BRENTZILLA

I’m laughing, anyway — stupid me. I wanted a book. I thought to skip the couple days it’d take Amazon to deliver it. Me, an employee at a Berkeley publishing house who ought to know better, thought to stop by Borders. Then Barnes & Noble. Then another Barnes & Noble. I’m a dummy.

Over the past five years, I can count the number of books that I actually sought and found at the chains: One. How many times did my boss and I seek out competitive titles to work some marketing voodoo upon? We never, ever found exactly what we were looking for.

If it weren’t for impulse purchases, these stores would be long gone. Oh, pretty cover — buy buy buy!

But, erm… it’s not just personal experience. I also have access to the data, and it ain’t pretty. The number of books published in the U.S. in 2006 was somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000. The largest Barnes & Noble stores, meanwhile, can accommodate 150,000 units, at most.

Of course the book I seek isn’t at Borders. Even though it’s published by a major house, and even though the target audience is scrambling to purchase it. The major chains can’t carry more than a handful of copies of any one title unless its a Harry Potter job.

Obviously, I’ve ordered through Amazon. I’ll wait a few days…

…but I won’t have to drive from chain store to chain store — branded to look the same, branded to look bad; filled with a faint, suspect smell; staffed by unmotivated, uninformed employees who can barely disguise how much they hate their jobs.

Sadly, of all the 100+ titles my publishing house puts out, you may find 10 on the shelves of chains at any one time — if you’re lucky. Anyone who knows anything goes to Amazon or to our own online store to purchase our products. People on a mission, with a particular task in mind. Every year, our online sales increase.

Meanwhile, chains are still important to our sales, for now. But I suspect the people buying these titles are buying on impulse — after all, what are the chances that they’d find any one of our books at these stores? They see a title, feel a brief glimmer of hope or inspiration…

…then shelve the book when they get home. Because the book wasn’t something they actually needed. “Start a business? Sure, what a good idea, this book will show me how.” Ha. Never happens.

The chain bookstores have buried themselves. They can’t compete on price with Amazon.com, and they can’t compete on selection (yeah, yeah, I know “The Long Tail” too). Worse, they can’t create an atmosphere that people want to be around.

Remember your favorite bookstore, back in the day? How it felt welcoming and cared for? How you’d drift its aisles and stacks for hours? How you could get into conversations with the owner of the operation about the latest sci-fi, argue about whether Robert A. Heinlein was a fascist?

The chain stores, they’re dying. Worse, most smell like something dead.