Barnes & Noble's New Plan Is To Act Like an Indie Bookseller

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Last fall, during a visit to Barnes & Noble's flagship store in New York City's Union Square, the British bibliophile James Daunt strode about the ground floor in oxblood loafers deploring the bookshop's hideous appearance. The carpets were dusty, and the escalators had broken down. A cheap pine table was littered with trinkets and scented candles. A vase was wedged between new titles, its bouquet of sunflowers sagging in brown water. "I like the idea of the flowers, but you have to change the water," Daunt said. "And you have to put in decent flowers -- you can't just go down to the petrol station and grab a bunch. I mean, look at it." Daunt has opened about 60 bookshops in his three-decade career, every one of them profitable, making him one of the Amazon era's most successful booksellers. After founding Daunt Books, a popular, independent brand of stores in the U.K., he was credited with saving the country's largest chain, Waterstones, from ruin by giving managers more agency over their inventory. Those credentials impressed Elliott Management Corp., a notorious $40 billion hedge fund better known for seizing an Argentine warship as collateral and berating corporate governance at Twitter Inc. and AT&T Inc. It acquired Barnes & Noble Inc. last year for $683 million including debt and appointed 56-year-old Daunt chief executive officer, the man in charge of its rescue. [...] If Daunt succeeds in rescuing Barnes & Noble, it would earn Elliott a stellar return. In typical hedge fund fashion, it's already insulated itself against not earning anything at all from its bookstore empire. Corporate filings show that a $41,598,957 dividend was paid last year from Waterstones to Book Retail Holdco, an entity controlled by the firm and domiciled in a Channel Islands tax haven that indirectly owns the U.K. chain. Daunt says he's answering a higher calling. "There aren't remotely enough independents to maintain our industry. Publishers won't keep that infrastructure going, it will become a world completely dominated by Amazon, and the traditional bookshop will disappear," he says. His life's work now depends on saving the giants that were once the enemy. "If we can achieve that goal, the owner will also make a lot of money, so they'll be happy as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

from Slashdot https://ift.tt/3avny8A

Share on FacebookPlus on Google+

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER