Barnes
& Noble will continue to shrink and eventually go under or get sold for
cheap. It’s not just Amazon, e-books, or
the change in consumer reading and buying habits that threaten it. Unfortunately, it is running up against its
own incompetence.
Why
do I say this?
Let’s
start with a few things:
Their
pricing stinks. I just bought a new $32 hardcover book for $29. B&N, if you
buy their membership at an annual fee of $25 will give you a 10% discount. That membership should be free and then
should give more than a 10% discount.
Their
customer service is ignorant of the books it sells. In one store that I had look up the book
title to make sure it was in stock, the clerk was unfamiliar with it. Meanwhile, Time magazine just ran a two-page spread about the book.
I
also looked for a copy of The Cooperstown
Casebook, a new book from St. Martin’s Press, about the selection process
for baseball’s hall of fame. There was only one B&N store selling it. No one else in the city or Westchester
County (home to 9 million people) had copies.
I said: “Why not?” He said the
store buyer felt this title didn’t match with the store’s buying demographics. Let me get this right, B&N thinks no one
in Manhattan or Westchester (a baseball-centric area) is interested in a baseball book that was just
written about in the Wall Street Journal? Hmm, looks like sound judgment there.
This
chain just rots at the top. Its last few
CEOs have zero experience in book retail or book publishing. How do you run the nation’s largest and most
prestigious bookstore chain without such experience? They will never succeed if they don’t have a
bibliophile in charge.
It
boggles my mind at how the brand is just getting shredded by its own stupidity
and lack of initiative.
I’ve
said it before and I’ll say it again.
Barnes & Noble needs to think like Amazon and run its stores with
the hunger of the indies. It needs to house around the clock events and author
signings. It needs to use its space 24/7 and have after-hours book-related
events or even rent its space for cool non-book events. It needs a community outreach
program, partnering with local schools, businesses, and government agencies to
get people into its stores. It also needs to
be staffed by knowledgeable bookworms.
It needs to wake up before it’s in a coma.
It needs to wake up before it’s in a coma.
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