Independent bookstores to financial analysts have been watching Barnes & Noble’s strategy closely since the rise of the e-book. As an independent bookseller, I couldn’t be more pleased with the impending pressure on big box bookstores.
J. P. Mangalindan of CNN Money.com made the argument for “why Barnes & Noble should go from bookstore to Nookstore.” He makes these key points about the changes at Barnes & Noble:
- B & N stock is down 80% over the last five years.
- Since B & N went on the for-sale market last August, there has been no buyer.
- B & N did beat Borders in branding its very own e-reader as opposed to Borders’ poorly marketed, little known Kobo reader. The B & N Nook has also beat the Sony reader in sales and remains second to Amazon’s Kindle.
Analysts like James McQuivey note B & N’s advantage with the Nook, but caution that changes to store space cannot come quickly enough. E-book sales are predicted to dominate the market within the next 24 months with B & N expected to cut retail space. However, McQuivey urges a faster and more drastic reaction:
“In a conservative market scenario, the company would shutter at least 30%, or 211, of its 705 retail locations, within the next three to five years. ‘If it were me? I’d cut deeper, faster–like two to four years,’ he says, suggesting a boutique model where B & N reduces store capacity by 50% through a combination of store closures, reduced store footprints, and decreased shelf space.'”
Meanwhile, Amazon announced this week that they will now be selling a reduced price Kindle–with ads. With ads?!?
The device is called “Kindle with Special Offers” and features ads from Proctor & Gamble, Buick–and the worst of all–Visa credit cards. If that weren’t enough, the screen saver is sponsored as well. Another layer of ads is Amazon itself–promoting their own products. Amazon assures its customers that the ads will not get in the way of reading.
One of the last questions Mangalindan asks in his article was important because he used the phrase digital company:
“Barnes & Noble has already gotten one thing right in having an ereader ready to help it do battle with Amazon. But as far as successfully transforming itself into a digital company? Well, that’s just Chapter One”
It made me ask myself: Can we say that B & N is moving out of the book business?
Thank You B & N and Amazon for focusing on a digital product and for taking much of the beauty and aesthetic enjoyment out of a book and allowing true book lovers to sell them! To me, putting ads on an e-reading device was the last straw.
What do you think?
The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry
Decluttering the Book Market: Ads on the latest Kindle (April 14) Independents on the Exposed End of the Titantic? (April 6th) Border’s Bonuses (March 30) The Experience of Holding a Book (March15) Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)
Hopefully, you are able to get away for some type of vacation this summer–whether it be some place exotic or your backyard. I am leaving for vacation next week and was wondering what the great Lemuria readers would recommend.
Sometimes when we write The Story behind the Pick for our First Editions Club, few readers have ever heard of the book, but that is not the case with Téa Obreht’s 
Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. As mentioned before, she has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York. (
He also mentions the Argentinian writer Jean Luis Borges as an inspiration for this home:
Ellen has been in a couple of Tate’s homes in Jackson. She has this to say:
My thoughts go back again and again to a book I read a long time ago called 
For folks that grew up in the 80’s the America’s Most Wanted TV show was part of life. The Fox network was new and starting in 1988 we watched America’s Most Wanted most every Saturday night. We were also a generation that grew up with the fear of crime: kidnappings, murder, etc. We saw it on TV and in the case of AMW it was and is real, very real. We may have been the first generation that wasn’t let out of our parents’ sights.
To me John Walsh, the host of AMW, was just another TV host. My parents had introduced me to Dragnet years earlier and I saw a similarity in the shows – Walsh’s deadpan presentation. I didn’t know at the time where his passion came from. Maybe my parents told me, but I don’t think I knew until much later that Walsh’s crusade for bringing criminals to justice had a very personal origin. In 1981 John and Reve Walsh’s 6 year old son was kidnapped and murdered.
For me this story represents so much of why our childhood was the way it was and is an origin story for our own parenting paranoia. Now in 
Warrior pose uses key words like “strong” and “focused”. On the back, illustrations and a small amount of text help you and your little one get into the pose. Usually two questions follow each pose to use with a more mature child. Warrior pose brings up trust with these questions: “What does it mean to be trustworthy?” and “Are you trustworthy?”
I have used these cards with a kids yoga class. Laying the cards out on the floor, we worked together to pick out which yoga poses we wanted to do and then we decided on the best order for the poses. It worked well for kids who might other wise have a hard time getting focused on yoga. The partner poses were great for supporting interaction and simple fun. These cards also help to give meaning to each pose before you try to actually do them together. Breathing and a few moments of quiet? Yes, we did that, too.
Mark Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and the novel Fishboy. His short stories and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Vogue, and GQ. He is the recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their three sons.
Jackson, MS. For us that has been a lot of different things – a great environment, a well chosen selection, first editions for the collector, and in recent years a dynamic website and blog. John’s goal to give Jackson a great bookstore is also why we have all of theses book signings and readings you’re always hearing about. The chance to meet and hear a great literary writer read from his or her book is a wonderful experience – we often have prize winning authors, but we also have lesser known authors who are up and coming or who have written great books and of course we have a lot of non-fiction book signings as well, history, philosophy, etc.
Lemuria has teamed up with R.U.F. (Reformed University Fellowship) and Belhaven University to bring Keller to Jackson. We set up the event with Keller’s Publisher, R.U.F. is helping with coordination and marketing, and Belhaven is hosting the event at their Center for the Arts. (click the