Barnes & Noble went from near-bust to back in action and the CEO of the nation’s largest remaining book chain credits a revived, independent-minded experience for helping the company take on Amazon.
In a new segment on “PBS News Hour” (above), James Daunt said the once-mighty Barnes & Noble has come “back from the brink” after closing hundreds of stores around the U.S., including a 22-year-old location in downtown Seattle in 2020.
With a renewed focus on selling books instead of lots of other stuff, and buoyed by an increase in readers during the pandemic, Barnes & Noble opened nearly 60 stores around the country last year and it has plans for 60 more in 2025. The company, which peaked at 726 locations nationwide in 2008, has approximately 600 stores today.
Amazon got its start as an online bookseller, and on its way to disrupting multiple retail verticals, the company’s e-commerce dominance took a toll on physical bookstores, including Barnes & Noble. Amazon even opened physical Amazon Books locations, a concept that lasted about seven years before they were shut down in 2022.
Daunt, a veteran bookseller who started his own British chain and rescued another, previously told The Guardian that “Amazon doesn’t care about books,” adding that to the Seattle-based tech giant, books are “just another thing in a warehouse.”
On PBS this week, Daunt said he now sees Amazon, which accounts for more than 50% of the book market, as “a massive positive for what it is to be a great bookseller.” He said Amazon has “taken all the boring books out of our stores,” reasoning that huge sections dedicated to such things as medical professionals have been removed and shoppers can go on Amazon for those books.
As for the not-so-boring books that Barnes & Noble and Amazon both still sell, Daunt believes the experience in a physical store will win out. Customers engage with other books and other customers about books.
“You will have an experience, and when you walk out of the store with [a book] in your bag it will lift you,” Daunt said. “It’s the same book, but I promise you it’s a better book, and the reading of it will be more pleasurable because you bought it in a bookstore.”
