At Barnes and Noble we were also saddened to see Borders go...believe it or not but Bookstores have this unique relationship: we compete against each other but at the same time we root for another.
I remember when Borders closed. We (BnN) honored all of Border's gift cards that customers had purchased at Borders and we even let them use their Borders reward cards at our store.
A friend of mine was the Store Manager at Borders and it was kinda a low down thing with how corporate handle issues with customers. They sold gift cards and 25 dollar reward cards know they would be closing (before the general public knew). My friend had a strong clash of ethics regarding this.
Another neat thing was we hired almost the entire Borders staff who was let go so that if they loved books we had a position for them. Even some of the managers at Borders kept their management status when crossing over to BnN.
Some big bookstores really isn't that bad. Some people would tend to compare BnN to War*Mart with killing independent stores. No, the lack of people's interest are killing bookstores....no matter if it's independent or corporate.
15 years ago, you had Waldens, B.Dalton, and Books A Million in one single mall. Now, you would be lucky to find any. So you need to adapt. If you don't you'll go out of business. Only reason why Barnes and Noble survived was because they followed Amazon's business type. Barnes and Noble actually offers more books at the same price online. Not many people know this....we have over 500,000 more book titles. On our ereader we have over 8 million free books (not the crappy xerox books...im talking about really good ones). BnN teamed up with Microsoft and Google so there is no fear of going the way of the dodo.
Also, BnN supports local and independent bookstores. We give grants to owners who wish to run a bookstore of their own. We donate millions of books (unused) to independent bookstores. We donate millions of books and money to charities and 3rd world nations who do not have access to libraries.
We rated 100% for LGBT scores up to and including SRS for transgender people. We do a lot of fun things for children (we are doing a Harry Potter night next weekend for four hours, the children are divided up into the four houses and compete for the house cup....awesome prizes, door prizes, and the child with the most points wins a nook...and it doesn't cost a penny to participate). Today we did a Star Wars night, the week before that it was a Curious George night).
So remember, BnN isn't this evil corporation hell bent on destroying independent bookstores. We actually embraced them. Hell, last year we filled up a New Age Bookstore with all donations of new books.
Oh....and our LGBT section is MASSIVE. Depending on where you live this will vary because there is only so much space in a physical store. It's like that with any bookstore...being independent or corporate. You find some books in one store but not in another.
