presentation book barnes and noble

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Leonard Riggio, who built Barnes & Noble into a bookselling empire, dies at 83

The Associated Press

Leonard Riggio, then chairman of Barnes & Noble, arrives at a bookstore in New York on Sept. 12, 2017. Riggio died on Tuesday. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption

NEW YORK — Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after the chain was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

“His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also nurtured a culture of innovation and a love for reading," reads a statement from Barnes & Noble.

Riggio’s near-half century reign began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase Barnes & Noble's name and the flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.

Barnes & Noble Founder Retires, Leaving His Imprint On Bookstore's History

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.” But in his time no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make any given book a best seller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance.

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in close proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

Barnes & Noble became so identified as an overdog that one of the 1990s’ most popular romantic comedies, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of an endangered independent store in Manhattan.

“We are going to seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep arm chairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character confidently declares. “They’re going to hate us at the beginning, but we’ll get ’em in the end.”

Acrimony from independent booksellers

For a time, it seemed industry conversation was an ongoing response to Barnes & Noble. Publishers were known to change the cover or title of a book simply because a Barnes & Noble official had objected. “Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt found himself condemned by the American Booksellers Association, the trade organization for independents, after agreeing to appear in a Barnes & Noble commercial. On the floor of the industry’s annual national trade show, long hosted by the ABA, independent store employees would hiss at attendees wearing Barnes & Noble badges.

When novelist Russell Banks, addressing Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder meeting in 1995, declared that he was both a stock holder and a happy B&N customer, some independent sellers stopped offering his books.

A bookstore named for James Baldwin is counting down to his 100th birthday

“You must know that I’ll never read, buy or sell another word you write,” Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. ”These are the kindest things I can think of to say to you.”

Tensions led to legal action when the ABA — on the eve of the 1994 convention — announced it was suing Barnes & Noble and five leading publishers for unfair trade practices. Some of the publishers were so angered they boycotted the gathering the following year and only returned after the ABA sold the show to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair business practices (both cases were settled out of court).

The internet shifts bookselling

Riggio began the 2000s at the height of power, with more than 700 superstores and hundreds of others outlets. But internet commerce was growing quickly and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in physical retail, lacked the imagination and flexibility of the startup from Seattle that called itself “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” Amazon.com. The online giant launched in 1995 by Jeff Bezos gained business throughout the 2000s and by the early 2010s had displaced Barnes & Noble through such innovations as the Kindle e-book reader and the Amazon Prime subscription service.

Bezos would liken himself to David taking down Goliath, although the contrast between the leaders also had the feel of an Aesop’s fable: The muscular, mustachioed Riggio, a boxer’s son, upended by the quick and clever Bezos.

How Barnes & Noble turned a page, expanding for the first time in years

“We’re great booksellers; we know how to do that,’’ Riggio acknowledged to the Times in 2016. “We weren’t constituted to be a technology company.”

Barnes & Noble started its own online site in the late 1990s, but such initiatives as the Nook e-book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to stop Amazon. Not even the collapse of Borders after the 2008-2009 economic crisis mattered for Barnes & Noble, which after decades of expansion closed more than 100 stores between 2009 and 2019.

An unlikely ally of independent booksellers

By the time of Riggio’s retirement, independent sellers regarded the chain not as a threat, but as an ally in the fight against Amazon to keep physical stores alive. At the 2018 booksellers convention, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher, once enemies in business and in court, praised each other during a joint appearance.

“My standing here, doing what I’m about to do (introduce Riggio) would have been impossible to imagine several years ago,” Teicher said at the time. “The simple fact is that our business is stronger and American readers benefit when there is a vibrant and healthy network of brick-and-mortar bookshops all across the country.”

A chapter ends for this historic Asian American bookstore, but its story continues

During the 2010s, Barnes & Noble seemed unleadable and unwanted. The board announced in 2010 that the company was for sale, but no one offered to buy it. Four CEOs left in five years and Barnes & Noble’s stock dropped 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale lasted for months before Elliott Advisors, which had previously purchased the British chain Waterstones, bought Barnes & Noble for $638 million and hired Waterstones chief executive James Daunt to lead B&N.

“I don’t miss being a business person, I had enough of that. But I do miss the bookselling part, helping to find books to recommend to customers,” Riggio told Publishers Weekly in 2021.

Riggio's roots and early bookselling ventures

Bookselling and family often overlapped for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served for years as vice chairman of Barnes & Noble and another brother, Thomas Riggio, helped run a trucking company that shipped the store’s books. After being interviewed in 1974 by the trade publication College Store Executive, Leonard Riggio met for coffee with the editor, Louise Altavilla, who seven years later became his second wife (Riggio had three children, two with his first wife, one with his second).

Leonard S. Riggio was the eldest son of a prize fighter (who twice defeated Rocky Graziano) turned cab driver and a dress maker. Even in childhood, he advanced quickly, skipping two grades and attending one of the city’s top high schools, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at New York University’s night school before focusing on commerce, and by day absorbed the bookselling world and the rising cultural rebellion of the 1960s.

Amazon shuttering its physical bookstores and 4-star shops

Working as a floor manager at the campus book store, he learned enough to drop out of school and start a rival shop in 1965 — SBX (Student Book Exchange), where he allowed student activists to use the copying machine to print copies of anti-war leaflets. SBX was so successful he bought several other campus stores and was in position by 1971 to buy Barnes & Noble and its single Manhattan store. A few years later, he became the rare bookseller to run television commercials, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of Course! Of Course!”

Riggio and the independent community may have seemed to hold opposing values, but they shared a love of reading and the arts and a liberal political outlook. He was a generous philanthropist and a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians. He was even friendly with the consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who featured Riggio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono among others in his 2009 novel “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, in which Nader imagines a progressive revolution from above.

“Ever since he was a boy from Brooklyn, he’d had a visceral reaction to the way workings stiffs and the poor were treated on a day-to-day basis,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who did at times stand apart from his management peers. When some 200 business leaders were questioned by Fortune magazine in the 1990s about their political ideas, only Riggio supported the raising of worker pay.

“Money can become a burden, like something you carry on your shoulders,” he told New York magazine in 1999. “My nature is to be a ball-buster, but my role is to help people.”

• Barnes & Noble
• leonard riggio

• Login / Sign Up
• Sales Guide

The 7 best books to get during Barnes & Noble’s massive 50% off sale

Including some of our favorite new sci-fi and fantasy releases

by Sadie Gennis

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Barnes & Noble’s Book Haul sale is back, bringing with it huge discounts on hundreds of books. Running through Sept. 2, the sale features 50% off tons of titles, including some of our favorite sci-fi and fantasy books of the past few years. So if your TBR list is already long, it’s about to become a whole lot longer.

I know not everyone loves looking through page after page of sale listings as much as I do, so I combed through all discounted books and picked out the seven I think are most worth checking out. The best part? Almost all of these books are standalone stories, meaning there’s no previously required reading before jumping in.

The Ferryman , Justin Cronin

The Ferryman

In this tightly wound sci-fi thriller, Proctor Bennett’s job is to shepherd citizens who have grown unhappy in their utopian society to the Nursery, where they’ll be reborn with no memories of their former lives. But when he’s assigned to retire his own father, Proctor’s life careens off the prescribed path as he begins to question the so-called truths he’s been fed his entire life. The Ferryman was one of my favorite sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023 , and if you missed it at its debut, this sale’s a great excuse to dive into the atmospheric mystery.

The Familiar , Leigh Bardugo

The Familiar

Six of Crows author Leigh Bardugo dips into historical fantasy with this darkly compelling story set during Spanish Golden Age. The Familiar follows servant Luzia, whose ability to perform magic is discovered and exploited by influential people seeking to raise their own status. But the more attention Luzia gains for her “milagritos,” the more she fears her Jewish heritage will be uncovered and she’ll become yet another victim of the Inquisition. Bardugo wonderfully blends the real-life horrors of this time period with complex characters, political intrigue, and plenty of twists in this memorable read.

The Book of Love , Kelly Link

The Book of Love

The Book of Love is long, and yes, it might start off slow, but there’s a reason this is the type of fantasy book that winds up on best of the year lists even outside the genre space. Imaginative, touching, and epic in scope, it follows three teenagers who find themselves back in their small town after dying a year earlier but without any memories as to what happened to them. The only one who seems to know anything about their disappearance or return is their high school music teacher, who gives them a series of magical tasks to complete if they want their lives back. There is a lot more that goes on in The Book of Love , but trying to boil it down to a few words is like trying to write a log line for a dream. This is a book you feel more than anything, and would make perfect book club fare. (Trust me, you’ll have a lot to discuss.)

Her Radiant Curse , Elizabeth Lim

Her Radiant Curse

As a child, Channi’s father offered her as a sacrifice to the demonic Angma, cursing her with the face of a serpent. Now, the only person who sees Channi for who she is and not the monster she appears to be is her beautiful sister Vanna. So when Angma returns years later with her sights set on Vanna, Channi doesn’t hesitate to throw herself into a high-stakes battle to save her sister — even knowing she might not be able to save herself in the process. Her Radiant Curse is a lush and heart-wrenching fantasy about the love between two sisters that’s beautiful but never sappy. And while the book is self-contained, it serves as the backstory for the outstanding Six Crimson Cranes , which you can also snag at Barnes & Noble for 15% off.

Prophet , Sin Blanché and Helen Macdonald

Prophet is a suspense-packed sci-fi mystery that sees people’s fondest memories brought to life only to kill them shortly after. Assigned to investigate the bizarre case are two military investigators who share a complicated past: by-the-book American intelligence officer Adam and ex-MI6 agent Sunil, who has the ability to tell truth from lies and fakes from the real deal. There’s a real X-Files vibe to Prophet at times, and a great will-they-won’t-they romance that packs a punch. Prophet is a bit of a windy read, but if you’re willing to commit yourself to the ride, it’s worth the payoff.

He Who Drowned the World , Shelley Parker-Chan

He Who Drowned the World

Yet another standout book from last year , He Who Drowned the World is the second installment of The Radiant Emperor duology. (The first book, She Who Became the Sun , is currently 15% off at Barnes & Noble, too.) Though there are fantasy elements interwoven throughout, the series is foremost an alternate history and queer reimagining of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty. He Who Drowned the World is a relentlessly brutal story, following four people willing to do anything and sacrifice everything to achieve their desired destiny. Despite the darkness, Parker-Chan brings such humanity to even the most difficult to read situations that I found myself sad to say goodbye to these characters and this world when the story ended. If you’re looking for something on the more intense side, I can’t recommend this more.

D&D Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk

D&D Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk

While this is not a novel, it is one of Polygon’s favorite Dungeons & Dragons adventure books. The basic premise is a quest to save a village from an evil cult determined to take over. However, there’s a lot more going on that gets uncovered throughout the adventure. While Phandelver and Below is fun time for experienced players, it’s also become a great go-to for new players if you’re D&D-curious. Plus, it features tons of awesome illithid action, making it perfect for fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 .

If you’re still looking for new reads, as part of its Book Haul sale, Barnes & Noble is also offering a buy one, get one 50% off deal for dozens of collectible editions. Some of the editions are actually collections of multiple novels, making this an even better deal. There are a ton of great and classic titles to choose from — all with stunningly designed covers — but our favorites on offer are:

• Dune by Frank Herbert ($40)
• The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice , which includes Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned ($36)
• The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams , which includes all five novels and a bonus short story ($40)
• The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov ($40)
• The Stand by Stephen King ($25)
• Carrie, The Shining , and Salem’s Lot by Stephen King ($40)
• Dracula and Other Horror Classics by Bram Stoker ($25)
• Wicked and Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire ($35)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories by Lewis Carroll and illustrator John Tenniel ($30)

Polygon’s handpicked deals on games, movies, books, and more.

• Entertainment

Most Popular

• Everything announced at Nintendo Direct August 2024
• Civilization 7 is making bold changes to a familiar formula
• One of the best turn-based games of all time has a new home
• Get the Scott Pilgrim box sets for their lowest price ever
• Fields of Mistria is pure magic

Patch Notes

The best of Polygon in your inbox, every Friday.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Sales Guide

The Latest ⚡️

Leonard Riggio, forged a bookselling empire at Barnes & Noble, dies at 83

In the 1990s, the then company ceo launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes..

In this file photo, Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes and Noble, arrives at a book store in New York, in 2017.

Seth Wenig/AP, file

NEW YORK — Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after Barnes & Noble was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

Riggio’s near-half century reign at Barnes & Noble began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase the company’s name and its flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

• Barnes & Noble opens Lincoln Park location after former site shuttered

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.”

But in his time no one in the book world was more feared.

With the power to make any given book a best seller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance.

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in close proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

Barnes & Noble became so identified as an overdog that one of the 1990s’ most popular romantic comedies, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of an endangered independent store in Manhattan.

“We are going to seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep arm chairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character confidently declares. “They’re going to hate us at the beginning, but we’ll get ’em in the end.”

“Len’s vision and entrepreneurial spirit transformed the retail landscape, establishing Barnes & Noble as the largest bookstore chain in the U.S,” reads a statement from the bookstore chain. “His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also nurtured a culture of innovation and a love for reading.”

Acrimony from independent booksellers

For a time, it seemed industry conversation was an ongoing response to Barnes & Noble. Publishers were known to change the cover or title of a book simply because a Barnes & Noble official had objected. “Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt found himself condemned by the American Booksellers Association, the trade organization for the independents, after agreeing to appear in a Barnes & Noble commercial. On the floor of the industry’s annual national trade show, long hosted by the American Booksellers Association, independent store employees would hiss at attendees wearing Barnes & Noble badges.

When novelist Russell Banks, addressing Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder meeting in 1995, declared that he was both a stock holder and a happy B&N customer, some independent sellers stopped offering his books.

“You must know that I’ll never read, buy or sell another word you write,” Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. ”These are the kindest things I can think of to say to you.”

Tensions led to legal action when the ABA — on the eve of the 1994 convention — announced it was suing Barnes & Noble and five leading publishers for unfair trade practices. Some of the publishers were so angered they boycotted the gathering the following year and only returned after the ABA sold the show to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair business practices (both cases were settled out of court).

The internet shifts bookselling

Riggio began the 2000s at the height of power, with more than 700 superstores and hundreds of others outlets, But internet commerce was growing quickly and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in physical retail, lacked the imagination and flexibility of the startup from Seattle that called itself “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” Amazon.com. The online giant launch in 1995 by Jeff Bezos gained business throughout the 2000s and by the early 2010s had displaced Barnes & Noble through such innovations as the Kindle e-book reader and the Amazon Prime subscription service.

Bezos would liken himself to David taking down Goliath, although the contrast between the leaders also had the feel of an Aesop’s fable: The muscular, mustachioed Riggio, a boxer’s son, upended by the quick and clever Bezos.

“We’re great booksellers; we know how to do that,’’ Riggio acknowledged to the Times in 2016. “We weren’t constituted to be a technology company.”

Barnes & Noble started its own online site in the late 1990s, but such initiatives as the Nook e-book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to stop Amazon. Not even the collapse of Borders after the 2008-2009 economic crisis mattered for Barnes & Noble, which after decades of expansion closed more than 100 stores between 2009 and 2019.

An ally of independent booksellers

By the time of Riggio’s retirement, independent sellers regarded the chain not as a threat, but as an ally in the fight against Amazon to keep physical stores alive. At the 2018 booksellers convention, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher, once enemies in business and in court, praised each other during a joint appearance.

“My standing here, doing what I’m about to do (introduce Riggio) would have been impossible to imagine several years ago,” Teicher said at the time. “The simple fact is that our business is stronger and American readers benefit when there is a vibrant and healthy network of brick-and-mortar bookshops all across the country.”

During the 2010s, Barnes & Noble seemed unleadable and unwanted. The board announced in 2010 that the company was for sale, but no one offered to buy it. Four CEOs left in five years and Barnes & Noble’s stock dropped 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale lasted for months before Elliott Advisors, which had previously purchased the British chain Waterstones, bought Barnes & Noble for $638 million and hired Waterstones chief executive James Daunt to lead B&N.

“I don’t miss being a business person, I had enough of that. But I do miss the bookselling part, helping to find books to recommend to customers,” Riggio told Publishers Weekly in 2021.

Riggio’s roots and early bookselling ventures

Bookselling and family often overlapped for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served for years as vice chairman of Barnes & Noble and another brother, Thomas Riggio, helped run a trucking company that shipped the store’s books. After being interviewed in 1974 by the trade publication College Store Executive, Leonard Riggio met for coffee with the editor, Louise Altavilla, who seven years later became his second wife (Riggio had three children, two with his first wife, one with his second).

Leonard S. Riggio was the eldest son of a prize fighter (who twice defeated Rocky Graziano) turned cab driver and a dress maker. Even in childhood, he advanced quickly, skipping two grades and attending one of the city’s top high schools, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at New York University’s night school before focusing on commerce, and by day absorbed the bookselling world and the rising cultural rebellion of the 1960s.

Working as a floor manager at the campus book store, he learned enough to drop out of school and start a rival shop in 1965 — SBX (Student Book Exchange), where he allowed student activists to use the copying machine to print copies of anti-war leaflets. SBX was so successful he bought several other campus stores and was in position by 1971 to buy Barnes & Noble and its single Manhattan store. A few years later, he became the rare bookseller to run television commercials, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of Course! Of Course!”

Riggio and the independent community may have seemed to hold opposing values, but they shared a love of reading and the arts and a liberal political outlook. He was a generous philanthropist and a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians. He was even friendly with the consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who featured Riggio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono among others in his 2009 novel “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, in which Nader imagines a progressive revolution from above.

“Ever since he was a boy from Brooklyn, he’d had a visceral reaction to the way workings stiffs and the poor were treated on a day-to-day basis,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who did at times stand apart from other his management peers. When some 200 business leaders were questioned by Fortune magazine in the 1990s about their political ideas, only Riggio supported the raising of worker raises.

“Money can become a burden, like something you carry on your shoulders,” he told New York magazine in 1999. “My nature is to be a ball-buster, but my role is to help people.”

Retail | Leonard Riggio, the man who built Barnes &…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Investigative Reporting
• Environment

Retail | Leonard Riggio, the man who built Barnes & Noble into book empire, dies at 83

Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday a “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after Barnes & Noble was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

His near-half century reign at Barnes & Noble began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase the company’s name and its flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafés.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.” But in his time no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make any given book a best seller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, the Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance.

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

Barnes & Noble became so identified as an overdog that one of the 1990s’ most popular romantic comedies, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of an endangered independent store in Manhattan.

“We are going to seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep armchairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character confidently declares. “They’re going to hate us at the beginning, but we’ll get ’em in the end.”

• Newsroom Guidelines
• Report an Error

More in Retail

Retail | Kroger egg pricing turns merger trial into inflation fight

Retail | High rents forcing small businesses to choose: Raise prices or move?

Retail | Fake online reviews are a headache for small businesses. Can the FTC help?

Retail | Walmart takes on Amazon, adding pre-owned watches, collectibles

Press Herald

Account Subscription: ACTIVE

Questions about your account? Our customer service team can be reached at [email protected] during business hours at (207) 791-6000 .

• Nation & World

Leonard Riggio, who forged a bookselling empire at Barnes & Noble, dies at 83

In his time, no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make anything a bestseller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, Riggio could terrify publishers. Then came Amazon.

You are able to gift 5 more articles this month.

Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. Learn more .

With a Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month.

It looks like you do not have any active subscriptions. To get one, go to the subscriptions page .

Loading....

NEW YORK — Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after the chain was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

“His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also nurtured a culture of innovation and a love for reading,” reads a statement from Barnes & Noble.

Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes and Noble, at a book store in New York in Sept. 2017. Seth Wenig/Associated Press, file

Riggio’s near-half-century reign began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase Barnes & Noble’s name and the flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.” But in his time no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make any given book a bestseller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance. Advertisement

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in close proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

Barnes & Noble became so identified as an overdog that one of the 1990s’ most popular romantic comedies, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of an endangered independent store in Manhattan.

“We are going to seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep arm chairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character confidently declares. “They’re going to hate us at the beginning, but we’ll get ’em in the end.”

ACRIMONY FROM INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS

For a time, it seemed industry conversation was an ongoing response to Barnes & Noble. Publishers were known to change the cover or title of a book simply because a Barnes & Noble official had objected. “Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt found himself condemned by the American Booksellers Association, the trade organization for independents, after agreeing to appear in a Barnes & Noble commercial. On the floor of the industry’s annual national trade show, long hosted by the ABA, independent store employees would hiss at attendees wearing Barnes & Noble badges.

When novelist Russell Banks, addressing Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder meeting in 1995, declared that he was both a stock holder and a happy B&N customer, some independent sellers stopped offering his books. Advertisement

“You must know that I’ll never read, buy or sell another word you write,” Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. “These are the kindest things I can think of to say to you.”

Tensions led to legal action when the ABA – on the eve of the 1994 convention – announced it was suing Barnes & Noble and five leading publishers for unfair trade practices. Some of the publishers were so angered they boycotted the gathering the following year and only returned after the ABA sold the show to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair business practices (both cases were settled out of court).

INTERNET SHIFTS BOOKSELLING

Riggio began the 2000s at the height of power, with more than 700 superstores and hundreds of others outlets. But internet commerce was growing quickly and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in physical retail, lacked the imagination and flexibility of the startup from Seattle that called itself “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” Amazon.com. The online giant launched in 1995 by Jeff Bezos gained business throughout the 2000s and by the early 2010s had displaced Barnes & Noble through such innovations as the Kindle e-book reader and the Amazon Prime subscription service.

Bezos would liken himself to David taking down Goliath, although the contrast between the leaders also had the feel of an Aesop’s fable: The muscular, mustachioed Riggio, a boxer’s son, upended by the quick and clever Bezos.

“We’re great booksellers; we know how to do that,’’ Riggio acknowledged to the Times in 2016. “We weren’t constituted to be a technology company.” Advertisement

Barnes & Noble started its own online site in the late 1990s, but such initiatives as the Nook e-book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to stop Amazon. Not even the collapse of Borders after the 2008-2009 economic crisis mattered for Barnes & Noble, which after decades of expansion closed more than 100 stores between 2009 and 2019.

AN UNLIKELY ALLY OF INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS

By the time of Riggio’s retirement, independent sellers regarded the chain not as a threat, but as an ally in the fight against Amazon to keep physical stores alive. At the 2018 booksellers convention, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher, once enemies in business and in court, praised each other during a joint appearance.

“My standing here, doing what I’m about to do (introduce Riggio) would have been impossible to imagine several years ago,” Teicher said at the time. “The simple fact is that our business is stronger and American readers benefit when there is a vibrant and healthy network of brick-and-mortar bookshops all across the country.”

During the 2010s, Barnes & Noble seemed unleadable and unwanted. The board announced in 2010 that the company was for sale, but no one offered to buy it. Four CEOs left in five years and Barnes & Noble’s stock dropped 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale lasted for months before Elliott Advisors, which had previously purchased the British chain Waterstones, bought Barnes & Noble for $638 million and hired Waterstones chief executive James Daunt to lead B&N.

“I don’t miss being a business person, I had enough of that. But I do miss the bookselling part, helping to find books to recommend to customers,” Riggio told Publishers Weekly in 2021. Advertisement

RIGGIO’S ROOTS AND EARLY BOOKSELLING VENTURES

Bookselling and family often overlapped for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served for years as vice chairman of Barnes & Noble and another brother, Vincent “Jimi” Riggio, helped run a trucking company that shipped the store’s books. After being interviewed in 1974 by the trade publication College Store Executive, Leonard Riggio met for coffee with the editor, Louise Gebbia, who seven years later became his second wife (Riggio had three children, two with his first wife, one with his second).

Leonard S. Riggio was the eldest son of a prizefighter (who twice defeated Rocky Graziano) turned cab driver and a dressmaker. Even in childhood, he advanced quickly, skipping two grades and attending one of the city’s top high schools, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at New York University’s night school before focusing on commerce, and by day absorbed the bookselling world and the rising cultural rebellion of the 1960s.

Working as a floor manager at the campus book store, he learned enough to drop out of school and start a rival shop in 1965 – SBX (Student Book Exchange), where he allowed student activists to use the copying machine to print copies of anti-war leaflets. SBX was so successful he bought several other campus stores and was in position by 1971 to buy Barnes & Noble and its single Manhattan store. A few years later, he became the rare bookseller to run television commercials, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of Course! Of Course!”

Riggio and the independent community may have seemed to hold opposing values, but they shared a love of reading and the arts and a liberal political outlook. He was a generous philanthropist and a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians. He was even friendly with the consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who featured Riggio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono among others in his 2009 novel “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, in which Nader imagines a progressive revolution from above.

“Ever since he was a boy from Brooklyn, he’d had a visceral reaction to the way workings stiffs and the poor were treated on a day-to-day basis,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who did at times stand apart from his management peers. When some 200 business leaders were questioned by Fortune magazine in the 1990s about their political ideas, only Riggio supported the raising of worker pay.

“Money can become a burden, like something you carry on your shoulders,” he told New York magazine in 1999. “My nature is to be a ball-buster, but my role is to help people.”

Comments are not available on this story.

Send questions/comments to the editors.

« Previous

Chinese government hackers have penetrated U.S. internet providers to spy

Next »

Israeli forces launch big operation in the West Bank, kill at least 10 militants

Rent hike at Bowdoin mobile home park worries residents

Truck that fell through covered bridge was 6 times heavier than posted limit, the wrap: new bar for biddeford; sapporo moving to falmouth, paul lepage reemerges to support effort to oust sen. angus king, perennial republican candidate in democratic stronghold of portland dies at 79, member log in.

Please enter your username and password below. Already a subscriber but don't have one? Click here .

Not a subscriber? Click here to see your options

Enhance your Learning Experience with Yuzu by Barnes & Noble

Yuzu® is a learning platform that delivers an enhanced digital reading experience with access to a broad digital catalog.

Stay tuned!

Android app is coming soon!

iOS app is coming soon!

For Students

Yuzu combines a next-generation reading and note-taking eReader; allowing students to create a personal learning experience that best suits their needs.

For Educators

Yuzu makes it easier than ever to engage students with inspiring course materials. Yuzu makes learning more friendly, organized, and enjoyable.

Travel Lighter

Replace multiple textbooks with one app where you can access your course materials from a single, organized interface. You can easily adjust the layout, font size, and zoom to make reading easier on all your devices.

Learn On-the-Go

With course materials always at your fingertips, you can read and study wherever you are. Highlights, notes, and bookmarks automatically sync across all of your devices.

Interactive Learning

eTextbooks can include links to related websites, videos, and other multimedia content, to make your learning experience richer and more engaging.

Simple Navigation

You can search key words, and add highlights and notes to your eTextbooks. Plus, you can easily adjust the layout, font size, and zoom to make reading easier.

And more...

Print only the pages you need within limits set by the publisher.

Easily copy/paste text passages for homework and papers.

Supports course materials that include rich media and interactivity like videos and quizzes.

Supports assistive technologies for accessibility by vision and hearing impaired users.

Read Offline with Free Apps

Enjoy a seamless reading experience across devices, online or offline, with notes and highlights that sync automatically.

Customer Care

For Yuzu Support

1-844-YUZU-NOW (989-8669)

[email protected]

FAQ | Contact

For BNC OER+ Support

844-932-6657 (844-9-EBOOKS)

[email protected]

Leonard Riggio, who forged a bookselling empire at Barnes & Noble, dead at 83

The Associated Press

August 27, 2024, 4:19 PM

• Share This:
• share on facebook
• share on threads
• share on linkedin
• share on email

NEW YORK (AP) — Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after the chain was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

“His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also nurtured a culture of innovation and a love for reading,” reads a statement from Barnes & Noble.

Riggio’s near-half-century reign began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase Barnes & Noble’s name and the flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.” But in his time no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make any given book a bestseller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance.

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in close proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

Barnes & Noble became so identified as an overdog that one of the 1990s’ most popular romantic comedies, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of an endangered independent store in Manhattan.

“We are going to seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep arm chairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character confidently declares. “They’re going to hate us at the beginning, but we’ll get ’em in the end.”

Acrimony from independent booksellers

For a time, it seemed industry conversation was an ongoing response to Barnes & Noble. Publishers were known to change the cover or title of a book simply because a Barnes & Noble official had objected. “Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt found himself condemned by the American Booksellers Association, the trade organization for independents, after agreeing to appear in a Barnes & Noble commercial. On the floor of the industry’s annual national trade show, long hosted by the ABA, independent store employees would hiss at attendees wearing Barnes & Noble badges.

When novelist Russell Banks , addressing Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder meeting in 1995, declared that he was both a stock holder and a happy B&N customer, some independent sellers stopped offering his books.

“You must know that I’ll never read, buy or sell another word you write,” Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. “These are the kindest things I can think of to say to you.”

Tensions led to legal action when the ABA — on the eve of the 1994 convention — announced it was suing Barnes & Noble and five leading publishers for unfair trade practices. Some of the publishers were so angered they boycotted the gathering the following year and only returned after the ABA sold the show to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair business practices (both cases were settled out of court).

The internet shifts bookselling

Riggio began the 2000s at the height of power, with more than 700 superstores and hundreds of others outlets. But internet commerce was growing quickly and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in physical retail, lacked the imagination and flexibility of the startup from Seattle that called itself “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” Amazon.com. The online giant launched in 1995 by Jeff Bezos gained business throughout the 2000s and by the early 2010s had displaced Barnes & Noble through such innovations as the Kindle e-book reader and the Amazon Prime subscription service.

Bezos would liken himself to David taking down Goliath, although the contrast between the leaders also had the feel of an Aesop’s fable: The muscular, mustachioed Riggio, a boxer’s son, upended by the quick and clever Bezos.

“We’re great booksellers; we know how to do that,’’ Riggio acknowledged to the Times in 2016. “We weren’t constituted to be a technology company.”

Barnes & Noble started its own online site in the late 1990s, but such initiatives as the Nook e-book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to stop Amazon. Not even the collapse of Borders after the 2008-2009 economic crisis mattered for Barnes & Noble, which after decades of expansion closed more than 100 stores between 2009 and 2019.

An unlikely ally of independent booksellers

By the time of Riggio’s retirement, independent sellers regarded the chain not as a threat, but as an ally in the fight against Amazon to keep physical stores alive. At the 2018 booksellers convention, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher , once enemies in business and in court, praised each other during a joint appearance.

“My standing here, doing what I’m about to do (introduce Riggio) would have been impossible to imagine several years ago,” Teicher said at the time. “The simple fact is that our business is stronger and American readers benefit when there is a vibrant and healthy network of brick-and-mortar bookshops all across the country.”

During the 2010s, Barnes & Noble seemed unleadable and unwanted. The board announced in 2010 that the company was for sale, but no one offered to buy it. Four CEOs left in five years and Barnes & Noble’s stock dropped 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale lasted for months before Elliott Advisors, which had previously purchased the British chain Waterstones, bought Barnes & Noble for $638 million and hired Waterstones chief executive James Daunt to lead B&N.

“I don’t miss being a business person, I had enough of that. But I do miss the bookselling part, helping to find books to recommend to customers,” Riggio told Publishers Weekly in 2021.

Riggio’s roots and early bookselling ventures

Bookselling and family often overlapped for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served for years as vice chairman of Barnes & Noble and another brother, Vincent “Jimi” Riggio, helped run a trucking company that shipped the store’s books. After being interviewed in 1974 by the trade publication College Store Executive, Leonard Riggio met for coffee with the editor, Louise Gebbia, who seven years later became his second wife (Riggio had three children, two with his first wife, one with his second).

Leonard S. Riggio was the eldest son of a prize fighter (who twice defeated Rocky Graziano) turned cab driver and a dress maker. Even in childhood, he advanced quickly, skipping two grades and attending one of the city’s top high schools, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at New York University’s night school before focusing on commerce, and by day absorbed the bookselling world and the rising cultural rebellion of the 1960s.

Working as a floor manager at the campus book store, he learned enough to drop out of school and start a rival shop in 1965 — SBX (Student Book Exchange), where he allowed student activists to use the copying machine to print copies of anti-war leaflets. SBX was so successful he bought several other campus stores and was in position by 1971 to buy Barnes & Noble and its single Manhattan store. A few years later, he became the rare bookseller to run television commercials, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of Course! Of Course!”

Riggio and the independent community may have seemed to hold opposing values, but they shared a love of reading and the arts and a liberal political outlook. He was a generous philanthropist and a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians. He was even friendly with the consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader , who featured Riggio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono among others in his 2009 novel “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, in which Nader imagines a progressive revolution from above.

“Ever since he was a boy from Brooklyn, he’d had a visceral reaction to the way workings stiffs and the poor were treated on a day-to-day basis,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who did at times stand apart from his management peers. When some 200 business leaders were questioned by Fortune magazine in the 1990s about their political ideas, only Riggio supported the raising of worker pay.

“Money can become a burden, like something you carry on your shoulders,” he told New York magazine in 1999. “My nature is to be a ball-buster, but my role is to help people.”

This story has been updated to correct the names of Riggio’s second wife and one of his brothers. They are Louise Gebbia, not Louise Altavilla, and Vincent “Jimi,” not Thomas.

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

Related News

Wimbledon champion Krejcikova out of US Open, Shelton and Tiafoe set to meet in 3rd round

Winning numbers drawn in Wednesday’s Powerball

Prosecutors in Arizona’s fake electors case dispute defendants’ allegations of a political motive

Recommended.

'We will never forget that': DC police officer killed after being accidentally shot while retrieving suspect's weapon

Pool season doesn't have to end yet — just borrow someone else's

Washington Commanders' new regime continues purging remnants from Ron Rivera's time in charge

Related categories:.

Leonard Riggio, who forged a bookselling empire at Barnes & Noble, dead at 83

FILE - Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, is seen in New Orleans, Feb. 26, 2008.

Alex Brandon / AP

Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83.

Riggio died Tuesday a “following a valiant battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after Barnes & Noble was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.

Riggio’s near-half century reign at Barnes & Noble began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase the company’s name and its flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and, in the 1990s, launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined a chain’s discount prices and massive capacity with the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.”

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through Barnes & Noble Booksellers, shown here in Pittsburgh in this Jan. 30, 2023 file photo.

Gene J. Puskar / AP

He grew up working class in New York City, liked to say he preferred socializing with childhood pals over fellow business leaders and was informal enough among associates to be known as “Lenny.” But in his time no one in the book world was more feared. With the power to make any given book a best seller, or a flop, to alter the market on an idle whim, the Riggio could terrify publishers simply by suggesting prices were too high or that he might sign up such top sellers as Stephen King and John Grisham and publish them himself. He even tried to buy the country’s biggest book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, but backed off after facing government resistance.

By the end of the 1990s, an estimated one of every eight books sold in the U.S. were purchased through the chain, where front table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books included. Thousands of independent sellers went out of business even as Riggio insisted that he was expanding the market by opening up in neighborhoods without an existing store. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, the rival chains sometimes setting up stores in close proximity to each other and to the locally owned business.

OPB’s First Look newsletter

Streaming Now

BBC The Media Show

Decomposing Barnes and Noble

Jul 17, 2014

100 likes | 256 Views

Decomposing Barnes and Noble. MIS 2502. An author may write many books and a book may be written by multiple authors. What does it mean if I put the royalty on the book table? What about the author table?. Need M:N relationship between author and book I’ve named bridge Royalty

Share Presentation

• multiple authors what
• publisher table
• editor assignment
• multiple customers

Presentation Transcript

Decomposing Barnes and Noble MIS 2502

An author may write many books and a book may be written by multiple authors What does it mean if I put the royalty on the book table? What about the author table? • Need M:N relationship between author and book • I’ve named bridge Royalty • Must include PKs of author and book table • Also includes the royalty that the author receives on this book.

Placement of Royalty on bridge table If royalty on the book table it says all the authors on the book got the same royalty. • If royalty on the bridge table it says this • Each author can get a different royalty on each book • Each author could conceivably get different royalties on a book (i.e. on first 100 $3, next 200 $4) If royalty on the author table it says this author always gets the same royalty

For each book, information such as the advance for the book, the publication date, and the price of the book must be tracked. In addition, Each book is a specific type (i.e. biography, non-fiction, poetry, how-to) • The attributes of advance, publication date, price, advance, and book type are indicated as required. • I’ve added pub_id as a lookup table to the publisher table noted later. If you don’t have this – no problem

There may be multiple editors on a book. There is an order assigned to each editor. Obviously, an editor will edit more than one book, as well. • Need M:N relationship editor and book • I’ve named bridge Editor_assignment • Must include PKs of author and book table

When a book is shipped to the store, the quantity ordered, quantity shipped, and the date shipped is collected. • Invoicing in General: • Remember with invoicing you want to find the following: • Customer • Seller • Items Bought • A customer “visits” seller multiple times and seller has multiple customers– M:N relationship. • Each customer can purchase many items on a visit and item can be purchased by many customers –M:N relationship

Invoice Header – M:N relationship between customer and store • Seller = publisher • Customer = store • I’ve called the invoice header ShipHeader • invoice header is bridge between M:N relationship between buyer and seller. • Like all bridges, need to see the PKs of the buyer (store) and seller (publisher). • Also include ship date • Can also include order date, etc.

Invoice Detail– M:N relationship between customer and visit (can purchase Many Items on 1 visit and vice versa) • On each “visit”, customer can buy multiple items. Items can be bought on multiple visits • Invoice Detail (called ship detail here) is bridge between header and items bought • As in all bridges, need PKs of two tables (ISBN and ship header ID)

Each book is published by only one publisher. • Lookup table from book to publisher

• More by User

A Case Analysis of Barnes Noble

319 views • 14 slides

Marion Barnes

Marion Barnes is an avid adrenaline junkie, and a mountaineer, para glider, cave explorer, and skier. He was born in Helen, Montana to Mary and Scott Barnes. They had a family ranch where he spent a majority of his life. Living on a ranch, Marion came to appreciate the beauty of outdoors, and enjoyed venturing out on treks. What he recalls the most is going on hiking trails and collecting insects, leaves, and bugs along the way.

258 views • 7 slides

Barnes and Noble East Lansing Closure

Barnes and Noble East Lansing Closure. Aaron Jordan and Marissa Russo. Like many bookstores across the nation, the East Lansing Barnes and Noble closed, leaving a large building vacant on Grand River Ave. .

206 views • 6 slides

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble. Financial Analysis By: Heather Deren. www.bookriot.com. Barnes & Noble. Charles Barnes opened a used bookstore in 1873 in Illinois By 1993 it became known as Barnes & Noble, became public, and expanded throughout the U.S.

836 views • 14 slides

Avon-Washington Public Library's E-book Collection Barnes and Noble- Free Fridays

Useful Sites for free books. Avon-Washington Public Library's E-book Collection Barnes and Noble- Free Fridays Barnes and Noble Tween Nook Books Amazon Free Kindle Young Adult and Children's Books Open Libary - ebooks Books Should Be Free Lit2Go-ebooks Kids learn out loud

160 views • 1 slides

Composing and Decomposing Numbers

Composing and Decomposing Numbers. Important Pre-Requisite Math Skills based on presentation by Dinah Chancellor, Math Consultant CAMT 2012. Research suggests…. Between the ages of 9-12, the brain matures enough to take things apart and put them together in new ways.

5.99k views • 32 slides

Decomposing Bananas

Decomposing Bananas. Mrs. Turner’s 4 th Grade Class. Ask A Question. What causes food to spoil? Does dry yeast make food spoil faster?. Write A Hypothesis.

463 views • 11 slides

Amazon vs Barnes & Noble: The Battle of the Bookstores

Amazon.com vs Barnes & Noble: The Battle of the Bookstores. OUTLINE History of Companies Competitive Forces Model in Book Retailing Industry Business Models and Core Competencies Key Competitive Strategies and Investments Viability of Business Models: SWOT Analyses

657 views • 15 slides

DECOMPOSING PROGRAMMES

DECOMPOSING PROGRAMMES. Re-coding hospital work with spatially syntactic information. Daniel Koch | Jesper Steen | KTH School of Architecture | www.arch.kth.se. I. Background.

422 views • 29 slides

Decomposing a Presentation

Decomposing a Presentation. Presentation Stages October 9, 2012.

183 views • 11 slides

Barnes and Noble(BKS)

Barnes and Noble(BKS). By: Ehsanullah Wedee CIS 1055 section 04 2/13/2012. What is Barnes and Noble?. Originally a book printing business started in 1873 First store opened in 1932 Current chairman, Leonard Riggio , purchased the business in 1971

289 views • 9 slides

Barnes & noble Presents: Fifty Shades of Newport

Barnes & noble Presents: Fifty Shades of Newport. By: Jordan King. B&N history. 1873 Charles Barnes opens book printing in Wheaton. 1917 First B&N bookstore in NYC 1971 Leonard Riggio bought B&N 1993 Starbucks Cafe 1997 B&N launches Website 2009 Nook e-reader. B&n stores and products.

298 views • 10 slides

Composing and Decomposing Fractions

Composing and Decomposing Fractions. Unit of Study: Addition and Subtraction of Fractions with Like Denominators Global Concept Guide: 1 of 3. Content Development.

876 views • 7 slides

Decomposing Overlay Applications

Decomposing Overlay Applications. Achieving Extensibility with High Performance. Yitzchak Gottlieb Princeton University. Constant Innovation. 1725 RFCs since 1995 50 Obsolete old RFCs 307 Update ~1400 New ideas 897 Standards track 142 Experimental. Similar to existing More recipients

618 views • 48 slides

Decomposing Waste!!!

Decomposing Waste!!!. By Will Wilson. Purpose. The purpose of my power point is to make people understand the harm that garbage does to the environment!!!

151 views • 5 slides

PubIt ! By Barnes & Noble

PubIt ! By Barnes & Noble. Becky Tantillo· Tech Camp · June 15, 2012. www.pubit.com Sign in with your Barnes and Noble account or create an account exclusively for PubIt ! Self-contained website (no software needed). Getting Started. Four easy steps.

238 views • 13 slides

Barnes and Noble, Inc.

Annual Report. Barnes and Noble, Inc. By: Erica Murray ACG 2021.080. Executive Summary . Barnes and Noble,Inc. is a strong company that continues to grow larger and increase sales. This company can be expected to stay strong throughout the future

292 views • 14 slides

Barnes and Noble, Inc. Balanced Scorecard

Appendix 1. Barnes and Noble, Inc. Balanced Scorecard. Financial. Customer Perspective. Learning and Growth. Internal Business Perspective. Vision and Strategy To bring books and bookstores into the mainstream of American life. barnesandnoble.com Balanced Scorecard. Financial.

604 views • 15 slides

Go to dangerouspet for Hardcovers Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders for softcovers

Learn that a Debt can only be beat by feeding it more of its favorite treat!. Go to www.dangerouspet.com for Hardcovers Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders for softcovers And become a FAN on Facebook!.

391 views • 30 slides

Thank you! Books supplied by Barnes & Noble All prices include tax.

Dear Parents,

96 views • 1 slides

Barnes & Noble bn

Barnes & Noble bn.com. A Test of Usability By Shannon Johnson. Bn.com. What is the site’s purpose?

407 views • 18 slides

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. Christine Corcilli ACG2021 SECTION 080. Executive Summary. This is a solid company. In the last year it has reduced it’s debt and increased it’s cash flow. Therefore, sales and profits are financing the company versus outside sources such as investors and creditors.

258 views • 12 slides

• Скидки дня
• Справка и помощь
• Адрес доставки Идет загрузка... Ошибка: повторите попытку ОК
• Продажи
• Список отслеживания Развернуть список отслеживаемых товаров Идет загрузка... Войдите в систему , чтобы просмотреть свои сведения о пользователе
• Краткий обзор
• Недавно просмотренные
• Ставки/предложения
• Список отслеживания
• История покупок
• Купить опять
• Объявления о товарах
• Сохраненные запросы поиска
• Сохраненные продавцы
• Сообщения
• Развернуть корзину Идет загрузка... Произошла ошибка. Чтобы узнать подробнее, посмотрите корзину.

Jonathan Adler Tables

Jonathan adler lamps, jonathan adler coasters, jonathan adler mug, jonathan adler bedding, jonathan adler home & garden.

• Office Products
• Office & School Supplies
• Binders & Binding Systems
• Binder Accessories
• Binding Covers

Sorry, there was a problem.

Image unavailable.

• To view this video download Flash Player

• Barnes & Noble Presentation Book - Black 9"X12" (24 pages)

Brand	Barnes & Noble
Color	Black
Material	Vinyl
Size	9" X 12"
Manufacturer	Barnes & Noble

About this item

• Presentation Book contains 24 clear plastic sleeves
• Each sleeve measures 9" X 12"
• Vinyl cover is sturdy and durable to protect your work or mementos
• Brand new with manufacturer's product band!

Product information

Technical details.

Manufacturer	‎Barnes & Noble
Part Number	‎06191
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer	‎Yes
Size	‎9" X 12"
Color	‎Black
Material	‎Vinyl
Item Package Quantity	‎1

Additional Information

ASIN	1402806191
Date First Available	September 27, 2009

Warranty & Support

Amazon.com Return Policy: You can return many items you have purchased within 30 days following delivery of the item to you. Our Voluntary 30-Day Return Guarantee does not affect your legal right of withdrawal in any way. You can find out more about the exceptions and conditions .

Fields with an asterisk * are required

: : : Enter the store name where you found this product : Please select province : to provide feedback. \n' + ' ' ); } function getThankYouDiv(thankMsg) { return ( ' \n' + '

' ); } function getLoadingGifDiv() { return '

Product Description

Barnes & Noble Presentation Book - Black 9"X12" (24 pages) - Presentation Book contains 24 clear plastic sleeves. Each sleeve measures 9" X 12". Vinyl cover is sturdy and durable to protect your work or mementos!

Looking for specific info?

Customer reviews.

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

No customer reviews

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices