Monday, February 19, 2024

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

What's Behind the Return of Bookstores?

Just when you thought that Amazon had finished off brick and mortar stores, booksellers are making a comeback. Yes, there's lots of available, low-cost, retail space. But the retail outlets are filling a bigger need. 

 

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1

FEB 20, 2024

 

It looks like 30 years after the founding of Amazon and after decades of decline during which more than half the bookstores in the U.S. disappeared, we may actually be seeing a dramatic uptick in the opening of new brick-and-mortar bookstores.

As a member of one of the last generations that will ever buy hardcover, non-fiction books (albeit primarily from Amazon), this is unexpected, exciting, and somewhat inexplicable news. I've insisted for many years that nothing would ever replace the sheer visceral joy of browsing a bookstore, the delight of happening upon new discoveries, and the efficiency of visually scanning dozens of stacks and shelves looking for new titles and those by familiar authors. One of the last great creative arts in advertising and marketing is the design and beauty of striking, surprising, and stirring book covers. Digital displays of any size filled with stamp-sized jpegs, tiny gifs, and banner ads can't compete.

I don't care how many different ways Amazon tries to present its massive inventory, there's simply no emotional connection or compelling comparison to seeing and holding the material up close and personal. Online book buying and paging thru endless screens reminds me of the painful and fatigued feeling you get these days when you search for something to watch on any of the streaming services and quickly become so overwhelmed by the sheer volume, clutter, and crap that when you finally make a selection, you're inclined to give up because you're now too tired to watch the thing. In fact, one of the worst aspects about the overwhelming flow of new books and the pressure to keep up with them is that it keeps us from reading so many of the older classics. 01:23

Part of the psychology of buying books and bringing them home (so we can stack them on our nightstands) is the unfounded belief that we'll thereby somehow be creating the time to actually read them. The Japanese even have a word for this: tsundoku. But, in any case, it's abundantly clear that you'll never get the same satisfying feeling of faux accomplishment from hitting a few keys on your keyboard. As fast as Amazon's delivery services have become, there's still nothing like grabbing the actual goods on the spot to satisfy our incessant cultural and personal need for immediate gratification although ordering a book on my Kindle and having it available minutes later comes in a close second. I will also admit that I'm holding out some modest hope that Apple's Vision Pro will soon create a virtual bookstore in space, where we will walk through an area and actually have the same visual and even quasi-tactile experience that we've always had in a physical store.

We may not see a huge surge in new mom-and-pop bookshops any time soon although neighborhood-based, narrowly focused stores with tiny footprints and limited specific inventories (like women's and children's books) seem to be popping up. For the last few years, the few independent and small full-service survivors in my area have seemed more like undertakers than caretakers. But Barnes & Noble is aggressively rolling out stores nationwide while, interestingly enough, Amazon has been shutting down all of its physical bookstores and focusing more on Whole Foods and some well-located Amazon Go grab-and-go grocery shops.

In 2023, Barnes & Noble opened more new stores than it had in the decade from 2009 to 2019, and in 2024 the company is planning to add another 50 stores to its current 600 locations. I wonder if part of the incentive has to do with the ready availability of large, open spaces and super attractive leasing terms in most major downtown areas because of the number of retailers and department stores that have exited. Hundreds of malls across the country have lost multiple anchor tenants and are sitting with these very visible and prominent abandoned spaces, which can't be a good look for any landlord.

It will be interesting to see if anyone else emerges as another player in the space. Borders, Waldenbooks, and Brentano's, anyone? Needless to say, if Amazon couldn't make a go of it, the prospects for another successful entrant would seem exceedingly grim. So, while it looks like an open field and an opportunity for B&N to run the table, I'd say that a few words of caution are still helpful, especially because these guys have been largely standing still for a decade or two and basically just hanging on. Not to mention the Nook which went nowhere.

The management might tell you that good bookstores thrive while bad bookstores die, but I'd say that it pays to be lucky, to have deep pockets, to stick to your knitting, and to have cooperative and patient landlords and lenders. I wish them well in their expansion efforts and look forward to seeing their new stores soon in my town as well. But they've lost their way in the past and I hope that in their ongoing and new execution they maintain their primary focus on the books. We already have too many coffee shops, plenty of meeting spaces and social clubs, and loads of toy and novelty stores. We don't need more clutter, tchotchkes and confusion - we just need a simple and straightforward place to buy our books.