Comments on: Amazon is probably not to blame for most of Barnes & Noble’s troubles

By: Will in-person retail go the way of the dinosaur?

Will in-person retail go the way of the dinosaur? — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 14:29:43 +0000

[…] with social distancing in effect, suddenly people have even more incentive to avoid bookstores than Amazon.com ever gave them. Why risk bumping into a person who might give you (and via you, your friends and family) a […]

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By: Shirley Dulcey

Shirley Dulcey — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 19:28:26 +0000

The woes of Barnes & Noble are almost entire self-inflicted. And it didn’t even have to be that way. The separately run education division (which was spun off as a separate company in 2015) was doing a much better job of running the stores it controlled than the main B&N company was. It wasn’t only because of having the textbook cash cow; it’s because they were doing a better job of choosing and displaying books. The fact that local managers were given much more control over what the stores stock didn’t hurt.

If the mainstream Barnes & Noble stores had taken the lessons from their college counterparts to heart, they would be far more successful now.

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By: Author Fonda Lee decries Barnes & Noble stocking more copies of bestsellers

Author Fonda Lee decries Barnes & Noble stocking more copies of bestsellers — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 03:43:40 +0000

[…] businesses, who make decisions based on their sales. (Granted, in B&N’s case, they don’t exactly have a history of making very good decisions, but still.) Tolkien and Jordan are justly considered classics, with a proven track record of […]

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By: Bill Rosenblatt

Bill Rosenblatt — Sat, 12 May 2018 12:26:27 +0000

Here is the missing grain of salt with which (IMHO) you have to take David Leonhardt’s piece:

Leonhardt lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan during the heyday of the B&N Superstore around the corner from him at 82nd & Broadway. Although this store had forced the closure of the great indie bookstore Shakespeare & Co. two blocks away, I believe Leonhardt came to the neighborhood after that happened. At that time, the B&N was a beloved social mecca for Upper West Siders — a hot pickup scene on weekend nights and a popular place to park your stroller and read with your child.

Leonhardt then got a promotion at the NY Times and moved to Washington. After that, metastasis and decay began to set in at the UWS B&N. It’s now a shadow of its former self, plagued not only by the mismanagement that others (like Mike Shatzkin) have gone into in detail but also by the lack of local focus that a national chain just can’t bring.

So in other words, David Leonhardt got to experience B&N at its best (social and intellectual anchor for a city neighborhood) and not at its worst (indie killer, decaying carcass). I believe that experience colored his judgment.

BTW how do I know this? He lived next door to us before moving to DC. I don’t claim to know him well, but his movements track with the above.

P.S. Shakespeare & Co. is returning to the Upper West Side later this year. We’re psyched.

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By: Christian Sieg

Christian Sieg — Fri, 11 May 2018 12:54:41 +0000

Jeff will just sit back and relax. His company did nothing illegal. Yes! It’s an active market-player who plays with its power, so do other big (not always great) corporations allover the world. Maybe just a smart angle of approach to swallowing B&N, firing the existing board in favour of keeping the good-ones (book-sellers in the stores) who save their jobs and work in AMAZON Bookstores helping the company to become bigger due to broaden its distribution additionally to “largest off-line” book-selling store-chain……

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By: DaveMich

DaveMich — Thu, 10 May 2018 16:36:27 +0000

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10052018-dont-save-barnes-noble-oped/

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By: DaveMich

DaveMich — Thu, 10 May 2018 16:00:52 +0000

In reply to idiotprogrammer.

I buy books from StoryBundle.

I’ll say one thing. if people are running around screaming “Save Barnes & Noble!”, then something must be going on somewhere. Where there is smoke…

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By: idiotprogrammer

idiotprogrammer — Wed, 09 May 2018 14:16:28 +0000

Good analysis, and I basically agree. BN has never really been a realistic alternative to Amazon in the book/ebook market. Google could be that alternative in the ebook market because they have strong device support and the market clout in some areas. So could Apple. But neither really view book selling as their core competency, and Amazon does it really really well. (I also think Smashwords and Baen and Oreilly do it very very well — I’m buying more and more indie titles from Smashwords these days).

I wanted to mention that the ebook deal newsletters are very powerful in the ebook niche. Bookbub, and now it seems Early Bird Books are effective promoting tools. I wonder how many ebook sales are the results of Early Bird Books these days? Publishers in cahoots with Open Road Media (which delivers Early Bird Books) could just as easily favor a non-Amazon alternative.

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