No more B&N in store book purchases.
Couple of year’s back, when I graduated from school, daily I used to go Barnes and Noble store at 66th Manhattan, NY. This store is not only easier to commute, considering that NJTRASIT and PATH are only means of transportation, but also has huge collection of various books across multistoried building. Unlike my school library, I had access to multiple copies of various books. So it is guaranteed that I would find the book I am looking for. I used to go through PHP, MySQL and .NET books to keep myself up-to-date with these programming languages. This was 'back in the days' story. I never visited any Barnes & Nobles store until recently.
The last weekend, along with Vijay and Sesha, I thought of going for hiking in / around Pennsylvania. But we have no clue where to go. Someone suggested that we should go for Mt. Pocono. I visited Mt. Pocono's website and found no useful information. Later, I thought of purchasing a travel book from near by bookstore, Barnes & Nobles. A gentleman working out there walked me through the isle containing US travel books. He also suggested to go for National Parks and State Parks in USA from national Geographic rather than restricting myself to PA. His suggestion sounded good for me.
I pulled these books and sat in Star bucks cafe after ordering Pomegranate Iced cappuccino.
- Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the United States - , ISBN: 0792253221
- National Geographic's Guide to the State Parks of the United States - , ISBN: 0792266285
Overall I liked these books and checked 'em out for 49$ + tax. I was pretty much excited about the trip; however, we learnt from weather channel that Pocono area might have some showers + thunderstorms during the weekend. So, we cancelled our trip plan. I was interested in reviews of these books and looked up on Barnes & Nobles. The reviews about these books are pretty good, which made me happy. But, what turned me down is the price, $44 + tax + free shipping. I also looked up at Amazon for an excelled offer: 31.35$ + no tax + free shipping.
I called 1-800-THE-BOOK (1-800-843-2665) of Barnes and Nobles and asked about the price difference with in store and online purchases. The customer care representative has confirmed they cannot do anything about the difference, but suggested what I can do is return the books in store and purchase them online as they do not have any price match policy. So, today I am going to return the books in store and order them online from Amazon to save more than $20.
I see the only benefit of books in store books is that you can go through the. You will have place to sit and read the entire book and decide whether you like it or not. If you like it better lookup on web for better price and purchase them from there. May be if Google books / any other Virtual Library let me access couple more pages, then I need not go in store as well.
Shyam K. Arjarapu