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As a long-time B&N customer, I hope the news is both true and positive rather than negative. I have long believed that Riggio is a major reason why B&N has not been more successful.
I have a contact in the main B&N office and for several years I have advised the contact that B&N will ultimately lose my preorder business if it does not institute a lowest price guarantee for preorders. I told the contact that by lowest price I mean lowest price that B&N offered the book at, not a price equal to or lower than what Amazon or some other competitor offered the book at. At B&N, if you preorder a book, whatever price you preorder at is the price you pay, even if 3 days later B&N offers a lower preorder price and 7 days after that a higher preorder price. That means one has to constantly monitor B&N pricing and cancel and reenter preorders.
Although many of my suggestions were listened to, the preorder guarantee was not. Just in the past few weeks I wrote my contact again about the preorder guarantee and advised that as of January 1, I had begun preordering some titles from Amazon and that as of the writing of my message, I had already preordered more than 70 hardcovers at Amazon. Those were 70 book sales that B&N lost.
I still preorder books at B&N, but they are only editions I cannot get at Amazon. (I have been buying already published books at B&N, as well.) Perhaps if the new owners are serious about keeping B&N going, they will change this no-guarantee policy. Riggio certainly has been unreceptive. If not, I'll just keep preordering at Amazon.
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