Five
years ago I was lamenting the closing of Borders – not just a store, but the
entire chain. It was the low-point in
the book industry. Combined with the raging Great Recession and the e-book
explosion that created uncertainty and left the book publishing industry in a
quandary.
The
book world sounds healthier today.
Bookstore sales are up. Printed
book sales are up. Audiobooks are
expanding. New indie bookstores are opening and flourishing. But then comes along a piece of bad news I
just can’t seem to reconcile.
A
large bookstore is closing today in Manhattan and nothing will replace it.
Barnes
& Noble is closing its huge corner store with two floors on Third Avenue and
East 54th Street, the one that anchored one of the city’s richest
neighborhoods, a well-populated area of residents, corporate offices, and
retailers.
I
don’t know why it went out other than the building it was housed in wants to
renovate. But if the store was coming
back afterwards, they would’ve said so.
If it was temporarily relocating, they would’ve said so. Instead, it had a lame-ass sign on the
interior glass wall saying it thanks patrons for coming for 21 years. If it wants to really thank us it would
service us and open up a store nearby. It
merely instructs us to use the nearest store on 46th Street and
Fifth Avenue.
B&N
has a golden opportunity to grow with New York City. This place has over 20 million people in any
given day, based on commuters from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Westchester,
Long Island, and Rockland County, as well as vacationers, business trip
visitors, college students, and 8.4 million residents. Their bookstores should be available to
service the curious minds of the masses.
With every store closing they concede the marketplace to Amazon.
People
can’t go looking for bookstores. No, they
need to be there as staples of the community, readily available when you need
one and always there to be discovered by wandering souls strolling the
streets. Once the store closes, that
business is lost and maybe 10% – if that – gets shifted to other stores. The rest just disappears or morphs to Amazon.
Maybe
rents are too high and books just can’t compete against higher-priced items in
a city that houses some of the world’s richest retailers. Come June 30th when this store closes, I’ll be
mourning what was and what could have been.
RECENT STORIES
Is there true free speech for advertising?
Social Media Shares actually Fail To Yield Clicks
Do you really know literary geography?
25 books that really changed America
Is it time to self-publish?
10 tenets of free speech
Antique car show inspires ideas for marketing books
Do writers know the truth?
Would you buy book insurance?
Have you surveyed your readers?
Google This: Book Thieves Earn Supreme Court Win
2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkit
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.