I just read a heartening report about Barnes and Noble’s expansion for the new year (see here: B&N on Track to Open 60 Bookstores This Year)
Stepping into some B&N’s in northern NJ and PA as I recently have, I’ve as much noted the updates in some of the store’s designs, opening up wholly new locations, and what seems to be heavy customer traffic (sorry, I don’t man the registers at these stores so I can’t comment on how many people are actually buying books vs. how many just browsing or coming in for a cup of coffee). But this expansion, with the company planning to open twelve new outlets this month in CA, FL, IN, KS, NH, NY, UT, Washington DC, and yes here in NJ, is part of the company’s wish to open sixty new stores overall by the end of 2024.
B&N opened thirty new outlets in 2023 while closing twenty stores, leaving them with six hundred and nine stores in that same year. B&N also just paid 1.83 million to acquire Denver’s famous Tattered Cover store. So, might things be looking up for the chain. Could this trend trickle down to all bookstores trending higher in popularity? Does this mean folks are reading more than ever before? Could this put a dent into Amazon’s lock-jam on book retail and publishing?
Why can a quiz be quizzical, but a test can’t be testicle?
Yes, so many questions, I know.
Having grown up hungrily searching the shelves of my local Allwood Branch Library, then scouring the old Printed Word Bookshop “downstairs” at the Styertowne Shopping Center for hours, enjoying Waldenbooks in Garden State Plaza mall (especially when the mall was only an outdoor mall), making a pilgrimage to City Lights Bookstore in San Fransico whenever I visit that city, having bought almost all my Harry Potter books from a wonderful UK bookstore that was a stone’s throw from the Covent Garen tube stop, jumping at any chance to stop in, sniff and look around at any independent book store I can, I welcome all actual brick-and-mortar bookstore expansion, even if it is a corporate one like Barnes and Noble.
Come one come all, read read read I say.
