Barnes & Noble’s return to Town Center brightens bookstore scene
Merchants describe a busy scene, which includes the return of Barnes & Noble in Corte Madera.
A major bookseller is back in Marin, joining merchants large and small in feeling upbeat about the holiday spending season.
A tenant for 17 years, national retailer Barnes & Noble closed its 25,000-square-foot store at Corte Madera Town Center in March. Now the store is back, reopening in a 4,000-square-foot location at the mall with a greater focus on books rather than a range of other media and toys, said store manager Logan Nevens.
“We really are back to the basics, so it gives us a chance to cater toward book lovers,” Nevens said. “We are feeling good. We have had consistent people back in since day one.”
The Barnes & Noble reopening has signaled an enthusiasm for in-person consumer book sales in an era dominated by online retailers such as Amazon or ThriftBooks, Nevens said.
“Being in the mall, it’s a comfort for people. Barnes & Noble is a known name,” Nevens said. “Everyone here has been part of this for as long as they can remember. This holiday season is going to stack up to what it used to be and bring back a sense of normalcy.”
Elsewhere in the county, Jeff Battis, store manager at Sausalito Books by the Bay, said the days before and after Thanksgiving were the best sales days of the year so far. He credits the sales to a curation process in which booksellers arrange books alongside each other in an engaging and tactile way. You can’t find that on a screen, he said.
“This year, it looks like the trend is going back to making sure our community bookshop survives,” he said.
In Novato, Linda Lowe, a clerk at the used-book store Book Place, said Friday that it “sold more Bibles than they’ve ever sold in a day.” Most books are under $4, she said, and the ones that leave the shelves are the ones in the best condition. The shop is operated by the nonprofit Friends of the Marin County Free Library.
“It’s been very good the last few days and it has picked up,” she said. “When I look at the monthly sales, compared to what we did this time last year, it is about the same. People are just now buying gifts.”
Robert Calef, owner of Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, said its specialization in religion, science, psychology and new age philosophy has propelled sales typically in the 10 days before Christmas.
“That’s been the case for 34 years,” he said. “When people want to get extra gifts, they can find it here.”
Bonnie Sullivan, owner of Stinson Beach Books, said her store is still recovering from the pandemic. She said return customers still propelled sales there and they were continuing to visit the store in the run-up to the holidays.
“It’s the hospitable environment and the fact that our bookstore has been here since 1968,” she said. “We have generations of customers returning. They make a point when they come out here to buy books here.”