What Happened to Barnes And Noble And What’s In Store For The Chain

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From Book Riot:

For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about how Amazon has been the death of bookstores all across the country. And yet Barnes and Noble has been creeping along for years after the closures of other behemoth bookstore chains such as Borders and Crown Books. But in the last few years, Barnes and Noble, too, appeared to be failing. It is quite true that Amazon still corners more than 50% of the market shares in physical book sales, but is Amazon really to blame for the company’s failure? Or did Barnes and Noble lose sight of its original purpose?

. . . .

The last time I went into a Barnes and Noble, this past winter in my hometown, Milwaukee, WI, the entire downstairs was taken up with games, cards, art supplies, music, Starbucks, and other non-book merchandise. Sure, you still have the magazine section and small front display of current bestsellers. There were also some tables boasting old titles on sale for under $5. Overall there was an overwhelming air of sadness and failure. In order to find most of the books, you had to go upstairs. I had a list of about five books that I wanted to track down. I wandered the stacks for a few minutes and struck out on each one. When I finally gave up and asked for help, I ticked through each selection one by one and the increasingly apologetic bookseller confirmed that they carried none of the books I was looking for.

. . . .

Barnes and Noble, once enemy number of one of independent bookstores around the country, met an ironic fate with the rise of Amazon. B&N operated on a model of being the big box store of books, carrying so many titles at such a high volume that they could offer lower prices than any independent bookstore could ever match. Amazon simply beat them at their own game. B&N responded by trying to get in on the ebook craze and created their ereader, the NOOK. While the logic was certainly there, this was, ultimately, a failed venture, losing the company more than a billion dollars.

. . . .

While the closure of B&N certainly would have been catastrophic for the publishing industry, which still relies on these larger booksellers, the trend in bookselling has been turning around in the past couple of years. We are starting to see more independent bookstores opening across the country and thriving. And even ebooks, often touted as the death kiss to physical books, are becoming less popular and giving way to printed books.

Link to the rest at Book Riot

As a reminder, PG doesn’t always agree with the items he posts on TPV.

10 thoughts on “What Happened to Barnes And Noble And What’s In Store For The Chain”

  1. Non-chain bookstores have been expanding precisely because of B&N’s weakness.

    But if Daunt brings his model from the UK and turns B&N into a chain of hyperlocal “independents” supported by a unified logistics backbone those same standalones won’t enjoy the “B&N resurgence”.

    • I have to wonder if it’s even possible to have anything hyper-local in the US today. Life-styles have changed, and social institutions have weakened. Hyper-local stores we might remember were just another version of a social institution.

      • In books you can.
        One example: bookstores near NASA centers sell way more SF and fantasy than stores near Oberlin College, where Naomi Wolfe will move like hotcakes. Ditto for stores near top rank Engineering and Hard science departments.
        Small towns in flyover country will sell more inspirational books than coastal cities and northern and rockie mountain will sell lots of nature books, hunting, bird watching, etc, while DC and NYC will be bigger on political and self help. And of course LA will be big on fad diets. 😉

        Some of the differences might be relatively small but it will affect turnover and thus profits.

        Contrary to the federalizers, there are significant differences between states and even regions of the same state. What sells well in Shaker Heights or Lakewood, Ohio, will languish in Columbus and vice versa.

        And don’t forget gentrification; economic status will impact things like litfic. AmazonBooks targets upscale neighborhoods and they vary stock store by store based on what people buy online using zipcodes as the focus.

        You can do hyperlocal if you have big data or at least collect detaioed sales data. Amazon has both, B&N probably never bothered.

        • There certainly are varying tastes, and an outlet can indeed cater to them. But does that variance indicate a hyper local store can survive? What percentage of revenue is drawn from the specific local taste? What percentage of the locals share that taste?

          Lots of stores catered to local tastes, but that didn’t save them from falling before the changing patterns of commerce.

          I don’t think it’s a question of selection. It’s a question of convenience and range of choices. No matter what an individual likes, or where he works, his tastes can be satisfied with a click. He doesn’t have to go to a B&M to find what he wants.

          Those books on SF, fantasy, and Naomi Wolfe? They are just a click away. And litfic too. For any given individual, his stuff is readily available online. It doesn’t matter if his tastes are not shared by someone in a different state. He doesn’t care.

          When the other guy has everything, specialization is not an effective competitive strategy.

          • The trade book business is worth $14B a year.
            Amazon sells half of it.
            That’s a lot of “not-clicking” going on.

            Theory is one thing, reality another.

            Reality is $7B a year worth of trade books moving through alternate channels, for reasons that have nothing to do with Amazon’s bigger catalog, lower prices, or convenience.

            For all their incompetence, B&N still moves $2B a year.
            The standalones with their limited assortment and high prices still move hundreds of millions in books.

            In business, specialization is called niche-dom: and some niches can be very profitable and even very big. Just look at Ferrari, Rolex, or Macintosh.

            There is good money in zigging while others zag, if you do it right.

            For all their whining

            • …a lot of the surviving Indies are in fact doing hyperlocal, which is what makes them vulnerable if B&N follows through.

              This isn’t at all about competing with Amazon but of competing for the other half of the market.

              Hoary old joke: two campers on safari wake up to hear the roar of a lion. They get up and see a lion charging in their direction and decide discretion is the better part of valor. They run. As they’re huffing and puffing one tells the other: “You don’t look too woried. Surely you don’t think you can outrun the lion forever.”
              “I don’t have to. I just have to outrun you.”
              And then he sprinted away…

              The B&M race is for second place at best.
              Smart players act accordingly.

      • Before it was bought by the holding company (say, before 2010), Hastings was very local. The Hastings near a major military base had lots and lots of local history, military history, and mil sci-fi (and fitness books). The main flagship store in Amarillo, TX stocked three rows of westerns and had a decent regional history wall.

        The regional B&N used to have a very large Texas/New Mexico section front and center. When the junk-stuff push came along, the Texana shelves got moved back and “stuff” and end-cap books replaced them. But there’s still large sections of Texana, sci-fi, and gaming and game-related books. Plus a western-history heavy US history and Military History section. So the local manager is trying to keep his market, and that might be what the new management can emphasize.

    • I think a great many serious readers associated the b&m bookstore experience with the great pleasure they received from reading. BN used to deliver some of this and successful indies have always done so.

      The perhaps subconscious connection between the reading experience and the pleasures of shopping at a store that provided a welcoming, intelligent and supportive environment is not something people get over right away.

      However, there are other welcoming, intelligent and supportive social groups, including many that are non-commercial. Book clubs come to mind as one example.

      There was a sense that online communities could never replace such offline experiences and perhaps they don’t fully do so for those with mainstream tastes. However, outliers are readers too and online is pretty much the only place they’re able to locate kindred spirits. Ditto for serious readers who live away from major metro areas.

      However, I think for many, when the perception really struck home was when they were leaving on a trip and realized they had nothing to read or they finished one book in a wonderful series at 9:00 pm on Friday and wanted to start another. Amazon and ebooks came to the rescue.

      Particularly for the lengthy books that take up a significant portion of my reading time, I just don’t like to deal with physical books any more.

      I use an iPad for a great many things, but still prefer a Kindle Paperwhite for long form reading. Last night I finished a four-book series that would likely have comprised at least 2,000 printed pages, probably more. All four volumes fit onto my Kindle with no problem and the Kindle is much easier for me to page through, put down and pick up without losing my place, read in bed after Mrs. PG has gone to sleep, etc., etc., etc., than four printed books of more than 500 pages each.

      Add to that the seamless and nearly-instant ability I have to download and start reading an over-priced traditionally-published ebook from my local library and a visit to a physical bookstore is simply not exciting at all.

  2. An example of hyperlocal that is blatant, is a tale of two Albertsons.

    I went to lunch at Jinja, a chain Fusion place owned by Gene Hackman, then walked into the Albertsons next door, across from the National Cemetery, and it was a total shock compared to the Albertsons on the other side of town where I live.

    It had a ton of people working there, running a high end deli with fancy takeout, along with prepared containers of fancy soups, everything handmade. I was there to get my biweekly Lottery ticket, Powerball with Power play. I thought, it’s an Albertsons within walking distance of my car, might as well save a trip.

    My Albertsons is a supermarket, with groceries and stuff. The one uptown made me expect a Maitre D’ to escort me through the store.

    Absolutely shocking difference.

    This may explain why my Albertsons, embedded among the new part of town, a mix of brand new houses and trailer parks, is different from the Albertsons nestled among the rich that have taken over most of the centuries old neighborhoods.

    The G-Word
    Drawing links between gentrification, displacement, art and growth in Santa Fe
    30 January 2018

    https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2018/01/31/the-g-word/

    Look at the map at the start of the article. Open it as its own tab so you can zoom in.

    I’m in the lower left, almost dark red section, labeled 63. A brand new subdivision, less than 30 years old, with an apartment complex standing along the street, with a trailer park across the street from that. The airport, and sewage treatment plant, and gun range directly West, on the other side of the Bypass.

    I, and a few non Hispanics in the neighborhood, keep it from being fully Hispanic. There is me, and my neighbors across the street, who are Middle Eastern, that keep the numbers low. HA!

    MOMENTS IN TIME | Through the Lens: Imaging Santa Fe | New Mexico PBS
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNa-1Tlrvu0

    Those “mud huts” they mention are now going for millions.

    • There’s different ways of running a customer-centric business. Hyperlocal is just a fine-grained version that aligns inventory to regional interests.

      B&N corporate hasn’t shown an interest in customer interests, just in moving what they’re paid to move. “Stock it and they will come” doesn’t worry its pretty little head with those nuances.

Comments are closed.