From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 10:54:46 -0600

So many of the "classics" these days (in the public domain) are
available through Project Gutenberg and other free sources. My first
download to my iPad several years ago was War and Peace. I wonder how
much a difference the availability of these free editions has made to
the stocking of retail stores like B&N?

Sandy Thatcher


> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:32:44 -0500
>
> Liblicense readers know my amateur counting habits.  Today a report
> from two recent visits to Barnes and Noble -- one store in Clarendon
> VA (a DC suburb in a mall-let shared with an Apple Store, Chicos,
> Container Store, etc.), and one in Milford CT (in a strip mall with
> Walmart, a block from a larger but not high end indoor mall).
>
> I wandered both stores trying to estimate floor space and came up with
> the same count in both places:  40% of these B&N stores' floor space
> is devoted to what I would call books -- things in hard or soft covers
> with words in them, for people to read.  The children's section of
> both stores has grown remarkably, as also the toys and games sections,
> while magazines, Nooks, DVDs, gifts, and the coffee bar fill out the
> space.  I do count as books things like self-help and remaindered gift
> books and B&N imprints of various kinds.  Once upon a time a bookstore
> "superstore" (B&N or Borders) boasted of carrying 150,000 volumes.
> That number is way, way smaller now, and I wonder how far they are
> from carrying a line roughly equal to that of an old Waldenbooks or B.
> Dalton.
>
> One way in which the slimming down of stock happens is by thinning
> out the supply of older and classic authors.  In fiction and
> literature today in CT, there was one volume of Waugh, two Updike
> novels and two volumes of short stories, four Nabokov novels and the
> volume of his short stories, no Proust, a respectable collection of
> Hemingway, and four novels of Faulkner.  In the glory days of the
> bookstore superstores, I liked to say that I was confident I could
> always pick up a copy of the next "classic" (broadly defined) title I
> wanted to read.  Now, I have to transfer that confidence to Amazon
> or other web-based sellers.
>
> Jim O'Donnell