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Barnes and Noble Bookstore Chain Put In Play

Posted by kdawson on from the more-clicks-less-bricks dept.

suraj.sun sends in word that the country's largest bookstore chain, Barnes and Noble, will put itself up for sale. "The news surprised analysts and alarmed publishers, who have watched as the book business has increasingly shifted to online retailers and e-book sales, leaving both chains and independent sellers struggling. ... For years, Barnes & Noble has been battered by large shifts in the publishing industry and the retail environment. Book sales have moved toward big-box stores like Costco, Wal-Mart and Target, and away from mall-based stores like B. Dalton, which Barnes & Noble acquired in the late 1980s. 'There's been a long series of pressures,' said David Schick, managing director at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore. 'The market has not been kind to bookstores, and it's for new reasons like competition with Apple and Amazon, and it's for old reasons, like what we believe has been a decline in reading for the last 20 years. Americans have devoted less of what we call media time to books.'"

6 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. Let me tell you... by brouski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sure feel great about my Nook purchase this week.

    --
    Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
    1. Re:Let me tell you... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I sure feel great about my Nook purchase this week.

      I bought a nook for Christmas this year. Part of my thought process was how useful will the device be if the parent company goes out of business.

      The nook has wi-fi, so I don't need to rely on the 3G working. The nook has a user-replaceable battery. It reads open formats like PDF and ebup natively, so I don't need to rely on the B&N storefront to buy my books. The nook runs Android, and is relatively easy to jailbreak, so I don't have to rely on B&N for software updates.

      So, I figure that the nook is still going to be a handy device even if B&N goes out of business.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Let me tell you... by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've not been to a Borders in years, but I've never even got the point of the DVD/CD section in the local bookstores here (which in this area are typically B&N and Books-a-million). They rarely have stuff that other places like Best Buy don't, and the prices are ridiculous. Boxed sets that are $30 at a regular store will be $65 in Barnes and Noble. Sure, they'll sometimes run a sale, and they have those "membership" cards to give some discounts, but even after you factor in all that stuff you're still typically paying more.

      Reality check to them: you're never going to get by selling the same thing everybody else does for double the price because it's in a trendy setting. Bookstores excel in one area: having the books that aren't necessarily the latest teen craze. I'm not exactly going to find a copy of Dandelion Wine down at Wal-mart, but I can at B&N.

      Stock those hard to find books, and for goodness sakes sort them in same sane fashion(sorting by category can be confusing - sometimes science fiction novels end up in "Literature" instead of the "Science Fiction/Fantasy" section for example). Put in a terminal that allows customers to look up what books you have in stock and show what shelf it's located on.

      And if they really wanted to pull in some extra customers - run a free e-book special for purchases in the brick and mortar store. I can imagine a lot more people buying there if Barnes and Noble had a code included with the books sold in their store that allowed you a free e-book copy of the work for your Nook - only for books purchased in the physical store (and naturally using that "no value until activated at the register" scheme so that people couldn't copy the codes out of the books).

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  2. Re:I still enjoy reading a good physcal book(store by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always sworn that I'd never become the old fart who's confused in the world of modern technology, but I really miss being able to walk into a record store and flip through the endless racks of LPs or CDs. I suppose I'm going to miss book stores too, when that day comes not too long from now.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. An interesting take on why they're failing by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Norman Spinrad has some interesting points about how the publishing and book sales businesses operate. They're like the music industry, only a lot worse in how they calculate the acceptable level of risk... even if an author has proved to be a fairly safe bet.

  4. Sad Day for Print by radicalpi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love reading, unfortunately I don't make enough time for it. I consider myself a very technical and electronic-savvy person. However, I have no intention of purchasing eBooks anytime in the future. There is something about owning a paperback and curling up with it as you flip through the pages. eBooks lack this personal touch. Browsing an online catalog doesn't compare to rummaging through the stacks and perusing a bookstore's inventory. It scares me greatly that we may, within my lifetime reach the point where we see the closure of the last brick and mortar bookstore.