[PhotoSparks] Idea hunting in a bookstore: Barnes and Noble v/s Amazon?

In earlier posts, we brought you creative photographs from Communicasia in Singapore, the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia, mBillionth Awards in Delhi, and Sampoorn Santhe (arts fair) and social hackathon in Bangalore. In this photo gallery, we show how bookstores are great places for idea hunting and creativity. Make YourStory’s PhotoSparks your regular source of photographs that celebrate creativity and innovation!

Barnes & Noble, Easton

Unlike many other retail stores, bookstores are great places to explore at your own pace, and terrific for idea hunting. The term ‘content’ demeans books, which in their printed form are also works of art. A bookstore with a café is an added bonus, and a bookstore with a community meetup space is a terrific local asset. Independent bookstores and large chains have their own characteristic flavours. Here’s the view from US bookstore Barnes & Noble in Easton!

Upto 170,000 titles per store!

Barnes & Noble operates around 1,400 bookstores in the US, including about 700 bookstores on college campuses. Each Barnes & Noble store features a wide selection of books, ranging from 21,000 to 170,000 titles, as well as magazines, games and DVDs. BookMaster, the company’s inventory management database, has more than 14 million titles. Many book covers are works of art, and show how much the creative mind can do with even just a few square inches of book space - as these covers below show!

Cool Cover 1: The Belly Book

The Belly Book: A Nine-Month Journal for You and Your Growing Belly, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, is a light-hearted well-laid out book with checklists and photo album space for readers to paste their own pictures.

Cool Cover 2: Nutella

Nutella: The 30 best recipes Hardcover, by Larousse, has 30 recipes in a Nutella bottle-shaped book for all the fans of the sandwich spread.

Cool Cover 3: The Golden Book of Chocolate

This book by Carla Bardi and Claire Pietersen is a fittingly lavish tribute to the most sensuous of all foods - chocolate. The book is packed with colour photos of over 300 kinds of chocolate, and is even enrobed in gold foil like a high-end chocolate bar. The bright golden colour makes it a bit difficult to photograph properly, but is worth buying and gifting!

Cool Covers 4

Fifty Shades of Grey and The Joy of Sex are some of the leading bestsellers from different eras, and have inspired the titles for a range of other publications such as food guides Fifty Shades of Kale and The Joy of Juicing!

Cool Cover 5: Workbooks

All creative people have digital or paper versions of workbooks or scrapbooks, where we jot down notes, ideas, quotes, names, numbers, addresses, doodles and other random thoughts. The more fancy ones are made from high-quality paper, or have elaborate evocative covers like this one above.

Cool Cover 6: Yeah Yeah Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, by Bob Stanley, is an encyclopaedic history of pop music. The analog cover bridges the digital world in its design with icons from music players, such as buttons and volume.

Nook: from print books to e-readers

In 2009, Barnes & Noble entered the e-book market with the Nook e-reader, with over 10 million devices sold so far. Under its partnership agreements with Microsoft, Barnes & Noble wants to expand to 10 international markets for e-books this year, with more than three million digital books.

Showdown with Amazon: the view from Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble generated $6.84 billion in total sales last year. The company also operates 651 traditional college bookstores and 35 academic superstores, which are generally larger in size and offer cafés and community space. But will this offline presence and its digital strategy help in its epic showdown with digital disruptor Amazon? That is another story altogether!

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