Borders, Seven Nations
Unusually enough, I left the house, like, lots, last week. Or seemingly lots. Killing the weekend but that's another story. The expeditions!
1. Wednesday, because I had a $40 gift card burning a little hole in my pocket, and I was afraid I'd soon be losing it, my mother and I headed to the nearest going out of business Borders. I figured it would be slim pickings, but to my relief, the shelves had barely been picked over when we entered - the café was closed, but they were still selling bottled drinks, chocolate, bags of coffee and the like. I wheeled through and discovered just why Borders is having problems selling books.
Here's what the, and I repeat, still full fantasy/science fiction shelves did not have: M.K. Hobson's The Native Star; Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, Jack McDevitt's Echo, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death, and Connie Willis' Blackout and All Clear. Recognize these names? These are five of the six nominees for this year's Nebula Award. (They did, shockingly after all this, have a copy of N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms which I finally gave up on the library ever having an available copy of and picked up - and yes, all of you were right and this is an excellent book, but I digress.)
A friend later suggested that I should have looked for Okorafor's book in the ethnic section, which just goes to show the problems with having an ethnic section, however large and well marked: it never ever occurs to me to look for science fiction/fantasy books there. Plus, they had Octavia Butler's books (three books!), which I've often inexplicably found shelved in an ethnic section, in the science fiction section, so, yeah.
I don't know the sales figures on any of these, and yes, some of them are new novelists (not writers), but to have only one of the Nebula nominees available does not speak well of Borders' buyers. And those were hardly the only "Er, why doesn't Borders have that?" missing books.
Worse, even at a going out of business sale, their prices were still more expensive than their competitors. Here's an incomplete list of things I did not purchase: Ghirardelli chocolates (a full dollar more expensive than at Publix, our local grocery store, not known as a chocolate discounter); the first season of Dexter (a full 16 dollars more than Best Buy); a lap desk (five to twenty dollars more expensive than Barnes and Noble); the second season of Pushing Daisies ($10 more than Best Buy); coffee (unaccountably more expensive than at Starbucks or Barnies and again Publix - in the case of Publix, for the identical brand) and so on. The books, even on sale, were the same or higher than Amazon and Barnes and Noble, even leaving ebooks out of the equation.
I mention ebooks because some people - and apparently some Borders executives - are trying to blame Borders' problems on ebooks, but Borders, when your competition is beating your going out of business sale, ebooks aren't your problem. You seriously need to rethink your pricing structure. I understand that Best Buy, Target and Walmart can use CDs and DVDs as loss earners to get people through the store, but Barnes and Noble attempts, at least, to compensate for this by offering some DVDs that those chain stores don't (mostly British stuff and anime) and offering competitive prices on other goods - not to mention having all of those books I listed above.
Anyway.
2. After that we headed out to Lake Louisa State Park, where we did not see any alligators, but where we did see some very happy dogs who were taking advantage of the warm day and the lack of alligators.
3. Friday night my brother and I made it out to a Seven Nations concert. On the way, I realized that I seem to be making a habit of getting out to one - exactly one - live concert per year: Stephen Lynch in 2009; Jonathon Coulton in 2010; and now Seven Nations in 2011. Quite frankly that kinda tells you all you need to know about me.
We didn't quite make it through the entire concert, not because of the dancing drunk under the impression that he was a leprechaun (traditional Irish mythology insists that leprechauns are both smaller and better dancers),but the parts we did see were awesome. Also, excellent food. It all bodes well for whatever the 2012 concert might be.
1. Wednesday, because I had a $40 gift card burning a little hole in my pocket, and I was afraid I'd soon be losing it, my mother and I headed to the nearest going out of business Borders. I figured it would be slim pickings, but to my relief, the shelves had barely been picked over when we entered - the café was closed, but they were still selling bottled drinks, chocolate, bags of coffee and the like. I wheeled through and discovered just why Borders is having problems selling books.
Here's what the, and I repeat, still full fantasy/science fiction shelves did not have: M.K. Hobson's The Native Star; Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, Jack McDevitt's Echo, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death, and Connie Willis' Blackout and All Clear. Recognize these names? These are five of the six nominees for this year's Nebula Award. (They did, shockingly after all this, have a copy of N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms which I finally gave up on the library ever having an available copy of and picked up - and yes, all of you were right and this is an excellent book, but I digress.)
A friend later suggested that I should have looked for Okorafor's book in the ethnic section, which just goes to show the problems with having an ethnic section, however large and well marked: it never ever occurs to me to look for science fiction/fantasy books there. Plus, they had Octavia Butler's books (three books!), which I've often inexplicably found shelved in an ethnic section, in the science fiction section, so, yeah.
I don't know the sales figures on any of these, and yes, some of them are new novelists (not writers), but to have only one of the Nebula nominees available does not speak well of Borders' buyers. And those were hardly the only "Er, why doesn't Borders have that?" missing books.
Worse, even at a going out of business sale, their prices were still more expensive than their competitors. Here's an incomplete list of things I did not purchase: Ghirardelli chocolates (a full dollar more expensive than at Publix, our local grocery store, not known as a chocolate discounter); the first season of Dexter (a full 16 dollars more than Best Buy); a lap desk (five to twenty dollars more expensive than Barnes and Noble); the second season of Pushing Daisies ($10 more than Best Buy); coffee (unaccountably more expensive than at Starbucks or Barnies and again Publix - in the case of Publix, for the identical brand) and so on. The books, even on sale, were the same or higher than Amazon and Barnes and Noble, even leaving ebooks out of the equation.
I mention ebooks because some people - and apparently some Borders executives - are trying to blame Borders' problems on ebooks, but Borders, when your competition is beating your going out of business sale, ebooks aren't your problem. You seriously need to rethink your pricing structure. I understand that Best Buy, Target and Walmart can use CDs and DVDs as loss earners to get people through the store, but Barnes and Noble attempts, at least, to compensate for this by offering some DVDs that those chain stores don't (mostly British stuff and anime) and offering competitive prices on other goods - not to mention having all of those books I listed above.
Anyway.
2. After that we headed out to Lake Louisa State Park, where we did not see any alligators, but where we did see some very happy dogs who were taking advantage of the warm day and the lack of alligators.
3. Friday night my brother and I made it out to a Seven Nations concert. On the way, I realized that I seem to be making a habit of getting out to one - exactly one - live concert per year: Stephen Lynch in 2009; Jonathon Coulton in 2010; and now Seven Nations in 2011. Quite frankly that kinda tells you all you need to know about me.
We didn't quite make it through the entire concert, not because of the dancing drunk under the impression that he was a leprechaun (traditional Irish mythology insists that leprechauns are both smaller and better dancers),but the parts we did see were awesome. Also, excellent food. It all bodes well for whatever the 2012 concert might be.