Since 2002, the United States has lost roughly 500 independent bookstores — nearly 1 out of 5 — due in many instances to the dominance of the Barnes & Noble (@BNBuzz) bookstore chain. Now, however, it’s B&N that’s fighting for survival.
Julie Bosman (@juliebosman), book publishing reporter for The New York Times (@nytimesbooks), writes a behind-the-scenes look at Barnes & Noble, a company that started in 1873 by Charles Barnes in Wheaton, IL.
In March 2009, an eternity ago in Silicon Valley, a small team of engineers here was in a big hurry to rethink the future of books. Not the paper-and-ink books that have been around since the days of Gutenberg, the ones that the doomsayers proclaim — with glee or dread — will go the way of vinyl records.
No, the engineers were instead fixated on the forces that are upending the way books are published, sold, bought, and read: ebooks and e-readers. Working in secret, behind an unmarked door in a former bread bakery, they rushed to build a device that might capture the imagination of readers and maybe even save the book industry.
They had six months to do it.
Running this sprint was, of all companies, Barnes & Noble, the giant that helped put so many independent booksellers out of business and that now finds itself locked in the fight of its life. What its engineers dreamed up was the Nook (@nookBN), a relative e-reader latecomer that has nonetheless become the great e-hope of Barnes & Noble and, in fact, of many in the book business.
Several iterations later, the Nook and, by extension, Barnes & Noble, at times seem the only things standing between traditional book publishers and oblivion.
The article goes on to say B&N plans to unveil another e-reader soon.
At its labs in Silicon Valley last week, engineers were putting final touches on their 5th e-reading device, a product that executives said would be released sometime this spring.
Read this in full. Also on CNBC.com (@CNBC).
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