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The Noble Legacy of Book Stores

Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 11:19 AM Category: Books, Business, Meryl's Notes Blog 5 comments

: Image via Wikipedia

First, Barnes and Noble is up for sale. Now nearby indie book store, Legacy Books closes. If any indie had hope, it was Legacy Books. The 24,000-square-foot store is a work of beautiful architecture, you feel right at home in the store and its amazing lineup of authors. (I took my son to see Doreen Cronin, author of Click, Clack, Moo).

All the articles say the move to ebooks is responsible. While, I have a Kindle, I’ve yet to read an entire book on it. I just find myself choosing real print over ebooks. I love what Plano Profile, a local magazine, editor Lisa Sams wrote in her editorial. She talked about an advertising campaign backed by the biggest players in consumer magazine publishing called “Magazines, The Power of Print.”

Sams describes an ad that features Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps (jokes aside) with the line, “The Internet is exhilarating. Magazines are enveloping. The Internet grabs you. Magazines embrace you. The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive. And both media are growing.” Ending with… “…people aren’t giving up swimming because they also enjoy surfing.” Amen!

Why can’t we have both? Why can’t print and ebooks survive equally? Like Sams, I love magazines. I rip out pages to follow up on while recycling the rest. I actually follow through on those ripped pages most of the time, unlike bookmarks.

Read a letter to the editor about the Legacy business. The writer drove over 30 minutes away to check out the book store when it first opened and expressed disappointment. The store, to him, didn’t carry anything you don’t see at other book stores like indie publishers and university press books. Good point.

It’s a beautiful building and I thought it had something going for it with the fabulous events. But when you put it the way writer did in his letter, other book stores have author visits. They may not have the incredible architecture, but the content remains the same. The store lives less than a mile from my home, so maybe I’m biased because of its location.

The bookstore’s owner already has plans for the next phase. The book store will move to another location further away near a lot of shopping and receive a new name, “A Real Book Store.” (Site not up yet as of this posting.) One of the problems with the Legacy location is that you couldn’t see it from the road. In fact, the first time I went there, I had to look hard for it and drive around a bit. I hope the new location will work better even though I’ve yet to get over that area (near an outlet shopping center).

What do you think of the local bookstore’s future?

Tags: Barnes & Noble, bookstores, E-book, publishing

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5 comments

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Posted by Brad Shorr on August 16th, 2010, 2:38 PM
Hi Meryl, Much as it pains me to say so, I think the demise of the local bookstore is at hand. Tools like Kindle and iPad are just getting warmed up, and already they’ve captured an impressive share of the market. Bookstores may hang around for a while to accommodate “old school” readers like us, but in the end, I imagine books will have the same level of retail presence as vinyl records. But what the heck – I’m sure the stone tablet market felt sorrow when the printing press cranked up.
Posted by Meryl K Evans on August 19th, 2010, 9:33 AM
Brad, I think it’s going to take a long, long time before ereaders go mainstream. Students have to get books and not all can afford to get an ereader. So they need to be able to go to the local bookstore to get what they need as they won’t have luxury of shopping online or waiting for the package to come in. Sure, there’s the library — but some need to buy the books to annotate and highlight.
Posted by Mike Young on September 3rd, 2010, 3:21 AM
My wife and I bought several hundred dollars worth of books and magazines at Legacy Books but haven’t been there in months.
Quite frankly, it had absolutely nothing to do with eBooks, Amazon, or the chain brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Several times we had to track down cashiers to check out because they were goofing off. We waited to pay while two employees stood about 15 feet away from the register, saw us, but continued to chat until we went over and essentially begged for one of them to handle our purchases.
Trying to get anything at the cafe was a joke. From what I understand, it changed hands at least three times while the bookstore was open. And you never knew when you came in whether it would be open so that you could grab something to eat and drink before heading out to the book stacks.
There was nothing that made Legacy Books unique except it had poorer service than struggling B&N and Borders. That’s not a great USP for attracting repeat customers.
Marketing was nonexistent. No email captures for sending announcements and promotions, no customer loyalty programs, etc. were ever presented.
Someone built a very nice facility with a great selection and then dropped the ball when it came to delivering anything positive to distinguish the store from the book chains.
I feel bad for any entrepreneur who invests time and money in such a venture only to see it fail. However, I suspect a new location will suffer the same fate because the owner apparently doesn’t get it when it comes to customer service.
We never felt welcome at Legacy Books and I’m trying to come up with a good reason why visiting a new location would make sense.
Posted by Meryl on September 6th, 2010, 7:43 AM
Mike, thanks for sharing your experience. Quite different from what I experienced when I went there for several events. Cashiers were right at the check out.