BAM moves fast.
Actually, as the “pardon our progress” sign on the front door suggests, the new bookstore isn’t quite ready for primetime. I couldn’t even get a cup of coffee in the rechristened Joe Muggs Café though an employee told me it should be open by the end of the week.
Book lovers familiar with the old Borders will find the new store easy to navigate. The café is in the same place as are the registers and music section. This is probably why they were able to reopen so fast. The changes that they’ve made to the store are relatively minor.
One thing that did strike me was a display (still being put together) for Barnes & Nobles e-book e-reader, The Nook. According to this story by Robert Nelson in gadgetell, this deal was announced a year ago.
“In a slightly surprising move, Books-A-Million has announced that they have begun selling the Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor ebook reader. And when we say slightly strange, that is only because while customers will be able to purchase and read BAM! eBooks on the device—they may not be as easy to purchase and get on the device as say—Barnes & Noble ebooks. Sounds like a risky move for Books-A-Million, but then again maybe any customer is better than none.”
Though I swore I wouldn’t buy any more hardcover books I made an exception today and help support HoCo’s newest bookstore. Dana Priest has written a book based on her Top Secret America series in The Washington Post and she told me she’d sign a copy if I sent her one. That’s not so easy to do with an e-book.
