SquarePeg Books

Barnes and Noble has begun harassing me at least once a week with email promos to come in and buy stuff. This has been going on since January, although they’ve had my email for something like 2-3 years, now. I only received an occasional email once every few months from them before, but now it’s weekly.

It’s irritating, but also sad.

We’ve all heard the word speculating that Barnes and Noble is circling the drain. I remember in the 1980’s and early 1990’s when the only way to get ANYTHING from Barnes and Noble, if you didn’t live near one of their very physical few stores, was through a paper catalog. I remember looking at all those wonderful books and desperately wishing that there was a Barnes and Noble store near me. I remember savagely despising my high school theatre instructor who stated she was NOT going to take us to the Barnes and Noble motherhouse while we were in NYC on a class field trip because it was a waste of time (I didn’t feel too grumpy about it until she insisted we spend an hour or two in the Trump Tower and then another hour in some ritzy toystore no teenager had the budget to enjoy – that’s when the hate got real for me).

I remember being overjoyed when Barnes and Noble began to establish stores all over the country. Me and my friends would spend hours in the store while we were in college. We would skip class to hang in the Barnes and Noble store, wandering the shelves, slobbering over the possibilities, snorting the bookish air and reeling delightfully in our nasal high like it was cocaine. We complained about our addiction to buying books over more useful things, like food, while we grinned idiotically over our new acquisitions.

Then we discovered used bookstores and that became a high that was just as bad. Oh, the books we would find! The dated titles, the odd tomes we never knew about, the discontinued series we would scour the shelves for while clutching a handwritten list of  titles in our grubby little paws.

The bookish smell was more intense in the used bookstores than in Barnes and Noble, but both had their place in our lives.

Now, most of the used bookstores in my town are gone, and the sudden uptick in advertising by Barnes and Noble tells me it isn’t long for her either.

One could point to Amazon as the source of all evil, but that’s over-simplfying it, I think.

I love Barnes and Noble, I do.

I just can’t afford Barnes and Noble. The money just ain’t there. I have to choose between books or my daughter’s dance class; books or my son’s baseball sport; books or meds; a book that looks like fun or a book that expands my writing research a little more; books or shoes that actually fit my damn feet.

I don’t have the money for both. And I think I’m in the majority. Most of the people I know exchange secrets to finding the Goodwill bargains, or have you seen that used booksite online, or “I got it at a yardsale” or even Craigslist, FB Marketplace, or the local freecycle pages. Hell, we complain that children’s jeans at Goodwill are $5 when the kid is only gonna wear the thing for three months before we’re gonna donate it back because he outgrew it.

Which makes me sad in bookstores, now. I can still find a used bookstore here and there to huff the air and drool, but it’s like being on a diet and lusting after the dessert cart – it’s just so frustrating because you can’t indulge.  And my local libraries are like eating plain melba toast. You can do it, but you’re probably not going to enjoy it.

The uptick in Barnes and Nobles email advertising to me looks like the last ditch effort to save the dying patient. Really? We’re starting this up now? Honey, you should’ve been doing this 10-12 years ago – it’s a little late, now. It’s like putting AED paddles on a patient with a sucking chest wound – You are wasting your efforts by using the wrong survival strategy. I don’t know what the right strategy is, but I know a weekly email campaign isn’t it.

I’ll probably cry when Barnes and Noble kicks the bucket. I didn’t for Borders or MediaPlay, because they weren’t my first love, but I most likely will for B&N.