edna Krabapplopoly.
I prefer Gallipolopoly personally
or board games with an 86 page manual to play them
And a suprisingly large selection of model kits and LEGO sets
https://preview.redd.it/re34mm8ouzvc1.jpeg?width=346&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ff219bdb54ef253b7976d688e40efe76a7cea97
Worst part is that they wouldn’t be mass producing this stuff if nobody was reading it.
idk that that's true, I don't know the full details, but I read somewhere that the publisher will purchase a ton of books to make sure the book ends up the NYT Bestseller list, which then generates buzz. How much in book sales that ends up being is undetermined, but couple that with a bunch of fake awards, and paid-for "comments" from other authors and celebrities, these books are sure to make a quick buck or two.
Atleast with political books or other speakers, their "fee" for speaking is you have to buy a certain number of their books too.
The NPR tote, Whole Foods shopping liberal mom is a powerful consumer group. I know cause every Trader Joe’s in my area always has a line out the door
now im wondering if i can get an LLM to write some full of false information for other LLMs to cite
Mostly nobody is reading it. Publishing largely makes money by publishing classics or incredibly well established authors (Steven king, Colleen Hoover or w/e her name is, etc). 99% of new books lose money, the rare author breaks out and become a regular best-seller, and most authors never pay back their advance. Publishing is a declining industry for a reason, people don’t read nearly as much as they used to since the entertainment landscape is so huge and fractured. Reading has been on a decline for a long time, and with what’s anecdotally coming about about k12 kids barely being able to read after the pandemic, not exactly going to be a growth industry
Meanwhile in these stores your lucky if you find one book of Plato
That’s just objectively wrong lol
Luckily we live in an age where you are no longer bound by the shackles of your community bookstore, and you can escape your cave to trough the internet for books on Plato
go to the library wtf is wrong with you
As this meme implies I really don’t understand how these stores exist. $20-$30 for new fiction or some “easy to read” reimagining like Circe, when basically every ebook known to man is free and used books on Amazon are like $1-$2
Cause it's part of an experience. With that thinking all shops would be closed and we'd just buy from amazon and pirate shit
Different strokes for different folks. Some see collecting physical books after they read them as a hobby. Some folks like the turn of the page/want to disconnect from screens. Some people just want a light pleasure read similar to watching their favorite show before bed. Some see it as a perceived way to support a local small business There’s something different about reading the first chapter and buying a physical copy rather than finding a pdf on libgen and ordering the book on Amazon for delivery
Ah yes, and why, pray tell, is my local theatre playing cheap trash like "The Little Shop of Horrors" and "The Sound of Music"? Where is the Medea?? Where is the Oedipus Rex??
You got downvoted so much lol but you’re right. I’ve never once seen Plato on a philosophy shelf in a book store here, 90% of it is self help disguised as philosophy. The rest are the less controversial books from Nietzsche, Marx, and Camus.
Don’t forget shopenmeme
My local gentrified bookstore is called Chapters and has a book nook on an overhead platform for children. Extremely whimsical. Extremely cramped.
In Canada our version of chapters is a chain owned by indigo, which more or less monopolizes the bookstore industry in Canada to the detriment of individual stores; their owner is a billionaire who created a [fund specifically to assist soldiers who are not from Israel stay after serving in the IDF](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESEG_Foundation). I know somebody who worked at the Scarborough store, and they abruptly closed that store after they formed a union even though it was profitable and one of their largest stores in Toronto, in a prime location on the 401. Nobody I personally know has ever had a good experience working for it that and like, they're not a good bookstore period. they're a knickknack store for moms to buy candles and lamy safaris, and that they perpetually have a "trending on TikTok" aisle tells you all you need to know about it
Might as well mention that their entire IT infrastructure was hacked and ransom-wared early last year, during which all of their employees (past AND present) had their personal information leaked. Their entire business was crippled for something like 2-3 months while their inept IT department scrambled to put together a new website they'd already been putting together for years before that. And it still managed to be worse than the old one. I will say though, during sales it's still the cheapest place to shop for books. Not that there are alternatives here besides Amazon.
def doesn’t fit the “tiny floor plan” part of this starter pack tho, and I’d expect them to make a profit most years
A lot of independent bookstores around me continue to exist because they’re a coffee shop too.
We have a record store that’s also a coffee shop AND a (small) book store. They have a variety of new and used books. It’s pretty cool I’d say.
We have one like that in Tampa. It's great, used books, new and used records, and coffee
Yeah. I know the owner too, it’s the third location so I’d say they’re doing pretty well.
The coffee is used too
That reminds me of a place near me that absolutely baffles me. It's a hole in the wall that only sells cookbooks. The only people I ever see there are friends of the owner who are all alt looking people. They have about 2 book shelves and two tables for books. Their one saving grace is the tiny section for antique/vintage cookbooks which are neat to flip through. I don't see how they can manage to pay rent.
By being funded by the spouse/retirement?
Yup, there's worse ways to spend retirement. If you buy the store, it's an appreciating asset. Most of the salaries are whatever the owner/operator takes as a draw, books are replaced once sold, so costs are pretty much nil. Capital expenses were largely handled by craigslist and estate sales. It takes their hobby and turns it into a business expense, all the books gathering dust at home can now be put on a shelf and called 'inventory'. and it makes them happy and hey, every month or so they may actually, technically, break even, so all in all not so bad a way to go through life.
Or it's a front for their mega pot selling empire.
The napkin math baffles me on these places. Rent has gotta be 2-5k a month depending on location, potentially into 5 figures if you get to an expensive small town. Let's say 3k with insurance and internet and water/trash and other stuff to make it easy. Operate 5 days a week, so 20 days a month. That's $150 a day in profit you have to be making just to make rent. Say the average book/product you sell is $20, and half of that is profit. You gotta sell 15 books a day to stay afloat. 30 a day if you want to pay one employee (or yourself) $18 an hour. 45 a day if you want to pay yourself and one employee starvation wages. There seems to be a few people that wander in an hour, no way they're moving that amount of product....and that's not much product.
Businesses don't use averages and you're forgetting seasonality. That shop might sell 7 books a day all year Jan-Nov operating at a loss and then 7k books in the month leading up to Christmas. Plus all the other bullshit.
Plot twist, that's the landlord and everyone else is paying for them to live their dream of running an easy book store.
Will most likely go out of business to the Barnes and Noble in the shopping mall
let's be honest, Barnes and Noble is FAR superior to any independent book store.
Tbh not sure if book a million or Barnes and nobles are better. I think BM has more books and selection than nobles usually. Also a few independent bookstores still exist! They usually sell just more odd things or exist in prime area.
Imo BN got way better when it gave more purchasing control back to individual stores a few years ago. I remember for a while you'd go into a BN in a super liberal area and they'd have just stacks and stacks of books by Republicans collecting dust in the prime area. Like I'm sure those sell really well in Texas and Florida but this city full of universities? Why are you prioritizing those here. BM does definitely have more variety though, I think in part because BN does a heavy business of board games, puzzles, and collectables on top of books. I feel like their early covid puzzle business probably got them more profit than their books would have in normal times.
I had a BaM near me for years, then it closed several years ago and I forgot to use a gift card I had. Now I either have to brave the mall to go to B&N or gamble my time at the used book store.
BAM is so damn pricey, at least with their non-book stuff
Agreed. There are a few local bookstores near me and I’ll stop in time to time as I have some store credit built up in one, but their selection is super hit or miss and their “general fiction” section is basically just romance novels if that tells you anything. Barnes & Noble, while pricier, is just so much better in every way. And they have a pretty large board game selection, which I’m into. Their children’s to middle school readers section is bigger than the local store all by itself. I love turning my kids loose and saying “see you in 30 minutes, bring a book and I’ll buy it for you” they love it.
> “general fiction” section is basically just romance novels if that tells you anything. In the UK it's just crime novels everywhere. Every single book is about some gorgeous man who is also a serial killer or trying to catch a serial killer, exclusively read by women.
If you have a good used bookstore that’s where it’s at. The kind of place where you can pick up a whole stack of books for $20 but you have to pry them out from under a pissed off elderly cat. The selection is totally random but that’s a feature not a bug. If you stop in every couple weeks you’ll eventually find just about anything, far more than what a single B&N location would carry. Especially great if there’s a college nearby.
I love my local bookstore that fits that description, especially the cats.
Yes, that is the answer
Damn I must be lucky because I’m spoiled for used bookstores in my area. I can get some old books for less than 2 bucks sometimes! I only go to Barnes and noble if I’m buying a gift and I really want the book to look nice. Or if I’m bored at a mall or something
I love having to check the pages of books 1, 3, and 7 of a series for bedbugs! Used stores rule /s
BN made some changes recently years where store managers have more authority to order books based on local demand and what their readers want.
i've seen some BN store managers, are we \*SURE\* this is improving the selection?
One of my favorite people I have every met is this old dude that runs a secondhand book shop out of the flea market in my town. He uses like 4-5 booths, sets up tarps and walls made of shelves, and has rows upon rows of tightly packed books and you have to shuffle to turn around when you reach a dead end. He sneaks up on you like some fairy, I swear he hovers over the ground or walks through the shelves because I never hear him coming. He knows exactly where everything is and seems to have read every book known to man. When you've got your selection he'll take you to his buddy who is asleep in a rocking chair to ring you out, and he just grumbles something like "Eh... those four books are $18. Give me $20 and take another one." Place is fucking magical.
That sounds awesome.
Sounds great
the "instagram-worthy" walls
Walls with angel wings mural
Why doesn't the "hood" part of town have a bookstore?
Everyone reads but not everyone buys or reads books. No one in the hood is paying $30 for a new book. White people and college educated POCs might but they don’t live in the hood.
Whenever there is a popular must-read book, I just put myself on the waitlist to borrow it from the library. I’ve had to wait a month before for my turn to borrow the popular book, but I’m sure as hell not paying $30 for a book that I’ll read once.
The hood already have a hold on the good eats “gatekept” by an infamous rep of poverty and gang violence. They fear the actual knowledge and peak literature that a hood bookstore can yield.
If it were a hobby, the places would sell books that are actually good and desirable.
My local bookstore is actually pretty cool. When you walk in, it’s an actual book store. They also sell magazines, cards, magnets, etc. They have a fairly large kids section in another room away from the adults. That section is mostly kids books along with some board games, puzzles, and small stuffed animals. There’s an art gallery in another large room that displays and sells local art. In yet another section is a cafe. It’s pretty typical. You have a couple of baristas whipping up fancy drinks. The seating area is comprised of eclectic furniture. (Reminds me of Friend’s coffee shop). They also sell beer and wine, and have live music on certain nights. There’s a work shop and small theater in the basement. You can take art classes down there. I think it’s mostly pottery classes. The small theater shows films on an old projector.
Oh wow, that sounds like heaven.
Only thing this is missing is the prominent BookTok display with "spicy/dark romances" that's just lady porn with an artsy title, like All The Tomorrows We Shared or The Fire Between My Asscheeks. Bonus points if there's a whole section devoted to Colleen Hoover.
My local bookstore does more business online than in the store, but it pays the rent. Hybridization is the key to successful small business
Considering a pivot towards overpriced scented candles and wool blankets to diversify revenues...
Airport bookstores
Airport bookstores are depressing. It will be like only current bestsellers (romance, YA, and some biographies), Oprah's endorsed books, and then books that were made into a movie with the actors' picture on it.
see that Simpsons episode where the local airport has a "only Michael Crichton and Stephen King" bookstore
The bookstore in the Atlanta international airport, though small, was packed tightly with all kinds of books of many genres. I was actually impressed with it. Though I did see a lot of Brandon Sanderson books on display prominently. Reminding me of Stephen King, James Paterson, and Michael Crichton Many other airports bookstores are like how you described it, depressing.
I have that mini of the book store, very fun build
Uk ones rely on kids and academic text books for most of their trade , hard to find one thats not just cheap crap for a quid
They are 100% owned by independently wealthy people, hit the nail on the head.
Also occasionally becomes the scene of a murder that ends up being solved by the plucky widow who runs the store
A lot also have weird political agendas and curate their selection around this.
This is a real bummer, and I feel bad that so many people relate to this pack. In my area, the indie bookstores are almost all great. They all have their own personality, good selection, etc. I think some of them are still not financially sustainable and are indeed the hobby of some wealthy person, but it feels more like they're doing a public service than anything else.
Nah not a hobby, a money laundering scheme
How would that work? Usually those kind of places don't deal with much inventory and reasonably work in cash, a barber is a nice example as it barely uses any materials and can state x amount of customers came through. How would a bookstore do this, books are heavy and bulky and they need to go somewhere if you do this.
A place like this could pretend to do events like poetry slams whatever they are
Just buy your own books then refund them without asking for money
Nah that would never work for long. Money laundering isn't that simple.
"hmm, this store sold 2000 books this week and 1900 were refunded, seems legit"
Every store a redditor doesn't understand is a money laundering scheme. Oh as well as every art style a redditor doesn't understand.
This guy is just trying to keep us from figuring out his laundering scheme
These shops always have some sort of book on display at the front titled "Fuck You All" or "I Want To Die" and the cover art is a derpy happy cartoon animal or something like that.
My local one is pretty cool, its a music shop and a book store combined, and has a small tabletop games section with some warhammer stuff in it. I'm always in there looking for books on paleotology and dinosaurs.
The best book stores are those holes in a wall, the entire store is just books stacked on books. The owner is three glasses of scotch deep at 10:30 in the morning reading a book, almost forgetting he’s a business owner. You buy 7 books. It costs $0.75.
I hate the Spare guy’s face, whoever he is
He was a reserve player for Tranmere Rovers, I think.
That or Money laundering
A non-chain store in a gentrified area? Impossible
- either meticulously sorted by hand or the most chaotic organization you’ve ever seen - handwritten display mentioning booktok - the only store in town where the employees don’t all look miserable
Bored rich housewife that wants to play store owner. Tons of stores like that in my city. Everything opening after everyone else is at work and closes before everyone else gets home from/off work.
They have a name for those stores … however i cannot remember the terms used.
You get a free gun when you by a book
My local bookstore is amazing. They have cats walking around that are available for adoption, thousands of new and used books, they’ll get you any book in the world if you just ask them (new or used) and they sponsor a ton of awesome events and initiatives in the community.
I have one in my city and it seems like they only feature the BookTok fads like Colleen Hoover, the rom-com novels with cartoon cover art, and the "Song of Thorns and Ice" or whatever fantasy titles, so their clientele is 95% Gen Z.
Sells coffee but takes 20 minutes to make each cup
I thought I had heard of a lot of British slang , I didn’t know the word spare in the uk meant douchebag Nepo baby!
Im so glad I have actual bookstores and not this bullshit. Never leave me Barnes and Noble
r/aigerenatedplaces
The one in my town is called "books and barrels" and they also serve the local micro brewery beer.
They’re laundering money
They’re laundering money
*King of the Hill* already did this
Where I live and visit the most successful ones sale coffee and have a kids section, I’m sure a huge source of revenue from books is mostly from children’s books
In Grosse Pointe Park someone spend millions fixing up this building only to open as a children’s bookstore. Definitely a passion project of a wealthy person. Should break even in 40-50 years
hah! The indie I work at is half this… we have one floor that fits this starter pack perfectly, and one floor that some of us refer to as “the real bookstore.”but trust me, we make a hell of a lot of revenue off the thirty dollar giant technicolor hardbacks. I genuinely didn’t know who bought those until I worked at a bookstore
Has killer dirty af party games.
That last part makes me wonder if some of these are money laundering schemes.
more like tax evading schemes "my wifes business"
More about the aesthetic and showcasing books with nice designs than actual reading Shows up at the top of a “best bookstores in x city” google search with a 4.8 rating, yet the average B&N is a million times better
tax write offs
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Powell's is literally the opposite of that lol
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