I read this from the AC Press on Monday December 15th 2008
Cumberland County New Jersey will have ONLY one bookstore
and thankfullyI live right near it.
Sherlock Tomes in Bridgeton will officially go out of business.
That will leave Cumberland County, which has long carried the stigma of its impoverished areas and low education rates, with a single bookstore, Bogart's Books and Cafe in Millville.
According to recent census findings, about 15 percent of Vineland residents hold a bachelor's degree or better. In Millville that number dips by a few percentage points and in Bridgeton the number is well below 10 percent.
Even with recent development in the county, including two large big box retail outlets across the street from each other in the north end of Millville, neither Borders or Barnes and Nobles, the nation's largest book retailers, have been mentioned in conversation when it comes to retail development in this county.
7 comments:
Kudos to Amy at Bogarts Books for kicking the trend! I have never been in her store when it was empty.
Dave Ewan's comment that the reason bookstores can't survive is because everyone around here is illiterate is snide, and simply wrong.
Stores just cannot compete with the inventory available on the internet! To survive they have to invent new ideas - the old ones don't work. High Street died because old merchants refused to embrace new ideas, such as expanded hours offered by the malls.
Bookstores, even the big chains, are closing because of the new marketplace.
Amy is intelligent enough to understand that to continue she needs to expand her audience, and has done that very successfully. Wonderful coffee, great music, good conversation, oh, and yes, she has books!
This holiday season make sure you do some shopping on High Street!
Barnes & Noble
I've been saying for the longest time we need to attract Barnes & Noble here. They don't just sell books, but CDs, DVDs, Video Games, StarBucks Coffee, Bagels...Most stores also sell magazines, newspapers, graphic novels, gifts, games, and music.
The benefit of a Barnes & Noble is even more realized when the stores offer free Wi-Fi which most stores do. A Wi-Fi enabled device such as a PC, laptop, game console, mobile phone, MP3 player or PDA can connect to the Internet when within range of a wireless network connected to the Internet.
I guess we are not a Large enough market for Barns and Noble. These chains calculate to the nearest dollar.
B&N, according to the former owner of Booksmith's son, came here to do demographic study and concluded that quite simply not enough people in this area read for their business to be profitable here. Look at millvilles HS ranking in the overall scheme of the rest of the state's to get an idea as to why readership blows here.
I'd like one here but I'm quite content to drive down to deptford. That it requires effort and resources to do so means it's infrequent and more valuable than if one were right around the block.
It's really not snide just a statistical observation. The overwhelming bulk of what is in bogarts also reflects the readership. Popular fiction, military fiction, romance novels with comparatively small sections on actual literature, classics, philosophy, science, mathematics etc. The role of the internet in cumberland counties predicament with regards to bookstores is minimal compared to education, and other social factors.
to dismiss these factors is to be an uncritical jingoist about ones own local culture.
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