The last time I bought a book at Barnes & Noble was 2012. I paid $16.99 and immediately regretted it. I could have gotten the same book on Amazon for $10.99, and qualified for free shipping if I threw in some other items. I didn't read the book until 3 years later, so it's not like I was chomping at the bit to start it right away. Lesson learned.
Barnes & Noble stores are too big and too spread out. They're impersonal and pretentious. There are too many titles in too many categories, yet not enough titles in the category that I'm shopping for. And they're expensive.
If you like browsing for books, it's a fine place to go and see what's available. But if you're looking for something specific, something that isn't/wasn't a bestseller, forget it. Sure, each Barnes & Noble store has a ton of inventory, but it's only a fraction of what's out there. The competition, Amazon, has a vastly superior inventory thanks to third-party sellers. Price- and selection-wise, you can't beat Amazon.
It seems to me there are two retail market models for physical books. One is to sell oodles of the Big 5's darlings. This is what Costco and Wal-Mart do. You can capture half of the 690 million physical book sales in America per year with fewer than a thousand titles. You don't need a big store for this to work. The other retail market model is to sell everything, which is what Amazon and its third-party sellers do. Barnes & Noble is flailing about in no man's land.
I was stunned to learn Barnes & Noble is responsible for a fifth of online book sales. I thought it would be lower. What's holding them back is ebooks. Nothing against the Nook, but I just couldn't get behind it. Barnes & Noble and the Nook is an unnatural marriage. Reading differences aside, the physical and digital marketplaces are completely different consumer experiences. Since Amazon's marketplace is digital, I'm more comfortable buying an ebook from them.
They chose the platform name Nook because it calls to mind a cozy corner. Plus it rhymes with book! Walk into a Barnes & Noble, though, and there's nothing cozy about it. The Kindle is better branded and arrived 2 years ahead of the Nook. Despite getting a late start, Barnes & Noble could have marketed themselves as the go-to ebook platform for self-published authors, but they missed the boat. When I offer my ebooks for sale on the Barnes & Noble website, it takes them months to approve it. Amazon takes a day or two.
It's a post-coronavirus world now. For the time being, Barnes & Noble is exclusively an online operation, where they lag behind Amazon in physical book sales and ebook sales. And they have a massive overhead, with 600 retail locations sitting empty. Hello Sears and Toys 'R' Us.
The future looked grim for Barnes & Noble even before the coronavirus. Their revenue has fallen over 10% in the last 4 years, and they were recently acquired by a hedge fund. The new CEO James Daunt is famous for opening profitable book stores in Britain. But what about turning around flagging stores that struggle to fill bloated retail space?
A dramatic restructuring of the market is overdue. Readers want books fast and cheap, and they put a premium on personal interaction. The conditions are ripe for an indie renaissance. If you want to join me on this journey, sign up for my mailing list. As a thank you for signing up, you'll get a free digital copy of my space colonization book, Tendrils to the Moon . I have also made available the first 4 chapters of my space adventure book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.
As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.
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