E-books peak this year as a share of the market, declining ever after. The company announces it will close one-third of its stores over the next decade. Riggio postpones his retirement and becomes acting CEO, 13 years after he resigned from the position.
July … And ends — messily. Never mind! June 7, A new era begins, we hope. In C. Barnes's son, William R. Barnes, became president of the firm, and he continued the busine ss in partnership with several other men. The younger Barnes sold his interest in his father's company in , when he moved to New York. Clifford Noble. Though Mr. The company's early business was wholesaling, selling mainly to schoo ls, colleges, libraries, and dealers.
A report in College St ore magazine recounted that single book customers were tolerated, but that the store's counters and display shelves functioned as barr icades against their encroachment.
Eventually the store took a buildi ng on Fifth Avenue that included a small retail space. The public the n "launched a campaign of book buying that soon banished all doubt as to the need for a general retail textbook house in New York. The quarters wer e enlarged and remodeled in , and the store set the standard for college bookstores. In the store instituted a "book-a-teria" service that was soo n picked up by other college bookstores.
A clerk handed the customer a sales slip as he entered the store. Purchases were recorded on the slip by one clerk, money taken by another, and wrapping and bagging d one by another. The New York store was also a pioneer in the use of " Music by Muzak," with the piped-in music interrupted at minute int ervals by announcements and advertising.
Staff during the textbook ru sh season sometimes numbered over , and the store boasted a stock of two million books. The com pany also ran an import and an export division, an out-of-print book service, and published several series of nonfiction books, including the College Outline Series of study guides. The company a lso opened branches in Brooklyn and Chicago, and managed an outlet fo r used books and publishers' remainders called the Economy Book Store.
I ts wholesale textbook division bought used books from around camp us bookstores all across the East and Midwest. Riggio began his stell ar career in the book business at age 18, when he was a poorly paid c lerk at the New York University NYU bookstore.
Riggio initially stu died engineering at night at the university, and in some sense he was unprepared for working with books. He recalled being embarrassed by a customer who asked for a copy of Moby Dick --Riggio had never heard of it. Nevertheless, he caught on to bookselling like no one e lse. Though his sto re was only one-eighth the size of the official NYU bookstore, he soo n rivaled his old employer's sales.
He offered exceptional service to his student customers, airlifting textbooks to the store if necessar y. The success of the Waverly Book Exchange allowed Riggio to buy or open ten more college bookstores over the next several years.
President John Barnes, grandson of the f ounder, had died in , and the retail and wholesale divisions of t he company were purchased by a conglomerate called Amtel, Inc. Business declined unde r the new management, and Amtel decided to sell. Riggio believed that more people read books for information than fo r entertainment, and he changed the setup of the flagship store to gi ve customers easier access to books they might want.
When Riggio acquired the B. The marquee stayed intact. Writer Neil Gaiman observed that the move basically gave Amazon the print exclusive to those titles, as well. DC titles have since returned to stores. BY Jake Rossen. Subscribe to our Newsletter! In , after an early career as an investment banker, he opened his own bookstore in London, called Daunt Books. Daunt Books now has nine locations, mainly in London.
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