The unnecessary demise of Barnes and Noble

Post by EamonnMR » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #34

aaron-lebo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't believe it's wrong to say you are a very niche customer. Their selection of Hemingway isn't much better, but that's because they've got limited floor space. Not sure how they could solve your specific issue unless they had much bigger locations.

Is it so unrealistic? When I wanted a copy of _Beowulf_ in 2003 or so, what I did was I wandered into my local Borders and found it, and compared 5 or 6 different books; I ultimately settled on Heaney's translation which I liked the bits I read the most of, and then picked the volume with the most additional historical essays providing context. And _Beowulf_ is surely less read than Homer.

Post by internetman55 » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #137

sseveran wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the beginning, especially about the deck chairs as its an expression I often use. Let's be clear its people like me who killed Barnes and Noble not its executives. I have two or three sets of bookshelves downstairs in my office filled with books, many of which were bought at B&N. I spent hours sipping coffee in their cafe's. Then I bought my kindle. And I basically have not been back since. When I do buy…

The tragedy, for me, is that while I agree with most of what you've said and my transition to ebooks has been similar to yours, I've also begun realizing what we're losing by moving away from brick-and-mortar retail. I look back on my childhood in the 80s and 90s and remember retail as not only fulfilling the need of acquiring stuff but also as a central meeting place. Going downtown to buy stuff was an activity as m…

Post by tytytytytytytyt » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:41 AM UTC

trynumber9 wrote: post #81

ukulele wrote: post #55

I can see how the author views this as company mismanagement, but I'd offer a possible counter: Online is killing retail, full stop. High touch sales models everywhere have lost profitablity due to "showrooming" -- curation and upselling aren't profitable for B&N, and they won't ever be again. To adapt, management needs to move to a lower touch model based on thin margins, web sales, and simpler stores. To do this, t…

Except, you know, lying about the upcoming layoffs.

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:45 AM UTC

yock wrote: post #61

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…

> Now, it's definitely sad when people lose their jobs, but that's kind of the devil's bargain we've made with capitalism. It's not so much a "bargain" as it is how we discover which jobs are useful. Capitalism is very efficient at exposing useless labor, and this is a good thing. Having a bunch of humans laboring at jobs no one needs or wants is wasteful.

Post by a-nikolaev » Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 5:49 AM UTC