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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Barnes & Noble confirms job cuts, expects $40 million in annual cost savings

Your basic point is pretty clear: personal vs. impersonal. I've never given any money to any streaming service; I poured $15 a month into drip.fm for three or four years.

The local behemoth out where I'm at is called Third Place Books. Backintheday I thought it was because they were happy to be behind Barnes & Noble and Amazon and before that, behind B. Dalton and Barnes & Noble. Nope. They've got a stage, a food court and a play area.

Barnes & Noble wanted to go this way. Most of them have cafes. Most of them have comfy furniture. We used to study at B&N all the time but that's back when I was in college so obviously we did it by lamplight. Nonetheless B&N got trapped in that nasty space between "personal" and "warehouse" and it's hard to be personal when all your advertising material and direction comes from a corporate board.

I was in the room once when the chief of Marvel Comics said they estimated the comic-buying public at under 2 million people. That means at any given Applebee's happy hour there's one person in that room who has bought a comic in the past few months. Of course, at this point there probably aren't that many more who have bought a book.