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