Books Abandon Malls for Land of the Big Box

Remember when people shopped for books in malls?

A simpler time. The stores stocked bestsellers, magazines, a good supply of romances and thrillers, their fiction shelves filled with classic novels for high schoolers and English 101 students from the local community college. The staff – what there was of it – may or may not have been knowledgeable about books. If you wanted coffee, you got it at the Chick-Fil-A -- and weren't allowed to bring it inside ("Please enjoy your food and beverages before coming into our store"). No overstuffed chairs to cushion readers' bottoms.

No wonder that stores such as Waldenbooks and Paperback Booksmith are (and have been) expendable.

Our Waldenbooks is closing today. It’s been at the mall as long as I can remember, and I’ve lived here since 1991. I’ve shopped there, once even had a Waldenbooks "frequent reader" card which earned me more than one free book.

But Barnes & Noble came to town in 1996. My wife Chris went to work there, was the second manager of the B&N Café, trained by itinerant Starbucks’ staff on the fine art of coffee brewing. Our family received a discount of 50 percent in the café and 20 percent in the store
so naturally I drank more good java while buying more good books and mags.

At the same time, Cheyenne had a wonderful indie bookstore in Joe Pages, owned by Rod and Linda Miller. Downtown’s City Newsstand also sold books but it was a sideline to its magazine, newspaper, and cigar sales.

Joe Pages folded about five years ago. City Newsstand now features many more books and the staff is very supportive of local authors like me. It’s fine magazine selection includes litmags. The store serves good coffee and sinful pastries, and hosts readings and book signings.

City Newsstand is on the rise and mall bookstores bite the bust. You can’t actually say that coffee shop/bookstores are cutting edge, not anymore. But those are the places book people gather. We all can order books much cheaper on-line. But these are the places that address the need for humans – even bibliophiles – to be social.

So why is Waldenbooks closing?

The chain is owned by Borders Group Inc. As always, bad news was delivered in corporatese:

"We're rightsizing our locations and business," company spokeswoman Holley Stein said Friday from company headquarters in Michigan. "We are doing that throughout the year." (Quoted in today Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.)

So bye-bye Waldenbooks and hello to more Borders stores. Maybe not in Cheyenne, since our potential book-buying base is so small with a population of only 55,000. But who knows? Someday we may get a big-box Borders to match our big-box B&N. The closest Borders now is in Greeley, about 45 miles away in Coloradoland. B&N has at least one big books/music store in Fort Collins (45 miles) and one off I-25 at the Centerra Big-Box Mall on I-25 outside Loveland (58 miles).

According to the people at Borders, the store is replacing its cafes with Seattle’s Best Coffee outlets. B&N does it a bit differently, with some stores running its own cafes with Starbucks goods (as in Cheyenne), and some featuring Starbucks-owned outlets.

So life goes on. Soon nobody will remember those golden days of yore when you could shop at the mall for books, overpriced sneakers, and huge doughy pretzels. In face, there may come a day when malls will be history, and teens will never be seen strolling sullenly through the well-lit corridors of Shiny American Consumption, but instead will grow sullen and fat in front of their computers.

Perhaps we already have arrived?