Lauren Aratani in New YorkSat 15 Apr 2023 00.00 EDT

James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, on the first floor of the massive bookstore, the second largest in the country, at Union Square in Manhattan, New York. Photograph: José A Alvarado Jr./The Guardian

The Observer Barnes & Noble

‘Amazon doesn’t care about books’: how Barnes & Noble bounced back

Barnes & Noble is the US’s largest remaining book chain but, under James Daunt, each of the 600 stores is meant to run like an independent bookstore

Lauren Aratani in New YorkSat 15 Apr 2023 00.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 15 Apr 2023 12.11 EDT

Walking into the big Barnes & Noble store in New York’s Union Square a few years ago, a book lover might have been surprised by what they found: an absence of books. Barnes & Noble shops were once full of other things: Lego sets, calendars, Funko Pop figurines, puzzles, chocolates – all with their own display shelves. The books were mainly upstairs.

Not any more. Now, “you’re not seeing much beyond books”, says James Daunt, Barnes & Noble’s British chief executive, standing on the first floor of the giant bookstore, the second-largest in the US. “I mean, there are other things, but it’s unequivocally book-driven.”

On a spring afternoon, the books seem to be successfully drawing a stream of browsers to the four-storey shop. People popping in from a run flip through mysteries and romance paperbacks near the front, while backpack-wearing teens giggle excitedly in the young adult section on the second floor. They pay little attention to the soft-spoken man walking through the store in a grey suit. “I’m not wearing my bookseller threads,” Daunt says with a laugh. “This is not what a bookseller looks like.”

Barnes & Noble is the US’s largest remaining book chain but, under Daunt, each of the chain’s approximately 600 stores is meant to operate like an independent bookstore – unique and highly curated to fit a local community. The aim is to offer something completely different from Amazon, where about half of all print books sold in the US are bought.

“Amazon doesn’t care about books … a book is just another thing in a warehouse,” Daunt says. “Whereas bookstores are places of discovery. They’re just really nice spaces.”

Read article

By Andrew Albanese |

Mar 25, 2023

In a Swift Decision, Judge Eviscerates Internet Archive’s Scanning and Lending Program

By Andrew Albanese |

Mar 25, 2023

In an emphatic 47-page opinion, federal judge John G. Koeltl found the Internet Archive infringed the copyrights of four plaintiff publishers by scanning and lending their books under a legally contested practice known as CDL (controlled digital lending). And after three years of contentious legal wrangling, the case wasn’t even close.

“At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Koeltl wrote in a March 24 opinion granting the publisher plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denying the Internet Archive’s cross-motion. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”

Read article

Kate Duffy

Mar 13, 2023, 6:09 AM

• The phone-obsessed Gen Z is surprisingly a sucker for paperback books.
• Three Gen Zers gave their reasons for preferring printed editions over e-books.
• One Oxford University student said real books strained his eyes less and allowed him to focus more.

There’s no doubt that Gen Z loves to read. 

This generation, defined as people born between 1997 and 2015, is often considered phone-obsessed and addicted to technology. But when it comes to reading, Gen Zers say they prefer to pick up a printed book over an e-book.

Book sales in the US and the UK have boomed in the past two years, the management consultancy McKinsey found. Sales in the US hit a record of more than 843 million units in 2021, while last year had the second-highest number sales, at almost 789 million. This increasing popularity was partly because of Gen Z and its social-media trends, including the hashtag #BookTok on TikTok, McKinsey said.

Perhaps the most surprising trend is not Gen Zers’ love of books but the way they consume them. While their pastimes usually involve a screen, data and interviews with Insider suggest this doesn’t apply to books. They’re choosing to ditch digital formats and opt for the timeless paperback book.

Read article

Stephanie Stacey

Feb 25, 2023, 12:00 PM

Stephanie Stacey

Feb 25, 2023, 12:00 PM

• Sales at Barnes & Noble are rising because staff are it’s not trying to make stores “homogenous,” its CEO said.
• James Daunt started running the chain, which has 600 stores across the US, in 2019.
• “Sensible retailing principles” equal “terrible bookstores,” Daunt told the Business Studies podcast.

The CEO of Barnes & Noble said the retailer has prospered because it rejected the “sensible retailing principles” that made other chain bookstores “inherently boring.”

James Daunt told the podcast Business Studies that Barnes & Noble’s bookstores succeed when they’re unique and adaptable, and not “consistent” and “homogenous.”

The British business figure has been credited with saving Britain’s biggest bookstore chain, Waterstones, which he started running in 2011 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Read article

by Andrew Bauld | Medium

February 13, 2023

A court decision could limit how you access e-books from the library

When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families.

The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared a National Emergency Library (NEL) lending program. With more than a million digital books in its Open Library collection, the IA temporarily suspended its usual limit on lending digital copies one at a time during this unprecedented period.

While the move was heralded by many readers, schools, and libraries, others weren’t so happy. Several well-known authors blasted the program as “piracy.” Then, two months after it began, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and John Wiley & Sons sued the IA, alleging “willful mass copyright infringement.”

Now over two-and-a-half years later, arguments have been fully briefed in the district court, but what began as a dispute over the NEL has grown into a much more complex fight over copyright law, the lending of digital books, and the future of libraries.

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries.

Read article: