At B&N yesterday

…I was happy to see a big stack of Kelly Braffet’s new novel on the front table—I’m reading it now—as well as several books by friends on the new fiction shelf, including Robert Boswell’s Tumbledown, which is great. I bought the new collected stories by James Purdy. The cashier gave me shit because I printed an email instead of the official coupon with the barcode, even though what I printed had a code for him to type in. Apparently this was worth lecturing me. As a member, even with the extra 20% off, it was still three bucks more than Amazon, though B&N’s online price is about the same as Amazon. So I paid three bucks more for the pleasure of driving 30 miles roundtrip and being treated like crap.

B&N is the only real viable competitor for Amazon (in the book business, I mean). Independent stores that have done well in the last decade have incorporated secondary means of generating income, but have also really upped their customer service. I’m not sure B&N is able to do that. They might be too big to succeed.