
Ways to Save Barnes & Noble - replicatorblog
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/10-ways-to-save-barnes-noble/
======
bruce511
Is it only me that finds it deeply ironic that the company credited with
closing a gazillion independent booksellers and round-the-corner bookshops, is
currently at the receiving end of exactly the same market forces that it
espoused during their demise?

Perhaps the real question is not how to save Barnes and Noble, but rather
_why_ anyone wants to save them at all. I find it hard to see them cast as Meg
Ryan opposite Amazonian Tom Hanks in the re-re-make of You've Got Mail.

B&N were once fans of market forces, and the public's insatiable hunger for
lower prices at any cost. Unfortunately, their discovering that economies Of
scale are only on your side until someone else comes along who does it better.

B&N are fundamentally Unsaveable. They contain neither the charm of the shop
around the corner, nor the value of Amazon. I for one will shed no tears at
the demise of this corporate monster.

~~~
acabal
I agree with the sentiment, but since BN has crushed independent booksellers
the problem now is that if BN closes, lots of more isolated places like
suburbs and exurbs will have no good place to browse and buy books. I'm
currently staying in a suburb of a major American city and BN is quite
literally the only place to buy physical books for a 50 mile radius, if not
more.

It's kind of a crappy situation, but it's one that we've put ourselves in. I'm
not confident that we'd see a renaissance of indie booksellers should BN
close.

Personally I think that with Nook, BN for various reasons bungled what could
easily have been a very successful product. They might still have been able to
turn it around by pressuring publishers to sell ebooks for cheaper, removing
DRM, and focusing on a true ereading experience and owning a niche instead of
competing with full-blown tablets.

Since they've thrown in the towel with Nook, their only hope seems to be
dropping prices to give people a reason to walk in instead of going to Amazon,
or to make money on ancillary physical experiences, like drinking coffee while
browsing. But they already made a possibly fatal mistake in that strategy by
renting out space to Starbucks instead of doing their own coffee thing.

BN closing would be a pretty big blow to books in general, regardless of
Amazon's sales. While I can't pity the corporation for being affected by
market forces, nor can I pity it considering what it's done to indie sellers,
neither do I want to see books completely disappearing from the average
American's sight.

~~~
derefr
> I'm not confident that we'd see a renaissance of indie booksellers should BN
> close.

Why not?

Here's a pretty standard progression:

1\. there used to be a bakery a few blocks away--medium-scale, medium-
convenience. Six or seven of them in your district.

2\. Then a supermarket came. It was just a bit further away than the nearest
bakery, but it included a bakery and a bunch of other things. The bakeries
went out of business. One supermarket per district was all you needed.

3\. But supermarkets aren't something you pop into for an "experience"\--you
don't visit one on a date. So, someone trimmed down the bakery idea to the
most consumer-focused essentials, giving people only what they wanted and none
of what they needed (the supermarket covers what they need, after all), and
launched... a cupcake shop. Maybe just one to start. But then, suddenly,
they're on every street corner.

I could see the "cupcake shop" equivalent to a bookstore: not a big pile of
unsorted old tomes, but rather an exquisite presentation for a small, heavily-
curated collection of books. A showroom for books, if you will. The clerk
would have read everything on sale, and be able to talk at length about all of
them. You'd be matched to a book in the same way an Apple Store employee
guides you to a piece of consumer electronics. Etc.

~~~
VLM
I think the important difference in customer experience is fresh edibles
require a local real estate presence. I've already switched from the local
bookstore, which was pure mass market and had no scifi or technical books, to
B+N, to amazon, now if B+N closes why would I ever switch back from amazon
prime to brick and mortar?

The other killer is amazon prime. I'm paying $70 or whatever it is, to get
free shipping and no sales tax. Anytime I pay spend a penny at B+M even long
after I saved my $70 from amazon, I'm still thinking... I fronted amazon $70
and I need to make it back on free shipping, and its cheaper online anyway,
and I won't have time to read it until after two-day shipping anyway... so why
go brick and mortar?

The other problem is, I'm pretty well read, interested in certain specialties,
and 50% of salespeople are below the median anyway, so a local store is
useless to me. I have special ordered books at local bookstores in the distant
past; I believe they used USPS media mail and it took about three weeks plus
two trips to the store. I already have amazon prime and it takes two days not
three weeks. So I'll probably never buy a new book at a B+M book store again,
at least not for myself. I don't know if they can survive off gift sales.

There are five interesting options going forward for bookstores:

1) Gift store that happens to sell books.

2) I donno what to call it, but the sales pitch would be "Don't pay for amazon
shipping when we can get it next day air no extra charge". Of course the base
price would be MSRP not amazon discount, to pay for the logistics.

3) "We print your book on demand in less than 15 minutes while you drink a
complimentary coffee and its still hot when we put it in your hands"

4) "We only stock the (insert authority name)'s top 100 titles... but we know
all about those 100 titles, and we never run out of copies". AKA the midnight
harry potter store, more or less. Also hosts wild midnight release parties.

5) Dead street in a dead town with no customers but the rent is cheap and the
owner sees it as a lifestyle business or bragging rights. Also a front for
money laundering, seeing as its a cash business. Being a front and a laundry
for regional weed distribution is how our local candle store kept in operation
a couple years back.

~~~
derefr
How about the radio-station model?

6) "We don't sell books, or make money from customers. Instead, your eyeballs
are the product, and we sell chain-wide coverage of recently-released titles
(including a guarantee our clerks will read+familiarize themselves with your
book) to publishing houses. We _want_ people to come in and read the book for
30 minutes and be itching to buy it on Amazon by the time they leave; that's
what the publisher is paying us for."

Sort of neatens up the incentive structure, doesn't it?

(This also means they don't have to have any storage; they only need two or
three pristine copies of each book to put on display. And it can even work for
books that are otherwise digital-only: the only physical copies are one-offs
created solely for display purposes, printed by the author's marketing agency
using a service like Lulu and delivered directly to each participating book-
gallery. In other words, the "books" become part of the _PR kit_ for a book
launch, rather than the goods being sold.)

------
logn
I think they just need to be a better bookstore. Think of Powell's in Portland
OR. It's my favorite thing to do in that city and I barely ever buy/read paper
books. They also have a building nearby the main one that sells only technical
books.

The reason I like shopping and buying books there is the sheer selection. Of
course, their footprint is much larger than BN. But BN could raise funds to
expand their stores slowly and see if it works. Powell's has several floors of
books and are probably larger than many large libraries in big cities. Next to
each new book they also stock used books of similar or the same titles.

I just really enjoy the act of flipping through an entire book and then buying
it on the spot. I don't think paging through the ToC in PDF form a la Amazon
is that nice and I hate waiting for shipping. Plus, if on a technical book I'm
going to spend $100 then I need to make sure for myself it's a decent
reference.

It's been painful to see BN push the Nook. And to see them try to be a coffee
shop. And CD store. etc etc. For the size of their store, they have a
remarkably small selection of books, and they're all high-priced... and they
complain they can't sell many books. Sorry, when I walk in to the store and
see 4 crappy books on CSS, 10 on HTML, 5 on Windows, and a smattering of
others, I'm not that inspired. But in Powell's technical bookstore, when
there's a whole aisle on Javascript, I get excited.

~~~
rdouble
Barnes and Noble is an inconsistent experience. For example, at the Roseville,
MN store, the technical book section is usually on par with, or sometimes even
better than Powell's. However, almost everywhere else, even at other locations
in MN, the stores mostly suck. There used to be a couple of great Barnes and
Noble stores in Manhattan, but they have closed.

~~~
Refefer
I imagine that's greatly influenced by the purchasing habits of the local
customers: in Gettysburg? Beef up the Historical section.

------
ja27
One that's not quite on their list is boardgames. B&N is pushing more of those
for the higher margin, but they do little to nothing to get gamers into the
store. They should be the ones partnering with Tabletop, not Target. Sponsor
BoardGameGeek somehow. Host gaming meetup groups. Provide store copies of
games for trial.

------
jinushaun
These are awful tips and don't prevent the retail problem of showrooming. Even
if BN is cheaper than Amazon, you can't beat the convenience of buying stuff
from your laptop in bed.

They need to draw people into their stores AND make them spend money. A lot of
these tips are just about getting freeloader traffic.

~~~
michaelfeathers
I think there is future in the showroom model, and not just for bookstores. To
make it work, showrooms should rotate stock aggressively, to the point of
moving in and out a tractor trailer a day. And, there should be dates on the
displays to indicate how long they will be in the showroom. The stock would
have to be compelling enough that you would tell your friends about it and
they would visit. The showroom itself would have to be a spectacle.

If anyone ever cracks same day delivery, it would align very well with this.
Onsite fabrication would align well too.

------
aspensmonster
How about: lower your prices. Seriously, have you been to a Barnes and Noble
recently? If they have any hope of competing with Amazon, or even other local
book stores, then the prices have to go down. Attempting to sell books at MSRP
is a death sentence.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
That's a nice idea, but in reality a B&H branch has more overhead than an
online bookstore. Rent, electricity, local taxes, cleaning, and even transport
costs (e.g. moving books in and out of stores).

So while I'm sure B&H could 1:1 match Amazon in prices, with Amazon's
economies of scale, and the tax loopholes online retailers get, I highly doubt
a B&H store could do it and still be profitable.

So, yes, lower prices. Just give the books away. It will get people through
the doors, no doubt, but they'll still go bankrupt.

~~~
chimeracoder
FYI, B&N is a bookstore - B&H is an electronics store run by Hasidic Jews:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26H_Photo_Video](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26H_Photo_Video)

:)

------
speeder
I think the best idea would be STOP refusing to sell! Yay!

You know, I am fan of a certain niche sci-fi series. Buying physical books is
hell expensive (shipping get outrageous), so I buy e-books!

Except, this niche sci-fi series was only available at Fictionwise to me (it
was in B&N, I tried to buy there, it made me fill lots of forms, and then
install a local Nook software, and do some other annoying things, and THEN
finally it told me they don't sell it outside the US... why the hell it
allowed me to register as Brazillian then? fuck you B&N).

Fictionwise was great, it allowed me to get the book in multiple formats, make
backups without DRM, and lots of other nifty stuff!

Then comes again B&N to ruin my party, they buy Fictionwise, and send a
message stating that all Fictionwise books will only be available in Nook
format, and you must download them from the US...

I even went into their FAQ site to be sure...

"Q: If I have a Fictionwise book and a Nook, and I want download it but I live
outside the US, what can I do?

A: You can go to the US, then connect in a network there, download your book,
and go back home."

OMG FUCK YOU AGAIN B&N!!!!!

By the way, if someone know someone that replaces Fictionwise I would be
REALLY HAPPY to know (you know, I still want those books, and I won't visit US
only to buy those books...)

~~~
hobs
Well, not that I endorse fictionwise or whatever that service is, but if you
want that content you can likely just proxy your traffic into the usa with a
VPN or similar.

~~~
speeder
I don't have a Nook anyway.

And you cannot buy from outside the US even with a proxy (you need proof that
you have a house, or a bank account, or something like that in the US).

------
FrankenPC
At some point a decade or so ago, they could have been relevant to me by
increasing the size of their science & engineering book selection. Instead,
they increased the "holistic healing" and "better dieting through fantasy"
sections while shrinking science & engineering books to a few tiny feet of
shelf space. They made their bed.

~~~
textminer
I've noticed that to correlate with local population. E.g., University towns
having plenty of great Dover prints on Algebraic Topology versus my mid-
Michigan industrial boomtown mostly having a huge Spiritual/Christianity
section.

------
mratzloff
I frequently shop at Barnes & Noble, and I have a membership. (There's one
just down the street.) I like the experience of going to bookstores, so I
consider whatever premium I pay a donation toward keeping that experience a
few blocks away. In reality it is the equivalent of a small monthly fee.

~~~
fargolime
Not to knock B&N but I figured they were on their last legs in my area when my
public library started allowing coffee drinking. I have to pay the small
monthly tax regardless, after all. I've had a good success rate finding
current books I want at the library. When they don't have it I'll usually
check the nearby B&N and pay the premium over Amazon.

------
pnathan
Physical markets absolutely do have a great quality of discovery and
discoverability that online markets simply don't have.

Further, I'm one of the (rare?) techies who prefers paper books.

If there are enough people who like discovering books (like me), then brick &
mortar bookstores have a future.

~~~
kvb
This is only true to the extent that they can monetize that discoverability.
The problem is that Amazon can freeload by offering a lower price without
facing the high costs of retail real estate, etc. and people will discover
books at B&N but buy them on Amazon.

------
cs702
The best response to this is probably Larry the Liquidator's speech to
shareholders of New England Wire & Cable, Inc., a fictional company in the
movie "Other People's Money"[1]:

 _Amen, and amen, and amen. You 'll have to forgive me, I'm not familiar with
the local custom. Where I come from, you always say 'Amen' after you hear a
prayer. Because that's what you just heard - a prayer. Where I come from, that
particular prayer is called 'The Prayer for the Dead.' You just heard The
Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, 'Amen.' This
company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got
here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a
miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the
infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead! You know why?
Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead, alright. We're just
not broke. And do you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an
increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow, but sure.

You know, at one time, there must've been dozens of companies making buggy
whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best
god-damn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a
stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is
dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death
certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.
'Ah, but we can't,' goes the prayer. 'We can't because we have responsibility,
a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to
them?' I got two words for that - 'Who cares?' Care about them? Why? They
didn't care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to
them. For the last ten years, this company bled your money. Did this community
ever say, 'We know times are tough. We'll lower taxes, reduce water and
sewer.' Check it out: You're paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our
devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are
still making twice what they made ten years ago. And our stock - one-sixth of
what it was ten years ago. 'Who cares?' I'll tell ya -- Me.

I'm not your best friend. I'm your only friend. I don't make anything. I'm
makin' you money. And lest we forget, that's the only reason any of you became
stockholders in the first place. You wanna make money! You don't care if they
manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You wanna make
money! I'm the only friend you've got. I'm makin' you money. Take the money.
Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be used
productively. And if it is, you'll create new jobs and provide a service for
the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if
anybody asks, tell 'em ya gave at the plant. And by the way, it pleases me
that I'm called 'Larry the Liquidator.' You know why, fellow stockholders?
Because at my funeral, you'll leave with a smile on your face and a few bucks
in your pocket. Now that's a funeral worth having!_

\--

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/)
\-- a clip of the speech is currently available at
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q)

~~~
VLM
B+N is an even worse scenario, in that a buggy whip company can pivot into the
lucrative adult toy market with little change other than inside the marketing
dept.

"Expensive used paper retail" aka bookstore has no pivot options not already
supersaturated. Coffee shop? Music/Video physical media store? Toy store?
"Educational kids stuff" store? Generic department stores? Gift shop? Used
book stores? All full marketplaces, or in decline, or both. B+N has been
pretty good at picking trendy overdone and declining sectors to expand into. I
think they need a in-house residential real estate office and a cupcake shop.

Their only hope seems to be outlandish. So they've got big mall stores... I
know, give up on all this "book" stuff and become Tesla Automotive Dealers.
Keep the coffee bar, I guess. My local B+N is architecturally beautiful
compared to local car dealerships; it could work out well.

Larry's speech is pretty much the opposite of modern crony capitalism's "too
big to fail". Its possible the only move left for B+N would be into govt
bailout/jobs programs.

~~~
dclowd9901
I disagree. Some of the ideas in TFA are fairly novel. Hiring people who are
actually knowledgable? What a concept! Imagine walking into a Barnes and Noble
and getting suggestions on a boom to read? Or there being a real actual
community of readers congregating in B&Ns? These are huge holes in the market,
where people are willing to pay more for an "experience".

~~~
VLM
I would respectfully point out, being somewhat older, that we had local
bookstores (and we had more of them...) before B+N arrived, and long after B+N
closes we'll still have local bookstores. They're not doing that great
financially, and the suggestions for B+N vaguely correspond to what local
bookstores have already tried. I think I've pretty much seen it all WRT
bookstores.

The problem with "experience" is it takes up space where books used to be
sold. So you end up with a coffee shop, and wifi, with live music, and
D+D/Pathfinder RPG get togethers, and author signing visits, an internet cafe,
wedding receptions, and dvd sales, and ... where's the books? Had to take them
out to make space for the candle shop and onsite child care center... Not much
of a bookstore anymore if walmart has a better quantity and selection.

One good rule of thumb is to look up and down small town main street. If
you're going to try 50/50 pirate shop and bookstore, you're not going to do
better than the actual pirate shop store, and you already know 50% of the
model (bookstore) doesn't work. Ditto candles, antique stores, herbal soaps,
or chocolate candies... simply listing an inventory of small town shops is
mostly going to result in lack of focus on multiple business models. None of
which are doing all that well anyway.

On a macro level, since I was a kid, total retail CRE square footage per
citizen has roughly doubled, but median consumption patterns haven't kept up
making aggregate brick and mortar retail per citizen drop, and the long term
trend isn't looking good for retail. There's a lot of stores to close before
we get back to long term trend for retail store CRE. It may very well be that
nationwide big box booksellers simply don't "work" in a real economy. In a
contracting market, aiming at shrinking holes is like picking up pennies in
front of a steamroller.

------
greedo
I have a family member who has worked at B&N for 16 years, and is continually
worried about the health of the company. Some of the big issues are:

1\. Employee pay and retention. Retail always pays shit, but if you want good
employees, you have to pay them.

2\. Re-zoning continually. B&N spends an inordinate amount of labor re-
organizing and shuffling books from one area to the other. This make work
makes it hard for customers to find books, makes it hard for associates to
know where a book is, and is just shuffling deck chairs.

3\. Pricing. BN.com is cheaper than B&N stores. Customers don't understand
this, causing huge amounts of irritation. Plus, B&N is just charging too much.

4\. Delivery/inventory. Order a book from Amazon, you can have it tomorrow.
Order it from B&N or bn.com, and it might take a week. All deliveries are made
from central warehouses, instead of leveraging the store's own inventory.

A smart fix for this would be to have the delivery manager able to deliver
books from his inventory overnight to the customer. If you're in San Jose, a
San Jose B&N would fulfill your order, (assuming the book is in stock),
otherwise the closest warehouse or store would. Naturally, Amazon is the
exemplar when it comes to order fulfillment, but at least try and close the
gap.

Cut some of the deadweight management. A district manager who only shows up in
your store once or twice a quarter is of no use to the company. Fire them or
make them perform.

------
javajosh
The only bookstores I want to save are the ones that closed 15 years ago.

------
Zigurd
All retail faces this problem. B&N got their first, despite having diagnosed
the problem early and made a try at a solution. They didn't execute that
solution very well, which is why they still face the problem.

The problem is: It's better to get almost anything delivered to you than to
spend time and gas going to the store. On top of that the selection is better
online.

The pity is that bookstores have obvious attractions other than being a place
to buy the fat end of the the very long tail of books. Nobodying is going to
go to Sears to meet the washing machine designer, but they will go to B&N to
meet an author. Nobody wants live music at the Home depot but at B&N, maybe.
Nobody would go to a LAN party or board game night at the hardware store, but
B&N?

These might all fail, but B&N could have put up more of a fight: Kindle LAN
party? Did they even try?

------
mikeash
These ideas are all contradictory. What a pointless article. Throw a bunch of
random ideas in the air and see what sticks. If B&N fails, you can point to
all the ideas they didn't follow and blame the failure on that. If B&N
succeeds, you can point to the ideas they did follow (for these ideas cover
the entire universe of possible action, so they will end up following some of
them just by chance) and claim credit.

Dumb.

~~~
ExpiredLink
> _These ideas are all contradictory._

Yes.

> _What a pointless article._

No, you missed the point.

~~~
mikeash
I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what point I supposedly missed? Because
just telling me I missed the point without explaining is, well, pointless.

~~~
shirederby
> Over the past several days, commentators have burst forth with a cacophony
> of competing ideas for your revival. The following list contains some
> potentially promising options for you to consider:

~~~
mikeash
Which doesn't suddenly give it a point, that just shows they're aware of what
they're doing. Spamming suggestions some of which they will fall into by
chance is silly.

------
engrsrce
Having worked as a consultant about 3 years ago in the NYC B&N.com office
across from Chelsea Market I can attest to the following:

Most of the developers are at best mediocre. The IT managers are clueless.
They reside in the same building as Google and are unable to attract NYC
talent.

Every time I see the stock climb above 17 or 18 I have a strong urge to sell
it short.

~~~
nukerhazz
Interesting. I did a bit of work in that office too. I was treated quite well,
but did not interact with enough of the organization to say much beyond that.

------
rak
There was not much of a fuss made when large national chain book stores killed
off numerous local, community offerings. Why should I care about the death of
another invasive species?

All kidding aside I really do miss the local shops that did not survive. I
just don't feel the same about big national bookstores.

------
VLM
The only reason I currently go to B+N instead of paying much less for a better
reviewed and larger selection of books on Amazon is I have no idea what to get
someone as a gift. Other than gift shopping I have no idea why I'd sit in a
car for 30 minutes when I can just open another webbrowser tab and get a
better product, cheaper.

The current organization by generic area of study does nothing for gift
shopping. I need store categorization by stereotypical demographic group.
"wife" or "tween boys" gift section. Maybe broken down by hobby, maybe not.
Holiday and "event" selection. So... this is THE place to buy gifts made out
of old fashioned ink and paper.

Their biggest problem is lack of selection. Amazon is so much bigger, and
about a half of the store floor space is already non-book (toys, board games,
videos, CDs, coffee shop...) They may as well give it up and become a gift
store for the small segment of the population which is not functionally
illiterate. Coincidentally people who are literate tend to hang out with other
people who are literate, and are usually in an economic class well above
functional illiterates, so its probably a good demographic to market to. They
can keep their chocolate bar selection, those are good gifts. Obviously the
gift card and wrapping paper racks stay. Maybe old fashioned optical disks
should be kept for awhile. The rest of the addon non-book stuff can be junked.
Why would I want a coffee bar when I'm shopping for a kids b-day party gift?
If you've ever been inside a "hallmark store" imagine that toned down a bit
with a selection of "gift books". Bland generic popular inoffensive stuff for
gifts; pretty much what they've already got.

Another interesting idea is segmentation. So the general masses of the
population have given up on physical trinkets and now go virtual. Selling
physical CDs? In 2013? I haven't bought a physical CD at a retail store since
the 90s. Well, that's OK. There's always going to be a small segment of the
population who want physical stuff (aside from gifts, see above). They might
increase profitability by intentionally shrinking, which is stereotypically
unthinkable by the "drive it into the ground" types, but might be their best
bet. As long as they don't make the big mistake of assuming 1:1 mapping
between old people and luddites. The Venn diagram probably looks more like
100% of hoarders are physical buyers. Also probably lots of aspirational
buyers; lots of travel guides sold, and "kids summer workbooks" and the like.

------
chiph
Why do I go to a B&N? Two reasons: I'm buying a gift and I want to browse the
coffee-table books. Or I need something immediately for work or a project.

So for me, #2 (tables, not shelves) and #7 (community franchising) would make
the most sense.

