The book business is a brutally competitive one. Many of the regional book sellers haven’t been able to make it, but the independent shops that are very service-oriented have hung in there. What about the big boys? Well, one of the biggest book sellers – Barnes & Noble – is having trouble because people aren’t finding the deals they want at B&N stores. More heavy readers are gravitating toward online sites, which offer huge deals. Plus, warehouse clubs sell best sellers for dirt cheap prices, and B&N is suffering because of it. Well, B&N is stepping up to the plate and finally offering deals that come closer to the deals at Wal-Mart and Costco. If you join the B&N book club for $25 a year, you’ll get a 40 percent discount on hard-cover best sellers and 20 percent off hard covers that are not best sellers. Those are actually decent deals.