Everybody has a strong opinion about chain bookstores and almost nobody has counted the reviews.
Three thousand one hundred and forty-two of them, at four point six. That’s more than any independent in this county by a factor of five, and it’s the sound of several thousand people in Pinellas answering a question every month that none of the small shops can answer for them.
I think the chain-store snobbery has gotten tiresome. A store that three thousand people bothered to review is doing something right for them, and I’d much sooner see a busy Barnes & Noble on 19 than another dark storefront where a bookstore used to be.
The independents deserve every bit of affection they get. This place deserves some too, and I’m happy to give it.
So here’s the case for the big one on 19, alongside everything it can’t do.
Where is the Barnes & Noble in Clearwater?
23654 US Highway 19 North, Clearwater, Florida 33765. Store number 2859 in the Barnes & Noble system, phone 727-669-1688.
The location is doing most of the work. US 19 is the spine of this county and the store sits directly off it. The drive is a straight line from Dunedin, Safety Harbor, Largo, Palm Harbor and the beaches, without touching a surface street anybody has to think about. Parking is a lot. A customer put it as plainly as it can be put: “very conveniently located right off 19.”
Hours run ten in the morning until nine at night Monday through Saturday, and ten until eight on Sunday.
Those late closings are a bigger deal than they sound on paper. Most of the independents in this county lock up between five and seven. If your free time begins after dinner, this is one of very few bookstores in range with the lights still on.
Is this the same as the Palm Harbor Barnes & Noble?
No, and this trips up enough people to deserve its own heading.
There are two Barnes & Noble stores on US 19 in this county, roughly seven miles apart, with identical published hours and the same road in the address. The Palm Harbor store is at 33591 US Highway 19 North, store 3548, a newly built location. This one is at 23654, store 2859, and has been here for decades.
The consequences are real and mildly comic. People arrange to meet at the wrong one. People drive to the closer one expecting the store they read about online. Navigation apps handle it correctly if you use the full street number and badly if you search the brand and tap the first result. If somebody says the Barnes & Noble on 19, get the number in the address before you leave the house.
What is the Clearwater Barnes & Noble good at?
Three things come up over and over in what customers write, and not one of them is what the chain advertises.
The first is manga. The section sits at the back and it’s grown steadily for years, to the point where longtime customers comment on the growth more than the size.
One of them, a regular of many years, noted the section had been expanding the whole time. For a parent trying to find volume eleven of a series their kid is halfway through, this is the only shelf in Pinellas County likely to have it in stock today.
The manga shelf pleases me more than any other part of the store. A kid who’s hooked on a series wants the next volume today, and a store that can hand it over is making a reader. I’d rank that above almost anything else a bookstore does for a town.
The second is games and cards. Customers keep describing the game section as a bigger part of the store than they expected, with esoteric card stock sitting alongside the mainstream. Board games, Lego, puzzles. One customer singled out “a great assortment of LEGO and other children’s products” alongside the books.
It’s gradually become a gift shop that also sells books. That’s a large part of how the chain survived the last fifteen years.
The third is the children’s and science sections, both singled out repeatedly, plus a wide run of vinyl, DVD and Blu-ray that most people stopped expecting from a bookstore around 2012. The cafe is a Starbucks with a large seating area. One customer noted approvingly that they’ve stopped running the loud overhead announcements. That sounds like nothing and is exactly the difference between a room you can work in and a room you can’t.
Whoever killed those announcements made a good call. A store that shouts over a speaker every ten minutes is telling you to pay and leave. A quiet room with coffee tells you to stay, and staying is the whole reason a writer would bother coming here.
Why would a working writer come here?
The chain store offers two things the independents can’t, and both are worth the trip.
The first is market reconnaissance. If you want to know what your category looks like on a shelf right now, you need a shelf with the current front list on it, faced out, arranged the way a general reader meets it. Comparable titles, cover conventions, spine treatments, what the category’s design language is doing this year, which books get a table and which get a spine.
You can’t get that from a retail website, because a website has no adjacency. Nothing sits next to anything. A table of new releases shows you what a browsing customer sees in the three seconds before they decide, and that’s the environment your own cover has to survive.
This is the advice I’d push hardest on any author who’s about to approve a cover. Writers pick covers on a laptop at full screen and fall for designs that vanish the moment they sit on a table beside twenty others. Half an hour in front of this new release table would save a lot of them from that mistake, and it costs a coffee.
The second is the seating. Ten to nine, six days a week, a table, coffee, and nobody expecting you to leave. The libraries in this county are better rooms and I’ve written about the Clearwater Main Library at length, but the Main Library closes at seven at the latest and is shut all weekend. The chain fills exactly the hole that leaves. Weekend afternoons and weeknights after seven, this building is what’s open.
On the signing question, which every author asks, I’ve written about how bookstore signings really work in Tampa Bay. Walking into a chain and asking for a table is the least effective move available, and the independents in this county are a far better first call.
What isn’t the Clearwater Barnes & Noble good for?
It’s a chain, and that comes with what a chain comes with.
Nobody at the counter has read the shelf the way the owner of a small shop has. The stock is ordered nationally, so the Florida and local material is thin compared to what the independents carry. There’s no consignment path for a local author. Prices are list.
Customers also note the store isn’t enormous by Barnes & Noble standards, and that the selection is good for the footprint without being large in absolute terms. Somebody hunting a specific backlist title will often need an order, and at that point the independents will order it too and keep the margin inside the county.
None of that is a serious flaw. Nobody should walk into a chain expecting a bookseller who’s read everything on the shelf, and nobody should expect a small independent to stay open until nine with a Starbucks in the corner. Each does its own job well, and the argument that one of them has to lose for the other to win is silly.
How does Barnes & Noble Clearwater compare to the independent bookstores nearby?
The rest of this county’s book retail divides by specialty, and each shop beats this one inside its own lane.
For used volume and price, The Book Rescuers in Largo is a warehouse with three miles of shelving and two dollar paperbacks. For comics, back issues and tabletop gaming, Emerald City Comics off 49th Street has been at it since 1989. For a recommendation from somebody who read the book, the small shops in Safety Harbor, Dunedin and Tarpon Springs will do it properly and enjoy doing it.
What this store has is breadth, hours, parking and a chair. On a Sunday evening with two free hours and no particular title in mind, it’s the only one of those options still open.
The case for a general bookstore
Something gets lost when a county has only specialists.
A specialist sells you what you already know you want, and does it better than anyone. A general bookstore sells you the thing you didn’t know existed, because the aisle you walked down to reach the tone had something on it that stopped you.
Pinellas County came close to losing that entirely. The chain nearly went under and a great many people wrote its obituary in public. Instead it kept building stores, including the new one seven miles up the road, and reviewers describe both as well stocked and busy.
You can hold two things at once here. Buy from the independents when you can, because the money stays in the county and the recommendations are better. And be glad the county still has one large room full of new books with the lights on at half past eight on a Tuesday. For an enormous number of readers, a room exactly like that one is where the habit started.
One reviewer, decades into shopping here, summed it up without meaning to: “Been coming here for decades.”
It’s good that it’s still there. Plenty of people spent years telling readers the physical bookstore was finished, and a busy room on US 19 with its lights on after dark proves them wrong every night of the week. Buy your recommendations from the independents and your Tuesday night hardcover here, and don’t let anybody make you feel guilty about either one.
