Barnes & Noble has decentralized operations, allowing each store to act like a local bookshop and giving more control to booksellers in deciding which titles to sell and display.
Barnes & Noble is leveraging its scale to build a purchasing and distribution pipeline that competes with Amazon, aiming to create a more engaging and community-centric bookstore experience.
Barnes & Noble emphasizes the importance of inclusive spaces that foster dialogue and diverse perspectives, while reserving the right to exclude content that goes beyond acceptable boundaries.
Deep dives
Decentralized Operations and Empowering Bookstores
Under the leadership of CEO James Daunt, Barnes & Noble has undergone significant changes to save the struggling bookstore chain. One key change has been the decentralization of operations, allowing each store to function more like an independent bookshop. Store managers are given more autonomy in deciding which titles to sell and how to display them. This shift has helped foster a sense of ownership and accountability among booksellers. In addition, Barnes & Noble is leveraging its scale to build a purchasing and distribution pipeline that competes with Amazon. These changes aim to create a more engaging and community-centric bookstore experience.
Preserving the Importance of Physical Bookstores
Despite the dominance of online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble believes that physical bookstores are essential for proper book discovery and browsing experiences. CEO James Daunt emphasizes the unique value of in-store visits, where customers can meet others, engage with booksellers, and explore a richly textured selection of books. While acknowledging competition from big box retailers, Daunt emphasizes the democractic and inclusive nature of Barnes & Noble stores, where everyone, from babies to the elderly, can find a place of enjoyment and connection. Barnes & Noble sees itself as a champion of diversity of thought and values, while maintaining standards that exclude books promoting racism, anti-Semitism, or other egregious content.
Navigating Culture Wars and Book Bans
As a national bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble faces pressure and navigating the current cultural landscape and ongoing culture wars. CEO James Daunt acknowledges the challenges and the need for the company to engage in respectful and intelligent debates over contentious issues. While decisions on book selection are decentralized to individual store managers, Daunt asserts that boycotting authors based on their personal opinions or views is not in line with Barnes & Noble's values. The company strives to offer books from various political and social perspectives, promoting a wide range of voices and perspectives. Daunt emphasizes the importance of keeping bookstores as inclusive spaces that foster dialogue while reserving the right to exclude content that goes beyond acceptable boundaries.
Decentralizing Book Selling and Cultural Relevance
The podcast episode explores the importance of decentralizing book selling from a centralized location to individual stores. It discusses how this shift allows for a more diverse and representative selection of books based on the communities each store serves. By reflecting the local community's interests and promoting engagement with cultural issues, bookstores can provide a healthier and more inclusive environment. The episode also touches on the criticism Barnes and Noble faced in the past for imposing a white middle-class cultural hegemony, highlighting the need to broaden the industry and appeal to a wider audience.
The Role of Bookstores in Curating and Recommending Books
The episode emphasizes the importance of bookstores as curated spaces that offer personalized recommendations. It contrasts bookstores with online platforms like Amazon that focus on efficiency and brand-name authors, but struggle with discovery. Bookstores provide opportunities to discover books one may never have considered, fostering a sense of serendipity and expanding readers' horizons. The episode also highlights the role of booksellers in driving book sales, particularly through online communities like book talk on TikTok. The focus on curation and personal recommendations distinguishes bookstores from AI-generated books and self-publishing platforms, as bookstores prioritize quality writing, publication standards, and the physicality of books.
In this installment of our Centennial Series on companies that are over 100 years old, we are talking to Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. The last few decades have thrown some hurdles in Barnes & Noble’s way, however. Far from being the monster that inspired the plot of the movie You’ve Got Mail, it’s had to face down a new Goliath called Amazon and the general decline of big-box retail stores. After years of closures and declining revenues, Barnes & Noble was bought out by activist investors in 2019, who installed Daunt as CEO, and he’s managed to turn things around by doing two main things.
First, he has decentralized operations of the stores, letting each store act like a local bookshop and giving his booksellers more control over what titles they sell and display. He immediately ended a system that allowed publishers to pay for special placement in bookstores, which he said corrupted the entire system in service of short-term profits. Second, he’s using Barnes & Noble’s scale to build a purchasing and distribution pipeline that serves as the rest of the book industry’s competitor to Amazon.
We get into all of it — the culture wars, J.K. Rowling, book ban bills in states across the country, and how Barnes & Noble went from being the bully on the block to competing with Amazon.
