It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books.
If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive.
I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.
It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.
It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.
A few years ago Austin opened up a new main public library. When it was being proposed I thought "why are we spending millions and millions on a library in the digital age?".
Boy was I wrong, and I'll happily eat crow for how wrong I was. The new library building is beautiful, super inviting and some of my favorite architecture anywhere. I love going there to work or read. They also do a great job making the building welcoming and accessible to all, while at the same time preventing it from getting trashed by the homeless (looking at you SF public library) with a simple no sleeping/no lying down rule.
Welcoming, inviting public spaces can do very well if people understand why they are desirable.
Last week I needed a copy of Atlas Obscura to gift to someone. I checked my local Barnes and Nobles website, they had a a copy on a shelf so I went and bought it.
No way I would ever risk buying such books from Amazon. I am concerned about the condition it would arrive in, scams and delays.
I bought a second book based on a librarian's recommendation. There was only 5 or 6 books of the kind I was interested in. It made choosing one easier.
The latest version of "look inside" has become super stingy. The default is to show you the first twenty pages or so, then you have to use "Surprise Me", which feeds me one page at a time at some random location, most of the time in the first twenty pages I've already seen. In technical books, that's not enough to get a feel for the actual content. It used to be better, you could read several pages for each "Surprise Me".
It's really off-putting. In a bookstore, I can stand there ten minutes and make sure the book is worthwhile. Technical books are expensive.
Amazon treats me like a deadbeat, even though I buy lots of books from them.
I'm puzzled where you see that "key insight" in the linked article. I came away with the feeling that the key insight was: if you want to sell books, you must love books.
Did you use the present tense to describe the past, before James Daunt took over, perhaps? I could understand "the key insight was that bookstores were no longer places to get books," but the entire article seems to be about how B&N has become a place to get books, because the CEO loves books, and empowers local stores to also love books and therefore sell them well.
Bookstore buying has one benefit in that you can verify the condition of the book. I'm really sick of getting bruised books in the mail. So, with expensive hardbacks, I've shifted to ordering through a b&m so I can be sure of getting an undamaged book.
I feel like Amazon used to be a good place for discovering new books and that they decided at some point it was more profitable to steer customers toward sponsored (if that's the word for it) items. Nowadays I look at Librarything for suggestions.
They are a case study in business school that selling tchotchkes and trinkets is more profitable than books. I disagree with GP's article. It is the same myth in tech that "engineers make better founders" and "companies ran by execs with engineering backgrounds are more successful". It is feel-good masturbation for professionals without objective data backing it. In this case they are running with "booklovers run better bookstores". Not necessarily generalizable to all booksellers. The pandemic has shown that cheap rates play an oversized role in picking winners and losers.
My local bookstore can generally match Amazon in terms of delivery times, including next-day, although I have to go and collect it (but they're local, so they're easy to get to). They know me now too, so I just drop them an email and they reply when it's arrived. I'm in the UK though, so I guess the smaller distances may help compared to larger countries.
I mostly agree, but for me Goodreads has given some good suggestions over the years as well.
But one thing especially is the “friend activity”. There are some friends that I have connected with whom have a similar reading preference to me. Discovering what they are reading / have read and rated has influenced my buying decisions quite often. When I lived near those friends, we would talk about the books as we had more contact, but since moving halfway across the world that does not happen as often. Goodreads is great for that (imo).
I don't understand how the same people who hang out around bookstores + make recommendations (which you classify as "good") aren't the same people on Goodreads writing reviews/making recommendations as users (which you recommend as bad?)
> It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending.
But is that a property of the recommendations or of the circumstances under which they are received?
It's possible that the quality of a recommendation generated by an AI based on psychological profiles is superior, so that if it was followed, the book would be enjoyed. But it's not being followed, because it appears too unlikely and the reader doesn't trust the AI.
If that's true, the competitive advantage of the physical interaction would not actually be the recommendations themselves, but the atmosphere it creates which makes readers susceptible to listening to them.
Definitely. For a long while (pre-covid), bookstores where my favorite place to hang out, drink a coffee, and browse! There's still something wonderful about having a physical book in your hands.
I actually really enjoyed the Amazon Books stores when they first opened; they were full of books, and not customized recommendations to me but actually the top rated and top-selling books across US Amazon shoppers.
But I feel like they succumbed to the same problem B&N did here, for different reasons -- they became full of kitchen gadgets and devices, because people were buying more things and less books on Amazon itself, and the stores started to mirror that.
This is exactly my thought process as I read the title. It was fairly obvious that Barnes & Noble pivoted their business model (starting about a decade and a half ago). It was already happening with the Borders bankruptcy; but that solidified and accelerated the change. Now BN’s business model is more aligned with general leisure (books, board games, gadgets, coffee, etc) than a “book store”.
Bookstores never really were the place to get specific books. Yes, you could, but in essence you'd just place a remote order.
Bookstores always were places to make discoveries, to learn, to have people recommend books for you. My first bookstore experiences go back to the late 70s, and the ones that stick in my mind as memorable? Two stores that had fiercely opinionated voracious readers as employees, who both knew books and their customers. (I could literally go there, as a kid, and ask "what book do I want to get my dad for Christmas", and they'd inevitably make fabulous recommendations that I wasn't old enough yet to figure out by myself)
This extends beyond bookstores - all stores are ultimately in the business of caring about customers and being deeply knowledgable about what they sell. The rest is logistics.
In my experience, more often than not, Amazon ships books with very poor protection, and they arrive a little bent or creased in places. They never used to do this, but now it’s terrible. For that reason, alone, I like to buy books at actual stores.
> It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books.
FWIW, this was considered common sense when I was in library school 20 years ago: that is to say, it was presented to us as a fact rather than a question. I don't think this was a unique or novel insight by B&N, rather a question of execution in the transformation of an already large company and, I suppose, the financial discipline to survive the competition.
I shop at Barnes and Noble a lot, and I even subscribe to their membership program (for an annual fee I get 10% off purchases in-store and free shipping online). i dislike the way physical books take up so much space in my apartment but at the same time I can't in good faith buy e-books when they're covered in draconian DRM. I also can't get over the incident from the early 10s when Amazon deleted 1984 off of their customers' kindles.
My apartment is running out of space for all these books, and maybe the solution to this is that I need to borrow from the library more often instead of buying my own books. I really wish I could have an e-reader, but again, I don't want to spend money on things that will lock me into a single vendor indefinitely and might just arbitrarily go away.
I learned my lesson in the early-00s when online music purchases were DRM'd and I lost a lot of my collection due to Yahoo music shutting down. I also remember one of the problems being that purchases made in one store would not be compatible with a competitor's MP3 player, which locked you into a single vendor. Couldn't switch to iPod because it didn't work with the DRM that was designed for my Dell DJ (which was a POS that broke all the time but I had to stick with it because of my existing music collection).
I'd hate to have that same problem but with books instead of music.
I hope that this will be used in the future as an example of why MBAs don't always make good CEOs. You may be the best person in the world when it comes to managing a company, but if you're not knowledgeable and passionate about the product you're making and/or selling then you're going to not do very well. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 more examples: Apple before and after Steve Jobs returned and AMD before and after Lisa Su was appointed CEO.
I once interviewed at a company for a job that was pretty much a dream job - very niche passion. Everyone there was very into that niche.
Except for the CEO, who prided himself on not knowing anything about the field. He saw not knowing the niche as a perk; he'd focus on the "business side" only, leaving the rest to everyone else.
Interesting insight and speculation from the comment section of the article:
>Jane Friedman
>Speaking as a publishing industry reporter & observer, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of James Daunt's leadership and business strategy. Unfortunately, the picture isn't quite as bright for B&N as those numbers would have you believe. B&N stores were once quite large (e.g., 25,000 square feet); the new stores opening are less than half that in some cases. And they're largely re-opening stores that closed during the pandemic.
>It's also concerning that during a record two years for book sales (the pandemic was great for book sales of all kinds), Barnes & Noble didn't see the same percentage increase, indicating they've lost market share. Some industry insiders believe the current private equity owner is trying to position the company favorably for sale.
Moving to smaller stores in the pandemic hardly counts as a bad thing. Restructuring your leases to reduce your rent is a great idea. It gives you room to stop chasing short term revenue such as publisher deals.
Also, a loss of market share in a growing economy is also not a bad thing as long as it’s accompanied by increased profitability. What this means is that B&N has basically maintained their revenues, while significantly reducing their costs, which as the clear market leader in the space sets them up very well to pursue a more considered growth strategy based on the current environment as opposed to the pre-Amazon environment, which is what their original stores were based on.
Also, those larger stores didn’t mean much in terms of B&N as a bookseller because they were largely filled with their coffee shops and selling toys and Knick knacks.
A Barnes & Noble near my parents moved from their original space at one end of the mall to the other end. This new space is smaller than their original space by about half or two thirds. While they have fewer materials on the shelves (and fewer shelves), it seems more lively than the original spot did, probably because there's fewer space for the number of people who go there. I bet that the company would see that as a fair tradeoff.
No idea about the market share, but downsizing shops seems like a wise move.
Rent and/or property taxes and maintenance are massive overheads. Considering that bookshops are no longer trying to have every possible book someone could want in direct inventory, big shops aren't needed for any but the flagship stores.
No financials in the article. None available of course because it’s private. My guess is it’s loss making and debt just got a whole lot more expensive. If I was the owner I’d be looking to unload B&N fast and focus on my investments with strong cash flow and solid business models.
There's a new Barnes and Noble nearby me (just opened last year) and it is like no other B&N I've seen. It's honestly a direct carbon copy of Amazon's physical book store. All of the shelves have books with the covers out (just like Amazon's store pioneered), not tightly packed spine to spine. This means the selection is much, much, much smaller. It's more like an airport book store and just has a handful of the best sellers (despite being a huge physical footprint of a store). Games, toys, and a huge coffee shop take up most of the space. You would never go here with a specific book in mind to find, unless it was a massive bestseller. It's interesting and I'm curious to see how it does, but it's definitely not a general bookstore anymore.
I'm going to classify this as a "just do a good job." We people like to understand the world with stories. Plot points. Twists. Heroes, antiheroes, antagonists... That's a bias.
All of the failed B&N strategies were snappy headlines... good stories: Online sales, digital sales & ereader, bookstore cafes, restaurant business...
These are all strategies you can put on a slide and sell to a board or executive team. An investment blogger can summarize them in a tweet. People can easily form opinions about them. You either think it's a good idea, or a bad one... and expect success or failure to follow smoothly from the goodness of the decision.
IRL though, execution matters. Almost every war ever fought was determined in battlefields, not palaces. That's true for Russia in Ukraine, the US in Afghanistan... and we'll shortly forget this lesson about both. From the outside, it's always easier to credit political-level decisions and forget about execution. I think this is a major recurring fallacy. Real outcomes are not deterministic. They're usually determined by execution.
Ted Gioia does a great job of creating a narrative frame here. But, it sounds like successes actually came from sub-narrative decisions. How purchasing is managed. Pricing & promotion policies. Responsibility splits between HQ & stores. These are all mundane, "housekeeping" issues... execution details.
Strategic decisions obviously matter. They're also interesting, especially to low engagement outsiders... including shareholders. They do not matter nearly as much as tactics. Tactics > Strategy, in life as in chess. This is the kind of thing that gets lost in 2nd hand accounts.
So, as someone who regularly visits B&N stores, this…creates a false narrative around the turnaround. Obviously, it has turned around, and is great. But it pretends that a sacrifice of floor space to non-book uses was part of the decline and the turnaround has involved recentering on books and particularly on a focus on intellectual stimulation, and the first is pretty clearly not true, and the second seems likely to be only in a very particular sense that diverges from what I think the average person reading the article would think.
On the first point, floor space devoted to books compared to the past at the same stores has continued to decline, with, in one case, the entire space formerly devoted to non-book items now devoted just to games and toys, and spaces that were, before the pandemic, devoted to books now devoted DVDs, vinyl records, and other legacy media.
On the second, the two sections of books that have not lost space seem to be (1) the bargain book section (which is also largely merchandised to show the whole fronts of books rather than spines like the rest of the store, so it is the least titles per unit of shelf space) and the self-help section; the rest of the sections have been compressed as the non-book areas have spread. If we define “intellectual stimulation” in terms of engaging a recurring customer base, I suppose that meets the description; but I don’t think it’s what people would normally read the description as implying.
I do think that the article, amidst the noise, identifies the key factor: giving stores control over stocking books that appeal to their customer base rather than relying on a mix of promotional agreements with publishers and HQ buyer selections. This leads to a selection more tailored to the local market, and more conservatively chosen – not in the political sense, but in the sense of what will sell vs. what publishers hope to make sell by placement.
I wish there was a book store with a great and relatively up to date technical book section. I would spend a lot of time there.
I’m not even talking up to date with the latest ChatGPT hotness, but any serious programming books written in the last 7 years - especially timeless classics that matter regardless of the technology. Rather that the same Sam’s Learn C++ book that’s been gathering dust for 20 years.
I suspect there actually is a market there, but the problem is you need a very particular book store manager that can curate this well. I guess it would have to be a labor of love, as financially the people who would do this well are busy making much more money as developers.
- James Daunt is now CEO of both B&N and Waterstones in the UK. Waterstones is a sizeable business in its own right with over 300 stores and totally dominates high street bookselling in the UK.
- Both B&N and Waterstones are owned by Elliot Management who bought B&N after acquiring Waterstones.
- Daunt only got his chance to run Waterstones after being installed by (now sanctioned) Russian Oligarch Alexander Mamut who bought the chain for $66m. I think it's fair to say this was a significant piece of risk taking as Waterstones was, at best, weeks away from insolvency and probably would have ceased to exist in anything like its present form. Of course, at that point Daunt's model was unproven (except in his own handful of London bookstores).
Here is James Daunt in his own words (from pre B&N):
I'm from Spain and there is no B&N here, but I have been surprised by the success of the bookstore sector in general.
In the 2010s, just when ebooks became popular, a lot of bookstores opened in my city and others I know, both of the large chain and small independent variety. My thought was "are they crazy or what? Physical books are obviously a declining business, most people will just read ebooks. Most of these stores are doomed to close, as bookstores will become something very niche". Boy, was I wrong... the reality, while I don't have sales figures and just speak as a layman, is that they didn't close, but rather the opposite: even more of then opened during the rest of the decade and they generally seem rather lively. Have ebooks not caught on after all, or are people reading much more so that there is market for both? I don't know.
By the way, on a more personal note, ebooks made me almost stop reading for a long time. I was an avid reader until ebook readers appeared. Then I started to read in ebook form, because physical books take a lot of space, and they already occupied a lot of room at home (and the space is not just for me, I lived with my wife, and now also my son!). With this, I dropped from reading a lot to like 4 or 5 books a year, then 2, then 1 or even 0. I made myself believe that this was due to lack of time (work, not being single anymore, etc.) which was only a half truth. The other half of the truth, as shallow as it is, is that ebooks don't get me hooked as physical books do, even if the content is the same. I'm not proud of it, it's silly because the real value of a book should be in what it says, not in the physical materials, but it's how I work. I tried to change it for some years but I failed. So I came to accept it. Now I buy physical books again and even though I don't read as much as when I was younger (work+parenting takes a huge amount of time), reading is again one of the main things I do with the free time I do have, and I at least read 1-2 books a month.
> I was an avid reader until ebook readers appeared
Same here, though possibly not for the same reasons. I go through phases of reading a couple of ebooks a week, but if I'm not careful I get reading deserts where when I look back I've spent weeks curating/buying more ebooks and never actually getting around to reading them.
I love reading, but it's a constant battle to be a reader and not just a collector of books, something I never have an issue with when it comes to my physical collection (which is large but also largely untouched due to tired, aging eyes).
I have both prime and B&N membership. Here are some of my thoughts:
1. Amazon is a terrible place to discover surprising reads. There is one day I was navigating the bookself in Technology sector, and found one book on the story of how Android is created. I didn't know this book exist, but now my interests can't be contained, and I want it NOW. The sense of discovery is awesome, and I am willing to pay for it.
2. B&N membership gives you basically a 10% discount StarBucks (unofficially, but pretty much the same), which is a sweet deal.
3. Amazon sometimes screwed up book versions. For example, I bought book 1&2 of the same series from Amazon, and book 1 arrived in UK format, while book 2 in US. This is an intolerable mistake for me as a collector. So I have to repurchase book 1 later from B&N in US format as I can no longer trust Amazon for it.
Overall, B&N now, is more of a socializing place for me than a retailer. I still use Amazon for books I can't find, but I don't mind pay a few more bucks to buy from B&N. Sometimes it is not all about money.
I whiled away so many afternoons at Barnes & Noble. We'd drive 30 minutes from our small town to the nearest big city and go sit and enjoy an afternoon reading. I would say maybe 1 out of every 3 visits would result in someone buying a book, but we never felt compelled to buy anything. For where we were in the country, the magazine selection felt incredibly cosmopolitan, and a window into the broader world.
To me, a Barnes and Noble still symbolizes the joy and worldliness of reading. Whenever I'm with family and shopping, if I'm not out to buy anything I still opt to spend some time reading in a B&N. I'm glad this chain is back on its feet and growing again. For lots of places, and lots of people, B&N is a lifeline.
I think the key insight is that a CEO with a background in the field, and who loves the field - such as James Daunt who became B&N's CEO but has a background as a bookstore owner - can do better than your average MBA.
This is perhaps the passage from the article that resonated the most with me:
> If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.
> But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Grammophon or Concord. I’ve come to doubt whether the people in charge really love the music.
I've said this over and over (not on HN, though)... Blockbuster would have survived if they leaned into the recommendations business. People want to go somewhere to look at whatever it is they're looking at, and find something novel and interesting.
It is so much more pleasant to go somewhere, and feel like you're being served a good selection of recommendations, new and old. Even better if you can talk to someone at the store and get their feedback and ideas. But in Blockbusters' end days, all they hired were teenagers not even old enough to rent from their Mature section.
There was no way they were going to compete with digital streaming services on sheer volume. But at the time of its collapse, every time I would step inside a Blockbuster - all I would see is non-movie related stuff being peddled at me. Posters, plush, popcorn, toys, etc.
The "new releases" movies were in the back, the best quality films hard to find, jumbled in with all the rest. The rest of the store just seemed to be wasted space. I always thought if they dedicated less space to the new releases and spent more time curating valuable films from all eras, they'd make a return to form.. especially with their name.
Movie and gaming deals ruined Blockbuster. And at the end, their $15/month ala carte plan just put them in the hole. They had such a good price before.. it was something like $3/night to rent. Then they raised the price to $7/2 night. It seems about the same price but no one really wants to rent it for 2 nights and the $7 priced most of the movie-goers out of the market. Then they tried the ala carte "Silver" or "Platinum" plan or whatever it was (it was probably a regional thing).
I have lived bookshops since I was young, I always felt like I might find something amazing and secret in them. They held a kind of mystic for me (1990s).
This changed in the 2000s. I do miss the massive borders books we had. I do have to say the all the Waterstones I've been into in the last 15 years have all those toys, calenders, etc the OP doesn't like; and the bigger stores all have Costas.
I LOVE entering a Barnes and Noble and being able to walk around looking for my next book. I love the atmosphere. I love moving from one section to the next. I love seeing other people there. It's just fun to me. I'm so glad it's beating the dier expectations. Digital books are convenient but the reading experience is horrible.
Barnes and Noble locations, at least the ones near me, still sell a lot toys and games. But the curation is excellent. I got quite a few things for my kids in there this year, when I stopped by to pick up one book. I’m not surprised they are doing well.
That said, their technology could still be better. Ordering something online for local pickup works, but there’s a surprisingly long delay (sometimes days!) between placing an order and it being ready for pickup. Target is a lot faster, for example, despite having much larger stores.
Something I took away from this is they don't discount books, they don't compete on price.
And that makes sense, anyone looking for a good price is going online, if you are in the store you are not price sensitive. And of course this means B&N is much more profitable than they would be otherwise.
Lowes is doing this too - their prices for plumbing products are insane - $12 for something that goes for $2 online, but they are betting that anyone buying in the store needs it NOW and will pay anything.
The description of the new Barnes & Nobles doesn't match the store near me. Half of it is still a cafe which looks like the last place I'd like to enjoy a cup of coffee or glass of wine. When I walk by the cafe is always 3/4 empty. The article talks about local staff now deciding what books to select to feature prominently. When I went inside my local store 2 months ago the prominently featured books consisted of those required by our local high school curriculum. The store had very few actual books overall especially in relation to the number of puzzles, toys and tchotchkes being offered. In other words it was the complete opposite of what is described in the article. This store is located in a prominent position in the premier retail center in my immediate local area. The type of location you would think B&N would prioritize on making a showcase of their new concept.
I'm left wondering if B&N has turned itself around or is simply riding a wave of post pandemic reading which will crest leaving B&N once again over built and in trouble
In a world where everything is now digital, physical goods have a lot more appeal. That's really what it comes down to, and they leaned into that hard.
It's the same reason why vinyl is continuing to grow. People want something they can actually own. Books are not immune to this and there is something inherently more satisfying about having a bookshelf with the books you've read versus a library of ebooks.
[+] [-] ketzo|3 years ago|reply
If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive.
I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.
It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.
It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
Boy was I wrong, and I'll happily eat crow for how wrong I was. The new library building is beautiful, super inviting and some of my favorite architecture anywhere. I love going there to work or read. They also do a great job making the building welcoming and accessible to all, while at the same time preventing it from getting trashed by the homeless (looking at you SF public library) with a simple no sleeping/no lying down rule.
Welcoming, inviting public spaces can do very well if people understand why they are desirable.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|3 years ago|reply
No way I would ever risk buying such books from Amazon. I am concerned about the condition it would arrive in, scams and delays.
I bought a second book based on a librarian's recommendation. There was only 5 or 6 books of the kind I was interested in. It made choosing one easier.
Amazon is tainted brand.
[+] [-] wrycoder|3 years ago|reply
It's really off-putting. In a bookstore, I can stand there ten minutes and make sure the book is worthwhile. Technical books are expensive.
Amazon treats me like a deadbeat, even though I buy lots of books from them.
[+] [-] pwinnski|3 years ago|reply
Did you use the present tense to describe the past, before James Daunt took over, perhaps? I could understand "the key insight was that bookstores were no longer places to get books," but the entire article seems to be about how B&N has become a place to get books, because the CEO loves books, and empowers local stores to also love books and therefore sell them well.
[+] [-] wrp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhevahir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melony|3 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Books_and_Music
They are a case study in business school that selling tchotchkes and trinkets is more profitable than books. I disagree with GP's article. It is the same myth in tech that "engineers make better founders" and "companies ran by execs with engineering backgrounds are more successful". It is feel-good masturbation for professionals without objective data backing it. In this case they are running with "booklovers run better bookstores". Not necessarily generalizable to all booksellers. The pandemic has shown that cheap rates play an oversized role in picking winners and losers.
[+] [-] frereubu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Insanity|3 years ago|reply
But one thing especially is the “friend activity”. There are some friends that I have connected with whom have a similar reading preference to me. Discovering what they are reading / have read and rated has influenced my buying decisions quite often. When I lived near those friends, we would talk about the books as we had more contact, but since moving halfway across the world that does not happen as often. Goodreads is great for that (imo).
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenie_beans|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boredhedgehog|3 years ago|reply
But is that a property of the recommendations or of the circumstances under which they are received?
It's possible that the quality of a recommendation generated by an AI based on psychological profiles is superior, so that if it was followed, the book would be enjoyed. But it's not being followed, because it appears too unlikely and the reader doesn't trust the AI.
If that's true, the competitive advantage of the physical interaction would not actually be the recommendations themselves, but the atmosphere it creates which makes readers susceptible to listening to them.
[+] [-] icedchai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jojobas|3 years ago|reply
I might want to revisit this in a year or two.
[+] [-] robswc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbhl|3 years ago|reply
But I feel like they succumbed to the same problem B&N did here, for different reasons -- they became full of kitchen gadgets and devices, because people were buying more things and less books on Amazon itself, and the stores started to mirror that.
[+] [-] deaddodo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] groby_b|3 years ago|reply
Bookstores always were places to make discoveries, to learn, to have people recommend books for you. My first bookstore experiences go back to the late 70s, and the ones that stick in my mind as memorable? Two stores that had fiercely opinionated voracious readers as employees, who both knew books and their customers. (I could literally go there, as a kid, and ask "what book do I want to get my dad for Christmas", and they'd inevitably make fabulous recommendations that I wasn't old enough yet to figure out by myself)
This extends beyond bookstores - all stores are ultimately in the business of caring about customers and being deeply knowledgable about what they sell. The rest is logistics.
[+] [-] jb1991|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|3 years ago|reply
FWIW, this was considered common sense when I was in library school 20 years ago: that is to say, it was presented to us as a fact rather than a question. I don't think this was a unique or novel insight by B&N, rather a question of execution in the transformation of an already large company and, I suppose, the financial discipline to survive the competition.
[+] [-] tgv|3 years ago|reply
That cannibalizes the bookstore you like to visit.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] snickerbockers|3 years ago|reply
My apartment is running out of space for all these books, and maybe the solution to this is that I need to borrow from the library more often instead of buying my own books. I really wish I could have an e-reader, but again, I don't want to spend money on things that will lock me into a single vendor indefinitely and might just arbitrarily go away.
I learned my lesson in the early-00s when online music purchases were DRM'd and I lost a lot of my collection due to Yahoo music shutting down. I also remember one of the problems being that purchases made in one store would not be compatible with a competitor's MP3 player, which locked you into a single vendor. Couldn't switch to iPod because it didn't work with the DRM that was designed for my Dell DJ (which was a POS that broke all the time but I had to stick with it because of my existing music collection).
I'd hate to have that same problem but with books instead of music.
[+] [-] slimginz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manimino|3 years ago|reply
Except for the CEO, who prided himself on not knowing anything about the field. He saw not knowing the niche as a perk; he'd focus on the "business side" only, leaving the rest to everyone else.
Got the offer, turned it down because of that.
[+] [-] kken|3 years ago|reply
>Jane Friedman
>Speaking as a publishing industry reporter & observer, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of James Daunt's leadership and business strategy. Unfortunately, the picture isn't quite as bright for B&N as those numbers would have you believe. B&N stores were once quite large (e.g., 25,000 square feet); the new stores opening are less than half that in some cases. And they're largely re-opening stores that closed during the pandemic.
>It's also concerning that during a record two years for book sales (the pandemic was great for book sales of all kinds), Barnes & Noble didn't see the same percentage increase, indicating they've lost market share. Some industry insiders believe the current private equity owner is trying to position the company favorably for sale.
[+] [-] rhaway84773|3 years ago|reply
Also, a loss of market share in a growing economy is also not a bad thing as long as it’s accompanied by increased profitability. What this means is that B&N has basically maintained their revenues, while significantly reducing their costs, which as the clear market leader in the space sets them up very well to pursue a more considered growth strategy based on the current environment as opposed to the pre-Amazon environment, which is what their original stores were based on.
Also, those larger stores didn’t mean much in terms of B&N as a bookseller because they were largely filled with their coffee shops and selling toys and Knick knacks.
[+] [-] jdhn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tams80|3 years ago|reply
Rent and/or property taxes and maintenance are massive overheads. Considering that bookshops are no longer trying to have every possible book someone could want in direct inventory, big shops aren't needed for any but the flagship stores.
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmaunder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qbasic_forever|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|3 years ago|reply
I'm going to classify this as a "just do a good job." We people like to understand the world with stories. Plot points. Twists. Heroes, antiheroes, antagonists... That's a bias.
All of the failed B&N strategies were snappy headlines... good stories: Online sales, digital sales & ereader, bookstore cafes, restaurant business...
These are all strategies you can put on a slide and sell to a board or executive team. An investment blogger can summarize them in a tweet. People can easily form opinions about them. You either think it's a good idea, or a bad one... and expect success or failure to follow smoothly from the goodness of the decision.
IRL though, execution matters. Almost every war ever fought was determined in battlefields, not palaces. That's true for Russia in Ukraine, the US in Afghanistan... and we'll shortly forget this lesson about both. From the outside, it's always easier to credit political-level decisions and forget about execution. I think this is a major recurring fallacy. Real outcomes are not deterministic. They're usually determined by execution.
Ted Gioia does a great job of creating a narrative frame here. But, it sounds like successes actually came from sub-narrative decisions. How purchasing is managed. Pricing & promotion policies. Responsibility splits between HQ & stores. These are all mundane, "housekeeping" issues... execution details.
Strategic decisions obviously matter. They're also interesting, especially to low engagement outsiders... including shareholders. They do not matter nearly as much as tactics. Tactics > Strategy, in life as in chess. This is the kind of thing that gets lost in 2nd hand accounts.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|3 years ago|reply
On the first point, floor space devoted to books compared to the past at the same stores has continued to decline, with, in one case, the entire space formerly devoted to non-book items now devoted just to games and toys, and spaces that were, before the pandemic, devoted to books now devoted DVDs, vinyl records, and other legacy media.
On the second, the two sections of books that have not lost space seem to be (1) the bargain book section (which is also largely merchandised to show the whole fronts of books rather than spines like the rest of the store, so it is the least titles per unit of shelf space) and the self-help section; the rest of the sections have been compressed as the non-book areas have spread. If we define “intellectual stimulation” in terms of engaging a recurring customer base, I suppose that meets the description; but I don’t think it’s what people would normally read the description as implying.
I do think that the article, amidst the noise, identifies the key factor: giving stores control over stocking books that appeal to their customer base rather than relying on a mix of promotional agreements with publishers and HQ buyer selections. This leads to a selection more tailored to the local market, and more conservatively chosen – not in the political sense, but in the sense of what will sell vs. what publishers hope to make sell by placement.
[+] [-] softwaredoug|3 years ago|reply
I’m not even talking up to date with the latest ChatGPT hotness, but any serious programming books written in the last 7 years - especially timeless classics that matter regardless of the technology. Rather that the same Sam’s Learn C++ book that’s been gathering dust for 20 years.
I suspect there actually is a market there, but the problem is you need a very particular book store manager that can curate this well. I guess it would have to be a labor of love, as financially the people who would do this well are busy making much more money as developers.
[+] [-] klelatti|3 years ago|reply
- James Daunt is now CEO of both B&N and Waterstones in the UK. Waterstones is a sizeable business in its own right with over 300 stores and totally dominates high street bookselling in the UK.
- Both B&N and Waterstones are owned by Elliot Management who bought B&N after acquiring Waterstones.
- Daunt only got his chance to run Waterstones after being installed by (now sanctioned) Russian Oligarch Alexander Mamut who bought the chain for $66m. I think it's fair to say this was a significant piece of risk taking as Waterstones was, at best, weeks away from insolvency and probably would have ceased to exist in anything like its present form. Of course, at that point Daunt's model was unproven (except in his own handful of London bookstores).
Here is James Daunt in his own words (from pre B&N):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjs2_iAomnc
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|3 years ago|reply
In the 2010s, just when ebooks became popular, a lot of bookstores opened in my city and others I know, both of the large chain and small independent variety. My thought was "are they crazy or what? Physical books are obviously a declining business, most people will just read ebooks. Most of these stores are doomed to close, as bookstores will become something very niche". Boy, was I wrong... the reality, while I don't have sales figures and just speak as a layman, is that they didn't close, but rather the opposite: even more of then opened during the rest of the decade and they generally seem rather lively. Have ebooks not caught on after all, or are people reading much more so that there is market for both? I don't know.
By the way, on a more personal note, ebooks made me almost stop reading for a long time. I was an avid reader until ebook readers appeared. Then I started to read in ebook form, because physical books take a lot of space, and they already occupied a lot of room at home (and the space is not just for me, I lived with my wife, and now also my son!). With this, I dropped from reading a lot to like 4 or 5 books a year, then 2, then 1 or even 0. I made myself believe that this was due to lack of time (work, not being single anymore, etc.) which was only a half truth. The other half of the truth, as shallow as it is, is that ebooks don't get me hooked as physical books do, even if the content is the same. I'm not proud of it, it's silly because the real value of a book should be in what it says, not in the physical materials, but it's how I work. I tried to change it for some years but I failed. So I came to accept it. Now I buy physical books again and even though I don't read as much as when I was younger (work+parenting takes a huge amount of time), reading is again one of the main things I do with the free time I do have, and I at least read 1-2 books a month.
[+] [-] kcartlidge|3 years ago|reply
Same here, though possibly not for the same reasons. I go through phases of reading a couple of ebooks a week, but if I'm not careful I get reading deserts where when I look back I've spent weeks curating/buying more ebooks and never actually getting around to reading them.
I love reading, but it's a constant battle to be a reader and not just a collector of books, something I never have an issue with when it comes to my physical collection (which is large but also largely untouched due to tired, aging eyes).
[+] [-] karmasimida|3 years ago|reply
1. Amazon is a terrible place to discover surprising reads. There is one day I was navigating the bookself in Technology sector, and found one book on the story of how Android is created. I didn't know this book exist, but now my interests can't be contained, and I want it NOW. The sense of discovery is awesome, and I am willing to pay for it.
2. B&N membership gives you basically a 10% discount StarBucks (unofficially, but pretty much the same), which is a sweet deal.
3. Amazon sometimes screwed up book versions. For example, I bought book 1&2 of the same series from Amazon, and book 1 arrived in UK format, while book 2 in US. This is an intolerable mistake for me as a collector. So I have to repurchase book 1 later from B&N in US format as I can no longer trust Amazon for it.
Overall, B&N now, is more of a socializing place for me than a retailer. I still use Amazon for books I can't find, but I don't mind pay a few more bucks to buy from B&N. Sometimes it is not all about money.
[+] [-] gorpomon|3 years ago|reply
To me, a Barnes and Noble still symbolizes the joy and worldliness of reading. Whenever I'm with family and shopping, if I'm not out to buy anything I still opt to spend some time reading in a B&N. I'm glad this chain is back on its feet and growing again. For lots of places, and lots of people, B&N is a lifeline.
[+] [-] mastazi|3 years ago|reply
This is perhaps the passage from the article that resonated the most with me:
> If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.
> But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Grammophon or Concord. I’ve come to doubt whether the people in charge really love the music.
[+] [-] UniverseHacker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deafpolygon|3 years ago|reply
It is so much more pleasant to go somewhere, and feel like you're being served a good selection of recommendations, new and old. Even better if you can talk to someone at the store and get their feedback and ideas. But in Blockbusters' end days, all they hired were teenagers not even old enough to rent from their Mature section.
There was no way they were going to compete with digital streaming services on sheer volume. But at the time of its collapse, every time I would step inside a Blockbuster - all I would see is non-movie related stuff being peddled at me. Posters, plush, popcorn, toys, etc.
The "new releases" movies were in the back, the best quality films hard to find, jumbled in with all the rest. The rest of the store just seemed to be wasted space. I always thought if they dedicated less space to the new releases and spent more time curating valuable films from all eras, they'd make a return to form.. especially with their name.
Movie and gaming deals ruined Blockbuster. And at the end, their $15/month ala carte plan just put them in the hole. They had such a good price before.. it was something like $3/night to rent. Then they raised the price to $7/2 night. It seems about the same price but no one really wants to rent it for 2 nights and the $7 priced most of the movie-goers out of the market. Then they tried the ala carte "Silver" or "Platinum" plan or whatever it was (it was probably a regional thing).
It's the same principle here with B&N.
[+] [-] account-5|3 years ago|reply
I have lived bookshops since I was young, I always felt like I might find something amazing and secret in them. They held a kind of mystic for me (1990s).
This changed in the 2000s. I do miss the massive borders books we had. I do have to say the all the Waterstones I've been into in the last 15 years have all those toys, calenders, etc the OP doesn't like; and the bigger stores all have Costas.
I don't buy books now, I just go to the library.
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|3 years ago|reply
That said, their technology could still be better. Ordering something online for local pickup works, but there’s a surprisingly long delay (sometimes days!) between placing an order and it being ready for pickup. Target is a lot faster, for example, despite having much larger stores.
[+] [-] ars|3 years ago|reply
And that makes sense, anyone looking for a good price is going online, if you are in the store you are not price sensitive. And of course this means B&N is much more profitable than they would be otherwise.
Lowes is doing this too - their prices for plumbing products are insane - $12 for something that goes for $2 online, but they are betting that anyone buying in the store needs it NOW and will pay anything.
[+] [-] tssva|3 years ago|reply
I'm left wondering if B&N has turned itself around or is simply riding a wave of post pandemic reading which will crest leaving B&N once again over built and in trouble
[+] [-] fzeroracer|3 years ago|reply
It's the same reason why vinyl is continuing to grow. People want something they can actually own. Books are not immune to this and there is something inherently more satisfying about having a bookshelf with the books you've read versus a library of ebooks.