Comment by icantdrive55 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icantdrive55 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I hope they stay open a few more years. Its my favorite stores. This company's eventual demise is one of the many things I hate about "living in the future".

We are going to run out of stores we can browse, see people, use their bathroom without dirty looks, and a friendly staff.

When I go in there, I think about how they could compete, and can't think of much. I like the stores so much I would consider spending my money on a monthly membership. Yes, like a gym membership. It would have to be reasonable, like $10/month, but I would gladly pay it for the honor of sitting at their tables.

I know I need to buy more books there. I don't understand the individuals who pull 15 books off the shelf, leaves them on the floor, and buys the one book they want on Amazon.(I understand the low income buyer, but not being disrespectful by not putting books back.)

They are putting a lot of toys in the stores. I guess that's a good idea. They have so much potential shelf space, I would like to see used books in their stores. Used technical books would be nice. So many customers would give them their old books.

I feel like I'm writing their obituary.

> When I go in there, I think about how they could compete, and can't think of much.

Hybrid Library and bookstore. (Not the same books :)

Your $10/month membership gets you access to the library, and a discount on books.

[UK, but I assume same everywhere] Libraries have their own set of massive problems though, usage has been dropping off for years. Public libraries keep steadily expanding the internet services relative to books. They're still central to a small group of people's lives, but that's generally contingent to them being free. Private fee-based libraries already exist, have done forever. There's never been an issue with having those libraries allow sale of some titles at discount due to bulk buying, but that's always going to exclude some interesting/rare titles (which could well be mitigated in part by ebooks, but then this goes full circle; why do you need a physical shop). University libraries are generally accessible to anyone for a fee, but are maybe too specialist and tooled toward courses to be universally useful (+ there's that balance to be made between learning and land value which seems to be swinging heavily toward the latter).

I really, really hope there is some path that would work here (i value books over any other possession, I'm a member of 2 public libraries, my old University's library, and a private library, so I'm pretty partisan) but I'm sceptical as to survival prospects of that line of thinking.

[plug, just member] the Lit and Phil in Newcastle - if you're in the the North East of England, it's an incredible, beautiful thing, and well worth the small yearly fee

Reply on news.ycombinator.com