This is true for you and other discerning readers. A lot of people just want the new Jack Reacher. I doubt there is enough volume or profitability here but who knows.
Interestingly, the only department to actually make money in B&N in the last few years, is the board game section. I think this is how they win. Being more of a general edutainment destination and focusing on kids stuff. 6 page kids picture books cost $7. Parents and grandparents will drop lots on "smart" toys and gifts for kids. I'd be all in on this, expanding with more play area and story times making it a fun place to visit. They already smartly dropped CDs as they have to ability to compete there except maybe to have new releases at the register as an impulse purchases but streaming mostly killed that.
> This is true for you and other discerning readers. A lot of people just want the new Jack Reacher.
I don't know what the experience is in the US, but in the UK, Waterstones' insight has been that it's not worth competing for those customers. They'll just buy the new Jack Reacher from a supermarket or, at best, WH Smiths (the stationery store). To be price-competitive with the supermarkets, you have to discount so heavily that you'll lose money on every sale anyway.
Waterstones have targeted the discerning reader and are doing well at it. This appears to be an attempt to replicate Waterstones in the US.
Our local B&N does book readings for kids a couple times a week. I imagine most do. This drives a lot of kids & parents in. The kids play with a train & do arts & crafts afterwards. Everyone gets a coupon for Starbucks & they typically either have a treat or buy a book before they leave.
In a lot of ways B&N is like an additional public library where you can buy the books & games or just browse. I think that's what makes it different than Amazon. I also think that's their closer competition.
I worked at Starbucks in Store Planning while they were trying to figure out how to makes their stores be a "third place" (early 1990s). Small stages for unplugged sets. Fire places. Big tables for study groups.
I'm just a computer guy, but I always felt Starbuck's merchandising strategy sabotaged those efforts.
WotC had great success for a short while as board gaming host, destination. Mox, the largest I know of today, seems to be successful. https://www.moxboardinghouse.com
I would love to see Barnes & Noble pivoting to become a third place. Especially something kid friendly. (My kid was super into Pokemon.)
Basically a public library vibe with a cafe, that also sells some stuff, located in a mall.
Way back in the day, this was ultimately why my high school friends and I went from frequenting Barnes & Noble to frequenting Borders. B&N had the overall nicer environment and a better book selection, but Borders had a halfway decent café. That made going there a better social event: We could grab a table and some coffees and sit around and chat. Anyone who wanted to spend a while browsing the books could do so without feeling hurried by the people who didn't, because they had somewhere reasonable to sit and hang out.
It's a bit like that with my favorite indie bookstore, too. It's a haul for me to get there, but still occasionally schlep myself over there when I have an afternoon to myself, because I enjoy the experience of buying a new book and then sitting down to start reading it over a glass of wine in their café.
B&N could be that now, but they would need to spruce up their café. As it is, it's like an airport coffee shop, only even more unpleasant.
I'm not sure this model scales if you have all the rental, staffing, and admin costs of a giant bookshop next to your cafe.
Indies can make it work because their costs are relatively small, and if they're good local people get attached to them.
Waterstones in the UK can just about make it work, because they choose not-too-large middle class locations and design their interiors to match.
B&N don't seem to have understood the appeal of a cozy vibe. The stores always feel like a book warehouse that's trying to impress you with its sheer scale rather than somewhere you can chill on your own terms.
So it's hard to imagine the same model working for a big corporate paying for big box/mall floor space.
Interesting. I bought two games there this past Christmas. They had them- Scrabble, which I went there to get, and some board game based on the movie Jaws that I had never heard of. So I impulse-bought a board game there, and I'm not a board-game guy.
Interestingly, the only department to actually make money in B&N in the last few years, is the board game section. I think this is how they win. Being more of a general edutainment destination and focusing on kids stuff. 6 page kids picture books cost $7. Parents and grandparents will drop lots on "smart" toys and gifts for kids. I'd be all in on this, expanding with more play area and story times making it a fun place to visit. They already smartly dropped CDs as they have to ability to compete there except maybe to have new releases at the register as an impulse purchases but streaming mostly killed that.