Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2019 Issue

Barnes & Noble Purchased by a Hedge Fund. Times Have Changed

Barnes & Noble's flagship store in New York from 1932 until it closed in 2014.

Barnes & Noble's flagship store in New York from 1932 until it closed in 2014.

The long journey of Barnes & Noble, once the world's largest bookseller, took another major turn in its declining years when it was sold last month to Elliott Management for $683 million, or $6.50 per share. Elliott Management is part of what can be called a Hedge Fund, or an Activist Fund, even a Vulture Fund, depending on your point of view. They purchase large or controlling interests in companies, often distressed ones, and attempt to improve their performance or turn them around. They are not new to book selling, having purchased the struggling British bookseller Waterstones last year. Barnes & Noble, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange since 1993, will once again become private.

 

While Barnes & Noble's influence on the rare and antiquarian book trade was limited, its role on the larger new book trade was enormous. During the period from 1970-2000 it turned new book selling on its head as it became the largest bookseller in the world. Then the internet came along and so did Amazon, and B&N turned from predator to prey. The company recovered enough to become #2 in the field of online book selling, but unfortunately, there was only room for one really successful online seller of new books. It turned into a one-horse race with the others fighting for scraps.

 

Barnes & Noble's history actually goes back to the 19th century. Clifford Noble took a job in a New York City bookshop in 1886, later became a partner, bought the firm out and went into partnership with friend William Barnes. Noble sold his share in 1930, Barnes died in 1945. It was around then that B&N finally opened a few locations beyond the flagship, including Chicago and another in New York. The Barnes family sold it to a conglomerate corporation in the 1960s, and it was back to a single store when purchased in 1971 by Leonard Riggio. Riggio has run the company ever since, only now will he be ceding control.

 

The 1960s and 1970s saw the birth and rapid growth of several chain booksellers. Undoubtedly, names like Waldenbooks and B. Dalton will still be familiar. They spread across the country, often found in shopping malls, also once more popular than they are today. They were relatively small stores, frequently stuffed with books, reminiscent of the single-location private book stores they often replaced. Barnes & Noble bought one of them, B. Dalton, to provide its entry into nationwide book selling. Both B. Dalton and Waldenbooks finally succumbed to the changes in book selling and closed their doors at the beginning of this decade.

 

Barnes & Noble, however, was nothing like these smaller shops. Their stores were huge. They became meeting places. They opened cafes in their stores, where you could buy coffee and pastries. Some even provided live music in the evenings. Browsing, even reading, was encouraged in the stores. They provided soft, comfortable couches and chairs to facilitate reading. You could get away with reading a book there and never buying it, but more likely, you would start one, like it, and buy it to take home. A few others, notably Borders, developed chains also selling books in this new way.

 

And then came the internet. Not long after, along came Amazon. There was no coffee, no music, no socializing, no comfortable chairs. All there was was lower prices, substantially so. Barnes & Noble became their foil. People would still come to Barnes & Noble to browse the new books, read a little, socialize, and then go home and order the books they liked from Amazon because it was cheaper. B&N became Amazon's showroom.

 

The large gathering place bookstore became, if not obsolete, no longer as popular. In time, people became more accustomed to buying online sight unseen, without needing to check out the products personally in a store first. Traffic and sales declined. Borders, once running over 500 stores, closed down in 2011. Barnes & Noble soldiered on. It still does, but sales have continued to decline, stores have been closed. The stock price, once over $30 per share, hit an all-time low shortly before news of the buy out broke, $4.11. That price made the $6.50 shareholders will receive look like a great relief, rather than a huge disappointment.

 

Can Barnes & Noble be saved? Obviously, Elliott thinks traditional book stores can still be viable, and reportedly has made some progress with Waterstones. Then again, there was much fanfare in 2005 when Sears and K-Mart, one or the other America's largest retailer through most of the 20th century, combined. Now they fight to survive while losing enormous amounts of money. Hardly anyone believes their demise is anything other than inevitable. I hope B&N finds a way. I will miss it. I still like stores. My kids do not. They buy almost everything from Amazon or certain online specialty retailers. They don't like spending their limited available time traipsing around stores. They will be consumers for many more years now than I. They are the future. I wish Barnes & Noble well.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Francesca Woodman's Some Disordered Interior Geometries, 1981. Untrimmed publisher's proof sheets. $4,000 - $6,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
  • Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Johnson (C.). A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates, 1724. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ordonez de Cevallos (Pedro). Viage del Mundo, 1st edition, Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1614. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: North America. Merian (Matthaus), Virginia..., 1627 or later. £1,500-2,500
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: World. Waldseemuller (Martin), Tabula Nova Totius Orbis, Vienne: 1541. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Erasmus (Desiderius). The ... paraphrase of Erasmus... 2 volumes, 1st edition, 1549. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Smith (Lucy). Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1st edition, 1853. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Derain (Andre). Pantagruel, signed limited edition, Albert Skira, 1943. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Austen (Jane). Pride and Prejudice, illustrated by Hugh Thomson, Large Paper edition, 1894. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ellison (Ralph). Invisible Man, 1st edition, New York: Random House, 1952. £200-300
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Taschen Collector's Edition. Annie Leibovitz, limited edition, 2014. £1,000-1,500
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR

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