MetamorphosisSigma wrote:It's beyond my understanding how B&N has lasted this long, in competition with Amazon. I suppose Borders closing has given B&N a temporary boost, but it's just a matter of time.

Don't get me wrong, I like browsing through real books, but at Amazon just about everything is about 30-35% off all day, every day. When I looked into getting a B&N rewards card (whatever they call it), they wanted to charge me $20/year to give me 10% or 20% off every once in a while. Sure, I can't get coffee at Amazon, but I can order coffee beans, the roaster, the press-pot, and a mug, and make it my damn self. And it'll be better.

Knowledgable staff and intelligent selection of books presented by management could have helped these stores at least from my perspective. I don't mind paying a premium for good books which I can read immediately but I don't know how often I have searched for certain classic texts in big bookshops and found only multiple copies of the latest newest crud on the same topic.

For me the largest surge in my reliance on amazon has come in the wake of the flourishing of customer reviews from which I can now reliably sift for recommendations. The fact that bookshops missed the boat on knowledgable recommendations is unforgivable.

I agree with you about the coffee!

GravityThief wrote:There have been numerous media reports of Walmart strong-arming manufacturers; agree to sell to Walmart on Walmart's terms (at Walmart's desired prices) or be shut out.

This actually happens quite a bit from both ends of the chain.  During and after college I worked for Target.  When I started I was just a grunt but ended up being a manager for a few years.  We had some similar problems with Coca-Cola.  Coca-Cola would simply not sell product to us at profitable prices.  For years when Coke products would go on sale in the national ad we would lose about a dollar per case of cola sold.  It was ridiculous.  When I became the department manager over the section of the store that had all the food and drinks I found out about this.  So I went to my store manager, gave him the details, and we called our Coca-Cola rep in for a meeting.  After about thirty minutes of polite discussion we told him that we wanted them to lower their prices to a normal level so we could actually sell their product without losing money.  He basically told us that he didnt have to do anything he didnt want to because he worked for the almighty Coca-Cola and he wasnt about to lower our price.  So after he left we called the district manager who explained to us that this was a pretty common problem for a lot of the stores and they were working with Coke USA to get the pricing problems resolved but there wasnt much we could do about it.  My store manager was kind of a jerk if he didnt get his way so we called the Coke rep back and told him to come pick up all but one pallet of his product.  They used four or five sections in our stockroom for backstock and had about 50 feet of shelf space plus a huge display in the front of the store.  After we got through with him he lost his display, and 35 feet of shelf space we ended up giving to Pepsi.  After about three months of Coke complaining they finally lowered their prices and we could finally break even on sales.

Charles G. wrote:I don't want to see one entity control our access to mass media.

Yeah that would suck.  But not nearly as bad as if all the fast food chains went to war and Taco Bell came out the victor.