A Poverty Of Literacy

The population of Laredo, Texas would hardly be described as upper to upper-middle class. Located on the U.S.-Mexico border, it's a blue-collar town.

Blue-collar people do read, of course. They have been seen in public libraries. They are known to buy books.

Barnes & Noble purchased the B. Dalton book chain and has been carefully culling its herd of excess stores. Having crushed a competitor, B&N claimed the winner's spoils. There isn't such a need in the B&N corporation for as many stores as they acquired, and so, the lone book store in Laredo, Texas, will have to go.

For a single shop, the place was profitable in that it made sales and could meet expenses. From a corporate stand-point, it's not profitable enough.

Eventually, Barnes & Noble would like to build a new place, eliminating the B. Dalton name in the process, but plans are not yet fully formed and it could be a year or two before everything falls into place. That would be a year or two when the people of Laredo could not walk into a brick and mortar store to make a purchase.

The loss of this small business won't put a dent in B&N's bottom line. Amazon will pick up some of the slack, but not all of it. There's the browsing factor that will go missing, the physical aspect of book buying on impulse that requires an actual book with actual jacket flap copy and genuine pages to turn---or not turn, if the first couple of pages don't grab the reader.

Blue-collar folks in Laredo who like to read and buy books will lose out, and all because a big corporation decided it wanted to get bigger, to maybe become the one and only book store chain in the universe.

While they build an indoor snowboarding park, the city of Laredo might consider portioning off a part of the new complex for an independent book store. Keep the rent low because there's not much profit in an indie shop, and promote literacy in a population that is growing increasingly illiterate.