Let’s look at this picture
Once or twice a week when I was growing up my parents and I would go to Barnes and Noble or Borders to look through book and get a coffee. From time to time my Dad would walk out with a business book or my mom with a fiction book.
A lot has changed since I was growing up a few short years ago. The last sentence being the big giveaway.
My girlfriend and I are sitting at a Barnes and Noble in Des Moines. It’s absolutely gigantic; two floors and a full size Starbucks. But the only thing we bought was coffee for the two of us. She’s sitting across reading a Cosmo I bought for her at Target and I’m looking through books on the Kindle store.
That’s the modern picture. I own a Nook at present, but I have no interest in filling it up with books since its nails are quickly hitting the coffin.
Nooks and Books
The Nook is dead. But it’s going to die hard and at a deep cost to Barnes and Noble, unless they do something about it. Essentially BN has two options: concede to Amazon now and be applauded, concede to Amazon later and be laughed at.
I understand the argument for books with the Nook. They have a pretty impressive selection, you can read for free in any store, and the GlowLight is a really nice device. But that’s where it stops. eReaders have become so much bigger than just reading. BN expects me to buy a Nook HD/HD+ just to do what I do on any other Android tablet? There’s no ecosystem that benefits BN and the interface is ugly, slow, and unintuitive. What’s the point?
Amazon has a great content selection and I can use my Prime membership? Sold.
Let’s fix this. Create an App for the Amazon App Store. This app will allow users to take a picture of any book in a BN store giving users the option to purchase the physical book right there, ship it to their home, read an extended sample, or purchase it on Kindle.
So what’s the point?
Amazon has one major problem, I can’t feel their products. I come into a BN and feel the book, maybe I just wind up buying the physical thing there and skip the eReader entirely. If I don’t purchase the book through Barnes and Noble I might still buy a cup of coffee or one of the various trinkets sold here. Essentially you’re creating a physical space for your Kindle and BN doesn’t have to worry about supporting the infrastructure for the Nook/losing money on the Nook.
Now we come to books.
When I came to Barnes and Noble, I was suddenly inspired to buy dozens of new books (the reason I was on Amazon in the first place). But there were so many books and so many sections of the store which looked like they hadn’t been touched in days. Get rid of them.
Three or four copies in stock of each book they sell. The books will be in four separate sections: kids, new releases, classics, and a weekly rotating section of random books.
Chairs, chairs, chairs.
It’s a struggle to find chairs in a BN outside of the cafe. I didn’t come to BN to stand and look at books (or sit in a hard wood chair); I wanted to sit and be lost in a good book. Put those overstuffed chairs everywhere in the store.
Place a stage for author signings in the back of the store. If there’s no authors available, host writing workshops.
After you’ve done all of that. Cut your stores in half all of that space adds to your bottom line.
Barnes and Noble has an opportunity to make a great success story in the midst of this digital revolution. At present, they’re on track to become as dead as the Newspapers they sell.
