mariness

This month, the local Barnes and Noble - a place that, in the winter, I could reach via my electric trike - closed down. According to the employees, this particular Barnes and Noble was doing well - better, they said proudly, than the Barnes and Noble up in Altamonte Springs (which is still open). And presumably less well than the Barnes and Noble down in the Dr. Philips area. The store had originally benefited from being only the second major bookstore in the west Orange area. Once the Borders in Ocoee closed, it was the only major bookstore in the west Orange area, benefiting from the expansion of Winter Garden and Clermont and the quiet wealth of Windermere. The other bookstores are all twenty, thirty minutes away at best from this area - a Books-A-Million up in Leesburg, which is more or less the equivalent of the moon for me, and another one in Altamonte Springs - less moon like, but four buses is a bit much - and the previously mentioned Barnes and Noble. Some customers said they would trek there anyway. Others said they would use Amazon. No one, despite hopeful hints from Barnes and Noble employees, said they would use the Barnes and Noble website.

(This is more about physical bookstores than websites, but I'll say it here anyway: Barnes and Noble, speaking as someone with a Nook who really wants you to succeed, your website is very difficult to search/browse through, both online and through the Nook, and Amazon's recommended feature leaves yours far behind. Kobo is sending me better, more targeted emails and I don't even visit their site. I'd work on this.)

Apparently, the company behind Forever 21 agreed to pay three times the rent that Barnes and Noble is paying. The outdoor mall management loved this idea. Barnes and Noble balked at a rent increase, and here we are.

I'm not sure what, if any, effect this will have on that particular mall, which is an outdoor mall in one section and a line of huge, big block stores like Lowe's and Target in another section. Bitter Barnes and Noble employees claimed that the idea was to bring in more teenagers with the Forever 21. The place does seem rather short of teenagers, but then again, I'm usually there on weekday mornings in winter, not a peak teenager shopping time, so it's entirely possible that in the afternoons, teenagers pop up everywhere, eager to spend. Or not. What seems to be more of a concern, specifically to the employees of the Bath and Body Works, was that Barnes and Noble tended to draw a relatively upscale crowd that was happy to wander over to Bath and Body Works and spend money there. Also, this now means that the Bath and Body Works people either have to cross a large, and, in the summer, painfully hot parking lot, or a six lane street in order to reach Starbucks, which means, they guess, they're stuck with Panera which isn't as good for coffee.

Which brings up another slight issue: that area did have three - count them, three - Starbucks in a very limited location: the one at Barnes and Noble, the one at Target, and the actual Starbucks just across the road. I wondered how sustainable that was.

Then again, this complex is located directly north of a very well to do area, and south of a patchily well to do area - some streets are very well to do indeed, and then there's my street, which isn't, but can afford the occasional stop at Starbucks, and east of a solid, rapidly growing middle class suburb. Who knows.

Anyway, everyone agreed that the Barnes and Noble was an anchor store that brought in customers, and was a place for people to meet, and study, and talk books, and this sucks, and the hospital going up across the street is not a substitute for any of this.

For me, this is personally painful for another reason: with the exception of my first months here, before I got my electric trike of awesomeness, it's the first time since I was 11 or so that I have not been able to get to a bookstore on my own. Granted, reaching one in a Connecticut winter was nearly impossible on a bicycle, but the bookstore was there, and I knew it was there, providing a certain comfort. Afterwards, I could always reach one. Two decent ones easily available my first year of college; three my last three years. Several in South Florida; several in Tokyo (overpriced English language bookstores, but definitely there. You can buy anything in Tokyo if you have the money.) The all too short lived Here Be Dragons bookstore, and this Barnes and Noble.

And now, without a ride, nothing but online bookstores. Which, for all of my severe addiction to the Orange County Library's ebook selection, just isn't the same. You can't feel a book on a website. I don't get the same sense of reassurance. Of home. Of books.

I'm going to be resenting this new Forever 21 for awhile.

Curious question:

Why, in nearly every discussion of the death/survival of brick and mortar bookstores, does Books A Million never come up?

Seriously. It's like we have either Barnes and Noble and struggling independent bookstores or nothing, always followed by worried observations that Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores are closing their doors. And nothing about the entity in between. And yes, I'm as guilty of this as anyone. And yes, the concerns about Barnes and Noble, based on their fiscal reports, seem valid.

But in 2012, Books a Million, according to their annual report added retail outlets. They took a fiscal loss for the year, but the report also adds that as a result of the expansion, they had their strongest holiday season ever, and their expectations for 2013 remain strong.

Now, let me be clear here: Books A Million is a lot smaller than Barnes and Noble is, and although I haven't seen any royalty reports from anyone, this strongly suggests that book sales through Books A Million are thus a lot smaller than sales from Barnes and Noble (let alone Amazon or even for some authors Target and Walmart). And I don't see, nor does this annual report suggest, that Books A Million has any plans to reach the size of Barnes and Noble or the late lamented Borders, and their annual report notes that they haven't paid stockholder dividends for the last few quarters. And annual reports by nature tend to at least try to give an optimistic spin on events.

But still, here you have it: a brick and mortar bookstore that is adding locations and unlike Barnes and Noble reported a healthy holiday season. Which almost nobody is talking about. I don't know what Books a Million is doing right (I didn't bother to comb through the entire annual report) and I have no idea what their position will be later this year. I do note they are selling Nooks, suggesting that they, too, have a lot of concerns about Amazon's dominance in the ebook market. But they are there, and growing, and I think they should be brought into the discussion.

So, Borders is closing various Florida bookstores.

To no one's surprise, one of those locations is the store currently closest to me, which is sad because it's where we occasionally hang out before or after a movie, but not surprising: it's by a slowly sinking shopping mall that features a merry-go-round, a movie theater, and several shuttered stores. The movie theater, too, would probably be suffering if it weren't for its saving grace: the only other nearby theaters are either very tiny, or, Universal Studios with the parking lot from hell, various theaters on the "what, you want your car to move forward International Drive?" and so on. (There is also a Clermont theater, but not that close to here or Ocoee.) I just hope this isn't another bad sign for the theatre.

I was also saddened to hear of the other non-surprising closure: the Borders near Galleria Mall on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. I say non-surprising because about the very first thing that anyone out of town said upon seeing this store is, "And how exactly can they afford to be here?" That particular Borders is/was located in a spectacular location – right on a river, within a (long) walk to the beach, accessible by Water Taxi, something I actually took from there once in a touristy sort of mood. Or you could sit on the porch, sipping coffee and nibbling on cookies, watching yachts go by. Or heading to a poetry reading, or small concert, or Harry Potter party, or whatever. Not, um, that I spent entirely too much time at that bookstore or anything like that.*

As I said, awesome location, but I will bet, hands down, that is also the one location where no executive bothered to look at actual in store sales, instead looking with stark horror at actual in store property taxes and/or rent and/or the land values. Prime real estate, certainly, but that doesn't always equate to prime shopping location.

The surprising closure is the local Borders across from the Florida Mall, which is in a prime shopping location, to the point where busloads full of tourists swing by daily dropping people off, but after I took a moment to consider this, I realized that the Borders is actually across a busy street from that mall, so maybe not as convenient to tourists as I thought, plus, there's a Barnes and Noble right around the corner. And the last two times I was there I couldn't help noticing far fewer books and far wider gaps between shelves. Also, a lack of copies of Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF. This is why you should be keeping this book on shelves and selling the heck out of it, booksellers. I'm just saying.

Anyway, it was enough to give me a nostalgic twinge or two. (Also, people arriving for the IAFA conference...the Borders near the Florida Mall is probably about 15 minutes away from your hotel, on Sand Lake Road just off of the Orange Blossom Trail. And then you can all head to the M&M store to either perish in horror at the American consumerism on display or posit some thoughts about folktales and the presentation of the Green M&M and quavering Yellow.)

*Because it's been scientifically proven that no one can ever spend too much time at a bookstore. Scientifically. Spacetime warps to prevent this. Trust me.