Though it’s not a Barnes & Noble pictured at the top, crouching on the floor with a hunched back is what browsers are relegated to doing at a B&N near you, as the Baltimore Sun’s Rob Hiaasen discovers. Just a decade ago, says Hiaasen, the trend in the bookstore industry was to fit nooks and crannies with big chairs for browsing, which, it was hoped, would spur buying. But now the availability of so-called “soft” seating – overstuffed chairs and sofas – is on the decline at some bookstores, done in by various complications: homeless squatters, overly enthusiastic young lovers, food trash left behind.
“We were finding people staying for hours and hours and not necessarily buying books,” says Juliana Wood, district marketing manager for the Borders chain. “We obviously hope browsing turns to purchasing, but that’s a chance you take when you offer people a really comfortable setting.”There was early skepticism about the trend to bookstores so comfortable that a visitor might simply relax but not buy, but other factors arose that some operators hadn’t predicted.”People were falling asleep in the chairs, then spilling their coffee. We want you to be comfortable, but we also want to be able to clean up after you have left,” Wood says. At another store, she once broke up two teenagers exploring something other than a good book – “by the children’s section, no less.”