Before we get started, do note:

I really do think a good independent bookstore is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

I really am familiar with the issues that independents have with the big chains.

I am asking, on what do we want to spend our crusading passion? One model of retail over another? Or, you know, books?

This becomes a very specific and personal issue in certain places. When my daughter moved to Myrtle Beach, SC (known by the Times as the Ticky-tacky Redneck Riviera) she found two books stores--a Christian Bookstore and a B&N. She saved her amens for the latter.

Now she's moved to Western Mass where the battle to save the four independents in Northampton, Mass (was six but two disappeared several years ago) is an agonizing slow slide toward the two fairly local B&Ns and the one Media Play in the malls.

I have yet to sign at either of the B&Ns or Media Play, but they carry a greater selection of my stuff than do three of the four independents. AND they keep asking me to sign, whereas I have not been asked by three of the four indies in years.

So several more personal dots on your graph.

Jane

I live in a small city in the San Joaquin Valley. Independent bookstores have been opening and failing in this area with little help or competition from chains for years. One learned to find a reliable store in a nearby large city (say San Francisco) for a semi-annual boook orgy, and fill in the rest of one's needs with careful mail order purchases.

The opening of the first B&N nearby in Fresno was liberating -- my wife and I would drive up at least once a month to spend a chunk of a day there. The problem was that there often was no parking -- the lot, and the store, were full. I love Amazon but there is no substitute for being able to dig into a book before buying it and the chains have transformed the physical availability of books out here away from the biggest couple of dozen cities.

I wonder if the effect of the chains on independents is not the most important question -- what about the effect of the chains on local libraries?

I'm a big fan of the big bookshops. They are, quite simply, much more likely to have the book you want than the bookshops of my youth were. Often, they're more likely to have the book you want even than the best specialist shops in their heyday. And they're not at all bad at having books you never even realised you wanted, too.

And I'm a non-library user. Every so often I feel a vague twinge of guilt -- shouldn't my children get the empowering experience of choosing library books? But then I remember that at our local library there aren't many books, and the selection is made up primarily of rotten books about how little Timmy is coping with being bullied at school ever since Dad moved out. Then once we get them home we find it unremittingly difficult to keep track of library books (protective camoflage), so getting the books back to the library on time, or indeed ever, is a trial.

Instead, I take them to the bookshop, and let them choose books. And instead of choosing from a range of librarian pleasing books with a social conscience, they get to choose from the best books available for kids. And they can keep them forever. But, you know, they don't get four books a week this way. So if they ever catch the voracious reading habit, libraries will be essential.

There's one sf specialty bookstore left in the Baltimore to New York region--Between Books, in a strip mall a little north of Wilmington, DE and not far off I-95. I don't think it's any coincidence that Between books isn't paying a big-city rent.

It does have a better selection of sf than the big chains, and it's more conveniantly organized. I don't know what it would take to convince a chain to put all the new books (including the mass-market paperbacks) face out in one section.

Philadelphia does still have a gay bookstore, Giovanni's Room, and it's in center city. I'm a little surprised myself that NYC doesn't have a gay bookstore--I grant that the chains carry a lot, but they can't cover specific subjects as well as specialized bookstores do.

I think you're right about the wide availability of gay books. Oscar Wilde thrived (throve?) when it was the only place to get such books; A Different Light already bit the dust for the same reason.

But I haven't been to a mainstream bookstore that had all, or even a distributed sample, of the books in Oscar Wilde. They tend to have political books, psychological books, and maybe a little light erotica. Where are the gay-themed (but not pornographic) romance, science fiction, historical novels/films?

On the Web. That's about it, other than places like Oscar Wilde. As a Homosexual-American (!) who prefers to walk into a bookstore and browse (no one has shown me a website where browsing is possible), I have to consider this a tragic loss.

Is it worth it in exchange for country-wide popular availability of books? I guess it is - IF people are reading more books as a result. Are they? I don't know. I heard a couple of years ago that the average American household contains three (yes, 3, not 30 or 300) books, and watches television 6 hours a day (IIRC). Has that changed?

Averages being what they are, if it's gotten up to five, say, it's probably worth it - but I distrust such statistics; I want to see the standard deviation and the median as well. I suspect that even if the average goes up it has more to do with out-of-control bookaholics like me (and you) spending the rent money on How To Grow Betony In Your Bathtub than with Granny Hatfield buying Voina i Mir.

I'd love to be wrong about this.

I worked in three of NYC's independent bookstores during the course of a decade (1979-1989). All are now gone, but only one should seriously be missed.

Scribner's (5th & 48th) was the most beautiful of the old 5th Avenue carriage trade stores. It carried perhaps a fifth of the number of books the Barnes & Noble across the street presently carries (that was, if I remember right, the first branch store opened by B & N -- there was of course already the main store downtown). Customer-friendly? We were told, explicitly, to take as few special orders as possible. No one was allowed to sit. Until a few years or so before I began, the store neither carried paperbacks nor accepted credit cards. The staff were treated like flunkies by the owners, and treated (most of) the public accordingly. The snob factor was remarkably pervasive.

Endicott Books was on Columbus above 82nd and was basically run as a vanity project for the owner. The store was lovely, and held perhaps one-twentieth the number of books carried by the B & N that opened a couple of years later, two blocks away. If a customer sat on the floor to look at a book, or spent more than a few minutes flipping through, we were directed by the owner to make them get up, or put the book away. Again, we took as few special orders as possible. I left the store just before my first book came out; when I dropped by to see if it was there I was told "it's science fiction, of course we don't carry it."

The third store at which I worked was the late lamented Coliseum Books, which as all NYCers remember did have a truly fabulous stock, but also a staff that by and large out-surlied the Strand any day of the week. This was the only store in which I worked in which physical violence could if necessary be employed against the customers. I left the store after the owner in a fit of pique threw a toolbox at me; and that was the end of my life in retail bookselling.

Nowdays, if I go into a B & N or Borders looking for a book, nine times out of ten I find it -- if not at one, then at the next. If I'm looking for a new book I go down to Shakespeare on lower Broadway (my favorite independent in town), which gets new titles before anyone else. And if I'm looking for anything more obscure (as I often am)I just get on the internet.

In Lexington, Kentucky, where I grew up and where there was one small bookstore downtown, there is now Joseph-Beth, a regional chain in the mid-south and Ohio that puts B & N to shame. As Patrick notes I think this is the case in most cities nationwide (and now even the Bronx has a B & N).

By and large I think the general-stock independent stores that are still in business are the ones that either always knew how to do the job in the first place, or the ones that cleaned up their act.

I don't get really passionate about the independents vs. big chains argument; I echo Patrick's comments in that what interests me is the books. Anecdotally, I grew up in the suburbs of Denver, which has what is reputedly one of the great independents (The Tattered Cover). Now, I love The Tattered Cover. But when I was a pre-teen and teen, besides riding my bike to the library on Saturday afternoons (which I did a lot), I didn't have access to downtown Denver and that great independent store. What I had access to was the local Waldenbooks at Westminster Mall, with its skimpy few shelf feet of SF&F selection. To this day, I remember the time, having recently become hooked on ERB's Tarzan books, that my ten year old self sat crouched at the foot of the shelf for an hour or so just reading the next in the series, when a clerk came and told me to either buy the book or take a hike. Do I love B&N and Borders, with their big chewy selection and their completely relaxed browsing rules? Damn straight I do, and they've reaped the rewards from my wallet in the last decade, too....

Nancy Lebovitz states that "the chains carry a lot, but they can't cover specific subjects as well as specialized bookstores do."

I would sign off on a modified version of this statement: they don't tend to cover specific subjects as well as a well-run specialized bookstore can. But being a "specialty store" doesn't confer automatic virtue, nor does being a "chain store" make it impossible for the store's management to take a strong interest in one or more specialties. And there are plenty of stores available to prove both points.

Jack Womack's post reminds me of the vile bookstore in his extravagantly dystopian novel Random Acts off Senseless Violence, which I always suspected was based on Coliseum Books.

I wish I had something meaningful to say about the demise of independent booksellers---it seems very sad to me, like the departure of the elves at the end of _The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy. But my real point is this: Jane, I always thought that Gulf Shores, Alabama was the "Redneck Riviera".

Patrick,

You suspected correctly!!

Coliseum required little, in fact no exaggeration to fit into my sort of text. Once one of our floor staff was stabbed through the hand by a cashier after he tried to take them away from her -- she was trying to stab a fellow cashier with whom she was having an argument, at the time. This took place at 5 PM when the store was packed, of course, and customers were lined up waiting to buy books from the aforementioned cashiers. In case you were wondering, no one was fired. "TAKE IT DOWNSTAIRS NEXT TIME!" the owner shouted. Ah, the golden age of the NY literary world...

Stabbed through the hand with scissors, I should have noted.

DC has Lambda Rising, an enormously successful independent gay bookstore in Dupont Circle. It has been in business at least since I moved down here 8 years ago.

There's a Borders (or maybe a Books-A-Million) *and* a Crown Books just down the street. Bothm being the the "gay-ghetto" of the circle, offer huge selections of gay-specific publications, and yet they haven't managed to put Lambda Rising out of business. LR's customer base is surprisingly loyal, even in the face of the lower prices offered by the chains.

Great things about the chains:

Computerized inventory, including list-by-section and certainty about current stock. I knew Powers' _Declare_ was excellent, I just didn't know that it was shelved in "Mystery" rather than SF. The computer told me the secret.

The Borders near me (57th & Park), until the recent republishing of the old Discworlds in the US, carried the not-available-in-the-us Discworlds in import Corgis, shelved with the US-available books. With a convenient $-denominated sticker. They still carry the hardcore stuff like that: The Mapp, the guide, the encyclopedia.

Graphic Novels. Borders and Virgin both give them nice big chunks of space, and happily carry the smaller publishers. Virgin often has import Artbooks shelved with the translated Manga.

Huge, sprawling SF-F sections (one Borders I've seen even segregates SF from F, because they have so damn many).

Huge, sprawling sections of books they didn't carry ten years ago. The B&N near me has shelf after shelf of Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, etc.

In-store-cafes. Some mock them. What could be more convenient?

End result? Every time I go into one, I come out with something. The more I browse and simply read whole books in the store, the more I come out with. They definitely profit from me, and I'm happy with them.

I am asking, on what do we want to spend our crusading passion? One model of retail over another? Or, you know, books?

My flippant answer was going to be, "How about: both?" But in reality I don't want to see one model of retail over another, I want to see many different models of retail. The sort of thing which doesn't really exist anymore in the comic book industry (in which the vast majority of comics are exclusively distributed by a single distributor, and to a dwindling number of venues).

I think that the mechanism for delivering product to consumers is hardly less important than what product gets delivered.

It's interesting reading comments in support of chain stores. In response to BSD's comment, my experience is that chain stores - especially Barnes & Noble - have "huge, sprawling SF-F sections" hugely dominated by a few very popular authors and by media tie-ins. Rarely do I find books that interest me. This has been my experience across several stores in different cities, with one exception which (I understand) had a fan who did a lot of the ordering for the SF section.

Patrick,

charming old independent shops in Cambridge

I can't remember it's name, but do you mean the one that used to be over the old Wursthaus on Mass Ave (now, alas, also a victim of mall creep in Harvard Square) where Spike used to sit behind the desk forever and knew every book in SF creation and where you could find it? (sigh)

Fortunately, Harvard BK is still there, and every September you can find great stuff in the Used lower level before the students arrive and get their hands on it.

"I think that the mechanism for delivering product to consumers is hardly less important than what product gets delivered."

That's an interesting and provocative statement, and I'd like to hear you dilate on it.

My experience as a publisher is that B&N and the other big chains have been reasonably supportive of some of our publishing projects that involved neither megapopular authors nor media tie-ins. For instance, B&N's support was crucial to the launch of Orb, our trade paperback backlist line. It's true that you won't find many gems of the SF small press on the SF shelves of a B&N superstore, but you won't find those in most independents, either.

That's a good point about the disaster that is modern comic-book retailing. Of course, the history of independent comic stores in the 1990s is a lot more like, say, the tulip craze, than like anything happening in the book world. Still, I certainly agree that diversity is better than monoculture. What I most want is diversity in books, and I'm all for whatever model supports that.

By the way, Xopher, upthread, wonders if more people are reading more books. The short answer is yes, definitely. It's hard to nail down figures, and the discourse is absolutely lousy with balonious data purporting to show that the average American reads one book a decade (probably while moving his lips), but in fact Americans read a buttload of books--and more and more of them all the time.

Thought you might have some more current info on that. But mainly posting here to tell you how much I love the word 'balonious'...did you strike that coinage yourself? If not, where was it minted? Or is it of ancient provenance, and I have somehow, to my loss, missed it up to now?

I giggle. I mutter it to myself. I grin ear-to-ear. Not since I got the word 'pathomnemonic' have I enjoyed acquiring a new word so much.

It crawled out of my keyboard, honest.

I live in Champaign-Urbana Illinois, an area with about 100-thousand people and a very big university, which seems to make for book heaven. There's a good mix of public and college libraries, new and used bookstores, independents and corporate chains. The indies seem to thrive by filling niches (second-hand, comics) that the chains aren't much interested in, or just by being well-run (one of the big-box bookstores here is an independent).

But a big college town may be a special case. Until three years ago, I lived in Peoria, a slightly larger market with just a small university. The result as of 2000 when I moved was fewer bookstore choices ---- a couple of chain stores in the mall, one big-box store, one college bookstore, a second-hand store or two, and one tiny indie store aimed at African-Americans. More bookstores closed than opened during the 21 years I lived there. Champaign-Urbana has triple the bookstores and more stability. It does NOT seem to have an exhaustive independent specialty store(there is a funky new-age bookstore run out of a bungalow). That's the sort of thing I would expect in a major city, which makes it disturbing to hear about gay and science fiction bookstores in big cities closing.

There's been a back-backlash in the chain-versus-independent bookstore debate (see the July-Aug 2001 Atlantic Monthly, for example.)

I'm an admirer of the chains, for just the reason Patrick suggests - a non-urban background. Growing up in in northeast Arkansas, the nearest bookstore of any kind was about thirty miles away. My family moved to west Tennessee around 1980, and just having a mall-sized Waldenbooks was a big step up.

Now the same town has a branch of Davis-Kidd. You would have had quite a time buying anything by Borges in 1980, but it's there now. You can buy David Foster Wallace, Richard Feynman, Nabokov, Wittgenstein, and Martin Amis. (As for the SF, the last time I was there, they had a large selection, including several NESFA titles.)

And you can browse through these while sitting around a fireplace and having a decent lunch. If you'd told me about it in 1980, I'd have fainted.

To keep an exhaustive independent specialty bookstore *housed in a physical plant* going in any city or town requires a number of things:

1) A market big enough to provide a solid local customer base;
2) A store location accessible enough, and busy enough, to sustain a predictable level (daily, monthly, annually) of purchasing customers coming through;
3) A store attractive enough, or functional enough, to continually attract potential new customers;
4) A reason for the general reader to come in -- having enough non-specialty material of whatever sort on hand to provide new customers with something to buy even if they aren't interested in the specialized subject (i.e. cards, coffee, CDs, etc. etc.);
5) A buyer who knows what he or she is doing;
6) Store managers who know what they are managing;
7) Store personnel who know what they are selling, but who do not fall prey to the "I could never sell/tell anything to someone as uncool as you" syndrome;
8) Reasonable rent, utilities, etc. etc.;
9) Sense, on the part of the owner (sanity is not a requirement)
10) Luck. A good friend of mine opened a now-closed Spanish-language bookshop here in Manhattan a few years ago. It was a beautiful space, not centrally located but still readily reachable. The rent was just doable. The one area he had to skimp on was insurance. Then the basement flooded.

These off the top of my head. There have been any number of specialty shops in NYC to open and close during the 25 years I've lived here, and it's often hard to say why, specifically, they do or don't make it. There is a very good architecture bookstore, Urban Center Books, around the corner from where I work. It's located in prime, i.e. expensive rental space in the center of Midtown Manhattan, it is set considerably away from the closest street, and it sells no non-architectural material, yet it has been doing very well for 21 years. But then there are an awful lot of architects in NYC, and they usually have money and, unlike the average SF reader, can always write off however many books they buy.

Mystery bookstores tend to do the best of all genre stores, I think.

Xopher writes:
"Where are the gay-themed (but not pornographic) romance, science fiction, historical novels/films?" [in the chain stores]

In many of the big box stores, they're just mixed in with the general fiction/romance/scifi/historical section. It does vary from store to store though - the management and staff of the big box stores do have some control over both their inventory and layout. In my experience, B&N stores with gay managers are more likely to have their gay fiction split out into a separate section, not to mention a much broader selection of gay fiction, period.

It's actually an interesting issue in itself as to whether it's desirable to have a separate gay fiction section within a big box store. Does this mean that it's assumed that a straight person browsing the general fiction section would never choose to buy a book with a gay protagonist and that gay fiction will only sell if gay people can find it easily? I've certainly read some of Toni Morrison's novels and I'm a gay white male. Why wouldn't a straight black female want to read a book by Andrew Holleran? Would she ever do so if she didn't find it while browsing through the general fiction section? From an economic standpoint, I wonder whether Holleran's novels (or other gay writers') sell better in stores where gay fiction has been "ghettoized" out into its own section or in stores where it's been mixed in with the rest of the fiction.

I'm fortunate enough to live in a city (Toronto) well-supplied with both big chains and small independents. In fact, there's a storefront not far from where I live with a science fiction bookstore on the first floor and a gay bookstore on the second and third floors. Both of them seem to be thriving even though they're just a few blocks away from an Indigo (a Canadian big chain bookstore).

Just to mention another lost and wonderful bookstore: Weiser's, an occult and metaphysical supermarket-sized bookstore in New York. Ok, maybe it was a small supermarket, but it went on and on, and in a time when most bookstores wouldn't have anything about Tibetan Buddhism, Weiser's would have a whole section of it.

And I filled out an index card about wanting a copy of Clynes' _Sentics_, and years later, they notified me when the book came back into print.

John Farrell asks, "I can't remember it's name, but do you mean the one that used to be over the old Wursthaus on Mass Ave (now, alas, also a victim of mall creep in Harvard Square) where Spike used to sit behind the desk forever and knew every book in SF creation and where you could find it? (sigh)"

That'd be the Science Fantasy Bookstore. Spike is these days, at least some of the time, perched behind the desk of Pandemonium, which was originally in the same location and is now in the Garage at the far end of the same block. Tyler somethingorother owns Pandemonium, and sells games as well as SF/F -- seems to be doing pretty well.

I find that chain stores vary. The Barnes and Noble in Colma, south of San Francisco, is pretty bad as bookstores go. The B&N on Bay Street, in San Francisco proper, is pretty decent (although I'd probably go to Stacy's first). I think it depends on the manager of any individual store; for example, the Borders in the Stonestown Galleria (also San Francisco) used to stock import British SF, which I haven't seen at any other Borders. The Borders in the Cambridge Galleria, out here in Boston, has some import mysteries. Etc.

Categorization: to some degree I think it's left up to the local store, in chains, but that's a guess. I know that when it comes to Borders and B & N I've found my books in SF/Fantasy, in Literature, and, sometimes, with some titles in one, and some in the other.

The smartest places, I think, keep separate genre sections but also make sure copies of books are filed in more than one location. This of course is easier said than done when it comes to keeping track of inventory on a main database.

The lost bookstores of NYC, ah bliss: Weiser's, yes, and Eighth Street, Laurel, Classic, Biblio, Brentano's, Marboro (the far superior discount chain, swallowed up by B & N), Bookmasters, Doubleday, Womrath's, Traveller's, Victor Kamkin...not even to mention the used book stores that have bitten the dust: Biblo & Tannen, Dauber & Pine, Academy, Arcadia, Abbey, the late great Mendoza...

It's interesting to see what stain trumps what, so to speak. As Alex points out above, many large bookstores have "gay fiction" sections. But lots of modern SF and fantasy has gay major characters or even protagonists--ranging from literary SF like Maureen McHugh's work to the pop fantasy of Mercedes Lackey--and yet that stuff is almost always kept in the SF section, rarely making its way over to Gay Interest. Even when the books in question have won the Lambda Literary Award, like McHugh's China Mountain Zhang or Frank M. Robinson's The Dark Beyond the Stars. From this we can conclude that being science-fictional is less culturally respectable than being gay. Or, alternately, that SF fans are less worried than mainstream readers about the terrifying prospect of reading a novel about somebody with the wrong orientation.

John Farrel wrote: I can't remember it's name, but do you mean the one that used to be over the old Wursthaus on Mass Ave (now, alas, also a victim of mall creep in Harvard Square) where Spike used to sit behind the desk forever and knew every book in SF creation and where you could find it? (sigh)

You must mean Pandemonium Books and Games. It's still in Harvard Square -- it's in the Garage. It's where I get my SF and gaming fix.

Someone wayabouts upthread there remarked that the one downside of the Internet bookstores is that you can't browse them. A lot of people agree with that, but I think it's one of those issues where perception lags reality. I routinely browse Amazon -- they've got personalized (if not always totally accurate) recommendations, interesting "Other customers who bought this book bought..." links, lists of somehow-associated books put together by their users. And nowadays, a lot of the books even let you read excerpts from inside.

Plus, they have REVIEWS. I'm so spoiled by those that I can barely even stand to buy an unfamiliar book at a physical bookstore, because all I know about it is what I can see on the packaging.

Alex, I'm glad to know that Bakka is doing okay in the Yonge Street location (Glad Day is upstairs, right?), but its days of true thriving were when it was on Queen Street West and occupied two storefronts.

In those days, before Indigo and Chapters and even before The World's Biggest Coles Store, it had to compete with a ton more generalized used bookstores, but most chain stores would only have a couple of books out of a series or by a particular author at any given time. Bakka was the place to go if you wanted something specific that hadn't been pushed by the distributors' sales staffs lately. These days, having "more like this one" isn't a unique feature of specialty stores.

No doubt that chain bookstores have brought lots of great books to places previously without good bookstores. And no doubt that a lot of independent and specialty stores suck (especially the ones that won't let you read anything, even if you're already carrying a load of intended purchases under your arm).

But the best independents are still better than the best chains. Even if not in their stock, in their ability to bring interesting books to your attention, books that you'd previously not heard of.

When I go to a good independent - e.g. Cody's in Berkeley, Vroman's in Pasadena, Tattered Cover in Denver - there will be fascinating non-fiction (fiction, too, but esp. non-fiction) on display, books from major publishers that I hadn't seen anywhere else. Maybe B&N had them, certainly they could order them, but what I needed was someone to show them to me.

That's just part of the advantages of good independents, but it's a big thing and a big part.

Paraphrasing a letter of mine published in _Whole Earth_ a couple years back:

I grew up in a wealthy hamlet on Long Island. (My family wasn't wealthy; we lived in the servant and tradesman part o' town.) It had an antiquarian bookshop (grouchy bastard in charge; SF&F, none; science books, none) and a tony boutique bookshop (safe bestsellers, perrenials, coffee table books, and lots of gifts). Independant bookstores, but not worth snot to *me,* a high-school SF-nerd who'd gotten a whiff of Stapledon.
Glen Cove, the next town over, had no bookstores after 1971 or so. (The drug stores had bookracks where you could buy Ballentine fantasies and stuff about ESP. Wheee.) Sea Cliff and Oyster Bay: More antiquarian shops.

For the teenage me, getting to a decent bookstore meant a trip to Hicksville or Manhasset, and those were storefront chain outlets (Brentanos, B. Dalton). Train trips to Manhattan were an option, and one I took advantage of. (The pre-chain Barnes & Noble sales outlet was like paradise on Earth.)

SO: When Barnes & Noble opened up a big-ass superstore in Garden City at about the same time I learned to drive, man was I happy. BIG place. Clean, well lit, giant news-stand, big computer section, big SF&F section.

I can't imagine how the coming of a B&N or Borders to a nearby highway exit strip mall would feel to someone in the some midwestern outback, where books were something you bought in drug stores or at a Scholastic Book Sale. Maybe like dirt farmers on an backwater colony planet would feel if Galactic General Products opened a synth-o-mat nearby.

[I added my last name since I see another Trent in the same list]

By all means, crusade books! I do think, however, that the big chains by-pass an important venue: the small press, the only place publishing the majority of important authors' story collections.

The case-scenario in Omaha, NE, is that Merchants of Venus--which is out of business and through which I bought Yolen's out-of-print collection, _Tales of Wonder_--carried a similar number to the five local Borders and B&N, but Borders carries the very occasional Golden Gryphon collection (I bought Robert Reed's there) while B&N has carried only one small press book in all my year's of combing: Meisha Merlin's SP Somtow's _The Ultimate Mallword_. I do most of my small press shopping online, but I do miss finding the rare and out-of-print editions that Merchants of Venus carried (granted, unless he'd put them in the cheap rack, I preferred buying them through Chris Drumm who saved me a few bucks though his "everyday specials"). Now that I think about it, I prefer ordering through Chris over the big-chain or independent stores; however, for convenience sake, he needs to list his store holdings online, so I can browse at my leisure and not have to transcribe what I'm interested in.

I can't even find his 3-year-old website. His email was something like chrisdrumm@aol.com or cdrumm@aol.com or simply drumm@aol.com. I forget.

Chris Drumm Books
PO Box 445
Polk City, IA 50226-0445

The best independents are better than the best chains, no question, but the problem is that there's so comparatively few of them.

Simon, you've listed three: one could continue i.e.

Seattle -- Elliott Bay, Third Place, University
Portland -- Powell's, 23rd Ave.
Menlo Park -- Kepler's
LA -- Book Soup
Austin -- Bookpeople
St. Louis -- Left Bank
DC -- Olssen's
Louisville -- Hawley-Cooke
Lexington, Cincinnati, Cleveland -- Joseph-Beth
Dayton -- Books & Co.
Minneapolis -- Ruminator
Champaign/Savoy -- Pages For All Ages
Jackson, MI -- Lemuria

I'll stop here, but the basic point is that the best independent bookstores in the US can be listed pretty easily, off the top of this given publishing professional's head; and if you don't happen to live in an area so blessed (and I for one would love to have Powell's, say, in NYC), then B & N and Borders provide far more than what used to be available to the US reading public at large.

I know the argument that the chains are a whole lot better than nothing, and that for much of the country, nothing was the only other choice. And to some extent, I can buy into it.

But what's genuinely odd to me about the conversation, from my perch here in Boston, is how different this place seems to be from the rest of the country. Counting suburbs which are on the subway, we have specialty bookshops in SF (Pandemonium --- the shop that used to be over the Wursthaus, which is now a block away in the Garage), poetry (Grolier's), foreign language (Schoenhof's), computers and other tech (Quantum), mystery (Spenser's), a couple of gay bookstores (at least) which I can't name off the top of my head, and several excellent indpendent general booksellers. And there are also quite a few good used bookshops, a few specialists I haven't named, no doubt, and several high-end antiquarians.

It doesn't surprise me that there are more bookshops here than your average city; Boston is, among other things, a college town writ huge. But the extent of the difference is a bit of a surprise; if a specialty SF store is making ends meet here, in high-rent Harvard Square no less, can there really be none in freaking New York?

I'm not complaining, mind you. If there's something in the water here, I would be thrilled to see someone make more of the stuff and dump it in the reservoirs somewhere else. (Dare I suggest DC?) But it sure seems odd...

Yes, there can really be none in freaking New York. A number of the older bookstores in town had 10 to 20 year leases originally signed in the late 60s-early 70s, when NYC wasn't exactly prime territory, and when those leases ran out the rents went up to, well, astronomical levels.

This happened not only to bookstores, of course. One of the stores I miss most in NYC was the old Lionel Train store on E. 23rd just off Park Ave., which sold only Lionel trains and related equipment and had a fabulous neon sign besides. When its lease ran out in the late 80s, out it went. Replaced by a Sox Shop chain that lasted maybe six months.

You know, it's not just F&SF or gay speciality bookstores that are dissappearing. For more than a decade, Computer Literacy Bookstore on Trimble in San Jose was one of the true landmarks of Silicon Valley. I would carefully arrange my schedule when hitting Macworld or some other trade show in SF to make it down 101 to CLB to load up on stuff that was just not available anywhere else on earth.

They apparently had management problems on and off, and opened and closed other locations. What (IMHO) killed them off was not just competitors like Amazon (CLB was bought out by a Amazon competitor wannabe, Fatbrain) but mainstream bookstores, especially the chains, stocking lots more computer titles. I can now find stuff out here in the wilds of the SJ Valley that I might have had a hard time finding at CLB. Once you took away their position as the only place to find stuff, they weren't that good a bookstore.

In Atlanta the "Science Fiction and Mystery Bookstore" is making one more stab at a new location. They have a fairly strong support base among locals and I think the newest location will be much better than their current location (it's closer to my home, for one thing :-) ).

One of the best bookstores in Atlanta for years was Oxford Books, however when they opened a second location only a few miles from their original store (what were they thinking?) and mismanaged their accounts (a friend who worked there told me they couldn't do special orders except as cash transactions because their credit was so bad with the distibuters) they did themselves in. For general bookstores the Borders and B&N stores are currently the best stores in town of which I am aware.

Patrick: "It crawled out of my keyboard, honest."

Hmmm, if it can crawl, then it isn't nailed down, is it? :-)

Alex: "It's actually an interesting issue in itself as to whether it's desirable to have a separate gay fiction section within a big box store."

I guess I'm against ghettoization, except when I'm actually shopping. Then it's easier to find the stuff I want. But then I haven't found any fiction worth reading by browsing in a long, long time. The sections are all crowded with TV and movie novelizations - even VIDEOGAME novelizations! - and The Sword of This or Gem of That trilogies. Never sure whether to yawn or vomit, let me tell you.

I read China Mountain Zhang, and while I liked it, I just barely remember that the protag was gay. Did he, like, have a boyfriend or something? Someone direct me to an SF novel where the protagonist is gay, and has relationships and stuff, and is an actual hero. You know, like Miles Vorkosigan, not perfect, not LitFas or anything...actually Miles is a great example, because he's frankly pretty lustful - I want to read about a gay Miles Vorkosigan, that's what. (I doubt writing to LMB about this would do any good; the only alternative is to write slash, which really just won't do.)

Patrick again: "...Or, alternately, that SF fans are less worried than mainstream readers about the terrifying prospect of reading a novel about somebody with the wrong orientation."

Well, I certainly found in the early 80s that fandom was much cooler about me being gay than the gay community was about me being a fan. Supports what I've said elsewhere about the positive effect of speculative fiction on the mind.

Mike: "Someone wayabouts upthread there remarked that the one downside of the Internet bookstores is that you can't browse them. A lot of people agree with that, but I think it's one of those issues where perception lags reality."

The kind of browsing you talk about is not what I mean. I cannot browse on Amazon, because I want to wander around, glancing at the shelves, ignoring what's put out front as a Bestseller or Book of Note, and just grab what catches my eye. Maybe I'll read part of it, not necessarily the beginning. I do that several times, until one book makes me actually buy it. Sometimes I buy a book because it feels like I should; can't get a "read" off a book that's in a warehouse somewhere. If you can tell me how I can do that on a website, I'll concede your point, but frankly I can't imagine that working.

Future Fantasy went under, speaking of Silicon Valley, but I blame that on the general dot-com collapse. Once you take away the disposable income of a significant percentage of the area, they stop spending as much money on SF.

Another thing that the comic and book markets seem to have in common is that used stock and stores are slowly wasting away. In comics, back issues seem to have been replaced by bound editions, which is fine unless you want to find, say, the complete run of Legion of Super Heroes from 1989 through the current day. The selection, even in big ("big") stores like St. Marks or Chicago Comics, is limited.

Hearing that Academy is gone just reminds me of the passing of Aspidistra, here in Chicago. Myopic is OK, but I don't think there are many places left where you can find, say, copies of out-of-print paperbacks (sf, mystery, horror) for under a buck. And Aspisdistra used to have shelves full of them.

Xopher writes: "I guess I'm against ghettoization, except when I'm actually shopping. Then it's easier to find the stuff I want."

Which answers so many questions about why publishing categories are as they are.

"Charles Dodgson": You aren't imagining things. New York is a mediocre book town. Boston is a glorious book town. We notice the contrast, too.

And speaking of Future Fantasy, I still miss them. The chains are wonderful, and carry far more science fiction than any bookstore I had access to while growing up in backwoods Connecticut, but they still can't compare to a really good specialty store.

I couldn't walk into Future Fantasy without walking out with my arms full of books. Alas, I can't say the same for the local Borders.

Well, suddenly I feel blessed. Here I've been telling myself that Cincinnati was an illiterate, intolerant, homophobic, racist city, and yet--and yet--there's the Pink Pyramid (gay) downtown (anti-porn crusader Simon Leis tried to shut it down and failed), Crazy Ladies (lesbian) in Northside, a Joseph-Beths in Norwood (semi-indy), a great used/collectible place in Clifton (the name escapes me), Kaldi's (a bar[!] that sells used books, and, and, -- I'm getting breathless -- Shake-It Records has a decent collection of rare graphic novels, zines, journals, and "alternative" books (besides being an indy record store/music label/music distributer). Numerous college bookstores (UC, Xavier). A great old-fashioned newstand downtown for periodicals. I see more small African-American shops than I'm aware of. And a big-box bookstore at damn near every exit off every interstate.

Manhattan has no independent gay bookstore, and Cincinnati (cf. Maplethorpe, Flynt, Leis) has two. Whodathunkit?

Man, I went nuts with the parentheses. The missing one goes after "used books), and, and".

Oh, well. At least that post conveys excitement at bookstores, if not the concomitant literacy that usually entails.

Funny thing, Bryant, CLB went under before the overall crash.

Hmmm . . . an omen? (grin)

Jack Womack: OK, granted, there aren't that many truly great large independents. But there used to be more, and they're the best. When the chains horn in on them and they close, the top available level of bookstore quality goes down.

Good on the chains for bringing the top level of bookstore quality up in suburbs, small towns, etc. Bad on the chains for bringing it down in bigger cities.

There are ways to do something on Amazon that bears a vague familiar relationship to browsing. But it just ain't the same thing. I'm with Xopher: I need a browsing experience I can't get online. But I also need a great online in-print list like Amazon's.

Someone mentioned Future Fantasy, a late SF specialty store in Silicon Valley. I remember visiting that one. I can't say I miss it.

Have to agree that for most communities, the chains outclass whatever else is there. The Podunk/East Jesus where I grew up had one store with one shelf of "books" -- mostly religious tract crapola. Now, although the town is still provincial, narrow-minded, and boring, at least there's a Waldenbooks at the local mall -- I'd have thought I died and went to heaven if there'd been one when I was 12. Now that I live in LA I miss the great independent bookstores that used to be here -- like Campbell's near UCLA -- and I have to schlep miles out to the Val to get to Dangerous Visions, but I never knock the chains!

Bryant: the Borders in Emeryville regularly carries British editions of Iain Banks' work (both M. and non-M.), although they stock it all in the general fiction section as opposed to the SF. I haven't seen much other imported SF there, though.

Sadly, the new Barnes and Noble in Emeryville is atrocious. The fiction section seems sizable, but the non-fiction is worse than any other B&N I've ever been in.

I've never found an independent that had as good a history section as the Borders in Emeryville, either. The Tattered Cover came close, but BookPeople and both Cody's pale in comparison.

"The Borders in Emeryville regularly carries British editions of Iain Banks' work (both M. and non-M)."

Gosh that's interesting. I wonder what the American publishers, holders of exclusive licenses to distribute in North America, think of that? Most recently Simon and Shuster?

(Yes, I know Dead Air hasn't found an American publisher yet, which is a shame because it's a truly ingenious thriller. He said. Pointedly.)

Simon, I know Kroch & Bretano in Chicago went under, and Pickwick in LA, and a number of the aforementioned stores in NYC, the biggest of which were Coliseum, Scribner's and Brentano's (no relation to K & B in Chicago). I can also think of some small regional stores and chains that have also gone under for a variety of reasons -- ranging from bigger chain competition to the store's profits going up the nose of the owner.

What are some other large independents that went under due to direct competition from chain stores? I know there are at least a couple I'm not thinking of, presently -- by big I mean Cody's/Tattered Cover size.

Here in NYC, Brentano's went under in 1979 due to financial mismanagement; Scribner's was enfolded into Rizzoli in the late 80s after the publisher (prior to its being sold by the Scribner family to S & S)quite literally dumped the stores (the Scribners were never financial wizards, either), and Coliseum, which lost customers to both the B & Ns further up Broadway, nevertheless closed only when the new owners of the building raised the rent so high as to prevent a renewal of the lease.

The thing is that this:

>>When the chains horn in on them and they close, the top available level of bookstore quality goes down

happens only when there was a good independent store in the neighborhood in the first place, whatever the size of the city. "Good" of course is a subjective opinion -- I was never a fan of the late Books & Company here in NYC, for instance, but plenty of writers were.

Frankly, the customer service at the B & Ns and Borders in NYC is, if no better, at least no worse than it has ever been at any of the independents here in town, past and present; and while I never count on anyone at either of the aforementioned chain stores ever knowing anything concerning the stock, I never get the attitude from their employees I'm sure I, like all my co-workers in those long-ago stores,often turned on the customers. I am sure this is not the case, or a problem, in other cities (I think of the West Coast, particularly).

(Re: Coliseum, further. I can now quote specific figures here, so everyone can get an idea of what I'm talking about when I referred to "astronomical" rents: The new owners insisted that the rent be doubled, to $300 a square foot for the upstairs, $75 for the basement -- monthly, of course; Coliseum had 12,000 square feet, and that was a nut that simply could not be made.)

A quick note to an early remark:
I wonder if the effect of the chains on independents is not the most important question -- what about the effect of the chains on local libraries?

The most visible effect of chain bookstores on libraries is that most of them gave up the war on prohibiting food/drink. All those in-store coffeehouses.

I wrote: "The Borders in Emeryville regularly carries British editions of Iain Banks' work (both M. and non-M)."

Patrick wrote: Gosh that's interesting. I wonder what the American publishers, holders of exclusive licenses to distribute in North America, think of that? Most recently Simon and Shuster?

Me again: I have no idea, although I've wondered about it several times, particularly when noticing the "not for sale in the U.S." small print on the backs of the books. What's even more interesting is that that Borders is not unique. I've found British editions of Banks' stuff in quite a number of the bookstores I've been to in the Bay Area, including Cody's and Black Oak Books.

Bryant, Charles, and Neel,

Thanks for the update on Pandemonium. But was it always in the Garage? Or did that move from another Harvard Sq location?

Speaking of which, McIntyre & More, which used to be on Mass Ave just outside of the Square, always had a great SF section worth checking on lunch breaks (when I worked at Readers Guide, the shittiest company any starving writer ever had to work for). M&& is still around, but I think they're farther down toward Central Square.

Two points: From 1984 until 1992, I helped manage a science-fiction specialty shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Well, more correctly, I helped manage a store which had started as an sf specialty shop in 1978; by the time I started working there, more than 50% of its revenue was from comics and games, and this remained true until I left. (I still get my comics mail-ordered to me from there.)

I visited there a few months back for the first time in five years. They still stock sf, but less than they used to, and when the shop changes owners later this year, it will stop carrying books. They can't compete with the Borders and the two B&N superstores within easy driving distance. They could, conceivably, carry the real specialty items, the 50-copy chapbooks (in hardcover for $75), but they can't make a profit on the bread-and-butter sf items like the eight monthly titles from Tor and the four monthly titles from Del Rey, because the chains get them earlier and can sell them at discount. And, of course, the chains also carry a lot of the small press stuff now, too.

And you know what? I'm not sure this is a bad thing. The comics are still doing well--better this year than last, even. The shop is in no danger of going out of business. Anyone who wants sf in Chapel Hill can go to B&N or to B&N.com. And Chapel Hill is flooded with used book stores. (The only place I've ever been with more used book stores per capita is Cambridge, Mass.) So if my shop stops carrying used sf, well, there are plenty of other places to check on that score as well.

My second point is that several people (both here and, more explicitly Jeanne D'Arc in the post Patrick blogged later) have bemoaned the loss of the customer service provided by the independent bookstore owner, the type of person who "is always ready to make suggestions for customers she gets to know". I was that type of clerk, and so were most of the people who worked with me, but it seems clear that that type of service isn't worth the money for most people.

It strikes me that there's a market opportunity for the type of people who are good at finding overlooked books and bringing them to the attention of other people who might enjoy them.
(The snarky impulse is to call them "reviewers", but the skills involved aren't identical.) Using nothing more than an Amazon Affiliate program number, one could actually make money online by assembling lists of "If you like these books, try these books"; the people who did this more reliably or more charmingly would make more money and get more attention and drive more business to their "store".

<underwear gnome voice>Step three: Profits!</underwear gnome voice>

Talking of British editions -- Does anyone know whether Foyle's in London has suffered from the opening of a Waterstone's and a Borders in the same part of Charing Cross Road? (I also wonder about the small independents there -- though I would suspect that already having to compete with Foyle's was something of a vaccination.) I do know that it's easier to find things in Foyle's now than it was twelve years ago, and can't help but wonder if that's in response to competition.

On this side of the pond, I miss A Clean Well-Lighted Place in Cupertino and Printer's Inc. in Mountain View, but on the other hand I can now get both books and espresso in Lincoln, Nebraska, so all in all I think it's a net gain. I don't think Cody's is in danger; the death of ACWLP and PI was, I think, a case of "location, location, location" more than anything else -- location and changing neighborhood demographics.

Jack Womack wrote:

The thing is that this:

>>When the chains horn in on them and they close, the top available level of bookstore quality goes down

happens only when there was a good independent store in the neighborhood in the first place, whatever the size of the city.

Yes, I know, Jack: I pointed out twice that a chain can't kill an independent unless there's an independent there to kill. I'm not sure why you keep saying this as if it were a rebuttal to something I said.

Chains can be good in some circumstances, bad in others. OK?

See Jeanne d'Arc's post in her weblog (the one Patrick links to in an update to a later post of his) for an example of how chains really can cause the quality of book selection to go down.

British editions: I've noticed that in Borders with more than just Banks, actually. It's slightly disconcerting to see so many imports and small press titles in a supposedly-mass-market chain bookstore.

Kevin: If there's one thing the Internet is not lacking in, it's ways to find book recommendations. I really like booklogs (brought to my attention by Kate Nepveu, in her "Outside of a Dog", linked on Patrick's blogroll), for a number of reasons -- not the least of which is the voyeuristic thrill of seeing people talk about all the books that they read, not just the ones that would normally excite comment.

Josh wrote:
I've never found an independent that had as good a history section as the Borders in Emeryville, either. The Tattered Cover came close, but BookPeople and both Cody's pale in comparison.

I agree with you about the Emeryville store, Josh. I love its location in the old public market, instead of the ususal box, so you actually know where you are . . . In Berkeley, Cody's is OK, but Moe's next door is a treasure.

General question -- I am familiar with SF, mystery, food, childrens, gay/lesbian, and childrens bookstores, but does anyone know of a good bookstore specializing in history?

The main observation I was trying to make in my last post, and clearly did not, was that not all failed independents have gone under because of competition from chain stores.

I had noticed, too, that the Borders I once frequented had an unusual number of British imports on its shelves. Adam Lee and Iain Banks were just two of them.

Depressingly, however, the Borders I once frequented was in the corner of the World Trade Center. Since moving out to the West Coast, though, the Borders here do not seem to do that sort of thing, although the quantity of standard SF and fantasy has never been higher. I had been worried for years that core SF and Fantasy would be crowded out by tie-ins and the like, but it hasn't happened.

And when all else fails, online bookstores ranging from amazon down to the websites of independent presses is a boon.

I had been upset when the SF Shop in the Village closed, and Forbidden Planet pared away its SF titles, but I am not upset anymore

That Borders in the World Trade Center was great. Why do I lay on the HTML styling? Because they were a truly great bookstore. Which is to say, they stocked all three volumes of Starlight. Do you have a better definition?

Saying that NYC's Forbidden Planet "pared away its SF titles" is tactful. "Was on credit hold with almost every publisher in town" would be more like it, from what I understand.

Every Borders I've been to on a semi-regular basis (in Maryland, Connecticut, and New York) has carried both small press books (NESFA, Meisha Merlin, Golden Gryphon) and British imports. I'm not sure how they manage the import thing (the few I've bought are packed away in boxes, so I can't look to see if they're stamped "Not to be sold in then United States"), but it's a nice feature from the POV of someone who has no financial stake in the publishing industry.

Barnes & Noble is a lot more variable-- there was a really nice one in a soulless strip mall along the Rockville Pike in Maryland, and the Wolf Road outlet in Albany is pretty good (they have a much better selection of science books than the Borders across the street), but the Connecticut branches I've been to were barely adequate, and I used to make occasional runs up past Hartford to the Borders in Manchester.

Even the weakest B&N's I've been to were orders of magnitude better than the Waldencoles outlets in the local mall that supplied most of my childhood reading. Johnson City, NY does offer an SF specialty shop with a good selection (Fat Cat Books) but slightly erratic service, but the first time I set foot in the Borders in Gaithersburg was as close to a religious experience as I'd had in years...

Of course, this discussion has left out the other big draw of the major chains: Borders sells both books and CD's, making it ever so much more convenient to run up my credit-card balance... Other than the fact that two thirds of their "listening stations" don't actually work, the Wolf Road Borders is also the best record store I've found in the Albany area, with a whole section (labelled "Left of the Dial") of the sort of obscure indie records you used to see cited in sneering reviews in Spin, and a much more expansive selection of general pop/rock stuff than the other local record stores I've been in.

(I dropped close to $200 in that Borders earlier this afternoon, mostly on CD's. $30-ish went to Tor, though, so I'm doing my part to support Electrolite...)

Powell's here in Portland is able to compete with the chains on their own terms, or almost. Maybe the chains are a little cheaper on new releases, but Powell's has lots of old hard-to-find and specialist books and is a million times better as a browsing experience.

Powell's really felt a pinch from internet booksellers though, and made a big internet push of their own. This required a reorganization which led to a strike and a lot of hard feeling from the staff. One of the reason Powell's has been so good is that they've always had a lot of PhD-quality people working for peanuts, and when job satisfaction went down trouble arose.

If you know what you want and it's not a bestseller, online is in most cases the only way to go. When I discovered online booksellers I immediately bought 40+ books I'd been looking for for as long as 20 years, and I only paid a greater-than-new price for 3 of them.

Www.bookfinder.com can find anything. Abebooks.com is also good and has the advantage of being an umbrella group for a large number of small local bookstores. So you can buy online and keep a local bookstore in business too. Bookfinder will steer you to Amazon or B&N along with all the others. (ABE seems to be wiorkign with Amazon these days, not sure).

A friend of mine running a quality 2nd-hand bookstore says 80-90% of his sales are on-line -- I think he's thinking of moving to get cheaper rent and deemphasizing the walk-in trade.

I regret the decline of small specialty bookstores for a reason at right angles to the issue of whether they provide title selection or customer service on a par with chain stores.

S-f and comic book stores have been watering holes for fan communities for over 50 years: places where visitors converse with store clerks, and where parties and readings are held.

If it has to be about providing the most efficient retail experience, these hobbit holes may well be on their way to extinction. But something non-fiscally valuable may be lost along with them.

Cmuncey: I've never been crazy about Moe's, mostly because outside of the used genre books they seemed to be rather disorganized. Not at the level of the Strand, but then what is?

B&N and Borders may be godsends to 2nd string markets, but they are often weak in many areas. I read a lot of mysteries when I travel (and I travel often) and have yet to find a Border's or B&N with a really good mystery section. NYC still has at least one great mystery book store (I order from them by mail), but DC & Bethesda have lost their's and I'm not sure what LA still has. these stores are important because they carry more backlist and more odd authors and any genre fan will tell you that they love findinga quirky new book or reading the entire works of an author they'd missed. The sf scetions in the chains look no bigger than the mystery sections so I would guess that similar kinds of gaps are there, too. Travel is another area where the chains are often weak and I'm thankful for a store in Pasadena (Distant Lands) that does mail order. People have mentioned the availability of gay books, but the gay aisle is often suspiciously devoid of customers even in Midtown Atlanta (our gay ghetto) or even in SF or Chicago.

My other complaint about B&N and Border's is that don't seem to really elevate the level of what's available locally. The Atlana B&N and Border's stores are the worst. I have no rouble walking out of branchs of these chains in Boston, SF, Chicago, etc. with somethingeven if I originally had nothing in mind, but the Atlanta branches are lucky if they have something that I've heard about from book reviews or personal recommendations. I never walk out with impulse purchases.

Specialty book stores often relied on mailorder to make a profit and the ones that were slow to move this part of the business to the internet got clobbered. The manager of Mystery Books in DC saw this as a downfall along with the deterioration of DC's tourism after 9/11. I would guess tha NYC's bookstores haven't been helped by 9/11 either.

Despite the examples of speciality books in chains, I still find new authors, new genres and non-mainstream boosk easier to find at places like Elliott Bay or Vroomans', or specialty shops like Murder Inc. or Distant Lands. Those of us who profess to love these places better keep shopping them. Even though I think some gnre and used places will stick around, I suspect there are too many who've gotten lazy going to supermarkes like Border's.

John, a few updates:

Pandemonium did move from another Harvard Sq. location; they were originally above the Wursthaus (which is just gone; the building was gutted --- it was structurally unsound --- a new one was built behind the old facade, and the space is now occupied by an Abercrombie and Fitch).

McIntyre and Moore actually moved the other way; it's now in Davis Square, Somerville (and their SF section has shrunk to near nothing, though that's a weak spot in a store which is still otherwise first-rate, particularly on technical books). You might be thinking of (IIRC) Rodney's, a newer used book store near Central Sq. The used bookstores in Boston I'd try for SF right now would be the used section of the Harvard Book Store (not the Coop!), the Boston Book Annex near St. Mary's on the C branch of the Green Line, and Avenue Victor Hugo on Newbury St. near Mass Ave. (though Victor Hugo is moving next door to a smaller space, and I'm not sure how much of their inventory they'll be able to keep).

I just want to say that, although I've read this thread many times on Usenet, over the years, that the newly revised set of contributors, and updated accounts, is why I thought it was a crying shame, though not a criminal offense, when Patrick, understandably, put a moratorium on comments.

And, again, that I'm extremely gratified that he took, and takes, the trouble to open them again. I'm grateful and thankful that he did.

Despite the problems, you draw a great crowd, Patrick. And I'm mostly posting to say that I'm gratified to see that Jim Meadows is still the Third. He has been, after all, since we were all teens.

Trivial note: I may be, and usually am, mistaken, but I seem to recall that Jim Freund was one of the many many managers, or semi-managers, or somesuch, of Coliseum, at some point in the late Seventies or early Eighties.

And, hey now, I have such fond nostalgic memories of the place, myself, never having actually worked there, but having, among other things, used it as a useful survey of the marketplace back when I was at Avon Books across the street, in our incarnations at that time in 1986.

Not to mention having grown up floating around the place from the age of about 12 when I was running off to Manhattan by myself, but still pretty much confined to buying paperbacks from Brighton Beach used book dealers at ten cents and twenty-five cents, on my allowance.

Coliseum Books remained a realistic icon of my youth, a place I would Yet Make Use Of. Scribners was more of a museum, a place to be astonished by, but never expect to actually spend money at, save in the fabulous future fantasies of millionairedom.

Nice to tour through, though.

I work in an independent bookshop in a very small mountian town in North Carolina (parts of Deliverence were filmed here if that helps anyone get the flavor) and I've got to say I'm pretty conflicted by alot of what I'm reading.
On the one hand I'm all for getting the widest selection of books out to the largest number of people possible, but at the same time I think that indys, when run well and properly, provide something special.
Look, we can't match the in shop selection of the B&N 60 miles away, but we have a staff that know and love books and more, who have a passion and skill for connecting people with them. There's not a one of us working there (for pay that the the owner regularly apologizes for) with less than a masters degree and if our physical stock is thinner than the B&N 60 miles away we at least know our stock and have in our heads an index of other options that we can have in the customer's hands in 2-3 days. Heck, I've even helped rec books -at- the B&N when the clerk had no idea what his customer was talking about. It just drove me nuts to hear this kid's puzzlement over what "Belleau Wood" might be.
No we can't keep a huge stock, we don't have the money to both keep a large inventory and pay the rest of our bills. We do play to our strenghts, we've got a regional section that I doubt any store in this part of the state can beat, and we like to promote mountain authors. I'm sorry to the authors who's books we don't keep in stock. (Ms. Yolen, we don't keep alot of your stuff on the shelf but I sure as heck rec it) But in the age of online booksellers should that really matter that much? Given the choice I'd much rather have a bright, capable staff who can help me find the book that I'm not even sure I'm looking for than I would a huge box store where I can barely tell the wheat for all the chaff.
And in our place we've got events every week (often more), an obscenely contented cat who might favor you with a lap visit, a first class restaurant downstairs, comfy chairs, and a fireplace. We were in the vanguard of the revitalization of our downtown. I like to think our little mountain town is a much better place for our being here. Maybe I'm wrong.
Yes, in some places there is no choice but the big boxes and that's fine. But does it have to be zero sum? Where there is a choice between a big box and a well run indy why not pick the indy?
(And what was I doing at the B&N where I did the freelance rec'ing? They do, or rather did, make good brownies)

I'll second Lenny's comment: Austin lost a nice venue for the just-got-in-to-town fan when Willie Siros had to close Adventures in Crime and Space. Book People is excellent, and one can chat to people like Steven Weinberg there from time to time, but fannish watering hole it ain't.

I'd like to make some remark on the bookstore situation in Australia, but I can't. Oh well. Maybe it'll be better by the time I get back, but I think that the currency and tax will still be punishing, and I shall return to the libraries of my youth.

Alison, I wonder if being able to take a bucket of books for a reasonably short period of time is one of the things that contributes to becoming a voracious reader: certainly I fell upon the mobile library bus with great glee as a six year old.

Patrick writes: From this we can conclude that being science-fictional is less culturally respectable than being gay. Or, alternately, that SF fans are less worried than mainstream readers about the terrifying prospect of reading a novel about somebody with the wrong orientation.

I conclude that the only reason gay fiction has to exist is that the character(s) be gay. As compared to SF, where having gay characters rarely, if ever, gets in the way of the story, although being gay may well be an integral part of the character.

It's like that definition of SF: If you take away the science fiction element, can you still tell the story or is it cowboys and indians with lasers? Hence: if you take away the gay aspects, can the story still be told, or might it as well be gender neutral?

In response to the query about Foyle's:

It's still going, amazingly. I did read some years ago that it mainly survived on mail-order business, the actual shop being so badly organised that it was horrible to browse in. The greater threat recently has probably been the rise of Amazon.

And then, a couple of years ago, some member of the Foyles family (who owned shares in the business) started to take an interest in what was actually going on in there (massive fraud, amongst other things).

There has been a reorganisation and the place has come back to life, somewhat. Most recently, when Silver Moon (the women's bookshop on Charing Cross Road) was forced to close, Foyle's effectively took them in and got them to run their women's section. (In fact, the Silver Moon people may have 'set up shop' in Foyle's, I haven't been in for a while.)

It may be no coincidence that the Waterstone's next door was shut down and/or was consolidated into the Oxford Street or Piccadilly branch.

Patrick: My recollection of the Borders in the World Trade Center was that it had a fairly small sf section, but that the staff was very enthusiastic (I base this on someone going and getting _Curse of Chalion_ for me, out of a box upstairs, at a time when I was extremely twitchy to have it).

Chad: while it's true that Borders & B&N are both pretty variable, I prefer Borders just because of the horrible things B&N does when running college bookstores. (The last straw was realizing that the Yale B&N was selling, e.g., the then-latest Jordan book at full price, while the one a couple towns down had it discounted at 30%. Ugh.)

Damien, I also suspect that the ability to take a bucket of books out of the library helped make me a voracious reader, though I can't exactly prove this. *resists turning this into a lament for libraries I no longer have access to* Anyway, today I buy more books and check less things out of the library, but that's because I actually have disposable income now--we still hit the library pretty regularly.

For me, the difference between bookstores comes down to the knowledge of the staff.

A couple of anecdotes:

I stopped in the big B&N on Fifth Ave a couple or three years ago. Saw they had a number of my books (maybe ten different titles) and spoke to the saleswoman (when I could find one.) Would they like me to sign the books? Had to haul out my identification so she knew I wasn't a crazy lady off the street. She said she'd speak to her manager. The manager looked at me sidewise, checked the ID, asked me to sign my latest. I touched five--"These are all the latest," I said. "Pick one," he said. "No thank you," I said--and left.

Alternate story--I walked into a small children's book shop in Oregon. A woman is saying to the
counter person, "Do you carry a book about a child who opens the door at a family Seder and goes back in time?" The counter person says, "You must mean Devil's Arithmetic." I say, "I am the author." There are screams, shouts, from the back room comes the owner, another saleswoman; they phone across the street to a third who is having lunch at the deli. I must sit down and sign all their stock and posters and, of course, the woman buys not one but two copies of the book. And then there is the signing wall where visiting authors leave a message and. . .

This is a difference I have seen repeated too often to bore you with more.

Though on occasion, I have (certainly locally and in my daughter's B&N in South Carolina) seen it reversed with a fine person at a chainstore making all the difference. It really comes down to staff.

Jane

Chris Drumm's site is at http://members.aol.com/cdrummbks/ --google is your friend.

Giovanni's Room (the gay bookstore in Philadelphia) has a pathetic little sf section. I get the impression that no one there knows much about sf, but for all I know, they might be gauging their customers accurately, too.

In Philly, the Borders and the Barnes & Noble are a block and a half from each other, and the Borders is a little better for what I care about-- there's a better display of new paperbacks downstairs, there's the selection of small press sf, and the magazine racks are low enough for me to be able to reach everything. Still, I buy most of my science fiction at conventions--the selection (and conveniance--I'm never sure whether the major bookstores don't get the new paperbacks as reliably as Larry Smith does, or if they just file them into the rest of their sf) is a *lot* better. I never thought I'd move to a major city and have to say that.

Anyone want to talk about specialty bookstores online? The only one that's crossed my path is Jessica Amanda Salmonson's http://www.violetbooks.com/ (Antiquarian Supernatural, Fantasy & Mysterious Literatures) -- and there's a rant about why she prefers being online at http://www.violetbooks.com/curmudgeon.html .

To respond to the comment on Foyles:

It is still going strong and has modernised to a great extent. I believe because Mrs. Foyle who ran it has handed over to her son.

Though I do miss the old days when you'd go in looking for a computer book. You'd have to know who published it as everything (including fiction) was organised by publisher. Having found it, you handed it over to a member of staff who gave you a chit that you took to the cashier. These cashiers were in little boxes, were usually East Europeasn (a very badly paid) and Foyles only took Cash or cheques, no cards.

Once you'd paid you were allowed to collect your book.

These days you go in, go to the subject area and pay for your book on plastic. Somehow, the challenge of shopping at Foyles has gone...

Mike

I kind of miss the old mediocre bookstores--independents and small chains such as Bookmasters--that were OK places to shop back when lots of good stuff was available in mass-market pb.

I really miss the 8th Street Bookstore, my archetype of the Great Independent Bookstore. (I imagine it grows from year to year as the distance one walked to school is supposed to.) I wouldn't be surprised if the WTC Borders had as good a stock.

I must admit that for almost 40 years I've been buying books from England (originally Blackwell's, now amazon.co.uk) when they weren't available at all in the US or available only in more expensive formats. (My trade pb copy of _Lost in a Good Book_ should arrive any day now.) I also liked it when US bookstores smuggled them in, as 8th Street, Classic, and Bookbranch often did.

Oh, and having visited Coliseum Books too infrequently to ever witness violence, let alone being involved in it, I am tempted to miss it.

Let's not forget used book stores in all this. I have three in my town with good SF sections and I'm able to find stuff there that's way more obscure than anything I can get at chains or the one or two local stores.

Seeing comments about the helpfulness of the staff drives home to me how differently people shop. The only time I talk to store employees is when I need to check out; I'd never go there for recommendations, or ask them for help finding a book I couldn't quite remember.

As long as they can take my money efficiently (and most can), the service is good in my book.

People have commented on service and this is an area where chains often have doen well, if only because they have service desks staffed with people who have a reasonable set of social skills and know how to use their computers.

Many books stores, esp. used book places tend to have staff who love books or reading, but aren't interested in people (kindof like the people who staff help desks in computer centers) and are luddites when it comes to the store computer (if they have one). If you're a regular or share their passion for some obscure writer or genre, you get great service. Otherwise, they tend to be off putting or unhelpful.

OTOH, the best indie genre stores have people who actually know womething about books and have some social skills and this usually puts them above any of the major chains.

In Canada the image of the chain booksellers got badly tarnished a couple of years ago. When Chapters and Indigo were merging, Chapters improved its balance sheet by greatly increasing its returns of stock, leaving many publishers with large unplanned debts.

Here's a story on this topic from last May:
http://www.canoe.ca/JamBooks/may1_stoddart-cp.html

What I look for in bookstores isn't the quality of the staff, or the avaliability of new or obscure releases. It's large quantities of extremely cheap books.

And, in this, the large chains have failed me. My favorite bookstore in the eighties was the Barnes and Noble on 5th Avenue and, um, 18th, I think. There used to be whole bookcases downstairs filled with 69 cent books (75 cents after tax). I'd spend fourty, fifty dollars there, whenever I got up enough funds for a trip.

The Barnes and Noble across the street still sells used textbooks, I think, not having been there in a while. But used books don't seem to be a high enough margin business to justify Manhattan rents.

In general, the big chains aren't really interested in bottom feeders like me. Neither are the independents, of course, but most used book stores that I've seen tend to have a rack or two of extremely cheap books. The better independent bookstores tend to be somewhat worse in that regard, as they tend to sort out any books that I might want, and sell them for more than minimum prices.

Currently, the only good source that I've got for books in my ideal price range are library book sales, but since I'm only in the states for occasional visits, I can't really count on hitting those.

It's sad, really. The next thing you know, I'll be buying new books, and actually, you know, supporting authors I like.

Bryant says, "Future Fantasy went under, speaking of Silicon Valley, but I blame that on the general dot-com collapse."

Me, I blame it on the stupid, *stupid* hours that Future Fantasy kept. I could never get there when they were open because I worked in the City and commuting got me back to Palo Alto after business hours. I suspect similar problems with a lot of people who worked long hours during the height of the dot-com industries.

I grant you they kept fairly normal business hours, closing at 6pm and being closed on Sundays (I believe), but those just aren't good hours for people who have jobs and want to buy books at your specialized bookstore.

(I'm still bitter about it closing, apparently. Ahem.)