William Lynch (then CEO) resigned last week and BN stock shot up by 5.3% the next day. I think everyone is wanting a change. Not to say "I told you so," but heck... I told you so! Okay, okay, no BN bigwigs are listening but perhaps that's a big part of the problem. The folks at BN corporate don't seem to care about what the lowly booksellers have to say. Perhaps... just perhaps booksellers see things and deal with things on a daily basis that could be useful. But nah... why bother.
I'll give you all a good example: BN corporate decided it was a genius idea to arrange the toys in a very interesting way: the baby chew toys, colorful rings, buttons that make noises, and other toddler-esq devices are in rows. What is behind those rows, pretty much hidden, are several shelves of remote control cars and airplanes for the 12-16 crowd. Um... am I the only one who thinks that this arrangement might be a tad foolish for several reasons? But of course no one at corporate cares to walk around and look or ask how it's going, etc. Alas. And of course a bookseller would get in reprimanded if he or she used their brain and moved the older toys to a better location.
I also thought it was a really bad idea to try and compete with the likes of Apple. Sure enough, down goes the Nook. Excuse me Nook. There's no "the." Anyway, BN spent a whole lot of dough on the kiosks to house these color Nooks and now they may be selling them off. Waste of money there.
There's a lot more going on. Lots of waste. Lots and lots of stupidity. I could give you a laundry list. I think that the store is going to go down like the Titanic unless it makes some major restructuring.
