There’s not a lot concerning the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Harmony that stands out from the company behemoth’s different places: board video games, sun shades, greeting playing cards and different trinkets line the partitions close to the precise bookshelves, which prominently show the most recent big-name political memoirs and celeb tell-alls.
And to Nicole Brown, a mom of three and lifelong reader, the shiny retailer displays little about her intimate relationship with literature. However the chain has been round lengthy sufficient for her to hold a “comfortable spot” for it.
“It was the Amazon of the bookstores,” Brown, who lives in Benicia, stated of Barnes & Noble. “And now I believe there are so few precise brick-and-mortar bookstores that we’re simply so completely happy to have them.”
That would bode properly for Barnes and Noble’s newest Bay Space addition: a brand new locally-focused retailer which is making a comeback Wednesday on Locust Avenue in Walnut Creek, seven years after the earlier outlet on Principal Avenue was shuttered. The brand new retailer within the East Bay procuring mecca presents a recent enterprise mannequin that bucks the corporate’s earlier top-down, nationalized strategy.
However Brown’s nostalgia for B&N isn’t all the time universally shared — particularly amongst individuals who cherished their cozy native bookstores and the educated individuals who labored in them.
Many years in the past, the nationwide retail big totally crushed native unbiased booksellers by packing gigantic shops with bestsellers ordered out of the corporate’s company places of work in Manhattan.
However not lengthy after the flip of this century, Barnes & Noble and its friends, together with the now-defunct Borders, have been dealt an analogous blow by the explosion of on-line booksellers, particularly Amazon, which threatened to kill off most in-person procuring altogether.
Barnes & Noble spent years making an attempt to outlive by promoting items and equipment that weren’t written phrases between two covers, however by the mid-2010s its fleet of Bay Space places noticed a wave of closures, together with in San Jose, Fremont and in 2015, Walnut Creek.
Now the brand new retailer’s workers will resolve the inside association and curate the number of books themselves, giving the store a extra native taste and working in a manner that’s extra akin to an unbiased storefront than a faceless income machine.
“In brief, anyone Barnes & Noble is more and more completely different (from) one other, every with their very own character that displays the neighborhood by which they're located,” an organization spokesperson stated in response to electronic mail questions.
Whether or not the mission is profitable stays to be seen, however the final result may play a significant function in the way forward for in-person bookselling, in accordance a longtime publishing business veteran.
“When Borders went out of enterprise, that was practically 400 shops that went out,” stated Kent Watson, the chief director of the Berkeley-based Small Press Distribution. “The very last thing that the business wants is any giant chain going out… we'd like all the ecosystem.”
The retail business as a complete is making an attempt to find out its future after COVID-19 gave folks each cause to buy from their properties the previous two years.
“I've the Kindle app, which may be very a lot a comfort factor,” stated Harmony resident Nicole Calegari of Amazon’s e-book different to bodily books, as she browsed the cabinets within the Harmony B&N. “However there are some books that I need to have in individual, so I can learn (them) over and over, and mark them up and spotlight them.”
Calegari, who frequented the Walnut Creek retailer earlier than it closed, discovered herself studying extra through the pandemic after the limitless stream of tv reveals misplaced their luster. Guide gross sales skyrocketed in COVID’s early months and remained a lot increased than in earlier years for a lot of 2021, in keeping with knowledge from the American Booksellers Affiliation.
However some bookstores didn't profit from a all of the sudden distant buyer base. Flashlight Books in downtown Walnut Creek — positioned a stone’s throw from Barnes & Noble’s new location — discovered itself with out its bread-and-butter technique of neighborhood packages and talking occasions to usher in income.
“We now not had folks strolling round and discovering us, so it was powerful to get our identify on the market,” stated Shoshana Smith, who co-owns the unbiased store with two buddies after years of working for different bookstores.
The shop, named for the picture of a kid wielding a flashlight to learn for hours into the night time underneath the bedsheet covers, is small in dimension however totally curated, with a set of cabinets devoted completely to native Bay Space authors.
Is that sufficient to beat a brand new Barnes & Noble across the nook?
“Clearly, having one proper down the road from us goes to be a brand new problem,” Smith stated. “We recognize that they’re going to have a a lot bigger choice than we do — they've the house and cash. However the best way we see it, smaller shops will all the time be right here for curation.”
One optimistic affect of COVID is that prospects now perceive the significance of procuring native, Smith stated. Marcus Hendricks, searching novels at Flashlight Books, affirmed that he had purposefully arrived that day to help the enterprise.
Barnes & Noble is making an attempt to residence in on that ethos — a spokesperson famous the “surging recognition” of the bookstore expertise amongst younger adults, aided by guide testimonials shared on the social media app TikTok.
Will the corporate’s comfortable rebrand as a champion of unbiased bookstores repay, given its historical past as a cutthroat face of capitalism?
For Brown, the mom procuring on the Harmony retailer, any renewed deal with books would go an extended option to hold youngsters invested in literature. Her personal youngsters like to learn, although she did have to tug them away from cabinets of Lego toys on show.
“Additionally they upsold me on a type of reusable luggage at checkout,” Brown stated, laughing. “However it’s simply a lot extra private to buy right here than on Amazon. And it’s a throwback to my youth.”