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11/7/2009 3:49:25 PM
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Bruce
Posts 158
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So the family owned, 44-year old Book and Art Den in Banff was closed a few months ago. The owners cited the recent local opening of the Canadian chain Indigo books as a contributing factor. This came on the heels of the closure of McNalley-Robinson book store in the downtown core and the loss of about 90% of the used book store over the last fifteen years. And feast your eyes on the debacles below:
"Borders to Close 200 Waldenbooks Stores: Borders Group Inc. will close 200 Waldenbooks stores in January, cutting 1,500 jobs. The company plans to focus on more profitable superstores, and will leave only about 130 mall-based stores open. Borders shut down 112 stores during the 2008 fiscal year, and closed an average of 66 stores per year between 2001 and 2007."
AND!
"Barnes & Noble to Close Remaining B. Dalton Stores: After closing 35 to 40 B. Dalton stores a year for years now, Barnes & Noble is preparing to shutter the last remaining group of 50 Dalton outlets."
A triumph of mediocrity. Soon, if you want a book, you're either going to have to get in a car and drive to one of these charmless big-box stores or order on-line. Bleh.
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11/7/2009 3:58:29 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 4528
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Hey, I celebrate Illiteracy each and every day at work. Each time I pitch a worn out copy of a 1950s edition of "The Sound and the Fury" to make room for another Hannah Montana/iCarly film festival, I feel like I'm doing my part.
Ah. B. Dalton. Haven't seen one of those in years. Those bright, prison jumpsuit orange bags, the row after row of the latest releases.
Our Waldenbooks was long ago converted to a BevMo. Which does fuel writing dreams, but isn't quite the same.
Still, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton were little prerunners to Borders and Barnes & Noble. It's places like the Book and Art Den that are worth really getting depressed about. The little guys always have the neatest stuff.
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"A thagizer? What's that do? Hey, what's this button for? Uh-oh. Sorry about that, man. It'll grow back, right?"
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11/7/2009 6:15:49 PM
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Madison Bridgen
Posts 338
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In Canada, they closed the Coles branch a few years ago. This was the bookstore in shopping malls (Chapters/Indigo owns all the bookstores in Canada). This shut down their entire mall chain, so there's only the mega stores to go to. This pissed me off, because there was a time when my mall had two, count'em two, bookstores. Now it's just food and clothes and assininity.
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We are currently living in the Dinosaurs' post-apocalyptic world.
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11/7/2009 8:05:39 PM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 465
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Madison wrote:
In Canada, they closed the Coles branch a few years ago.
Oh, man. Way back when I discovered science fiction, I went to high school in Toronto. I used to pass by a Coles every day on the way to/from school. It was just a small one (on Bloor St between Spadina and Bathurst) but I'd be in there a couple of times a week to see if they had anything new. They probably didn't have more than a twenty or thirty titles, in a wire rack all face out. There just wasn't much SF in those days (mid/late 60s). But I have a fond memory for Coles bookstores.
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- Alastair
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11/7/2009 8:15:26 PM
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Madison Bridgen
Posts 338
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Me too, that's where I went to buy my pokemans novels when I was a kid. They never had as much as Chapters and Indigo.
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We are currently living in the Dinosaurs' post-apocalyptic world.
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11/7/2009 8:33:41 PM
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Bruce
Posts 158
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Yup, I was happy with Coles [I'm in Calgary btw]. And WH Smith. Chnook Mall used to have three, count 'em, three bookstores...now it has a Chapters. Big whup.
Someone pointed out that this latest brain-fart by the bean counters will scuttle the impulse book buying aesthete. Pages on Kensington is the last independent in Calgary, a city of a million. How lame is that?
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11/7/2009 8:41:46 PM
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Kevin C.
Posts 1686
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Growing up, one of the joys of visiting a large town was dropping by a bookstore. There was a Christian Bookstore nearby - for us that was just 25 miles away, and you could find paperbacks at department stores and Five and Dimes at that same distance, but they had a somewhat limited selection of fiction. I have never known the joys of a local bookstore. And though I mourned the passing of two "local" bookstores - they were thirty-odd and forty-odd miles away, they were more boutiques than anything else. To this day I do most of my book shopping in bargain bins. That's where I found Little Fuzzy, A Gift of Sanctuary, and other gems who's authors and editors may or may not appreciate me mentioning (I have to wonder how some of these books wound up there, for most aren't garbage, but I digress). For specialty book or a particular work of fiction, I turn to online shopping, just as in my younger days I ordered fiction books through school. It's not that much of a change for me.
I have to wonder how small bookstores can remain in business. In the case of one, you could order books they didn't have. Online shopping did away with that advantage. The rising price of books has to squeeze them as much as or more so than the big online retailers.
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11/7/2009 11:49:32 PM
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Alex
Posts 1374
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The new books are about exclusively from a modest sized Borders, hereabouts. I can only think of one independent purveryor of new books. I don't know how Tom stays in business. The store's not so big, the selection limited. There's hardly anyone ever in there.
But then there's the Tin Can Mailman An ancient building with mazes of weird cubbies, all stacked to the gills with castoff books. Take the tour and don't forget to say "hi" to Debbie.
This is the SF section. (only. The fantasy is in a whole 'nother room through that little gap in the upper left of the pic.)
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We try not to let over-zealous adherance to facts interfere with the spinning of a good yarn, or a bad joke.
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11/8/2009 1:05:42 AM
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Bruce
Posts 158
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Brilliant, Alex! Reminds me of the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle.
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11/8/2009 5:31:03 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 3572
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I remember hearing they ended "Reading Rainbow" here recently because it was seen as more important for kids to know how to read at all rather than encouraging them to like or recommend books. I understood it, but somehow it seemed a bit like an odd kind of retreat. Like RR assumed kids by age 7-10 are capable of reading, but maybe just not motivated to, to assuming that kids that age are probably still illiterate.
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"Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies." Federico Garcia Lorca
"I was going down a long hallway, and at the end of it there was a bright light a kind man with a beard reaching his hand out to me, beckoning me, and he looked at me as I got closer.. and said: 'Hey buddy, can you spare some change? I want a cup of coffee!'" Tom Servo
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11/8/2009 8:25:02 AM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 4528
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I don't remember what they built after shutting down the legendary Acres of Books in Long Beach, but even protests from Ray Bradbury couldn't save it. Alex's picture kind of reminds me of the front counter of that place. Except plants would never survive there.
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"A thagizer? What's that do? Hey, what's this button for? Uh-oh. Sorry about that, man. It'll grow back, right?"
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11/8/2009 11:49:30 AM
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John E. Rogers, Jr.
Posts 2170
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Bill Moonroe wrote:
I don't remember what they built after shutting down the legendary Acres of Books in Long Beach, but even protests from Ray Bradbury couldn't save it. Alex's picture kind of reminds me of the front counter of that place. Except plants would never survive there.
Didn't the city install one of those automated F-451 Used Book incineration kiosks?
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11/8/2009 1:47:16 PM
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Madison Bridgen
Posts 338
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That picture makes me envious; there's stores like that in Toronto, but none anywhere around me.
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We are currently living in the Dinosaurs' post-apocalyptic world.
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11/8/2009 1:50:13 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 4528
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John E. Rogers, Jr. wrote:
Bill Moonroe wrote: I don't remember what they built after shutting down the legendary Acres of Books in Long Beach, but even protests from Ray Bradbury couldn't save it. Alex's picture kind of reminds me of the front counter of that place. Except plants would never survive there. Didn't the city install one of those automated F-451 Used Book incineration kiosks?
Either that, or a Starbucks.
For anyone who hasn't been there, Acres of Books was a used bookstore that filled two or three connected warehouses with books of every possible kind. You really didn't want to be there after dark, because skylights provided most of the light, and there's no way you'd find your way out through the maze of shelves without daylight.
edited by Bill Moonroe on 11/8/2009
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"A thagizer? What's that do? Hey, what's this button for? Uh-oh. Sorry about that, man. It'll grow back, right?"
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11/8/2009 5:25:18 PM
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AspE
Posts 1231
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...I thought this was going to be about Kanye West...........:-)
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11/8/2009 9:25:33 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 4528
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AspE wrote:
...I thought this was going to be about Kanye West...........:-)
Oh, no you dinn't.
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"A thagizer? What's that do? Hey, what's this button for? Uh-oh. Sorry about that, man. It'll grow back, right?"
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