In the age of online shopping, are bookstores irrelevant? The new CEO of big-box bookstore chain Barnes & Noble doesn’t think so. If they were, why would Amazon be opening physical bookstores across the country, with a new one opening in New York City tomorrow? He sees this growth as proof that bookstores are still relevant. [More]
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Barnes & Noble Blames Coloring Books And Adele For 8% Decline In Sales
By 3.2.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Investors don’t want to hear that a retailer’s sales are down, so when Barnes & Noble had to explain to its backers and to industry analysts why comparable stores sales figures were down 8.3% over last year, the bookseller had some scapegoats to blame: coloring books and Adele. [More]
Barnes & Noble Pulls Latest Nook Over Faulty Charger
By 1.16.17
Less than two months after Barnes & Noble launched its latest Nook tablet, the company has pulled the devices from physical and online stores after reports that the tablet’s charging adapter contains a flaw. [More]
Colleges Give Up On Bookstores, Just Send Students To Amazon
By 9.16.16
Amazon pickup points on college campuses, which have been sprouting up at schools across the country, have two purposes: they exist to alleviate the strain that college students with Prime memberships put on campus mail services, and to help kill college bookstores. Bookstores are responding: not with price-matching or anything wacky like that, but by dropping books from their merchandise assortment. [More]
Barnes & Noble Founder: Retail Climate Is Terrible, Sales Will Keep Falling
By 9.8.16
Leonard Riggio, the founder of Barnes & Noble, was supposed to retire by now. Instead, he is serving as interim CEO after the company fired imported Canadian CEO Ronald Boire. He started the bookstore that grew into the Barnes & Noble chain more than 50 years ago, and he shared some important wisdom during the company’s earnings call today: things are really terrible in retail right now. [More]
Barnes & Noble Decides New CEO ‘Was Not A Good Fit’
By 8.16.16
Barnes & Noble is ditching its CEO of about a year, Ronald Boire, saying in a statement today that he “was not a good fit for the organization” and that the company would begin their search for a new CEO immediately. [More]
Barnes & Noble Is Starting A Restaurant Group: Wait, What?
By 6.23.16
Barnes & Noble is looking at ways to keep people coming to their stores in the future, and that will mean opening prototype stores later this year. One unexpected thing that the prototype stores will have will be a restaurant. Nope, not just a Starbucks or a cafe: a restaurant. [More]
Barnes & Noble Is Opening 4 New Prototype Stores, Closing Fewer Than Expected
By 3.3.16
It was just three years ago that Barnes & Noble announced that it planned to close about one-third of the 689 stores that it had at the time by 2023. Things have apparently changed in the book business since then, because the bookstore chain announced today that it will open four new stores and close eight by the end of the year. [More]
Barnes & Noble Shuts Down Third-Party Marketplace For Over A Week, Shrugs
By 7.8.15
Twenty years ago, you would not have been allowed to set up your own little kiosk in the accessories department at Walmart selling the same sunglasses at slightly lower prices. Yet that’s exactly what e-commerce sites let third-party sellers do, and it usually works smoothly for everyone. Unless you’re a seller on Barnes & Noble’s Marketplace site, which shut down with no warning more than a week ago. Sellers are still locked out. [More]
Barnes & Noble Decides To Keep Nook Instead Of Spinning It Off As Planned
By 2.26.15
Barnes & Noble apparently isn’t ready to let go of Nook, announcing today that while it’ll still be spinning off its college textbook business as planned, it’ll be holding on to its e-book division after all. [More]
Barnes & Noble Will Buy Back Microsoft’s Share Of The Nook Business
By 12.4.14
At first upon hearing that Barnes & Noble will be buying back the stake Microsoft bought in its Nook business in 2012, one might have the idea that Barnes & Noble really believes in the Nook again. But no, it’s just bringing the e-reader business back into the fold so it can prepare to spin it off in a sale next year. [More]
Barnes & Noble Now Taking On Toy Stores To Increase Sales
By 9.10.14
Once upon a time, a book store sold books and a toy store sold toys. That is not the way things work now, though. And Barnes & Noble is a prime example of companies selling items outside of their traditional products in an attempt to lift their bottom-line – and it’s working. [More]
Barnes & Noble, Google Partner To Take On Amazon With Same-Day Book Shipping
By 8.7.14
The spirit of competition has a tendency to create odd bedfellows. Or so seems to be the case for Barnes & Noble and Google, whose partnership to offer same-day shipping could prove to be a formidable rival to Amazon. [More]
Barnes & Noble To Train Employees To Not Be Jerks To Breastfeeding Moms
By 7.9.14
In spite of the fact that every state in the U.S. has laws that allow nursing moms to feed their babies in public, there are still frequent reports (some possibly fictional) of breastfeeding mothers being told to cover up or leave stores, restaurants, and airplanes. In the wake of one such incident at one of its stores in New York state earlier this year, Barnes & Noble has agreed to train its employees that it’s not illegal for a mother to give sustenance to her young child. [More]
Barnes & Noble To Finally Spin Off Nook Into Separate Business
By 6.25.14
These days when we think of Barnes & Noble, there’s always a second thought immediately after — “What the heck is going on with that company?” After years of whispers, exits, and declining sales, Barnes & Noble says it’s finally going to go ahead and spin off its Nook business, separating it from the retail part of the company. [More]
Barnes & Noble Might Have Smaller Stores, Still Won’t Price-Match Own Website
By 4.18.14
It’s pretty intuitive that you don’t need a lot of retail floor space to sell e-books. Even a display of e-reader gadgets doesn’t take up as much room as shelf after shelf of books. that’s why absolutely no one should be surprised that Barnes & Noble might be considering stores with a smaller footprint. [More]
Barnes & Noble Turns Profit, Considers Splitting Itself Up
By 2.26.14
Barnes & Noble consists of three businesses: college bookstores, regular bookstores, and the Nook e-reader device and platform. In today’s earnings call, new CEO Michael Huseby reported that the company is again turning a profit, and that they’re “studying” separating the different parts of the business. [Reuters] [More]
Will Focusing On Digital Products Save Or Doom Barnes & Noble?
By 1.10.14
This past summer, Barnes & Noble announced that they’d be finding a third-party manufacturer for their Nook line of e-readers and tablets. Then their CEO resigned, mostly due to the failure of Nook hardware and content to save the company. The head of the Nook division took charge of the company, and has now officially been named CEO. So what will happen with the Nook now? [More]
