Visiting a book store never hurts, but I think you should be fine with any large book store that sells fantasy or history books - there's probably particularly great B&N stores (the Americans here can probably shed more light on this), but the one I visited (in Bellevue near Seattle) was lovely, yet also more or less comparable to larger German book stores I've been to.
Out of curiosity, how long ago was that? I worked at one for a few years back in the early 2000s and shopped at them (we had four within driving distance at peak) for years after they and Borders (a similar big box book store chain, now gone) for years before that after they'd killed almost all out small stores and yes, they were pretty good. Looking at the sole surviving B&N here in 2024, they've let their shelf stock drop off at least 30% in terms of shelf space and title variety, even more in some genre sections (history was very hard hit, for ex) and dedicated the floor space that was once books to toys and games and puzzles instead. That shift started at least ten years ago and accelerated enormously when Toys R Us (the major US toy retailer chain) collapsed - although the loss of Borders probably factors in as well, they used to be pretty cutthroat competitors around here. At least locally B&N isn't really worth going to browse for books any more, and since the chain uses (or at least used) corporate plan-o-grams to determine stock levels based of footage more than demand it's likely that the rot is similar no matter where you shop.
About a decade. I think it was 2012, but it might also have been 2014 (I was a PhD student back then and lucky enough to have a conference paper at a top-level conference, so my professor/department sponsored the trip - otherwise trips to the US are always a bit pricey).
Yeah, that's far enough back that the changes weren't really taking off yet. Speaking anecdotally, I'd say B&N has become noticeably less of an actual book store in the last ten years. Not entirely a bad thing unless you were looking to browse books, and they've certainly grown in some ways. The local one now stocks more graphic novels and manga than even the largest of the dedicated comic shops in the area, for ex. But the old days of being able to reliably find something new to read with every visit seem to have passed, and it's particularly difficult to start a new series on impulse due to their refusal to make any effort to stock the first book or two in what series they do carry. And the publishing industry is pushing hard toward everything being a series these days, at least in fiction - the number of standalone novels these days feels like it's half what it was 30-40 years ago.
They are slightly better over here (in Germany) thanks to a thing we call "Buchpreisbindung", meaning you have a fixed book price and Amazon cannot just discount smaller book shops out of business. But looking at my own purchases, ever since I moved to a small town, most of my orders are from Amazon. I do order from publishers directly from time to time, but it's really more of an exception. And while I do have a great friendly-not so local-game shop with a great selection, RPG books increasingly arrive at my door as the result of crowdfundings.
www.enworld.org
www.enworld.org
www.enworld.org
Basically "shots fired!" in an edition war lol
You're not wrong.D&D General - The D&D Memes Thread
This is the kind of post that I wish we had a wider range of emoji's to react, because this one is
Edited to add: Also, the implication that 3.0 is D&D and 3.5 is not is
