Slope Losing Another Small Bookstore
These are dark days for indie-minded Park Slope bibliophiles. 7th Ave. Books closed a few months ago, and just last week the Times reported that the Community Bookstore had fallen on hard times. Now comes word that another 7th Avenue bookseller is packing it in: Park Slope Books is consolidating operations with its sister store…
These are dark days for indie-minded Park Slope bibliophiles. 7th Ave. Books closed a few months ago, and just last week the Times reported that the Community Bookstore had fallen on hard times. Now comes word that another 7th Avenue bookseller is packing it in: Park Slope Books is consolidating operations with its sister store on Montague Street, Heights Books, and closing its Slope location this spring. Sad news for Slopers who like having options beyond Barnes & Noble. GMAP
I think they should allow smoking in these indy bookshops.
Pot smoking.
They’d do a killer biz.
1:06, the point about the magazine rack is so true. If these independent bookstores set aside space to have large magazine racks, with harder to find great magazines, it would increase their traffic tenfold.
1:01 hits the nail on the head. Not having enough inventory. Also, the interiors of the independent bookstores are cluttered, dusty, and have not been updated it seems in ten years. Which is perfect for those of us who love to browse through stacks and go deep into the nooks and crannies of cluttered bookstores. But fruitless searches through cluttery piles don’t appeal to everybody and you don’t bring kids into those spaces either. It’s catering to only one kind of book buyer, so it fails.
this is the same problem that record stores have.
its a dead industry. You can get better stuff online or just steal it. Barnes and Nobles has been closing stores as well. This has nothing to do with park slope or the people in it. This is happening everywhere.
also Barnes and Nobles has the only decent magazine rack in the area. Kinda sucks.
I went in there looking for two books in the past year. Both were NY Times bestsellers and they had neither.
Barnes and Noble did.
And therein lies the problem.
Um, Park Slope Books did accept credit cards. And has one of the best inventories of any bookstore I’ve seen in Brooklyn. So they don’t sell coffee, they aren’t a coffee shop. And programming for children, give me a break, why should they *have* to do that to stay in business.
12:38…i sadly kind of agree with you. i live in the slope and always try to buy local if i can. even if i’m in manhattan and really want something then and now, i always think about (and usually do) wait and think if i can buy it somewhere in my neighborhood even if it means waiting a day or two. it just feels good to support the locals.
it’s disspointing when you do try to do that but the businesses just are keeping up with their end of the bargain.
Amazon has good books about small business management.
Slopers don’t care about having options beyond Barnes & Noble. They do care a great deal about being able to say that they have options beyond Barnes & Noble, but that’s not the same thing.