Bookstores are dying. Barnes and Noble’s pricing policy may help explain why
The U of T library has been purging their collections of old archived journals - possibly onlining them as well. They also toss out 3-4 cubic meters of all sorts of books/ They put them in the University swap shop at 10 cents each in large cubic meter bins of wheels. about a dozen bins. New bins enter full and the book buyers burrow and more. and by the time the bins reach the end in about 2 weeks, the rest are pulped. The University gets donated books as well as their own aging collection. If a book is not used for XX years, I suspect they allow people at them and then pulp them. I looked at some fresh bins - nothing at all I wanted even if free. Covid has reduced access, I have not been there for over a year, but I hear it is open again - if I have a mind to browse...
There used to be four Barnes and Noble bookstore easy to reach from downtown Washington, all within a short walk of a Metro station: downtown on 12th about E NW; at Union Station; at Woodmont and Bethesda Avenues in Bethesda, Maryland; in Clarendon (a neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia). Of them, Clarendon is left. I heard that the Bethesda store was profitable, but the landlord wouldn't renew. I think that it is now an Anthropologie.
I used to go to Barnes and Noble all the time, hang out in the cafe, read random books that caught my interest. Sometimes I even bought a few! I went a few times this summer, but basically covid ended that for me.
Wonder if Barnes and Noble make more money from the affiliate commission than from selling the book? May be they're riding the coat-tails of Amazon's cheaper distribution and better negotiating power.