The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 242: Five Writing Lessons From Barnes & Nobles’ Turnaround
In this week’s episode, we take a look at five lessons for writers from Barnes & Nobles’ turnaround. I also discuss indie author advertising results from February 202
You can listen to the show with transcript at the official Pulp Writer Show site, and you can also listen to it at Spotify, Apple Podcasts , Amazon Music, and Libsyn.
-JM
I am glad to learn that B&N is making a comeback. Since I’ve moved to the sticks, there aren’t any of their stores in the area, and so I was going off of what I saw 5 years ago. As you said, there were overpriced toys everywhere, the display areas were stocked with books that no one wanted, and the restaurant had way too many options for way too much money.
Going back to basics, and giving the individual store managers more leeway in layout is a good thing. The Big Lots store in town just closed down because their top brass doubled down on selling furniture instead of concentrating on what they did best. The manager was having a hard time – angry because folks are now out of jobs while the executives got golden parachutes and sad because it didn’t have to be that way.
Publicly traded and privately held companies both have their pros and cons, but a privately held one can sometimes make necessary changes that a publicly traded one, with the need to have quarterly reports to the shareholders, just can’t.