1) their buyers, who are the people that decide what each store stocks, deteriorated from "people who knew books" to "people who knew inventory control" ; as a result, the bookstore selection has gotten markedly worse as you have noticed.
2) they have suffered from a lack of seriousness in approaching what a good bokstore should be. Instead of being true to themselves and having an excellent book selection, they add "features" like a coffee shop, games, paper and pens, etc. all of which dilutes their original purpose.
The issue IMHO is that:
1) their buyers, who are the people that decide what each store stocks, deteriorated from "people who knew books" to "people who knew inventory control" ; as a result, the bookstore selection has gotten markedly worse as you have noticed.
2) they have suffered from a lack of seriousness in approaching what a good bokstore should be. Instead of being true to themselves and having an excellent book selection, they add "features" like a coffee shop, games, paper and pens, etc. all of which dilutes their original purpose.