The Worst News Day Ever

[magpie-leah.livejournal.com]

I was so sad to read the earlier post about La Contessa's closing and I was writing a friend about it and she pointed out this recent story about McIntyre & Moore:
http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2007/03/is_the_writing_.html

Comments

[tastyanagram.livejournal.com]

This is terrible. I just moved up here this October (I'm new to Boston), and this is probably my favorite feature of the neighborhood.

[magpie-leah.livejournal.com]

Hopefully they'll find a way to make it work out!

[fanw.livejournal.com]

I'm curious. What did you like about the store? I never found anything there no matter when I looked and the staff was pretty surly. The merchandise was kinda poor and not that cheap for a used book store. Do you like linguistics or one of their other specialty topics?

[spatch]

That's the thing. If you want a cheap used book store on general fiction and whatnot, go to Goodwill or Harvard Book Store. If you're looking for some specialized topics, McIntyre & Moore is where to go. I've bought plenty of history volumes, radio ephemera, first-edition biographies specially-inscribed, New England histories, and other stuff I hadn't been able to find anywhere else.

I certainly hope they don't close. It is a treasure trove in there.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the answer! I'm afraid I'm more a Harvard Bookstore girl, but I can see your point about Mac&Moore

[spatch]

I love HBS too, and I go for their selection of used fiction and recent biography as well. I'm trying to see how much I can rack up on my frequent buyer card until they stop asking "Do you want to use your discount?" and say "You've gotta clear out your discount now." But their used books are mostly recent.

But Mac&Moore is where I go to dig for old gems. I don't usually find inscribed books in the HBS used section; Mac&Moore can find treats.

What I guess is that Mac&Moore is perceived as just a regular used bookstore, and their purpose is a bit more focused, and I can see people being disappointed when they realize this. Unless they're the kind of people who go "Cool!" when they realize this.

[tastyanagram.livejournal.com]

Correct! Hehe. I have a great interest in linguistic. There's also two kinds of people: those who read everything or almost everything they buy, and those who buy more than they actually read. I also have had great success with finding presents for others, and have only had positive interactions with the staff. But I only browse there, I never look for anything specific. It is a used bookstore.

:-)

[tastyanagram.livejournal.com]

And of course, I meant linguistics, not "linguistic". D'oh!

[ifotismeni]

oh man.... i have to admit this is pretty sad news. i live in davis square but i don't buy books at their store, i was pretty worried when i heard the big open space at the porter exchange is going to be a barnes and noble. i don't think that's necessarily direct competition but it can't help. still it's more important that local businesses like this aren't all converted into crappy chain stores... if this place goes and is replaced by yet another chain that'll be a damn shame indeed.

[ron_newman]

is that a real Barnes & Noble or just the Lesley bookstore?

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

It's the Lesley bookstore that is now owned by Barnes & Noble.

[ifotismeni]

the place i'm talking about is on the ground floor, seperate from the lesley store, where the gap used to be. but this information is second hand. i asked the staff at the sushi bar across from it and she said it's going to be a coffee store and bookstore, but couldn't remember the name. i asked if it was barnes and nobles and she thought that sounded right but couldn't remember.

Not a Bookstore

[beckmann.livejournal.com]

The former Gap is being broken into 3 spaces - 1 coffee and 2 different non-food retail establishments. Lesley has not yet rented. The BN in the basement is the Lesley bookstore and will probably stay, but isn't really competition for bookstores around here since it is really just for textbooks, etc. All will likely be open by the end of the summer.

Re: Not a Bookstore

[ifotismeni]

ohhh cool, thanks so much! i was a bit confused why BN would rent out two spaces in the same building. do you know if these 3 new places will be chain stores by any chance? (i'm crossing my fingers for more delicious japanese and korean food places in the exchange)

Re: Not a Bookstore

[beckmann.livejournal.com]

They havent rented yet, so I dont know what they will be. I only know 2 of them cannot be food because they are not zoned for it. 1 will be coffee.

Re: Not a Bookstore

[ifotismeni]

very interesting -- thanks for this update! i'm very curious what's going to happen with that space.

Re: Not a Bookstore

[flexagon]

I heard Starbucks, for what it's worth; and I think I heard that from a Bally's employee but can't remember for sure anymore.

[cook-ting.livejournal.com]

I've tried McIntyre & Moore several times and I've always been disappointed. I love used bookstores and will typically make a sizable purchase every month or two, but that store really turns me off. Each time I've gone in there I've felt very strongly that my presence wasn't wanted by their sour faced staff. I'm not asking someone to hold my hand or try to upsell me at the register, but a smile and a "can I help you find anything" would be nice. I don't give my money to people who disrespect their customers (especially openly) and I'm betting a lot of people feel the same way.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't suppose there's any chance another better used bookstore will take their place? One with, say, softcover books for decent prices? I'd be satisfied even if it were a new bookstore as long as it were something independently owned like Porter Sq books.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

There was a Buck-a-book in Davis for awhile, but it went under. If you're looking for cheap used softcovers, check out the Goodwill store.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I actually have requirements other than cheapness for books! Buck a Book was very sad (so sad) because it was all those neglected books that were left there because they really aren't worth even a dollar: ghost-written biographies of minor celebrities, right-wing books about the decline of civilization, and how-to books on improving your golf swing. Ugh. I never was so happy to see a "book" store go (although only maybe 10% of the floor space was for books and the rest for Hallmark tschochkies).

Goodwill is a sad book place because they are so mistreated. I want to take all those books piled several feet deep in bins and carefully arrange them on bookcases and pet them to make them feel better. Perhaps I should volunteer...

[ron_newman]

The whole Buck-a-Book chain folded, not long after the Davis location closed.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

So many of the posts on the article were complaining about the store... I admit, I've had experience with their surly staff too (though I also met some really friendly people), and they wouldn't buy any of my books either and were once or twice kinda snotty about it (and yes, I had brought scholarly books, not trade; they just weren't what the store wanted, which is fair enough).

But while I think some of those complaints may be legit, I also sincerely doubt that they're why the store's having so much trouble. I wonder if it has anything to do with it at all. If their staff was always friendly, and they carried more trade books, and lowered their prices, I bet they'd still be losing money... just because so many other bookstores are suffering from the exact same problem. It's happening all over the place. I don't necessarily know the reasons why, but I'd guess the single biggest reason is the internet.

If I were to make a customer-service related suggestion, it would be about taking bags into the store. (NB -- haven't been in there recently, for all I know the policy has changed.) I totally understand why they don't want people taking bags into a store that sells items as valuable and stealable as some of their rarer books. On the other hand, when I'm out shopping, I tend not to go in there because I have several bags and don't want to have to check them. In the article, they mention "convenience" and staying open later to be as convenient as possible; I'm sure it would be a lot more convenient if people could take bags in and make it one more stop on a big shopping trip. Is the added customer convenience worth what they might lose in theft? I don't know. Maybe not. I've never run a bookstore, just worked in them.

I'd really hate for Davis to lose its only bookstore, not to mention another landmark. (I really wish we had a bookstore that sold a wider selection of used trade books, too. From the article, it sounded like that would actually help M&M's business, not hurt it.)

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Why don't you want to check your bags? I've been places where it can be a time hog, but I've never had that problem at M&M.

This isn't meant to be snarky: I actually want to know why you see it as a negative.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

No snark taken. :) I think it's a personal thing. I'm a pack rat and the sort of person who carries a lot of stuff around with her all the time. I think I just like having Things to Clutch.

Of course, there have been times when I was so tired and my bags were so heavy that I really *wanted* to put them down (and have been annoyed, in other stores, that I couldn't!). It also depends on whether I want to spend a long time browsing (in which case I probably do want to stash my bags) or just quickly check for something (in which case it slows me down).

In any case, I'm not trying to criticize, I'd just personally prefer not to have to bother. But they're not as bad as the Grolier Poetry Book Shop was, where the owner thoroughly drove bookish me and my bookish friends away because she was so hostile -- she was rude, she wouldn't let me look at books around a corner because it was out of her direct line of sight, she searched one of my friend's bags before we left even though we had purchased things -- it was insulting and extremely counterproductive. (What if there had been something around that corner I wanted to buy?)

In both cases I understand why they're like that. The lady at Grolier probably had to deal with rampant theft of expensive stuff by Harvard students over the decades, leaving her understandably bitter and suspicious. On the other hand, I just couldn't be surprised when she finally had to close her doors, as much of a landmark as the place was. I'm sure the internet had more to do with it than poor customer service, but her actively driving away anybody who looked like a student can't have helped, either.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I used to work at the Grolier, so here's my perspective: Maybe a third of the people who visited were either casing the joint or actively stealing. I've worked in other bookstores, so I know that shrinkage is always a concern, but it was nothing compared to what I saw there. The problem is that unless you see them do it, you don't want to risk a confrontation. If you get a big stack of John Ashbery remainders, for example, they immediately start disappearing and turning up at M&M and the Harvard Book Store. Louisa's suspicions weren't always right, but it's not like they were unwarranted. Thieves took advantage of the situation there. I hope that the new owner is succeeding in stopping this trend.

I have never gotten attitude from Mac&Moore. The staff there have always seemed to me mostly to be tired or depressed. I have never gotten attitude from the Diesel, either, so sometimes I wonder if I'm just missing something. I did get attitude from Sagra over the weekend, though!

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's what I figured -- but even understanding why she acted that way didn't make me willing to go back and face it again. But I wasn't glad to hear about all its troubles, either.

I've both gotten attitude at M&M, and met really nice friendly people who made me smile and/or laugh. Never gotten attitude at Diesel that I can recall -- always friendly, smiling & helpful service.

I can believe that some customers have occasionally encountered rude service at Diesel (even though I've never seen it), because it can happen anywhere every once in a while -- but I also don't believe it for a second whenever somebody claims to have been discriminated against at Diesel because they "looked straight." What rubbish. That reminds me of the way people used to claim, when they came to eat at the dining hall in my rather bohemian creative arts dormitory in college, that they were discriminated against because they "looked preppy." Give me a break.

It may have ever only been trolls making that claim here, anyway. (About Diesel, I mean. Don't think anybody's ever complained about my college dormitory here.)

[obie119.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with Ayelle on the bag-check. The general atmosphere in the store can be so unbelievably unfriendly. Every year when I pick up my Illuminations Tour tickets it is as if I asked the staff to move mountains..

I forgot how nice it was to have a cheerful, grassroots, locally-owned bookstore to browse in between errands until Porter Square Books opened up.

I love a used boostore but I think M&M is surely my least-loved. I still miss the Book Cellar in Porter Square :)

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

I agree, too.

It's not the bag check; it's that the staff seems to go out of their way to be unpleasant to you when you check your bag and are especially surly if you pick up your bag without buying anything.

I guess Harvard Book Store will be next. There's really not much left in the Boston area, compared to what was here five years ago. Just this week I found out that Quantum Books' branch in Waltham (formerly Softpro) is gone, leaving one lone tech book store where there once were four in the metro area. And Quantum seems to be shifting focus to gifts rather than books.

I wonder every day why I'm still paying high rents to live here. And I don't live in Davis; I live in one of the "cheaper" suburbs.

[ceo]

Just to clarify, Softpro wasn't a branch of Quantum. They moved from a convenient location in Burlington to a totally inconvenient one in Waltham, and closed a year later. They still have a store in Denver, however.

[ron_newman]

I believe Quantum took over the local Softpro store for a year or two before closing it.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

I've spent a huge amount of money at M&M over the years and some of their sections are better than any other used bookstore in the area. Their cookbook section is particularly good and they have a huge collection of weird culture theory you won't find anywhere else.

If I was to make one suggestion though, it would be to hire a fiction buyer and put a little more effort into that area of the store. The "scholarly bookstore" tag isn't going to suffer if they make a little more effort to stock some slightly more mainstream selections and fiction is much more of an impulse buy than a book on literary theory or Central Asian history. I've occasionally wondered why they bother with an science fiction or mystery section at all given how little their stock seems to have changed in the last ten years.

[lonelyholiday.livejournal.com]

I agree, they'd have far more browsers/impulse buyers with better fiction. Maybe they prefer their Central Asian history browsers to contemporary fiction browsers, but sometimes you've gotta drop the snobbery if you wanna break even.

I certainly wouldn't think less of them if they pandered to the masses a little bit, as long as the scholarly selection was still satisfactory!

[flexagon]

Seriously. But I gave them this suggestion once (about beefing up their fiction section) and got the reply that there's far too much fiction in the world already. Oh-kayyyyy then!

I am on the side of those who hate the snobbery. I've been in a few times over the years, but they actually make a used bookstore unfriendly and unappealing. I have no idea how they do it -- I've never disliked ANY other used bookstore that I can think of.

That said, my mother once found a very rare book on Hungarian folk-dancing there, and she was quite overjoyed.

[brianbeck.livejournal.com]

This is really sad news. I've never had a bad experience there. I've even brought back books that I bought there and got a fair price for them. I can't imagine Davis without this store.

The Idea of McIntyre & Moore is actually better than M&M

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

Every time I pass McIntyre and Moore, I think about how I like the idea of a scholarly used book store better than I actually like the store itself. I've browsed the store several times and I've never found anything that I just had to have. While I love the flavor they add to the area, a general purpose bookstore would be more useful to me personally. I'd vastly prefer to see something more akin to Porter Square Books. PSB is just great. Their staff is delightful and they're always willing to order things they don't have in stock for you.

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

I hope they don't close but as some have said here, I like the idea of M&M more than I actually shop there recently. Yeah - the bag check thing is one of the drags for me about the place. Are they expecting hordes of shoplifters of Derrida books?

Maybe they should open a coffee bar in the front... ;-)

[everose.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that a coffee house/bookstore or even a pub/bookstore would be a great idea. Seriously.

Saddest quote ever: “I would like it (Davis Square) to be more of a destination for weird retail instead of just restaurants." So disturbing that a bookstore is now considered "weird retail".

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Ha! I know what you mean. He probably just meant "non-big-box chain-store retail," but I would have called it "quirky," maybe. I kind of agree with him. But we already do have Magpie, Comicazi, that antique gallery a couple blocks further down Highland, M&M, PLRG, and Goodwill on Elm, a sporting goods store and two upscale clothing stores down Holland... I wish we could add another mainstream used book store, another craft shop sufficiently different from Magpie... Oh, and that the Halloween store could stay open all year round. It would be awesome. But Davis already does have a lot of quirky retail: how much more would it take to make it a shopping destination? *sigh*

[ron_newman]

That's weird as in "Keep Austin Weird". It's a good thing to be.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I suspect the reason they have the bag check policy is to avoid doing what the chain stores do: sticking RFID tags in all of the books. And I imagine they still have a fair amount of shoplifting even with the book policy.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

This is the worst thing ever. This is even worse than La Contessa closing. My god, what's left?

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

There is a fair amount of retail around still -- see my comment above. But I don't know how many of them are doing well, besides Poor Little Rich Girl (I'm just guessing, but it looks in good shape). And M&M is the only bookstore.

[antimony.livejournal.com]

Waah! I love M&M. So much fun to browse, and I always end up buying something I don't need but like anyways.

And wow are people being bitchy in the comments to the news article. I realize that the type of stuff that M&M sells isn't for everyone, but they've made themselves unique by having specific standards on what they stock. I've always found their prices very fair. I wonder if they're listing their inventory on the various online services as well -- if they aren't taking advantage of the larger bookshopping world, that could hurt.

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

About a year ago, while clearing out my bookshelf (while I continue to live in multi-bedroom apartments, I painfully restrict myself to one bookshelf and a box or two, and not an entire wall of books), I came across about 50 titles I had no use for anymore. Some were old textbooks, some were eccentric books relating to sociology or paganism or Judaica or reference, and others were what I classify as "junk books," the type you'd find in a $1 rummage bin.

I brought the books to M&M blindly, waited around while a girl checked everything, and was told only 5 titles she didn't want. The best part (for both of us) was when she said I could expect to receive about $40 in cash or about twice that amount in credit. I, not wanting to make money off used books of mine I had no use for, gladly accepted the credit and she gladly wrote me a receipt.

I haven't used the credit yet. I suppose the expiration is ticking...

[disblfsuspender.livejournal.com]

This sucks. One of the (more minor, but still) reasons I moved here was the great used book stores, and one by one they are kicking off. If a scholarly / specialty place like M&M can't survive here, I'm not sure where it can. Online, probably, but there's not the same sort of browsing and serendipity there.

I buy there occasionally, and have never had problems with staff. I want bookstore (and all retail, for that matter) staff to leave me the hell alone until I ask for something, and they do a great job of that, and are polite and civil otherwise. The long hours are good too, especially as compared to most of the rest of the retail in the Square, which seems to be mostly closed by the time I get home at 7 or 8 on weeknights.

The only thing I would change would be to do something about shelving, categorizing, etc. It's pretty easy to have your eyes glaze over in there, because it's just booksbooksbooks as far as the eye can see, with not much to break it up. Maybe some of the staff-recommendation sorts of models that other stores use? Especially as arcane as a lot of the stuff they carry is, it'd be great as an interested amateur/layman to have some guidance. And while the taxonomist in me appreciates the fine-grained categorization, stuff doesn't often seem to be filed where I would intuitively think it would be, or is filed inconsistently(Some Latin American fiction in its own section, some in general Fiction, that kind of thing.) Minor quibbles, but those are probably the main reasons I don't shop there more than I already do.

But yeah, this is probably more a case of this neighborhood being a victim of its own success, and of the economics of the book business than of anything M&M has done wrong. I hope they can stick it out, but I've seen this story play out over and over again with bookstores I liked, and I know how it usually ends.