Quote:
Originally Posted by RHWright
I'm going to throw a flag on this common misconception. To my knowledge, B&N has never "run" anyone out of business. To my mind, that implies a targeted, conscious, concerted effort to drive others out of business.
Most of the book stores I've seen suffer and go under from competition with B&N was a product of their own choices. Many of the owners/managers were nice people, who got into it because they loved books, but had no great head for business. They had survived in a certain type of market, where they were the only choice around. Then faced with the competition of a bigger, stronger business they caved.
Some would say that B&N's bestseller pricing was predatory, but it was not below cost. Many indys were able to adapt and change. Many didn't.
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I lived in several cities and towns growing up. Almost all of them had healthy, local bookstores which competed fine with the mall stores, PickWick, B. Dalton's, Waldenbooks, etc. When B&N came to town, they almost all went out of business within a year or two -- as did the smaller mall bookstores. So it really doesn't matter to me if B&N was particularly "predatory" or not, the end result is that they ran out the smaller bookstores. Hence, I don't feel that sorry for them if they refuse to compete with Amazon. And I don't really consider Amazon particularly "predatory" either -- they just want to sell their books.