At Barnes & Noble, most of its 627 stores are closed to the public "and it seems likely that the few that remain open may shortly be required also to close," CEO James Daunt wrote in a letter to employees on Friday afternoon. "We will offer BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) via curbside pick-up where this is permitted, as is presently the case for most stores. This service is helping a dramatic increase in sales through BN.com. Notwithstanding this success, our revenues have declined in an unprecedented manner."
As a result, as B&N has closed stores, the company has laid off staff with less than six months of employment and furloughed most of the rest, keeping only "a core of booksellers to service BOPIS." The company has also furloughed more than 260 employees in the home office. Daunt called it "a brutal process and something that we hope will be of the shortest possible duration."
The "small silver lining to this calamity," Daunt continued, is that B&N is using the period to renovate most of its stores, a project "we had otherwise intended to work through over the next 18 months to two years." This includes moving bookcases and furniture and "improving visually our stores with better fixtures." In addition, teams of booksellers are being brought back to "work through all our book categories. We aim, to the best of our abilities, to direct an appropriate allocation of space and the best possible backlist assortment. This is an exercise in bookselling curation that is very long overdue and which we hope will improve dramatically the quality of our bookstores."
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Simon & Schuster, which last week launched a partnership with Bookshop.org to help independent bookstores, has made several additions to the program:
For the rest of the year, S&S is donating any affiliate fees earned through sales at Bookshop.org to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc).
S&S is working with Libro.fm to include audiobook download purchases in supporting booksellers.
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Interested booksellers should apply by 12 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday, April 8. For more information, including the 10 jobs and the application form, click here.