As Barnes and Noble Struggles to Find Footing, Founder Takes Heat

The big figure that stood out for me in this article was that the number of independent bookstores in the United States has increased 30% in the last ten years. And there's enough people who love brick-and-mortar shops and physical books to warrant Indigo to expand into the U.S.

I think the article was spot-on about following the Waterstone model of making it a chain of hyper-localized stores, instead of a homogenous behemoth trying to be everything to the masses. Book readers are thinkers, and are turned off by mass marketing.

It's like how local coffee shops continue to survive and thrive, in spite of the ubiquitous presence of Starbucks. People like local, special things. What people on 35th Street in Chicago want to read is not the same as what people in Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco want to read.

If one wants to explore something from the other, there's always in-store ordering, and online. Plus the more-popular-than-ever-in-spite-of-the-zeitgeist libraries.

Hard to feel any sympathy for them when they've been doing stuff like this (Feb 2018) http://audreyii-fic.tumblr.com/post/170886347853/the-entirel...

Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for the company, as they recently laid off much of their full-time, expert-level employees for a quick and dirty buck, likely accelerating their demise. It is a shame, though, because in some places - despite the rise of local bookstores - they are the only place left to not only _buy_ books, but a place to "hang out" around books. They also host readings for smaller writers. Yes, libraries also fulfill this function, but where else can you bring your kids, buy a coffee, look at/buy some books or magazines and then go to the nearby mall?

I've always been amazed at how well-stocked B&N stores are, even in small towns like Fresno, CA. Likely one of the only places to buy a philosophy or classic literature book in the whole town.

Remember when we all hated B&N because they put all our local booksellers out of business?

The bottom line is that it's not possible to compete on price with Amazon. Amazon does not need to operate storefronts (although ironically it is starting to open them), has a massive selection, and offers very fast shipping.

Amazon also does not need to deal with shoplifting, which is a huge problem for bookstores. I worked at a Border's Books back in college and it was just amazing how many DVDs were stolen. People would fill backpacks with them.

The only way to outcompete Amazon is by becoming a niche player, not by becoming a worse version of Amazon, which is the outcome of the Barnes and Noble strategy.

We've been trying to make all the purchases we can from our local B&N store to try to keep them open as long as possible.

It's a small effort but if everyone does this maybe it will make a difference.

I love going by our local B&N to look at books, games and legos.

Hopefully they can fight this out and stay open.

I'm kind of surprised that they say they are still struggling. B&N in my area is one of the few chain stores I go to where I am actually interested in their inventory and often but things. I agree that the Nook seemed weird as it was a lesser device to the Kindle at launch and never really differentiated. The fact that they are my go-to shop for interesting gifts is an easy choice. They are one of the few places I can reliably buy interesting Lego and other fun junk. It's usually better selection and selection that seems to rotate inventory than a target and walmart where the experience is static and feels like it hasn't changed in a decade.

Do I buy books there? No, they usually struggle to have anything that meets my interests or are appropriate for my level of expertise. But the fun junk? It's my first stop as it doesn't have the home and house thing like a homegoods or pier 1 style place or an accessory or clothing store. They have a place in the neighborhood marketplace but I am wondering if the square footage is too high per store to make a meaningful conversion. Americans really don't like empty stores and empty shelves even if they have no interest in buying what's on it ever. Once I saw them going the mid-upscale gift shop route I felt they nailed it.

I always enjoyed going to B&N to drink a coffee and read a magazine and have thought that they should do something to capitalize on this. I wouldn't mind being able to rent or check out magazines while I drink coffee, then give them back when I leave.

I'm not sure if they can even turn a profit on this though.

Smaller stores in higher traffic areas, a few bigger stores that serve a larger suburban metro, and they need some exclusives and maybe a paid membership program.

What should B&N do???

Support the efforts of reading epub's in browsers, get rid of "an app for that" and simply have Edge/Chrome/Firefox be your front end for reading as well as a limited selection of nook branded tablet devices included 1-2 7" tablets and 1-2 paper white devices. your part time sales can't be good at selling 4-5 different devices you have now. Make your ebooks universally readable without the expense of "an app for that". Have a simple discovery service that is http so it works on anythimg/everything as store front.

work with indy publishers and such to fast-track publication of books to nook devices - promotion at stores, promotion on wifi login - allow people to buy this space and self-service taking advantage of online and offline premium presence.

maybe ditch printed magazines entirely and push electronic delivery and have ipads or samsung galaxies at stores with read at store capability and a simple way to buy and subscribe and deliver - save the retail/stocking space of magaines - maybe even offer something like "subscribe to 5 magazines, get 7" nook for free" - offer this approach to bloggers who write good blogs/online magazines so you can help indy publishers and indy content.

Make the B&N discount program universal - apply to all purchases at B&N - jack up the price if need be.

Follow amazon's footprints - if you're a B&N member have consistent pricing online & offline - monopolize on 600+ locations. Who cares if they buy on or offline, make pricing the same.

keep the cafe's up and the service up. Make sure wifi doesn't suck ass like it does at a lot of stores supplied by shitty ATT service. Just like you allow Nooks to read at the store, allow anyone with a browser to read at the store. Instead of copying the mile long receipts of CVS, use wifi login to make it stupid easy to purchase/have a coupon or funnel customers to an experience that builds a sales funnel.

Fix the "pickup at store" to be stupid easy rather than painful process.

Work with favor or city delivery services to offer B&N "now" in major cities for ~ 2-hour delivery service and use this to incentivize purchasing and sales funnel - no need to do your own delivery, capitalize on other services. Offer this as a discount to B&N members so they choose you for fast books even if they can't make it to a store or don't want 3-5 day delivery from website.

Update the 7" nook asap - keep using android, make it known it can use any ebook service out there too even if its not yours - add 512MB of ram (1.5gb total or so), increase CPU speed slightly - fix the local storage to be faster and 16gb - the current 8gb model requires massive nerding to be useful by any means - if your customer is older people who read tons of books - make it stupid easy for them to do so with nook / B&N branding all over the place - even if they're reading google books or amazon books or microsoft books - having a Nook that can easily read all of that means you own the fucking start page to reading. Hell, hack the price up to 69 bucks to make the 7" nook just that much better - if you had iterated on it i'm sure the nook experience would be killing it rather than festering.

help monetize podcasts - just like blog/magazine content above - use your branded nook devices to offer a simple channel - it can't cost much to acquire and develop a simple solution that could be built into a web service and branded on nook devices. allow podcasters to join in with monetization to allow you to fill these with pre-roll commercials or "supported by" and allow others to buy these spots just like web presence, end caps. learn to grow your digital market not just in commissions but in creating a person two person market - get out of the way of defining the product but allow people to create products that you have experiences to sell.

hire me. :)