Bummer. Local Barnes & Noble closing

We had a new minimall (open less than 1o years) here in NNJ: Linens & Things, Circuit City, Old Navy and Borders. Guess how many stores remain open?

None.

Throw in the shuttered Saturn dealer and Houlihan's just down the block.

 

When you order a book on Kindle for $8 - $12 - no tax / no shipping/ no fuel used to go to store it makes it even more amazing.

 

Royalities are based on list.

 

I'm just stunned that the Barnes and Noble and other big book stores have hung around as long as they have. I want to walk in there and scream, "You can everything for half the price on Amazon!"

 

Worked for Barnes & Noble for about two years during college, couple things to mention. B&N is really a couple different companies, despite appearances: the online retailer, the "regular" retail stores, and the campus bookstores (many of which are not clearly B&N and are branded as the college's bookstore, with only minimal B&N signage). That's why you can't do in-store pickup as a shipping option and you can't return online stuff to stores - not saying they couldn't set it up that way, since they certainly could.

I worked at a campus bookstore - UPenn's, it was a massive store - and was always told that the main retail operation was doing poorly, while the online retail operation was doing alright, and the campus stores were raking in money hand over fist. Which is no surprise, since textbook sales are insanely ludicrous, especially for used textbooks. Used book buyback is generally 5-10% of retail price, and at campus stores they sort out stuff professors use each year from ones they'll just sell back to a wholesaler. For the ones that profs use each year, they make a gigantic profit. And they still make a nice profit on the wholesale ones.

Retail books are a losing proposition in many ways, especially for a big store like B&N. They have a massive inventory and relatively little turnover except in popular releases (which do make a fair bit of money). I doubt the campus stores are going away any time soon, even with online textbook sales - which hit them pretty hard, but it's a consistent % of students that do it, so they take that into account for inventory. Plus a lot of students are lazy and wait until the last minute, so they've got that going for 'em, too.

 

It'll be in your contract. Or check with your agent.

It used to depend more on the publisher's selling price to the retailer than what the retailer sold it for.

Normally your royalties are a percentage of the suggested retail but if the publisher sells it to a retailer/wholesaler below a certain price, you get a percentage of the net.

 

Plus these days some colleges that give out grant money for textbook purchases stipulate you have to spend it in the campus/B&N store.

 

A Hollywood Video in a great location - right in front of WalMart/Lowes - closed right before Christmas with no notice (of course, it just happened to be across from a longer-established BlockBuster).

If Movie Gallery - which has been in my town longer than any movie-game rental place - closes down, that just leaves BlockBuster and the increasingly-more-popular McDonald's Red Box.

 

Blockbuster will be gone soon.

 

I think within the next year or two, the only place we'll be able to rent a movie will be at a Red Box.

 

I think the whole business model will be moving on line. It's pretty much there now in various forms.

 

Yup.

We had a local independent video store close just recently. It went all the way back to the time when video stores were split in two: one half was VHS, the other half Beta. And long before the chains moved in.

It was a big store---probably 2,000 or more square feet and had a great selection of old flicks as well as the new releases. Beat the crap out of Blockbuster and Rogers (our biggee up here) in terms of selection.

I remember talking to the owner about six or seven years ago and he said, "This business model will be done in about five years. I have to look at other ways of making a living"