They stopped having a "new releases" part of their main sections, so if I want to find a new release in SF/Fantasy it means having to look at all the books in that section.
Granted, that section is a lot smaller now, with books front-cover-out, as you say. But it's still kind of a sucky move for steady customers.
I used to visit the local B&N every week. Now it's down to every few months, when I know exactly what I want to find there. And the B&N is about a quarter toys and board games now (this is not an exaggeration). We're down to two bookstores in our city of 600K+ people, hard to believe.
I had the same experience. One of the main reasons I went to B&N was to look at the new books. Now that they are hidden, there is little point to going in there.
I asked a manager about it, and they told me it was a corporate directive.
Borders did the same re-arrangement about a year before they went under. There used to be a half-bookshelf or so of "released this week" titles where any regular customer could walk in and immediately see and grab a new book by a favorite author, or maybe a new book by an unfamiliar author. Nope, you had to search the whole section.
I really wonder if these corporate directives are made by people who like bookstores, or read.
There's been a lot of C-Suite cat fighting at B&N - mostly between minority owner Leonard Riggio and various revolving CEOs he's brought in and then fired. See e.g.
Honestly I'm amazed Riggio got as much as he did for the sale. I suppose there's a fair amount of value in the property portfolio, but the book business as a whole is in a very rocky place.
Granted, that section is a lot smaller now, with books front-cover-out, as you say. But it's still kind of a sucky move for steady customers.
I used to visit the local B&N every week. Now it's down to every few months, when I know exactly what I want to find there. And the B&N is about a quarter toys and board games now (this is not an exaggeration). We're down to two bookstores in our city of 600K+ people, hard to believe.