From Forbes:
Book lovers, give thanks. Barnes & Noble is saved, as a deep-pockets acquirer steps up to revive the troubled bookseller. If the company had gone under, it would be a gut shot to the publishing industry. And readers. Yes, Amazon, the goliath of book peddling with half the print book market, would gobble up more market share. But a major provider would be lost if B&N vanished, and book sales overall would suffer.
. . . .
Remember the movie You’ve Got Mail, the 1998 rom-com in which Meg Ryan’s character owns a sweet little children’s bookshop that is threatened when corporate giant Foxbooks opens an outlet across the street? That story had a happy ending in that Ryan and Tom Hanks, playing the heir of the Foxbooks empire, became a couple and, while her shop closed, she ended up running the children’s section for Foxbooks.
Well, in the 21st century, Amazon chieftain Jeff Bezos and Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio aren’t about to start a romance. Bezos has waged scorched-earth warfare. Amazon, with its even larger book selection and ease of shopping, has shredded B&N, along with other book chains. Borders, the No. 2 bookseller chain, closed in 2011.
Barnes & Noble has been on a long retreat. Over the past decade, it shuttered 150 outlets, and now has 627. Revenue and profits have shrunk. In the past four years, the stock price has plummeted by a third (that includes the Elliott run-up). The company has been a revolving door for chief executives. Last summer, it fired the fourth one in five years. Aside from closing outlets, B&N has struggled to find a strategy that worked. It now also sells toys and other junky non-book merchandise, to little effect.
. . . .
Despite these challenges, Daunt and the Elliott juggernaut are arriving at a propitious time for physical books. Turns out that e-books, once thought to be the death of paperbound volumes, are ebbing in popularity, and printed books are making a modest comeback. According to Publishers Weekly, they rose 1.3% in unit sales last year, to 695 million.
Polls show people increasingly like books made from trees, even the electronics-obsessed younger set. Perhaps as a respite from a life spent staring at screens. Who knows?
Link to the rest at Forbes
As an abstract proposition, PG thinks it would be good for readers and indie authors (and probably Amazon) if Amazon had a high-quality, well-funded competitor in bookselling.
However, PG doesn’t think a re-skinned Barnes & Noble, still filled with low-wage clerks, is that competitor.
PG is a bit skeptical about consumer surveys that poo-poo ebooks and their attractiveness to serious readers. However, he could be wrong.
Has anyone seen a recent (last three months or so) survey sponsored by a party without its survival on the line (the American Booksellers Association need not apply) and conducted by a reputable market research organization (Nielsen, Kantar, IRI, Gallup), that has measured consumer purchasing/reading habits in the US or elsewhere?
If so, please put a link in the comments or you can send it privately to PG via the Contact page – https://www.thepassivevoice.com/contact/
I find it interesting that they use You’ve Got Mail as an example when in that film the small bookstore devouring villain was clearly Barnes and Noble.
Yet more ADS, and it’s starting to get even more whiney and pathetic.
Perhaps we should blame the real people responsible for B&N’s problems. Consumers did it.
Consumers had a choice. B&N or Amazon? They freely chose Amazon. Nobody forced them. They went out of their way to set up accounts with Amazon. They chose to click the Buy button.
These consumers didn’t care about B&N. They ignored Douglas Preston and 800 of the finest writers in the English language. They didn’t give a rip about book lovers. They even bought low-priced independent books, taking sales away from established authors and publishers.
These consumers cared about themselves and their own self-interest.
Give them a chance, and they will do the same to Amazon.
God Bless the free market, for choice has consequences.
I loved the part about Jeff Bezos waging scorched earth warfare. I doubt B&N has figured highly in Amazon’s thinking for some time now, except perhaps for the opportunities arising from its decline. For example, it seems quite likely that B&N’s new owners will not want to sell e-books. I think B&N has suffered chiefly from Amazon’s mere presence in the market. I can’t think of any recent Bezos tactics directed particularly at B&N.
Having said that, I would like to see at least one well funded healthy competitor who is actually interested in competing.
Follow the articles and you will note many independent booksellers that are absolutly convinced that Amazon deliberately sells books at a loss and makes up for it with the proceeds from other merchandise, and that they do so to spite other booksellers. Paranoid, but it is one of their gospels.
This is mostly likely because many of them don’t fully grasp the power of bulk purchasing to lower inventory costs, and they don’t factor in that the inventory value per square foot in your typical Amazon warehouse is FAR higher than any storefront.
“They’re doing it to spite (x)” is almost never true.
If Amazon ever cared about independent booksellers, it definitely hasn’t done so in many years.
Amazon thinks about Walmart, Carrefour and Alibaba.
Investors, probably.
Readers? TBD.
But no love for Indie bookstores that have been getting their growth (such as is) from B&N !osses?
Of course not. Indy bookstores don’t buy adverts in Forbes and don’t invite the editors to parties. Where’s the incentive to write puff pieces about plebeians?
Try these from Variety (2016) and Price Waterhouse Cooper (2019):
https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/pwc-entertainment-media-2017-forecast-plateau-1202455338/
https://www.pwc.com/us/outlook
It’s not just publishing but they’re not looking backwards.
Of note: the numbers for the various industries (unless they say otherwise) are total, for all players. Producers, distributors, and retailers.
They’re reporting 27% of *revenues* are ebooks.
Considering the BPHs are down to ~17% and their ebooks are 2-4 times the price of indies, the unit numbers are going to be significantly bigger.
The other industries are pretty interesting, too.
The biggest ongoing disruption is cable:
https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-is-losing-a-tv-customer-every-10-seconds-comcast-loses-1-7-subscribers-every-minute/
10% since 2016. They were hoping for flat. 🙂
Note that publisher revenues are actually flat as far as the eye can see.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271931/revenue-of-the-us-book-publishing-industry/
Even those minimal 1% increases they report are really about consolidation.
The fun part of the pbook ascendant polls is they roll in textbooks to fatten the percentages…
…but all the major textbook vendors are tripping over each other to move to digital.
Wonder how those polls will look like in a couple years if they’re honest enough to reflect this or if they’ll change their methodology.
Jeff Bezos and […] Leonard Riggio aren’t about to start a romance.
Ewww.
Anyway, they don’t have to make quarterly announcements anymore, so there’s no telling what they are up to or how well they’re doing. Anything could happen.