Bookstore treats D&D books like Playboy

[Altalazar]

That's my initial hunch as well.
Regardless, this thread has a great tagline!

It just seems like there are other ways to deal with theft prevention - ones that don't involve basically losing your customers. That rather defeats the purpose of having the books in the first place. Sure, they are safe from theft. They are also safe from purchase. That's a losing proposition - at least with theft, you are fully covered by insurance. If the books don't sell, you are out of luck.

And thanks - I like to take pride in coming up with good taglines, no matter what the thread.

 

[Herobizkit]

I'm joining the bandwagon and agreeing that it's probably a theft issue, as well as a browsing issue... I mean, c'mon, why pay 50 bucks for a new book when you can take 5 minutes to jot down all the info you want from the book in the first place? This is why my local gaming store seals all their books.

 

[nonamazing]

I happen to work at a Barnes & Noble at the moment, and maybe I can shed a little light on this. My store happens to be one of the company's "high-shrink" stores, which means that we lose about five hundred thousand dollars worth of books a year. Some of that is due to inventory errors, I'm sure, but I also know that a major chunk of it is walking out the door.

I've had people come in asking for the Player's Handbook, and man, would I love to sell it to them, but I can't because all of the four copies we're supposed to have are gone. We lose at least two gaming books a week, and for me, the worst part of it is knowing that there are people who might actually want to buy this stuff (or even just hang out and read it, I'm fine with that) but they can't because somebody stole it. The whole thing is particularly gruesome to me because I love gaming and I'd like to be able to allow new gamers to have access to these books.

My guess is that the store you're talking about has a gamer working there. A gamer who's tired of being unable to give people the books they want, and who has resorted to drastic measures to help control things. They're not trying to take the books away from you, and I'm sure they'd be happy to let you look through them whenever you want. They're just trying to make sure the books are actually there when you want them.

As an interesting side note, almost any bookstore in the world will tell you that their most heavily shoplifted section is the religious area, specifically bibles. I can't believe that so many people would steal a book that specifically tells them not to.

 

[Altalazar]

I happen to work at a Barnes & Noble at the moment, and maybe I can shed a little light on this. My store happens to be one of the company's "high-shrink" stores, which means that we lose about five hundred thousand dollars worth of books a year. Some of that is due to inventory errors, I'm sure, but I also know that a major chunk of it is walking out the door.

I've had people come in asking for the Player's Handbook, and man, would I love to sell it to them, but I can't because all of the four copies we're supposed to have are gone. We lose at least two gaming books a week, and for me, the worst part of it is knowing that there are people who might actually want to buy this stuff (or even just hang out and read it, I'm fine with that) but they can't because somebody stole it. The whole thing is particularly gruesome to me because I love gaming and I'd like to be able to allow new gamers to have access to these books.

My guess is that the store you're talking about has a gamer working there. A gamer who's tired of being unable to give people the books they want, and who has resorted to drastic measures to help control things. They're not trying to take the books away from you, and I'm sure they'd be happy to let you look through them whenever you want. They're just trying to make sure the books are actually there when you want them.

As an interesting side note, almost any bookstore in the world will tell you that their most heavily shoplifted section is the religious area, specifically bibles. I can't believe that so many people would steal a book that specifically tells them not to.

So why not use the tags that set off alarms like they use for DVDs and CDs? They already have it in the store. Why not tag the books as well? You'd think the insurance company would have demanded it by now, with having to pay that much out in losses (the bookstore isn't what takes the hit, it is the insurance company that does).

 

[Turjan]

You'd think the insurance company would have demanded it by now, with having to pay that much out in losses (the bookstore isn't what takes the hit, it is the insurance company that does).

That would be the first insurance company I know of that is run as a charity .

 

[nonamazing]

So why not use the tags that set off alarms like they use for DVDs and CDs? They already have it in the store. Why not tag the books as well? You'd think the insurance company would have demanded it by now, with having to pay that much out in losses (the bookstore isn't what takes the hit, it is the insurance company that does).

We have tagged the books. People will just rip the tags off (tearing out pages or part of the cover if need be) and make off with the books anyway. The tags, to be frank, don't slow anybody down. We find torn up tags (and pieces of books) hidden in corners of the store all the time.

I don't know for sure about the whole insurance thing, but I do know that my store has cut back on raises for all employees (including management) because we're losing so much money. That's another thing that makes me bitter about all this--I can barely meet my rent each month, much less afford the gaming books I want, and yet I know some jerks out there are helping themselves to everything they want.

Sorry. I don't mean to come off as rude, but it does get depressing after a while, people constantly stealing from us. It makes me feel so frustrated and powerless.

 

[Turjan]

Just to clarify: there is no way a bookstore that loses five hundred thousand dollars worth of books every year can insure against that. It doesn't make sense. Insurance companies calculate their premiums from the losses plus costs and profits. This means that it's cheaper for the book store to cover those losses itself, without insurance. An insurance is good for protection against fire (as a singular, unlikely event with catastrophic losses), but not against regular expenditures.

 

[Magestrike]

Theft

I work at a B. Dalton, which is the mall division of B&N. We dont keep the RPG books behind the counter, but we have them on an aisle that is directly in front of the counter, so we can watch the section closely. We do keep the D&D minis behind the counter in a display, but we also have empty boxes on the shelf in the RPG section so people can look at the boxes.

In our store's most recent inventory, 25% of our total store's shrink was Role Playing. 25%!!! Thats sad. In fact, when 3.5 came out, we got a big display that we had to put out to push the books. There were 6 PHBs, 3 DMGs and 3 MM in the display. Within 10 minutes of putting the display out, we were missing 3 PHBs, all the DMGs, and 2 of the MMs. I walked in the back to get another display and they were gone that quick.

As a gamer and a bookstore employee, I agree with the poster about being tired of not being able to get my customers the books they need/want because others decided to steal them. It gets really old after a while. Thats why we rearranged the store so we could get the RPG section right in front of the counter, so we can watch it. It seems to be working so far, since we seem to be missing less books than we were before. I guess we will find out next year after the inventory.

 

[William Ronald]

As others have said, I believe the issue here is not censorship, but theft.

I find it a bit sad that stores have to keep a apecial eye on the RPG section. Unfortunately, I have meet a few gamers who were thieves. (One person, before leaving a group I used to play with, took several books from the DMs home.)

I hope that this will not give stores a bad image of gamers. Ironically, bookstores might be one of the best places to introduce new people to gaming. (This assumes that a store will let someone run a demo or other event.)

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I am sorry. I am the cause of all this. Whenever I enter a store, I can't help myself from stealing PHBs and DMGs. I must have 80 of them (each) by now.