Barnes & Noble Is Sooooo Dead

Are Barnes & Noble Founder Leonard Riggio and His Nemesis Ron Burkle the Only People Who Still Want to Own a Mega-Bookstore?

Quoting Barnes & Noble’s Len Riggio:

“You know, I’m going through a thing—the record shows how old I am,” he said. “I’m going through, you know, like, ‘Oh my God, do I need this? At this period in time, to be as busy as I am?’” […]

“If this was a Nook,” Riggio said as he flipped through the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo, “I just look at is as, well, here are the pages, and we magically erase the pages and another book appears.” As a business strategy, he was wagering that this convenience would inspire readers to spend more. But personally, Riggio remains unswayed. He doesn’t use his own Nook. “I like to hold the book instead of the device,” he said. “I would rather own multiple books than a single book that carries everything.”

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Barnes & Noble is soooo dead.

Do you think Steve Jobs doesn’t use his iPhone and iPad?

Jeff Bezos never use his Kindle?

Bill Gates never use a Windows PC?

Priorities change as a person ages.

In the cases of Jobs, Gates, and Bezos, they’ve grown up doing X and getting rewarded for it.

Riggio grew up doing Y and is no longer rewarded for it.

He admits there he is too old to change from doing Y to doing X.

Riggio must step down for the good of that company.

He is its major stumbling block.

And hey, Riggio, maybe if you used your own damned device, you’d see all the things that are wrong with it and command them to be fixed!

Previously here:

A Study In JPEG