Barnes & Noble Can Fight Off Amazon by Embracing the Literary Community
A focus on cultivating a community that literary enthusiasts can back may just be its saving grace
Walking into Barnes and Noble gives me a giddy feeling every time — in essence, its a bastion of knowledge. It’s choreographed tables of wide ranging topics couple nicely next to its shelves of glisteningly clean books that beg you to take a peek further. It’s a homey, comfy environment and a den of unknown treasures. Sometimes I find myself there not for any inclination to purchase a book, but out of sheer interest in what it offers. But for all the good aspects of its store design, Barnes & Noble can’t seem to keep pace with its massive neighbor Amazon, which wistfully casts aside website and store design in favor of insanely low prices. The competitive battle has struck hard at B&N’s revenues, which have fallen each year for the past nine years. After Amazon’s ruthless culling of Borders in 2011, many signaled B&N would follow suit and announce a capitulation of defeat to its Amazon overlord.
Most recently, however, a private equity firm has given Barnes and Noble new life, by purchasing the company for a reported $683 million — a far cry from the $1.04 billion value it held in 2015. Nevertheless it represents a resounding confidence booster to a chain that made numerous ‘Bankruptcy Stocks to Watch’ lists at the beginning on this year. The purchasing firm, Elliot Advisers, currently manages the UK bookstore chain Waterstones, which it turned around among sluggish sales in the last few years to a road of profitability. Although it hopes to sprinkle its magic formula again on Barnes & Noble, the new CEO Jim Daunt has been rather coy about their approach, maintaining that they plan to focus on the “core principles of good bookselling.” A vague statement nonetheless, Waterstones today derives its success from curating each Waterstones store to fit the needs of the local community it resides in. It refrains from taking the modern approach to retailing — which aims keep the store design consistent across all stores — in order to promote a more unique and inviting setting akin to an independent bookstore. It’s an unconventional method that may actually work well with Barnes & Noble’s habit of offering a hodgepodge of gift worthy items, while also trying to act as both a book cafe, children’s play center, and music store.
While some feel B&N’s store design to be inviting and warm, many others might feel overwhelmed with the varieties of products, unable to discern where the Non-Fiction section may be in a jungle of boardgames, Harry Potter wands, and Vinyl records. On the other hand, the variety of products turn B&N into the perfect gift store for all those shoppers needing a last minute gift for their loved ones. But each new addition to the multitude of products means sacrificing space for B&N’s core product — books. It’s suffered a terrible loss of focus that has pushed consumers towards truly independent bookstores, which serve a single unwavering purpose. The chain has tried to corral its lost customers with a number of initiatives like launching local book clubs and offering exclusive editions of books. But despite these (delayed) proactive measures, they’ll need to do a lot more to woo customers away from Amazon’s prices.
It’s new parent company Elliot Advisers understands that each community brings a different audience to its shores. In order to to stress the community feel, a bookstore’s layout must cater to the tastes of the region — a suburban B&N may highlight Children’s books over vinyl music, while a city neighborhood may value its author events and bookclubs over a space used for stacking magazines. If the chain could shift to acting as a community center and place of engagement then sales will naturally follow it its path.
If each individual store carves out an individual brand for themselves, can Barnes & Noble’s crucial online presence replicate that?
While Elliot Advisers may have a plan to better embrace the community within each store, the online literary community remains the more elusive demographic. Reading is inherently a private activity, and doesn’t offer the same social benefit as many other hobbies, a quality that has translated over to the internet. Reading’s sedentary nature means online discussions happen usually after a book is read by a large contingent of people, or in the anticipation of upcoming book releases. Barnes & Noble has tried to promote book news circulation on its own website, but its often hidden behind its main store front page on some back alley blogpost — hardly a place where users would flock to for their news fix.
The online community for any fandom or particular interest has often resonated most with those that don’t have close ones to engage with their hobby. But in the same way gaming fandom has thrived in the vicinity of the internet, book enthusiasts have nested well in the throes of the web. Fans wishing to discuss and reflect on their favorite series of books from The Hunger Games to the Millennium series have found comfort in online boards and Reddit communities. These nuanced discussions are likely better suited for dedicated forums, but for the average literature enthusiast, the internet has not provided a distinct platform to meet the needs. Goodreads might be the best example of the sociability of the literary world, but much to the chagrin of B&N, its owned by its biggest competitor, Amazon. Users can catalog the books they’ve read and not read, and connect with friends to see similar the progress of their reading. It syncs with your Amazon Kindle account and is flooded with hyperlinks back to Amazon’s shopping pages. It can be a useful tool for book discovery as well, as the enormous amount of user generated book lists from “best 21st science fiction” to “top novels from Japanese authors” aim to meet the craving for finding unknown titles. Any of its 85 million users can post and discuss any topic on Goodreads’ message boards, which on first sight have an antiquated design, but serve the basic needs of the obsessed. Goodreads promise, though, is thoroughly hampered by its parent company’s neglect. The site is riddled with performance and design issues ranging from a slow and clunky interface to a laughable recommendation system. Amazon has focused its efforts more on monetizing its user base than exploring the power of the literary community, which leaves B&N a good opportunity to cozy up to the discounted community.
Through all the waning success of Goodreads, Barnes & Noble has remained reticent on striking ties to the online community. It has no equivalent for its Nook platform, and as noted above, it’s ‘Barnes & Noble blog’ is sequestered behind its main shopping page, doomed to never be seen without intrusive ads or tenacious investigating. Furthermore, I posit that online literary engagement should be wholly separate from the shoppers sphere. A neutral host where users can read up on their favorite authors or upcoming releases shouldn’t be plagued by ‘20% off’ ads. Now building up its own response to Goodreads would be a monumental task, and that’s why an acquisition of a site like LitHub could turn the tides of B&N’s limited immersion into the online book reader community.
LitHub is a rich resource for book lovers, and it’s been evolving since its inception in 2015. You can find book news, well written essays on a range of book topics, and a critics compilation of high profile books called Book Marks that resembles the book counterpart to Rotten Tomatoes. It’s Twitter and Faceboook feeds are very active, and it has managed to entice authors to give short excerpts of their upcoming books. These book recommendations could have links pointing to B&N’s website, but it should be careful to refrain from inundating casual readers with the need to buy buy buy. The purpose is to grow the passion for reading, thereby increasing the number of potential future customer while galvanizing more of its core audience. B&N doesn’t need LitHub to integrate with its Nook platform or pull all of its content into its main shopping page. LitHub can act solely as a place for book enthusiasts, not a place for those wishing to purchase a book. Segregating the two spheres demonstrates an understanding of book consumerism vs book fandom. B&N also has the financial ability to grow the site — it certainly has enough clout to to bring in top-tier authors for interviews. As this audience grows, more connections back to its store page will be imperative to directing sales from its dedicated fans.
There are dozens of ways that B&N can hook internet audiences. A podcast about book news and curated author interviews could draw in morning commuters or a Youtube channel highlighting book trailers and recommendations would intrigue YA and millennial audiences alike. Whatever B&N decides on, the tenacity and speed of the action is imperative to energizing the sleepy current online populace.
The bleak uphill battle with Amazon has defined Barnes & Noble for the last decade. But as Amazon struggles with publishers over its neglect of book embargoes, copyright infringements and general price gouging, Barnes & Noble has a prime opportunity to capture back the impassioned reading community and present itself as a companion to the literary cause as opposed to a money-seeking twin of Amazon.
