Borders Books: A painful time to be a megabookstore

Is your local library associated with the school system? Ours is separately incorporated as a public corp which recieves state funds (Which are tax based from the fuels taxes, lotteries, state income taxes and county). Hwever, we are urged to " seek funding on our own as we do better".

One great thing working for Barnes And Noble is they have a Kindle killer in their Nook e-book player. Many tech bloggers have claimed its superiority over the Amazon e-book player.

If Borders tried a while back to develop their own, they might have saved themselves.

Borders made a lot is mistakes, they deserved to die, but in truth B&N did too. Both bet that the e-reader would flop, only B&N had the sense to change course.

nd there is no stupid book license connections as with Kindle. Thats why we chose the NOOK (too close to Nookie-know wad I mean nudge nudge?)

for our new library e-book and computer connections. QWe got a tech grant from a nearby business and we went nuts with Wifi and kiosks and Nook nooks. Weve even done away with desktops for the library except for staffers With very little jiggering, the NOOK becomes a laptop, albeit a limited one that works best with cloud and no internals

Amen, brother. If I know what I'm going to buy, I'll usually go online. Except for professional stuff, though, I never know until I see it. And that's not reading the blurb, that's thumbing through it and reading passages at random, looking through the TOC for highlights or things I'm interested in. Blurbs and reviews leave me cold.

Problem for me is, most of the reading I do is outside of the purview of most of the independent, local booksellers I've seen. I read a lot of first-hand account non-fiction type of stuff, and that can be hard to find in stores where they have to limit their stock to a particular range of interests due to size.

I was spoiled in Santa Cruz, between the local big store and the big used bookstore and the diverse reading interests of the locals. Since I left there, though, I've usually felt like I've had to choose between a big box and a limited selection of books I'd already read or determined I wasn't interested in.

That said, one of our two Borders (all the big box here is very unfortunately doubled up, the east and west sides being separated by a narrow isthmus) is still open, for the time being. And damn it, those stores are a giant waste of space. On the side the closed, I can see the University bookstore picking up the slack if there's really a demand for serious book browsing -- they've got a store with tons of unused space.

Only one Big Box Bookstore that Ive visited , has enough actual stock in texts and nonfiction so as to maintain the breadth of coverage of many subjects. This is a place called "The TAttered Cover" and its in Denver. They are still doing well and they draw crowds pf buyers from all over.

Denver, you say? Sounds like an excuse to go back and get some pork tacos at Patzcuaro's...

Sounds like Powells books in Portland OR, but they have been in trouble these last years. They just let go of 31 employees this Feb. I expect that they will be gone soon. My other fav place used to be Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, but they recently made a desperation move to a place with much less charm and that is much smaller. I dont need to go back now.

Maybe the closest thing I've seen to a packrat bookstore like that in Wisconsin is, oddly enough, at the Milwaukee airport. But I've always got books when I get there, so I haven't really looked around.

They stay in business there in spite of not taking credit, and they don't sell "Nothing Tips Like a Cow" merchandise, so they must be doing something right for somebody.

books and bookstores have been compared to video houses, and they arent even close. A video can be rated and sent as a trailer and its minimal investment in time and money. Books are different. There still is no good comparison base for e-texts and e-non fiction. Like you, I dont care for these Amazon "pro-bono" ratings because Ive fpound several in my areas of need to be totally bogus, and if accepted on its face , the reviewer would be given some credibility by an advanced amateur. Its like wikipedia , I am gratified whenever studenst would find the Maguffin in a wikipedia entry.

For me, I'm not browsing bookstores for sources of information, really. The books I read generally are for entertainment, even the "informational" stuff, so I'm frankly less concerned about veracity than readability -- and that I find impossible to gauge based on information available on Amazon and the like. I don't give a **** what some reviewer or paid booster or anonymous posters thinks, what I want to figure out when I pick up is if I'll enjoy reading it. To me the best way to find that out is still the old manual interface.

Professional info I get almost entirely from colleagues online and occasionally from textbooks. There's very little in the way of published tomes that touches on my work.

Is there a good text on livestock worms, wormers, and worming??

I don't know. The big problem I see with leaning on a text there is because a good schedule's going to depend so much on local climate, local parasite burdens generally, how the animals are kept, etc -- not to mention increasing resistance to ivermectin in some species/places. (Suspected in heartworm in dogs now, too, which is scary.)

I'd really trust the recommendations from a stock vet in your area before I'd rely on a published text on that one. As a dog/cat/sometimes rabbit guy, it's way outside my purview.

we switch a lot (Ivermectin, Tramisol, fendabendazole etc). We onlyworm the ewes and the keeper rams. Everything else gets pasture rotation only. and then market.

Have you heard any optimistic results from any fully organic wormers like diatomaceous earth?

I was in Santa Cruz itself only a couple of times, pdog, and it was back in the seventies, when I had been visiting friends who then lived in Felton. Anyway, I remember what I thought of as a great comfortable bookstore. I think part of that impression I retain was that there were some cushiony chairs, and maybe some bookstore cats. I'd probably recognize the name if I heard it. Hope it's still there, of course. Guessing it might be the used book place you mention.

Nope. Ain't heard nothing pessimistic, neither.

If I remember I'll check the boards when I've got more time to sift the results.

Bookshop Santa Cruz for new and Logo's for used. I came 20-25 years after you, though, with a major earthquake in between, so count on discontinuity.

Oh, well. Still, good memories.
Looks like they were both there in the seventies. Maybe my name-memory isn't as good as I thought.

I was at Powell's Books in Portland yesterday, so they are still open. I saw lots of books on trolleys waiting to be placed on shelves, jamming up isles, which was annoying, but otherwise all seemed fine. There were a good number in line to purchase but they did not have a lot in their arms. I also remember that the owner of Elliot Bay Books told Seattle weekly around the time of the move that what kills their profit is the people are buying from them used or older books, that recent books selling near list price and high profit margins are much less in demand than pre Great Recession. This could be that they are being bought from Amazon where they are cheaper, or in e-book form, or that people are choosing to read older cheaper stuff to save money.....in any case making money as a book store is very difficult now.

I let my Barnes and Noble membership card expire this March with the full intent on resubscribing when money wasn't so tight. Given the chance to go back to Barnes and Noble to renew, I faltered and decided not to wherein I went to either Shakespeare and Company or The Strand to buy my book fix.

I think my guilty subconscious finally caught up to me.