posted on 30 Oct 2022

Whatever happened to the books in Barnes & Noble?

Here at the Letterpress Project we’ve been looking forward to a long-delayed trip to meet-up with friends in Charlotte, North Carolina. As well as catching up with all the news and gossip, we used to make a point of visiting the local branch of Barnes & Noble to spend an hour or two browsing through the piles of new books and tables of remainder stock - it had become something of a tradition to go there for an afternoon and maybe even grab coffee and cake. In anticipation, we’d even packed an extra  collapsable bag to take back through customs if needed.

In the long, dark British winter evenings, we’d wistfully talk about how great it would be if we had a similar shop to visit here at home in the Malvern Hills - so you can imagine that when we arrived at our friends’ home, a visit to B&N was pretty much top of our list. But, to our dismay, disappointment was waiting for us as we pulled into the parking lot.

The first warning that things were not as they had been hits you as you go through the doors. Gone were the tables and free-standing shelves of remainder stock that used to fill the floor as you entered. To the right was the space given over to magazines and periodicals which then blended into the cafe seating area - much as it was before; but to the left of the front door the small space previously given over to ‘gifts’ had expanded dramatically. And it seems that these extra gifts - mugs, tote bags, bookends and other frippery - had been added at the expense of books.

Upstairs space for bookshelves had also given way to franchised toys and plush animals associated with the children’s book section. The adult fiction section, which was never expansive is even more modest and carries very little other than mainstream, current titles. You would struggle to find copies of many of the great works of 20th and early 21st century classics here. The only section that seems to have retained its identity was the back wall of modern hardback children’s illustrated books - which still provides a great selection of some of the best current children’s picture books. Hats off to whoever is in charge of defending the quality of that part of the shop because they are doing a stout job in the face of what is obviously a drive to downplay books in favour of turning the shop into a more general gift shop.

But what was most significant for us was the way the atmosphere of a bookshop has been lost by this significant downsizing of the book stock - that intangible something that piles of books, tumbling on tables and cramming shelves brings to any space seems to have been ironed out, cleaned away.

I’m conscious that over here in the UK, Waterstones has also been heading in that direction - more cards, more gifts, toys and sundry bits and pieces have been slowly creeping their way in and inevitably it has to be at the expense of space for books. Just as I want my libraries to be libraries and not ‘information hubs’ so I want my bookshops to be bookshops. There are plenty of other shops selling gift tat that most people probably don’t want, so leave that stuff to them and focus instead on making a wider range of books available. If there isn’t space for back catalogue and classic titles, how will people ever discover what they haven’t read? Browsing shelves is vital for serendipitous finds because you can’t do that on the internet and bookshops have been responsible for some of my most important unintended finds.

 

Terry Potter

October 2022