Some notes on Barnes and Noble--the last national bookstore chain standing.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/10/barnes-noble-cfo-joseph-lombardi-resigns-.html

Went into the Calabasas, CA store Tuesday night and noticed that, before closing, the only place to pay for book/other purchases was through the cashier in the coffee/food area.

Was at the store in Woodland Hills last night and noticed that, like Borders, B and N is staking a fair amount of store space on selling to perceived "hot" consumers.  In B and N's case, it's children (whereas Borders in its latter phase was feverish to sell TWILIGHT and other teen-goth romances).

Guessing that B and N will announce more store closings in 2012.

[UPDATE 10/26/11: I was prescient.  The B and N at the Westside Pavilion in West L.A. will close by the end of this year: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2011/10/barnes_noble_westside_pav.php]

Borders will close 200 stores--a list and a post-mortem.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_borders0216_20110216.html

What I'm about to write wouldn't have passed the Literary Correctness test in, say, the year 2000.

Back in the day, no one would have imagined the corporate book chains of Borders and Barnes and Noble (then underpricing many independent stores out of business) would face the store-closings and bankruptcy filings of one-decade-plus-later.

And, to give one example, you certainly couldn't go into the now-quite-dead Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica and carry a bag from either of the Independence-Slaughtering Corporate Behemoths.

In terms of my experience, there were (and are) good and bad Borders stores.  Some of them had better stocking of nonbestsellers than others; some also had a fairly deep selection of CDs and DVDs (until the Great Culling of 2008-09).  And some stores had more friendly, helpful staff members than others (who will be nameless, but employed certain young-and-sometimes-older people who thought of customers as something to be endured).

As poetry gatherings in L.A. are concerned, three of the earliest readings I look back on fondly were those taking place in Westwood, Santa Monica and Glendale.  The Westwood and Santa Monica stores are now closed; the Glendale store made the dreaded List of 200.

In reading the death list, I was disappointed to discover the imminent closing of the store at the Pike in downtown Long Beach--they have a Wednesday reading and actually stock local icons such as Gerald Locklin.

Also, I was semi-surprised that the Northridge Mall store (which has suffered from sometimes below-par staff and is more run-down than it used to be) was spared.  It gets a fair amount of shoppers, but I was guessing that Borders would have pulled the trigger to get out of their lease with the mall owners.

It will be interesting to find out--for all the media whining and moaning about imminent death of brick-and-mortar bookstores and overemphasizing the sales figures of e-books--whether independent and second-hand stores will again gain the deserved traction they lost in the past decade.

Corporate bookstores' business model: on the ropes.

Given the rumors one hears about the state of Borders' financial health, one wonders if it might be time for corporate bookstore chains (which, at their most robust, helped to obliterate independent stores that couldn't/wouldn't offer deep discounts) to alter their "buy the hot new predetermined bestseller" business model.

Perhaps Borders and Barnes & Noble could consider some empathy training for customer-phobic staff members, as well as reinstating more community-friendly programs (including, yes, poetry readings in some stores) without worrying about what effect they may have on the bottom line.

My guess is that the above suggestions will be ignored. And the two once-mighty megachains are almost certainly praying hard that Dan Brown's new pulp thriller will cause customers to stampede into the stores this fall and save them from bankruptcy and/or going-out-of-business sales.

And to think most of this could be avoided if these stores could just manage the task of selling all kinds of books instead of only a few "hot" volumes.

Borders Books cut-cut-cutting DVDs and CDs from stores.

If you wander into a Borders Bookstore (as I did yesterday), you'll see red-tagged 30% discounts on a number of CDs and DVDs.
[UPDATE 3/23/09: I just received a standard customer e-mail from Borders which indicates that this sale isn't happening in certain cities such as NYC and San Francisco.]

Apparently, the chain is delivering on its desire to cut CD/DVD space by 70% (as was recently written about in ROLLING STONE).
[UPDATE 3/26/09: A story here confirms this: http://www.switched.com/2009/03/26/borders-to-quit-selling-cds-and-dvds/?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl4link5http%3A%2F%2Fwww.switched.com%2F2009%2F03%2F26%2Fborders-to-quit-selling-cds-and-dvds%2F]

Given Borders' continued commitment to keeping audiovisual content priced as high as possible (except for sales on older catalog product), one shouldn't be surprised that the available stock will be trimmed.

For the casual customer, this means remaining items will likely consist of what the chain predetermines as "best-selling". And the young staff will be losing their voices repeating the mantra: "We don't carry that in our store. We can special order it--or you can just go on our website."

It's easy to make a paranoid jump (given the company's financial state: http://www.borders.com/online/store/PartnerSiteInvestorsView) that entire sections of books may be next.

Poetry, perhaps?

The new battle cry of the impatient young: "He/she's like.....90 years old."

I heard the above phrase yesterday from a young woman working at a corporate bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. She was using it as a part of a conversation with a male colleague.

Heaven forbid if you're a senior citizen and slow to give information to someone much younger working in a service position.

And my wife overheard someone using the exact same phrase recently.

Heartlessness is something corporate America thrives on in its search for megaprofits for just a few at the top (CEOs, large shareholders). And perhaps those citizens who think people like General Electric's Jack Welch are ubernifty--plus those who joyfully mocked John McCain (who spent the last few months self-destructing his "maverick" myth) for being "old" can take responsibility for the behavior of the young men and women who have made "he/she's like.....90 years old" a synonym for "I don't want to take any more time with you than I have to because I'm not working here forever."

Let's all prepare for the young to keep singing "We are the champions/No time for losers." And pray we have good health and enough of a nestegg to avoid going to nursing homes where impatience (sometimes physical as well as verbal) and the ever-popular rite of orderlies/nurses stealing patients' belongings are rampant realities.