Category Archives: Borders

Grand Opening!

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by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

In 1988, when we moved to Flathead County, Montana, the population was 57K. There were more than 10 bookstores within a 25-mile radius of Kalispell. Except for Waldenbooks in the mall, all were independently owned. They happily coexisted, each with its own quirky personality, specialties, and customer base.

Fast forward a few years when a behemoth named Borders came to Kalispell. Readers loved the huge selection, the cafe, and ample parking lot, unlike downtown where parking has been a problem since horse and buggy days. My critique group met at Borders in cozy nooks with comfy chairs.

But, there was a downside: one by one, the neat, quirky, little indie bookstores went out of business.

Fast forward a few more years and an even bigger behemoth named Amazon took over domination of the book market.

What goes around, comes around.

Where Borders had once put mom-and-pop bookstores out of business, now Amazon gobbled up Borders. In 2011, 400 Borders stores closed, including the one in Kalispell.

Meanwhile the county’s population swelled. As of 2023, it’s 114K folks. For years, a handful of used bookstores and one small indie that had survived were the only brick-and-mortar options. Browsing thumbnails onscreen just isn’t the same as wandering the aisles and spotting something that strikes your fancy. Readers were living in a literary desert.

Then, on January 31, 2024, a new Barnes & Noble opened in Kalispell.

A week before opening, B&N CEO James Daunt said in a press release:

“The positive feedback we have received since announcing this new Barnes & Noble has been astounding. It has been a long time since Borders had their bookstore just across the parking lot and it is a particular pleasure to bring a major new bookstore back to U.S. 93.”

If Mr. Daunt had any doubts about this new location, opening day quickly erased them.

It was a mob scene. Vehicles circled the jammed parking lot like vultures waiting for someone to pull out. Hundreds of long-famished book lovers roamed through the store. I don’t remember this much excitement about a retail store opening since 1993 when Costco arrived.

One of the most frequent comments as customers walked through B&N’s doors: “It’s wonderful to smell new books.”

The arrangement is an attractive, intriguing labyrinth. Walls of books divide the space into discrete sections: fiction, new releases, mystery-thriller, sweet or spicy romance, westerns, nonfiction, history, religion, self-help, children’s and YA, Manga, graphic novels, and more.

On one table, a sign announces “Banned Books.” Many titles had been required reading when I was in school.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl;

Of Mice and Men;

The Great Gatsby;

For Whom the Bell Tolls;

To Kill a Mockingbird;

Catcher in the Rye;

Fahrenheit 451;

  1. 1984.

Also there are more recent titles like:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings;

The Hunger Games;

The Handmaid’s Tale;

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest;

The Color Purple.

One large wall displays books about Montana, from hiking guides to history to Glacier National Park to bison, wolves, and grizzlies to mining and logging to pioneer memoirs.

Each new cubby in the maze features more products: games, gifts, cards, beautiful bound journals, vinyl records, turntables, magazines.

 

Especially encouraging are expansive sections devoted to young readers, covering the range from picture books to YA novels.

A reader’s oasis appeared in what was once a literary wasteland. On opening day, people waited in line for up to 45 minutes to pay for their armloads of purchases.

 

There’s an old saying that you can’t throw a typewriter in Montana without hitting a writer. Dozens live in my immediate area, hundreds within a tankful of gas. And no one is more excited about the new B&N than we authors are.

Local authors Dr. Betty Kuffel, Barbara Schiffman, Debbie Burke, Jess Owen Kara

The manager, Daniel, put out the welcome mat for us, hosting book signings not only for traditionally published authors but also indie-pubbed authors on consignment.

My slot was at noon on the Sunday after opening day. A few days before, I brought in two boxes of books. By that weekend, crowds were still large, but not quite as overwhelming.

The signing table was set up just inside the front entrance. Daniel had stacks of my books ready, along with stickers that read “Signed Edition.” I waved at him across the store, but he barely had time to nod because he was so busy ringing up sales with two other cashiers.

Families streamed through the door with toddlers to college-age kids, adult mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, grandparents and grandchildren. The interest among young readers was heartening.

I must have talked with more than 100 people. All were excited about books and reading.

Some chats were brief: “I’ve missed Borders. Glad this new store is here.”

Others lasted much longer: “You wrote all these books? Wow. What are they about?”

“Which book should I start with in your series?”

“My fifth-grade students are learning to write stories. Would you come and talk to them?”

“I want to be a writer. Can you give me advice?”

“I like to support local authors.”

And they did support this local author. I sold 17 books on consignment.

I also learned insights into B&N’s book ordering process. They can’t order or stock books that don’t show up in their computer system. As mentioned in this post, they don’t order from Amazon KDP Print-on-Demand (POD).

However, there’s a workaround for Create Space POD books:

Amazon/CreateSpace authors have the ability to choose the extended distribution option for their titles.  By choosing this option, their books automatically become available through Lightning Source.

Lightning Source is Ingram Book Company’s print-on-demand division, and they make CreateSpace titles (as well as other POD titles) available to Barnes & Noble and other retailers.

Barnes & Noble will only sell CreateSpace titles through BN.com and customer orders, not through in-store stocking and replenishment.

 

That’s how Daniel was able to order and stock Instrument of the Devil and Crowded Hearts – A Novella, but not the rest of my titles. Those sales he handled through consignment.

Another alternative is to upload directly to BN.com. However, there’s a catch: for a store to order them, books need to be returnable. But, according to a knowledgeable author with many self-pubbed books, BN.com POD books are not returnable. Huh?

Confused? Me, too.

My conclusion is that the best option for me as a self-pubbed author is to upload to Draft2Digital and Ingram Spark (I’m in that process now). That makes ordering clear and direct.

Because CEO Daunt gives individual local managers autonomy and latitude for ordering, I’m hopeful Daniel will keep my books in stock once they’re available on D2D and Ingram Spark.

What happens to our little locally-owned shops now?

I’m not about to turn my back on the Book Shelf and Bad Rock Books (with three friendly resident cats!). They’ve supported me for years. When I spoke with Stephanie, the Book Shelf owner, she was excited about B&N’s opening: “There are never enough bookstores!”

Existing stores cater to different niches than B&N. At this point, the area’s population is large enough to sustain all of them.

When many retailers are closing stores because of the shift to online, readers prove they still love to sniff the aroma of new books and wander aisles in search of serendipitous finds. How’s this for an intriguing title? It begged me to pick it up.

Barnes & Noble, welcome to the neighborhood! 

~~~

TKZers: Which physical bookstores do you visit? What’s your favorite way to buy books–online, in a bricks-and-mortar store, or both?

 

 

Barnes & Noble Makes a Comeback

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Photo Credit: Ethan Hoover, Unsplash

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

 

What goes around comes around. And around. And around.

So goes the tale of Barnes & Noble.

The bookseller was founded in New York in 1886 as Arthur Hinds & Company. A clerk named Gilbert Clifford Noble rose to partnership and soon changed the name to Hinds & Noble. In 1917, Noble partnered with William Barnes to become Barnes & Noble.

Fun fact: In 1940, B&N was one of the first businesses to feature Muzak. 

A single NYC store grew to a nationwide chain. In 1974, the Fifth Avenue B&N became the biggest bookstore in the world.

Along the way, B&N gained a reputation as a corporate bully that gobbled up smaller chains and elbowed aside numerous independent bookstores, putting many out of business.

Big fish eat little fish. To the dismay of readers, few indie minnows survived B&N’s dominance.

“Barnes & Noble was perceived as not just the enemy,” said a former chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, which represents indie shops, told the New York Times, “but as being everything about corporate book selling that was wrong.”

Then…along came a whale named Amazon.

Photo credit: Stephane Wegner, Unsplash

Online book sales thrived while physical bookstores dropped by the wayside. The juggernaut of Amazon led to mergers and bankruptcies of sizable chains like Waldenbooks, Crown, and B. Dalton. In 2011, Borders filed bankruptcy, leaving B&N the sole remaining national bookstore chain.

Amazon was fast gaining ground.

In 2010, B&N introduced the Nook e-reader to compete with Kindle but it never came close to Kindle’s success. Stores added coffee shops, free wi-fi, gifts, and non-book merchandise, hoping to survive. Nothing worked. Sales dropped, employees were fired, stores closed.

Per Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker:

“By 2018 the company was in total collapse. Barnes & Noble lost $18 million that year, and fired 1,800 full time employees—in essence shifting almost all store operations to part time staff. Around that same time, the company fired its CEO due to sexual harassment claims.”

The bookseller that had put so many other bookstores out of business appeared ready to join their fate.

Enter James Daunt. The 59-year-old former banker and business exec had founded Daunt Books and turned around Waterstone’s, a British bookseller that had once languished in similar straits to B&N. In 2019, he took the helm as B&N’s CEO and set out to rescue the floundering chain.

A daunting task (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

Daunt turned the focus back to books and got rid of unrelated merchandise. He gave control of stores to local staff, correctly reasoning that the people who meet customers every day are in the best position to know what their particular readers want.

Y’know, like mom-and-pop indie bookstores used to do.

Managers have free rein to stock books by local authors, including good-quality self-published ones, and those of regional interest. They no longer have to stock books chosen by a single head buyer from thousands of miles away.

A few months ago, I visited B&N in Missoula, Montana. The manager not only ordered some of my books, she is also happy to host an in-person event later this year.

B&N stores are now becoming more like the indie bookstores they used to put out of business.

Daunt’s strategies are succeeding. In 2023, B&N plans to open 30 new stores. Ironically, some will take over the same locations where Amazon’s experimental physical bookstores failed.

What goes around comes around.

What’s coming around now for B&N is good news for readers. It also gives a boost to local authors who want to see their books on real shelves.

~~~

TKZers: Have you visited a B&N store recently? Do you see changes? What’s your opinion about them under the new leadership?

~~~

 

COMING SOON! SPRING 2023!

DEEP FAKE ~ Tawny Lindholm Thriller #8

You can’t believe your own eyes.

To be notified when Deep Fake is released, please sign up here.

Can You Believe the Kindle is Ten Years Old?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The Kindle turns ten next month. My, how that little baby has grown!

When Amazon’s ereader first came out (November 19, 2007 to be exact), I sensed most people were skeptical about the future of digital reading. The Sony Reader had been around for years but failed to take hold. “Electronic books” were thought to be the coming thing around Y2K. Publishers Weekly even started a section to cover the subject, but later dropped it due to failure to launch.

Clearly, serious readers preferred paper. So the Kindle would probably sell to some early adopters, but likely would not revolutionize anything.

**clears throat**

In 2008, Oprah Winfrey gave the Kindle her endorsement. Talk about a boost! Then people began to realize they could have all the works of Dickens and Dostoevsky on a single device which they could take on a plane or a train or (in L.A. commuter traffic) an automobile. Pretty doggone cool!

And the biz mavens realized that Amazon was (as always, it seems) making a powerful and forward-thinking business move—selling the Kindle as a gateway to their massive bookstore.

Here at TKZ, we were analyzing all this from the start. On Kindle’s one-year anniversary our own Kathryn Lilley wrote:

I think it’s time for all of us to stop mourning the nongrowth of paper book sales, and celebrate the new digital age. It’s the future. Let’s embrace it. For example, last week when I posted, I was freaking out about the changes in the industry. This week, I have decided to reframe my thoughts about the book publishing crisis, and seek out the hidden opportunities in those changes.

Because ready or not, the digital era is here. Kindle products like the Oasis are still going strong. In fact, this review of Oasis is spot on.

And what did all this mean for authors? Well, beginning in 2009 or so, it became apparent that Amazon was presenting a viable new way for writers to get published—by their own selves!

And get this: by offering authors an unheard of 70% royalty split!

The lit hit the fan.

A complete unknown named Amanda Hocking made a cool couple of million dollars publishing directly on Amazon!

This got the attention of many, including TKZ emeritus Boyd Morrison, and a mainstream mystery author by the name of Joe Konrath who, via his blog, began to champion the new digital possibilities.

When I went to Bouchercon in San Francisco in October of 2010, everybody was wondering how to get in on the ebook thing without ticking off their agent or publisher. Agents (and I heard several) were warning writers not to “go there” for fear it would jeopardize their careers. Publishers were not at all sanguine about their authors moonlighting with a company they saw as their biggest threat. Some writers even got sued or terminated over this.

But the money was dropping off Kindle trees! That could not be ignored.

A funny thing happened at that Bouchercon. I was sitting with a couple of writer friends in the lobby of the SF Hyatt Regency, talking about all this, when Joe Konrath arrived and made his way to the bar area. He was flocked by fellow authors peppering him with questions.

The next day, at lunchtime, I was outside the Hyatt and spotted Mr. Konrath and one Barry Eisler walking and talking excitedly along the sidewalk. I thought, “What is that all about?”

A few months later I found out. Mr. Eisler, a New York Times bestselling thriller author, turned down half a million bucks from his publisher in order to publish with Amazon!

It was the talk of the industry. I saw it as a real tipping point. In fact, I gave it a name: “The Eisler Sanction.”

Self-publishing was getting serious.

I put my own toe in the E waters in February of 2011. Now I’m all wet.

So ten years after the birth of the Kindle, what have we seen?

1. Kindle devices and apps are awesome. I’m currently reading the two-volume memoir of Ulysses S. Grant, easily highlighting passages I want to review later. The General is bivouacked on my phone. Cost me 99¢.

2. While other ereaders have appeared—notably Nook and Kobo—the Kindle is dominant and unlikely to lose market share. The poor Nook, which is also a cool device, is hanging by a thread.

3. Kindle Direct Publishing has saved the careers of thousands of midlist writers, and created the careers of thousands more who are making good-to-massive lettuce every month. Those who are doing well have mastered some basic practices but also concentrate on the most important thing: quality and production.

4. The traditional publishing industry was hit hard by the digital disruption. There have been mergers, layoffs, shrinking profits and even a DOJ smackdown.

5. But the Forbidden City is still open for business. And while large-advance deals for debut authors are becoming as rare as the blue-footed booby, they still happen.

6. There has been chatter about the “comeback” of print books, but it appears that most of any increase in print sales can be traced to … Amazon. (And here’s a counterintuitive development: Millennials may actually prefer print books!)

7. Big bookstores took a huge hit due to e-commerce. The massive Borders chain of stores went down, followed by Family Christian. Barnes & Noble stores have been closing steadily for the last eight years, a trend that will likely continue.

8. However, local independent bookstores may be emerging through the cracks. Oh, and guess who else is opening up physical stores? Amazon.

9. On the other hand, many niche bookstores are closing. The latest is Seattle’s Mystery Bookshop.

10. We’ve reached a period of relative stasis in the “self v. trad wars.” From 2010 to 2014 or so, it seemed like we’d get blogosphere firestorms every week cheering for, or predicting the demise of, Big Pub. There was also a lot of “gold rush” talk on the indie side. Reality, as it is wont to do, has settled things down. There’s a lot of information out there now (e.g., Author Earnings reports) and the savvy players have a better handle on where they stand.

In an episode of Downton Abbey, when it became clear that the old ways of life were on the way out, never to return, Carson the butler mused, “The nature of life is not permanence, but flux.”

Kindle brought the flux. And a decade later, we’re living it.

What do you say, TKZers? What are your reflections on the 10th birthday of the Kindle?