Thursday, June 26, 2003
Almost a week of radio silence...I was out with the new Harry Potter, both selling it and reading it. We had a great turnout for the midnight event Friday night at Third Place Books. After we closed up around 1:30, I drove over to the nearest B&N to see what their scene was like. I had heard earlier in the night that they were mobbed by people and didn't have a decent system in place for handling it.
Third Place took presales for the book. So at midnight we had two lines, one for people who had already paid and the other at the register for people who had not paid for a book yet. Everything went very smoothly and we went through at least 500 people in less than 40 minutes.
The B&N store was still on #340 when I got there at close to 2 am. I saw the first line of sixty people, thinking it was for the book registers, but later found out that was the line for the cafe. The store was filled with people just waiting for their turn to wait in the book line.
It all made me wonder if B&N had planned it so customers would have to wait in the store for hours in order to get their book. Certainly people were hanging out, looking at books, maybe even bringing a few more up to the counter than they planned. It seems like an insulting way to get people to stay at your store though.
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Third Place took presales for the book. So at midnight we had two lines, one for people who had already paid and the other at the register for people who had not paid for a book yet. Everything went very smoothly and we went through at least 500 people in less than 40 minutes.
The B&N store was still on #340 when I got there at close to 2 am. I saw the first line of sixty people, thinking it was for the book registers, but later found out that was the line for the cafe. The store was filled with people just waiting for their turn to wait in the book line.
It all made me wonder if B&N had planned it so customers would have to wait in the store for hours in order to get their book. Certainly people were hanging out, looking at books, maybe even bringing a few more up to the counter than they planned. It seems like an insulting way to get people to stay at your store though.
