B&N CEO Lynch resigns, replaced by CFO Huseby

[charmian]

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...by-huseby.html

With its Nook Media strategy floundering, the architect of that effort, William Lynch, resigned Monday as CEO of parent company Barnes & Noble. With Lynch’s departure, Michael Huseby, who joined B&N in March 2012 as CFO, has been named CEO of Nook Media LLC and president of Barnes & Noble Inc. Huseby, along with Mitchell Klipper, CEO of the B&N Retail Group, will report to B&N executive chairman Len Riggio. Max Roberts, CEO of B&N College, will continue to lead the digital education strategy and report to Huseby, as will the executive management team of Nook Media.

[jersysman]

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by jersysman

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end.

Could be, on the other hand there's still plenty they can do still turn it around.

[Elfwreck]

The beginning of the end was when they bought Fictionwise and started removing features from it. BN's been headed downhill ever since.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by jersysman

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end.

It is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.
It *could* be an oncoming freight train but an optimist can at least hope for new policies.
At this point, any change can only be an improvement.

[porkupan]

They were giving B&N a couple of years to live when Borders was going under. And I thought one big B&M bookselling chain was going to be able to survive for much-much longer. I am afraid now I was wrong, and very soon a paper book will be something one would be able to buy only in one of few remaining independents in a big city... or at Walmart.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by porkupan

They were giving B&N a couple of years to live when Borders was going under. And I thought one big B&M bookselling chain was going to be able to survive for much-much longer. I am afraid now I was wrong, and very soon a paper book will be something one would be able to buy only in one of few remaining independents in a big city... or at Walmart.

Or in the local grocery checkout line. Hmm... I wonder how many stores that would be? Come to think of it, I think there are plenty more Walmarts and Targets than B&Ns within 5 miles.

Luck;
Ken

[porkupan]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Or in the local grocery checkout line. Hmm... I wonder how many stores that would be? Come to think of it, I think there are plenty more Walmarts and Targets than B&Ns within 5 miles.

True. Except I remember those distant times, only about 10 years ago, when B&N's selection was so much better than that of any Walmart or Target. It (selection) is still better, but not "so much" any more.

Perhaps if they reclaimed the space used for Nooks, toys, clearance junk and souvenirs, and reallocated it to a much improved selection of actual books, the things would once again be great... But probably not. The ship of a dedicated book superstore has sailed.

[Elfwreck]

Borders had a good plan for a superstore... "set up in college towns that don't have a bookstore." Then they decided they could expand from that, a lot, and ultimately fell apart. (That's not the only reason, but losing sight of their core demographic was part of it.)

BN gets to discover that the superstore system can't compete with the bigger superstore that is Amazon. What walk-in stores need is books at hand that appeal to the local crowd--indie stores can do that; national ones can't unless the local managers are allowed to choose what to stock. They do get to skew the stock a little bit, but mostly, they're pulling from the same collections; they can't drastically rearrange the store to deal with the local crowd; instead, they try hard to appeal to whatever locals like their normal supply range.

The Nook space wouldn't be bad if they were staffed by people who understood ebooks instead of salespeople told to sell as many tablets as possible. But the toys, souvenirs, book-accessories, gift packaging... they've obviously decided they're not catering to readers; they're catering to people who buy stuff for readers. That's a very different market, and it can't sustain a bookstore in the long run.

[markbot]

It's OVER!!!! yay, I own stock in Amazon.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.
It *could* be an oncoming freight train but an optimist can at least hope for new policies.
At this point, any change can only be an improvement.

I think that's right.

As I understand it, B&N isn't getting out of the Nook e-reader business, just the Nook tablet business. Which makes a lot of sense - while I understand why they got into the tablet business: they saw a niche that wasn't being filled - that is no longer the case. The most recent CR tablet review reviewed 90 tablets, for example. It's not clear that B&N can make money in that space by selling tablets, nor is it clear that it really adds much to their books sales. (And, unlike Amazon, they don't have extensive experience selling streaming videos, and I don't think it's really that productive trying to compete in that crowded space against Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and the other smaller providers).

So focusing on books and e-ink readers, plus apps for tablets, seems to be a good approach right now.

[cromag]

In a perfect world B&N would have rolled their Nook business over into Fictionwise.

[charmian]

I don't think this is the beginning of the end either. By stopping the tablet projects, B&N gotten a bit farther from the ledge. Still, there are all kinds of further challenges, like the stagnation of the e-reader market, and that high single-digit decline projected in 2014.

B&N will probably deal with this by trying to get more money from publishers and by selling more non-book items.

[tubemonkey]

B&M bookstores are dinosaurs on the road to extinction.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by charmian

I don't think this is the beginning of the end either. By stopping the tablet projects, B&N gotten a bit farther from the ledge. Still, there are all kinds of further challenges, like the stagnation of the e-reader market, and that high single-digit decline projected in 2014.

B&N will probably deal with this by trying to get more money from publishers and by selling more non-book items.

They *are* trying to get more money out of the big publishers... they're refusing.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...ver-terms.html