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posted by Fnord666 on Monday December 04 2017, @06:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the tchotchkes dept.

Barnes & Noble will shift to smaller stores and is turning to books to attempt to save its business:

The retailer had hoped that toys, games and other items would shore up its results, especially as Amazon.com Inc. ate away at its traditional business. But its non-book sales have flagged the past two quarters, and now the company is putting its focus back firmly on reading.

Barnes & Noble will "place a greater emphasis on books, while further narrowing our non-book assortment," Chief Executive Officer Demos Parneros said in a statement.

The failed foray is just one of the challenges bearing down on the chain. Customer traffic is down, and Barnes & Noble is losing market share. Though the release of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" reinvigorated sales a year ago, the company is now paying for that blip: Same-store sales fell 6.3 percent last quarter, with about half of that decline coming from the drop-off in Harry Potter demand.

Barnes & Noble's Nook e-book business also has languished, a further sign of Amazon's tightening grip on readers. It all added up to a loss of 41 cents a share in the fiscal second quarter, compared with a deficit of 29 cents a year earlier. Analysts projected a 26-cent loss for the period, which ended Oct. 28.

Barnes & Noble may benefit from short leases, allowing it to close or downsize stores as needed. New stores may be only about 40% as large as the average existing location.

Headline credit where it is due.

Also at WSJ:

"There's too much stuff in the stores," said Barnes & Noble Inc. Chief Executive Demos Parneros, in an interview after the company's earnings call. "We're drawing a line in the sand and reducing the assortment of gift items and what I'd call tchotchkes. For example, we love journals. But we have way too many. We're refocusing on books."

Related: Amazon Opens Physical Bookstore in Seattle
Amazon Books Opens in New York City


Original Submission

Related Stories

Amazon Opens Physical Bookstore in Seattle 13 comments

After years of slowly killing off its traditional bookstore competition, Amazon has opened its first physical bookstore at 4601 26th Ave NE, Seattle, WA:

Amazon is opening a bookshop in Seattle in a move it described as a "physical extension" of its business. It will stock the most popular books from Amazon.com, and the prices will be the same as those offered on the website. Customers will also be able to try out Amazon's devices, including the Kindle and its Fire TV. One expert questioned how much impact such a shop would have.

Amazon Books vice-president Jennifer Cast announced the online giant would open its "real, wooden doors" at the Seattle University Village on 3 November. "Amazon Books is a physical extension of Amazon.com. We've applied 20 years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping," she said. The shop will stock 5,000 books in the 5,500-sq-ft (510-sq-m) space, with the majority chosen on the basis of customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on reader recommendation site Goodreads, and the shop's curators' assessments.

The BBC article shows an online customer review displayed alongside one of the books, along with a shelf featuring books rated "4.8 stars or higher".

From The Seattle Times:

Amazon is betting that the troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website will give it advantages in its retail location that other bookstores can't match. It will use data to pick titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers.

And that could also solve the business problem that has long plagued other bookstores: unsold books that gather dust on shelves and get sent back to publishers. More than most book retailers, Amazon has deep insight into customer buying habits and can stock its store with titles most likely to move.

The company will stock best-sellers, of course. But it will also include books that get the highest ratings from its customers, including little-known titles. The store will also include such categories as "Most Wished-For Cookbooks." Another section features "Award Winners, 4.5 Stars & Above, Age 6-12."


Original Submission

Amazon Books Opens in New York City 6 comments

After helping drive many U.S. bookstore chains out of business, Amazon has been opening its own retail stores, starting in Seattle in late 2015.

Its first Amazon Books location in New York City opens Thursday morning in Manhattan’s Shops at Columbus Circle, which was previously home to a pretty large — and now closed — Borders Books and Music.

[...] It’s mostly books here, but there’s a gadget section for things like Amazon’s Echo devices, Alexa-compatible smart home gizmos, Kindles and tablets, and a dozen AmazonBasics items, including iPhone chargers and AAA batteries.

Recode

Previous story:
Amazon Opens Physical Bookstore in Seattle


Original Submission

Barnes & Noble Reports Holiday Revenues Down 29 comments

Barnes & Noble reported their sales from the 2017 holiday quarter, and the news is not good.

B&N today reported holiday sales for the nine-week holiday period ending December 30, 2017. Total sales for the holiday period were $953 million, declining 6.4% as compared to the prior year. Comparable store sales also declined 6.4% for the holiday period, while online sales declined 4.5%.

Entering December, the Company was encouraged by the comparable store sales improvements throughout the second quarter and into November. However, sales trends softened in December, primarily due to lower traffic.

The Company's book business declined 4.5%, outperforming the overall comparable store sales performance. Declines in the gift, music and DVD categories accounted for nearly half of the comparable store sales decrease. The Company said it remains focused on executing its strategic turnaround plan, which includes an aggressive expense management program.

The keywords are "aggressive expense management program," which translates to "lowering" the cost of employees, and closing and downsizing stores.

Previously: Barnes & Noble Pivots to Books


Original Submission

Barnes & Noble's "Bloody Monday" 60 comments

On Monday, February 12th, Barnes & Noble fired a number of employees.

From CNBC:

Barnes & Noble is trimming its staff, laying off lead cashiers, digital leads and other experienced workers in a company-wide clearing, CNBC has learned from sources familiar with the matter.

The news came abruptly for many workers who showed up Monday morning at various Barnes & Noble locations to be notified that they no longer had a job, the people said. The number of affected workers couldn't immediately be determined. As of April 29 of last year, Barnes & Noble employed about 26,000 people.

"[Barnes & Noble] has been reviewing all aspects of the business, including our labor model," a spokeswoman told CNBC about the layoffs. "Given our sales decline this holiday, we're adjusting staffing so that it meets the needs of our existing business and our customers. As the business improves, we'll adjust accordingly."

From The Digital Reader:

The initial report said B&N had fired "lead cashiers, digital leads, and other experienced workers", but what that report missed - and why this was worth bringing up a day later - was that B&N also fired nearly all of its receiving managers in what current and ex-employees are calling Bloody Monday.

[...] When B&N fires a digital sales lead, it means they'll sell fewer Nooks. This is no big deal given how B&N's digital revenues have fallen since 2013. When B&N fires a head cashier, it means you're in for longer waits at the register.

But when B&N fires its receiving managers, it means that B&N won't have the merchandise to sell you because the person who was responsible for making sure shelves get stocked does not work there any more.

Previously: Barnes & Noble Reports Holiday Revenues Down
Barnes & Noble Pivots to Books


Original Submission

Barnes & Noble Just Fired Another CEO 16 comments

Barnes & Noble just fired CEO Demos Parneros after fourteen months on the job.

Barnes & Noble said Tuesday that it has fired CEO Demos Parneros for violating company policies.

The company did not specify exactly which policies were violated. It did say, however, that Parneros' termination "is not due to any disagreement with the Company regarding its financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud relating thereto."

Parneros will not receive any severance and is no longer a director on its board, the company said in its statement. Barnes & Noble said it fired Parneros under the advice of its law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Barnes & Noble said it will begin its search for a new CEO and that it has tapped a group of leaders to run the company in the interim. That group includes chief financial officer Allen Lindstrom, chief merchandising officer Tim Mantel and vice president of stores Carl Hauch.

Parneros joined the company in 2016 and was named CEO in 2017. He was previously president of Staples' North American stores and online.

Barnes & Noble's prior CEO was Ronald Boire, who lasted eight months on the job before being fired.

Previously: Barnes & Noble's "Bloody Monday"
Barnes & Noble Reports Holiday Revenues Down"
Barnes & Noble Pivots to Books


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 04 2017, @06:46AM (14 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 04 2017, @06:46AM (#604933) Journal
    Sounds a bit like they're doing a Radio Shack - attempting to diversify into more mainstream products and now collapsing to a business they don't really have that much to do with any more. What's interesting is that Barnes & Nobel is a survivor of what used to be a large retail chain bookstore market. That has massively collapsed over the last couple of decades.
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 04 2017, @10:40AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday December 04 2017, @10:40AM (#604966) Journal

      I'm a little shocked that Nook [wikipedia.org] still exists. They spun it off and partnered with Microsoft, bought back control of it, and partnered with Samsung on new hardware.

      Nook users may read nearly any Nook Store e-book, digital magazines or newspapers for one hour once per day while connected to the store's Wi-Fi.

      That's a good idea for getting people into their stores, especially into cafes in college towns. Except that the Nook market share is dismal [the-digital-reader.com].

      Barnes & Noble is like the slightly upscale and more competent looking version of Books-A-Million [wikipedia.org], the other big box books store with similarly cavernous air-conditioned locations.

      The holiday season is what keeps stores like this alive. You look at the "tchotchkes" and other crap sold and B&N, and I can guarantee you will find many journals, greeting cards, stationary sets, RC helicopters, slime science kits, plush dolls, Game of Thrones action figures, and other non-book junk. I'm sure they sell a lot of it as Christmas gifts, but do they really need to stock 100 varieties of journals? Apparently not.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by etherscythe on Monday December 04 2017, @05:59PM

        by etherscythe (937) on Monday December 04 2017, @05:59PM (#605159) Journal

        It won't for long. [the-digital-reader.com] I was about 2 seconds from pulling the trigger on the new Nook Glowlight 3 Black Friday deal when I found out about this and decided I'm going to get a Kobo Aura ONE with my tax refund instead. No sense investing in an ecosystem that will not be maintained, no matter the "in-store support forever" guarantee. I'm hoping my library doesn't up and vanish before I get it converted into non-DRM format.

        In case anyone's wondering, I'm boycotting Amazon as the reason I'm not getting a Kindle. Kobo does not have a huge presence in the US, but I'll be damned if Bezos gets any more of my money after the political stunt Amazon pulled on Wikileaks years ago with the Manning affair. I'm depressed to see how Amazon has flourished since then, with as hard as it is to avoid that place these days from a convenience and selection standpoint.

        --
        "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Oakenshield on Monday December 04 2017, @01:33PM (10 children)

      by Oakenshield (4900) on Monday December 04 2017, @01:33PM (#605018)

      Sounds a bit like they're doing a Radio Shack - attempting to diversify into more mainstream products and now collapsing to a business they don't really have that much to do with any more. What's interesting is that Barnes & Nobel is a survivor of what used to be a large retail chain bookstore market. That has massively collapsed over the last couple of decades.

      There is a (formerly) independent bookstore around here that moved to an open air mall. It looks like it's housed in an aircraft hanger. This place is absolutely huge. Before the buyout and move, it used to be one of my date night destinations. My wife and I would go to dinner and spend a fortune on books and magazines there afterwards. The place was much smaller but had a great selection, including and entire room of computer books floor to ceiling.

      Now the new gigantor store has almost nothing but games, toys, stuffed animals, and a section with enough calendars - year around - to fill a WalMart. The books they do have look just like the same selection at the much closer Barnes and Noble. My last trip there, I searched for three separate magazines and came up zero for three. Their computer book selection now consists of one shelving unit, four feet wide with not a single programming book to be had. They were all of the "iPads for Seniors for Dummies" variety. This is in a building that you could park a couple Goodyear Blimps. This seems to be Barnes and Nobles recent business model too.

      The last two times I stopped at Barnes and Noble were for picking up reading books for my kid's English class. Both times, they did not have the book but offered to order it for me. I ended up ordering from Amazon because it shipped quicker and it didn't require me to make another trip out to the store. I used to love to browse book stores, but now, they have nothing for me.

      I won't miss the gigantic selection of journals, the card games, the fancy coffees or the toys, but I do miss the days of decent book stores that actually stock good books.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 04 2017, @02:06PM (6 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday December 04 2017, @02:06PM (#605028) Journal

        I'm pretty sure every Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million I've been to (years ago) has had a shelf of programming books. Maybe basic tier and outdated stuff, but definitely covering C++, Java, Visual Basic, and HTML development or JavaScript at the least.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday December 04 2017, @03:00PM

          by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Monday December 04 2017, @03:00PM (#605066) Homepage Journal

          It was decades ago that I regularly visited Barnes & Noble.

          It *was* a wonderful place. I remember reading Green Eggs & Ham there aloud with a very attractive classmate while in high school.

          I used to go in there all the time to browse and would always find something interesting to read. They always (especially at their former flagship store [wikipedia.org]) had an enormous selection across a wide variety of topics.

          Their stores today hold little interest for me, as they don't have the breadth of subjects or a decent selection of the subjects they do have.

          It's sad to see a venerable and storied company like B&N go to hell, but it's not so surprising, given that actually reading an entire book seems to be too much work for most these days.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Monday December 04 2017, @03:16PM (4 children)

          by Oakenshield (4900) on Monday December 04 2017, @03:16PM (#605077)

          This former independent is owned by Books-a-Million. And no. They had nothing. It was all how-to-use type books (Windows 10, MacOS, IOS, Android, Photoshop, Office, etc) I specifically asked if they had any other computer books and was told that their dinky little four foot section was it. The Barnes and Noble has a much better selection of computer books - one small row - but nothing even close to the old "independent" store or the old Borders I used to visit.

          Now if I want something computer related, I go straight to Amazon, Half.com or ABE Books now.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by darnkitten on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:20AM (3 children)

            by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:20AM (#605447)

            I go straight to Amazon, Half.com or ABE Books now.

            Only now, half.com is gone, closed by eBay a couple of months ago. I had sopped there since a couple of months after they opened--they beat Amazon all to hell, especially with combined shipping and displaying books grouped by grade, especially when combined with grading enforcement (until the last couple of years).

            Unfortunately, eBay didn't realize what they had--a better way to sell used and rare books. They just kept trying to fold half.com into their eBay stores, not realizing that their format/interface is a terrible one for serious book purchasers. And then they kept making changes to the half.com UI and database, each one further undermining the shop, both for buyers and sellers--I mean, "This shop has too many items to browse at once."? That alone was a slap in the face of their largest merchants--it cut off access to category browsing for those shops, which meant their customers had to know what they wanted before searching, and couldn't just search for "Mystery Novels" or "Science Fiction," especially after they crippled the search syntax eBay-wide. Making it impossible to get direct customer support was an added bonus.

            It wasn't perfect, (lacking, for instance, a way to report database or catalog errors), but they did a good job of policing the catalog and removing the crap items.

            I miss them and Amazon is no replacement, especially for large varied orders.

            • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday December 05 2017, @02:58AM

              by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday December 05 2017, @02:58AM (#605478)

              sorry-forgot to close the quote tag...

            • (Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday December 06 2017, @02:42PM (1 child)

              by Oakenshield (4900) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @02:42PM (#606139)

              Wow! I did not realize half.com was gone too. Damn... It makes me wonder if we are headed into a brave new world of illiteracy.

              • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:10PM

                by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:10PM (#606288)

                Well, eBay had been trying to get rid of half.com since they opened the eBay Stores, but the buyers and sellers simply refused to migrate to a platform unsuited to selling books. After years of trying to cripple the site and failing to get people to switch over, they finally decided to pull the plug.

                It's a shame, though--If they had doubled down, instead of conceding to Amazon as soon as it started selling used books, eBay/Half.com could have competed well against their rival giant.

                It makes me wonder if we are headed into a brave new world of illiteracy.

                I believe we've always been in a largely illiterate world--some people are readers, but the vast majority are viewers, and read only when it can't be avoided..

                I do think, though, that we are going through an adjustment period, as electronic reading materials find their niche in the literary ecosystem. At the library I run, after a multi-year decline in readership, the numbers for the last two years show a steady build in the reading of print materials. If you add in the e-materials we provide, the statistics seem to suggest more people are reading in general, as many of the patrons now consuming e-books were habitual non-readers of print books (largely due to a perceived lack of time--now that they can carry their books on their devices, they can read in spare moments). A number of patrons have also tried the e-book thing, and discovered they actually prefer physical books.

                We may also be seeing a trend away from impersonal service in libraries and bookstores and a return to individual contact with patrons or customers. We can see this in the failure of the large brick-and-mortar retailers, who can't compete with Amazon's algorithms and a marked increase in the independent booksellers, who can offer more personalized service.

                Similarly, I run a small rural library, under 20,000 volumes, but I curate the collection for my patrons, and I make an effort to see that if they walk in the door, they walk out with a book in hand, or preferably two, one of which should be slightly outside what they are used to reading. I also order books in, if I can't satisfy their needs on the premises, with the help of a co-operative arrangement with ten other rural libraries and a fantastic volunteer courier network, as well as the state and national interlibrary systems. I am also seeing larger libraries require more floor time for employees, requiring them to actually go out and talk with the patrons and show them books, rather than sit behind their desks, waiting to be approached.

                Overall, I am cautiously optimistic--the face of the reading world is changing, but I hope we are learning the right lessons and getting it right more often than we have in the past few years.

      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 04 2017, @10:53PM (2 children)

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday December 04 2017, @10:53PM (#605375) Journal

        And so is the private bookstore. Publishers and the ever more artificial scarcity of their business model can die in a fire. It's time our public libraries and schools be allowed to take full advantage of technology and go all in on digital formats and networking. The only things the private bookstore ever had on the public library was lots of the latest, plus catering to the desire to own your own print copy of popular classics. Now with the Age of Information, I see no reason for the public library to continue being a backwater and paying the list price for print books when it is so easy to switch to digital.

        One of my biggest problems was lack of shelf space. Some books had to go to make room for new ones, but more often, I just didn't buy. Another problem was high prices. I think publishers blundered badly in the 1980s when they hiked the price of paperbacks at double the rate of inflation-- a $1.95 paperback in 1980 was $4.95 by 1990. Just as cost smashing technology was around the corner, and computer gaming was emerging as a powerful new form of entertainment luring people away from books and TV, publishers got greedy and drove prices up, speeding up the exodus of their customers.

        Ebooks solves the problems of space and costs. I love being able to carry around an entire wall's worth of printed material in my pocket. But even more, I'd love not having to keep copies around. It'd be huge knowing I could download and redownload whenever I wanted. Your book collection could be a simple list of titles. But no, we still have to hoard printed books like they're gold, in part to ward off accusations of "digital theft". It's totally upside down how these publisher ownership scumbags have managed to take our natural right to share and copy, equated it to theft, and have most of the public believing that.

        • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:35PM (1 child)

          by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:35PM (#606322)

          I'm copying part of one of my responses from the Vid.me thread (with a couple of additions), because I think it is relevant to bzipitidoo's comment in this thread. (and because I forgot to hit "submit" on that comment last night, and didn't post it until just now).

          • At the least, public libraries ought to be allowed to handle digital books! It's a mistake that we just stumbled into giving Google the right to scan everything, for their search engine, but didn't make that a more general right.

          That's a publisher thing. And an ILS vendor thing. The publishers would rather libraries not make ANY e-content available, and saddle us with DRM, restrictions on format and terms of use, and often prohibitive pricing, (such as paying full price for a book that locks out downloads after a certain number of checkouts, but which the library can't remove from the catalog, to force us to re-purchase; or requiring a fee of $500 annually for each and every computer the library designates for ebook download). The vendors of proprietary library catalog systems, for those of us who are locked into that, make us pay per title (or per a number of titles), which sets a limit to what some library can take on before becoming prohibitively expensive (which is why my little library does not offer Project Gutenberg or Librivox titles in its catalog).

          The one benefit of Google's scanning is the proliferation of reprinted public domain books in facsimile, which has allowed us to replace old copies of interesting books on the shelves or to obtain books formerly unavailable. Unfortunately, there are also those who publish poorly OCR'ed versions of the same books, and it is nearly impossible to tell which is which. Additionally, Google's action in scanning books NOT in the public domain panicked the publishers into adding more DRM and restrictions to their e-content for libraries.

          • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 07 2017, @04:02PM

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday December 07 2017, @04:02PM (#606840) Journal

            I've been wondering what we can do to help our public libraries with this problem. It's a big problem and I can't think of any easy answer. You clearly know much more about the dirty deals publishers manage to impose on public libraries.

            Maybe a letter writing campaign to our politicians? Would have to be a heck of a lot of letters to move them.

            I doubt letters to the editors of any newspaper would see the light of day. They'd probably decide a letter that advocated against copyright was subversive and a threat to their business and the American way and refuse to consider publishing it, with great anger and prejudice. Exposing the dirt could help, but again that would take some cooperation from the media, and they are acting decidedly uncooperative. There may be offbeat publications that would do it.

            So, perhaps national competition would move things? I've heard Egypt would like to rebuild and expand the famous Library of Alexandria with modern technology. But they probably can't afford to defy US copyright law, not with the all the holds the US has on them. So, maybe Iran? Or, what about the BRIC nations? An advantage of India is that many of them know and use English. Russia has a long tradition of shamelessly copying Western science, in their desperate scramble to keep up. Anyway, I understand that's a direction RMS has been exploring.

            Un-brainwashing US citizens would be good. As an example of how thoroughly some are brainwashed, consider the collectible card game genre. The first and I think still chief of those games is Magic the Gathering. Try to enter a contest with a deck of proxies (copies of the cards) and see what kind of anger that provokes, because it will. Those fool players will get all righteous and leap to defend the manufacturer's so-called rights. They don't really care about that, what has them hooked is that allowing copies would deflate the artificially high valuation of their collected cards. Plus, if they think they can get your deck disqualified on those grounds, they will go for the easy victory. You must show them that you own (or at least have) originals of everything you proxied. They won't like it, but they do understand not wanting to put wear and tear on the originals, as they feel the same way. Sadly, Magic is in large part a game of money, with significant advantage to those players who can afford to pay and pay to collect good cards, and it seems the wealthy players would like to keep it that way. Takes thousands of dollars to compete in Magic. That everyone (except the manufacturer) would be better off if copies were no big deal seems not to matter to even the poor players. It's weird. I got out of Magic years ago, and wish I'd never got in.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @02:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @02:51PM (#605058)

      They're being run by morons. I had a couple of Nooks and each generation got less and less full featured, the most recent versions lack a microsd card slot. But, it doesn't much matter because the people running the ebook division are complete assholes. It used to be that you could download the books and use Adobe Editions to put them on the ebook reader, but that's gone.

      They upgraded all their books to a new version that can't be cracked, which makes is massively harder for me to read my books or back them up, so I refuse to buy any more of them. I wound up buying my newer ones from Amazon since I might as well when it's a choice between B&N and Amazon.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday December 04 2017, @08:20AM (12 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday December 04 2017, @08:20AM (#604948) Homepage Journal

    I mean, who'd've thunk it: a bookstore that sells books!

    I used to love going into bookstores to browse. Shelves filled with a broad selection of books, you could easily discover new authors. In good bookstores, the staff in each section actually knew the selection, and could make good suggestions.

    Gradually - even before Amazon became such a power - the stores started carrying the same-old-stuff. All the big titles from years past, reprinted and reprinted and reprinted, plus whatever was on today's best-seller list. No more unusual titles, no more new authors. You'd go into a bookstore and...nothing new. But now they had teddy bears! Yeah, that's why I went into the bookstore, to buy stuffed animals!

    The big pubishers are also part of the problem, of course. They are the ones who kept pushing the old cash cows, apparently not understanding that we've already read them. The customers who read dozens of books per year don't need another copy of Asimov's Foundation, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because we already have three of each. We want new authors, new stories. Add on the SJW convergence (pink SF), and gaaaaaah...

    Of course, the competition from Amazon worsened the situation, but the publishers bookstores had already dug their own graves. I haven't been inside a bookstore for years. I buy mostly from indy authors now.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @10:35AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @10:35AM (#604965)

      I agree for the most part, although their ebook offerings falling down probably has something to do with shooting themselves in the foot by helping to fix the prices of ebooks to be on par with physical books. As a result, people didn't want ebooks nearly as much anymore but if they were down with getting the physical editions Amazon was beating them in both selection and price.

      • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday December 04 2017, @01:18PM (5 children)

        by bradley13 (3053) on Monday December 04 2017, @01:18PM (#605007) Homepage Journal

        You're right: The early ebook prices were a problem. Publishers thought they could charge as much (sometimes more) than for a physical book, despite the obvious savings in production, printing, transportation, etc.. On top of that, the early eReaders weren't very good, which made the experience less than ideal.

        That, at least, has pretty much sorted itself out. The only remaining problem is DRM. I use a Kindle, but I want my books in *my* media library, able to read them with whatever reader I want. Amazon's new DRM is a pain to circumvent - I wish they would just stop. The music world has discovered that it can live without DRM, so why not the book world?

        --
        Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @01:29PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @01:29PM (#605016)

          Ironically this is why I am among the "dismal" number of Nook users. You can entirely skip Barnes & Noble and side-load content as you would a flash drive.

          • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday December 04 2017, @02:24PM (1 child)

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday December 04 2017, @02:24PM (#605040) Journal

            I have never found it too difficult to get downloaded ebooks onto a Kindle. Just use Calibre [wikipedia.org], which is able to convert the files and handle metadata and stuff, and organize your books to an extent. Not as simple as treating the e-reader as USB storage, but potentially saves time. I don't own a Kindle anymore, and I am not sure when/if I will dive back into e-readers (I don't have a tablet either). PDFs were really slow/crappy on Kindle, despite their obvious utility for illustrated works and being fairly common on download sites. I'm sure .CBZ comics converted to PDF or MOBI would have been terrible on Kindle, as well as in black and white.

            I noticed that there were a few color Nook models, although those use tablet screens and not e-ink. I have expected Amazon to put out a color e-reader, but it never happened.

            If there is not a decent color e-reader in the next couple of years, I will probably pick up a tablet. Battery life and performance has improved tremendously in laptops in the last few years, and I'm sure tablets have seen a similar trend. It seems that quantum dot [engadget.com] (but not OLED?) displays use less power, and a move to 10nm or 7nm ARM could improve battery life to an amount that is acceptable even if it can't match e-ink. And then you can use your tablet for color PDFs/CBZs, video, music, and web browsing.

            The only viable alternative I see would be a tablet-sized version of YotaPhone [rbth.com].

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @03:07PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @03:07PM (#605070)

              Indeed, that's part of why I don't have a Kindle. They make it so easy to get content from other stores onto their devices, but more or less impossible to take Kindle content and put it on 3rd party devices. I still don't get how they got away with doing that without any sort of antitrust action being taken.

              Then again, the DoJ was fine when Apple was abusing the hell out of it's near monopoly in the music space to push those crappy iPods.

          • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday December 04 2017, @03:11PM

            by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Monday December 04 2017, @03:11PM (#605074) Homepage Journal

            Ironically this is why I am among the "dismal" number of Nook users. You can entirely skip Barnes & Noble and side-load content as you would a flash drive.

            You can do this with the Kindle as well. I received one as a gift some years ago, and while I do have over 12,000 ebooks, I have yet to purchase one from Amazon.

            I side-load books without issue and manage (as well as convert formats) using Calibre [calibre-ebook.com], which is cross-platform, open source [github.com] and free.

            If I was unable to do so, I'd have stuck to paper books, which I prefer but, especially when traveling, I can bring dozens of books with me on my kindle.

            --
            No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
        • (Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Monday December 04 2017, @03:31PM

          by Sourcery42 (6400) on Monday December 04 2017, @03:31PM (#605085)

          The music world has discovered that it can live without DRM, so why not the book world?

          Why because then people might share books they've purchased with their friends and families and deny those benevolent publishers much needed revenue. What's that you say? People could easily do that with traditional, physical books, and such practices should essentially already be baked into their business model? Poppycock!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 04 2017, @10:03PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 04 2017, @10:03PM (#605338)

      the stores started carrying the same-old-stuff

      Eventually I think all legacy brick and mortar non-food non-clothes retail will converge from all directions upon crappy generic gifts. There really isn't a purpose for them anymore. There will be a million places and a billion square feet all devoted to selling crappy gifts and nothing else on the market will be available except for online.

      I was at a B+N a couple weeks ago and all I could find to buy was a gift for a family member, a specific cookbook. They sure have a lot of legacy optical media in a cavernous empty sixth of the store with no browsing customers at all, what a dumb merchandising mistake. The large board game selection is obscure in that its too euro/war/complicated for normies but its too intro level for real gamers, I suppose that fits the gift stereotype where grannie can buy something in the correct theme and the kids can return it for what they really want. I also noticed they have pretty much given up on merchandising tech type books. They sell almost exclusively gift books now, very little you'd buy for yourself.

      The most interesting place to find tech type books, or really any non-fiction, is book resale stores of which there are a couple regional chains. Theres a chain named "half price books" that covers the civilized USA, pretty much anywhere more than 500 miles from the coasts. Today I found a book titled "Mathematical Astronomy Morsels" strangely appealing and interesting. Like "computer recreations" column from the 80s meets an astronomy magazine in a collection of essays format. That entire genre of non-fiction is missing from B+N, they gave up.

      One interesting concept that isn't entirely insane is the local B+N at the mall is across the street from the pop-up store that sells seasonal junk, so ... merge? I could see a day where there's a book buying season, wedged in with Halloween costume season and Christmas ornament season. Spring has valentines day. Maybe dog days of summer would be a good popup book store season.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 04 2017, @10:07PM (2 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 04 2017, @10:07PM (#605341)

        Figured it out just after posting. The three retail genres will be food, clothing, and gift shop. Think of tourist traps with their "gift shop". Someday soon the only non-food non-clothes store will be endless gift shops as far as the eye can see. Eat it, wear it, or give it away, nothing else possible.

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:14AM (1 child)

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:14AM (#605416) Journal

          No, no. It's 4 things, and they are:

          music
          movies
          microcode (software)
          high-speed pizza delivery

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:58PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 06 2017, @10:58PM (#606463)

            yeah yeah. That's a book where I alternate between "wouldn't it be great to see a great movie adaptation" and "wouldn't it be horrible to see a messed up movie adaptation".

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday December 04 2017, @10:50PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday December 04 2017, @10:50PM (#605373)

      Most of the books I buy now are used, and quite a high percentage of them are out of print or just not found in the big chain bookstores. Most of them cost a whole lot less as well, if you have the choice of buying 10 or so books for $50 or 2-3 books for the same price, there is not much debate.
      I suspect things will be much worse in the future, with printed books new and used dwindling in supply. E-Book availability may suffer from copyrights extended well past any reasonable length and DRM on the various readers, so consumers may have nowhere to turn.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Monday December 04 2017, @03:32PM

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Monday December 04 2017, @03:32PM (#605086)

    B&N used to be one of my favorite places. Then, a few years ago, I walked in and all I saw were kids games, crossword puzzles, and a bunch of other dumb gift items. I walked out and never went back. So, they've lost whatever base they had, and have been catering to illiterates. Now the illiterati have figured out how to use Amazon, which sells things other than books. I don't think going back to books is going to save them at this time.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @06:46PM (#605191)

    A bookstore selling books cannot be allowed in the new disrutitive economy! where are the MBA's??

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:35AM (#605422)

    I see too many people using Barnes & Noble as a library. When someone is sitting in one of the comfy chairs and they are 3/4 of the way though a book, there is little incentive for them to purchase it. Get rid of the tables and chairs, and when someone is trying to read a book without paying for it, you keep interrupting them. "May I help you?", "Is there something in that book you are trying to find?", etc.

    Independent book stores do not have any advantage. I was speaking to someone in a Comic Book store, and they had asked me if I knew the local Book store was closing. A "customer" came into the Bok store, and asked about a specific book. The proprietor located it in the store for them, and they proceeded to purchase on Amazon right in front of them, then walked out of the store leaving the owner flabbergasted. The proprietor told the Comic store owner that they cannot compete against that, and were shutting down.

    Personally, I will miss going to book stores. :-(

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by jman on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:01PM

    by jman (6085) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:01PM (#605585) Homepage
    Last used B&N in 2003, when it was worth it getting their discount card to purchase the Gary Larson 2-Volume complete Far Side collection.

    Having the card, then proceeded to spend around a thousand dollars on books in the ensuing year.

    When the year was up, they wanted to charge a fee for continued use of the card.

    I countered, saying they had become my exclusive source for books, and wouldn't they rather just keep me as a customer?

    No, they just had to have the $15 (or whatever it was.)

    A small amount, but it cost them a customer. Have set foot in one maybe three times since then, but no purchases.

    These days, it's either Half Price (used), Book People (local, new), or the ever-gobbling behemoth Amazon.

    Sorry, B&N. You had your chance to keep a customer that still prefers dead trees to screens.
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