When I discovered that the store didn't have a single, solitary copy of any play by the Russian master, my confusion turned to dismay. Things worsened when I went up to the Information Desk and asked the deceptively bookish-looking, bespectacled milquetoast behind the counter what gives.
After he asked me to spell out Chekhov's name for him, his brow furrowed when he found on his computer they truly had no copies of the playwright's work. "Guess people aren't that interested in him anymore," the clerk suggested. "Yeah," I replied, "like that clown Shakespeare."
When I was finally able to grab a copy at the Strand yesterday, I jokingly relayed the B&N experience to the clerk helping me, noting, "I tried to find this at Barnes & Noble the other day... but turns out they don't sell books anymore."
Today, I awoke to discover the tellingly eldritch news that, indeed, Barnes & Noble is one of many brick-and-mortar, actual, here-and-now-in-the-real-world bookstores that is in even worse trouble than we originally thought. We've seen plenty of B&N's stores close over the last few months in the wake of other mega-giants like Borders liquidating its extant 399 stores in 2011.
But now it's official: B&N will be closing one-third of its 689 stores.
Now, yes, traditionalists and doomsayers can rest somewhat easy in the fact the process will take ten years to complete (that's approximately twenty stores being shut down a year). But the fact remains that the Digital Age is having its deleterious effect on a business that many of us are sorry to see falling to the wayside like its brethren video and record stores.
As the Digital Reader's Nate Hoffelder pointed out this past August, B&N's Nook sales last year "ranged from diddly to squat," with total shipments going out at half the frequency of online competitor Amazon's Kindles. Not to mention sales of the Nook dropped to nearly half its mark in the second quarter.
The Business Insider's Jay Yarow hit the coffin nail on the head again a month ago with a headline that tells it all: "The Nook Isn't Doing All That Great." True, Yarow optimistically reports the "good news" that "Pearson is going to invest $89.5 million in the Nook business" (assisted by fellow investor Microsoft). But then comes his "bad news": "Based on preliminary sales results to date in the holiday period and sales trends, the Company expects its holiday sales results will be below expectations and that the NOOK business will not meet the Company's prior projection for fiscal year 2013."
The question therefore becomes one of motivation, or at least, degree of motivation on the part of how much this latest plan for closings has to do with what the Los Angeles Times' Tiffany Hsu referred to as the interplay between "reading habits changing and digital publishing evolving."
In responding to all the hubbub, which was instigated in part by the Wall Street Journal's original story on the closures that was published Monday, a representative of B&N had this to say to CNET: "The Wall Street Journal article implies that our rate of store closures has changed. We have historically closed approximately 15 stores per year for the past 10 years... It should be noted that in 2012, Barnes & Noble opened two new prototype stores and in 2013 plans to test several other prototypes, as well.
"Barnes & Noble has great real estate in prime locations and the company's management is fully committed to the retail concept for the long term."
For those of us still interested in purchasing our plays and books from the haimish comfort of a real-life bookstore, let's hope she's right. Uncle Vanya wouldn't have it any other way.
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