B & N is not our friend or ally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/arts/barnes-noble-bookstores.html 

I'm sorry, I don't buy into this at all. Barnes and Noble is not the independent bookstore's friend or ally. It tried to be what Amazon is and failed. I don't give them the slightest bit of credit. 

I was here when Barnes and Noble came to Bend and put 3 indie bookstores out of business within a very short period of time. The next two indies didn't quite make it. We have a healthy number of indies in Bend now, but no thanks to Barnes and Noble. In fact, the very weakness of B & N may have helped. 

Does anyone not realized that the increase in indie bookstores is probably partly due to the collapse of Borders and the weakening of B & N? Does anyone not think that indie bookstores wouldn't pop up like mushrooms if B & N disappeared? 

I came into bookselling full time after the arrival of Amazon, but I did face the megastores in most of my other products: toys, games, and especially cards. They are no friend.

Sabrina said an interesting thing yesterday. "People think that Amazon and B & N are of a kind, but they are two different things. On the other hand, indie bookstores and Barnes and Noble ARE of a kind."

Amazon has always been a little out of sight and mind for me. I know it's there, I know it's taking the lion's share of the business, but...there's not a damn thing I can do about it. However, if someone is looking to go shopping, Amazon is not my competition. B & N is my competition. 

I've always been very dubious of the American Booksellers Association's opinion about things. It seems to me that they hype strategies that don't work and spend most of their time trying to promote, promote, promote, without much in the way of useful advice. 

No, you don't have to have endless signings and book clubs and coffee and millions of knick-knacks.

What you do need are books. Everything else is a distraction, and if you add up the time, space, and money most bookstores spend on these distractions, I'd be willing to bet that they don't pay off the way most bookstores think they do. 

But hey, what's time and space? Well, to answer my own stupid question, it's MONEY. 

Weirdly, this article says that part of the reason that B & N is doing better is that they are focusing on books instead of knick-knacks. Well, duh. DUH! I say.

So why does the ABA go from suing the publishers over their relationship with B & N, to calling them our friend? I believe the ABA is in thrall of the publishers as much or more than they are of their so-called constituents.

Because the publishers made some stupid decisions, pulled the rug out from under indie bookstores in a greedy and short-sighted alliance with the Big Business and now sees their doom on the horizon.

I believe indie bookstores can weather that storm. When the publishers struggle to survive without B & N, they'll either realize that they need to bolster indie bookstores or become wholly owned subsidiaries of Amazon. 

Indie bookstores can buy from smaller, more adept publishers--even, GASP!, from the authors themselves. Instead of being disdained by the bookstores, self-published authors might even find themselves in demand.

I do know this: B & N is not our friend. If they could take Amazon's place, they'd do it in an instant.