Kicked Out of Barnes and Noble

by Kathleen Parrish

On January 6, 2016, while waiting for my Starbucks coffee, the new manager of the Barnes and Noble bookstore that hosted our twice-monthly writer’s critique group approached me. There had been a recent change in management of which we’d been unaware, and she got right down to business.

“You can’t meet here.”

It didn’t matter that this B&N store had hosted our critique group for 18 years. When pressed, the new manager said that B&N “had no policy” for hosting writer’s groups or any other kind of local community group in their stores. So, we were out.

Since most of us were either sitting in the store’s Starbucks Café or standing in line to purchase or pick up our coffee and food, she relented enough to provide us with folding chairs (but no tables) and the use of some open space in the corner of the store’s east bay for one last meeting.

The incident troubled me enough to contact the B&N customer service department on Friday. I submitted an email explaining what had happened and asked if there was any kind of B&N policy regarding local groups who wanted to meet in their stores; if not hosting writer’s groups (or other community groups) was truly a matter of corporate policy, it would save us time and aggravation simply to know that upfront and seek other arrangements. I did make it clear that their manager had not been rude or unprofessional, merely adamant.

The B&N representative was very apologetic that we’d had such a poor experience. More details were requested, which I provided: the store location, who we’d talked to, and any specifics as to why we’d been told we could no longer meet there. They promised to get back to me.

My next call from B&N amounted to a polite brushoff. The store manager had ‘been informed’ so that the issues I had raised would be properly addressed by all concerned. Additionally, my feedback “would certainly enable us to review our service commitment at our Peoria, AZ store.”

Except that my experience had been at the Glendale store, and I’d asked a simple question that still wasn’t answered. I tried following up one more time. It appeared that B&N indeed had no policy for hosting or sponsoring writers or other community groups in their stores. Such arrangements appeared to be solely at the discretion of each store manager.

My final conversation with the B&N Arizona district manager boiled down to 1) Barnes and Noble was a retail operation, not a community hangout; 2) Hosting our writer’s group interfered with store operations; and 3) the staff had no time to deal with setting up tables or chairs when it interfered with helping “actual” customers.

The entire call felt rushed, and there was no one really listening on the other end. I ended the call feeling … disrespected. Then, I began thinking over the business ramifications of the entire peculiar episode. As an engineer, I was used to dealing with numbers and doing cost-benefit analyses for numerous projects. In this case:

Our critique group routinely spent about $120 per meeting on coffee, pastries, and sandwiches or hot soup at the store’s Starbucks coffee shop. At 22 meetings a year, we represented $2640 of annual business for that alone. However, we also spent over $4000 a year in that Barnes and Noble on books, magazines, journals and Christmas presents. Many of us ordered books from “our” B&N when we could have ordered from Amazon at lower prices and with free home delivery.

It took B&N less than 20 minutes to set up and take down the folding tables and chairs we needed for our meetings. That didn’t count the intrinsic value of free advertising and referrals to friends and family. So — the cost was 440 minutes a year. The benefit was $6640 in annual gross income.

Our tables were set up in a quiet corner of the store, usually in the east bay, to reserve the Starbucks café seating area for other patrons. All around, it had seemed like a win-win.

The bottom line? Barnes and Noble lost 22 loyal customers due to a short-sighted attitude and a five-minute, one-way conversation. They also lost at least $6600 in annual sales. Maybe that’s only a drop in the B&N annual cash flow but drops add up.

When a retail operation loses touch with its customer base, it shows in a lot of small ways. When they do it in the face of competition from the Amazon/Kindle juggernaut, it can be downright self-destructive.

I looked at the trends in B&N’s stock prices during this interval. Barnes and Noble (BKS) stock dropped from $13.79 per share on July 17, 2015, to $5.56 per share as of February 3, 2016, a 60% drop in value. In comparison, Amazon (AMZN) increased 9.96% over that same interval. By March 1, 2018, B&N stock had dropped to $3.76 per share. In August 2019, when the company was acquired by Elliott Investment Management, the stock price rebounded to $6.50 per share.

Our critique group tried several other venues with mixed success. When the COVID pandemic happened, we migrated to ZOOM, an online meeting platform, for our critique meetings. ZOOM was surprisingly successful, but when things opened back up, we settled into a hybrid format of ZOOM and ‘brick and mortar’ venues.

New management brought changes. Barnes and Noble’s new CEO, James Daunt, gave much more autonomy to local B&N bookstore managers, allowing them to respond more intimately to the needs of their local market. As a consequence, the Barnes and Noble we’d once met in closed and reopened in a smaller, more modest location about a block farther east.

In 2023, one of our breakout groups asked to meet at the newer, downsized B&N store in Glendale. The manager welcomed them with open arms. We moved that group’s start time up an hour since the new store location closed at 8:00 pm. Several attendees still joined the group at that location using ZOOM, as the store offered excellent WIFI. My breakout group meets entirely on ZOOM, mainly for its convenience. Our third breakout group alternates between meeting on ZOOM and at a Panera restaurant near the old B&N location.

I’m glad the Barnes and Noble brand survived and appears to be thriving. I do miss the coffee shop, though, and hope the Glendale store will eventually add one at its new location. Who knows? If they add a coffee shop and extend their store hours to 9:00 pm, we may all come home to roost.