Category: Bookselling

A huge focus of James Daunt’s keynote speech to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) was how Barnes and Noble is bouncing back from the retail apocalypse. It also included a lot about mundane changes like new furniture to major overhauls of how books are even shelved!

One big change is that stores can now take responsibility for stocking their shelves — a real game changer and an advantage to authors who can get their books stocked at the local stores.

Individual stores will now decide which books they want to stock. Publishers used to buy a place on the shelves, but no longer have that option.

B&N has shifted from how it operated in the past, providing a much-needed opportunity boost for indie and small press publishers.

“It’s so smart of Barnes and Noble to position themselves as less of a big retailer and more as an indie bookstore,” said Miral Sattar of LearnSelfPublishingFast and author of the Self-Pub and Book Marketing newsletter. “There are lots of ways to get your print books into physical Barnes and Noble stores, but I always tell indie authors to distribute through IngramSpark for the print book distribution. In general, bookstores are more amenable to ordering copies from places that aren’t competitors (like Amazon).

“So if you want to get your physical book into a Barnes and Noble, distribute your paperback and hardback through IngramSpark, reach out to your local Barnes and Noble, make sure your book meets the Barnes and Noble requirements, and send your book to the small press department.”

Now that they have a chance to reach the shelves of Barnes & Noble, independent authors and small publishers can focus on forging relationships with local B&N branches. They at least now have a chance of competing against massive advertising campaigns and shelf space contracts from the Big Five.

Is Barnes and Noble doomed to Borders’ fate?

Borders’ liquidation this summer should have been Barnes & Noble’s grand opportunity to grab a sizable market share, just as the warehouse book-selling superstores benefited in the past when they ruthlessly forced countless smaller and independent bookstores to board up and call it quits.

But something isn’t quite right at Barnes & Noble. Call it bad zeitgeist or whatever you want, but the vibe is all wrong. A quick check of our local store this weekend revealed aisle upon aisle, indeed entire sections of the store, stocked with non-book items, junk we’d never have seen a few years ago. One would’ve thought that putting out their own proprietary eReader (Nook) should have kept Barnes & Noble in the game, but a price-slashing war with Amazon is exposing the retailer’s financial shortcomings.

These times, they are a-changing, and Barnes & Noble can kiss their glory days goodbye.

The bookseller just emerged from another dreadful quarter. Take the Nook and its digital downloads out of the equation and the stark reality is that sales actually fell by 11% at its superstores. Unlike Amazon, which has a habit of always turning a profit, Barnes & Noble posted another wider-than-expected deficit.

Losing money and market share is a recurring theme at their superstores, and stacks of the Steve Jobs biography at a 30% markdown isn’t going to staunch the bleeding. Barnes & Noble has missed Wall Street’s profit targets in each of the past six quarters, and industry analysts see nothing but losses for all of fiscal 2012.

We’re now heading into the Christmas season, by far the most profitable part of the year for booksellers, but with so many consumers purchasing gifts cheaper online (including books), how many will be crowding the registers at your local Barnes & Noble? For the real book lover in your family, wouldn’t a Kindle make a more attractive gift? Forget the Nook. Kindle owns the eReader market.