Used Books Blog

Barnes & Noble released third quarter earnings this morning, reporting a $18.4 million loss compared to a $4.4 million profit the year before. Same store sales fell a whopping 7.4%!

“A significant drop-off in customer traffic and consumer spending impacted our business in the third quarter,” Chief Executive Steve Riggio said in a statement.

It’s really a perfect storm of sorts for a bookseller like Barnes & Noble. The general weakness in the economy is the largest culprit as consumers decide books are an expendable discretionary item. Sadly, I believe books are the first entertainment medium to take the hit. Consumers can always stay home and watch TV or surf the Internet.

Then there’s the competition from online retailers like Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks and Biblio. In particular, I suspect that used books may be in higher demand as consumers seek to lower the average cost of their purchases.

The real boogeyman might be larger retailers like Target, Walmart and Costco. Convenience and price loom large as these giants leverage their built in foot traffic. This will only grow if the economy continues to suffer and consumers watch their pocketbooks.

Why go to Barnes & Noble to get the newest James Patterson when you can drop it in your basket when you’re at Target or Walmart stocking up on paper towels? Oh, and did I mention it’s cheaper too?

Barnes & Noble has been effective in their strategy of making their stores gathering places - destinations for even the casual reader. But that’s going to be increasingly difficult in this economic environment and they don’t have the website presence to help backfill this weakness.

No matter how you look at it, it’s hard out there for a bookseller.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 10:31 am and is filed under Book News, Used Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.