September 17, 2025, 12:47pm

Barnes & Noble, former sworn enemy to the indie bookstore, may be shaking up its business model. Under the leadership of CEO James Daunt, the company has been using its unlikely second act to bail out struggling indies. Most recently, Books Inc., a California chain.

Books Inc. is considered a community pillar, having “weathered the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression,” gold rushes, and a certain global pandemic. But the 174-year-old Bay Area institution filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Citing a love for “remarkable bookstore chains,” B&N swept in this month with a 3.25 million acquisition plan, and reassurances that nothing would change on the day-to-day if the sale goes through.

If the proposal is approved in bankruptcy court, Goliath has pledged to honor David’s integrity. B&N will allow the store to retain its name and “independent identity,” while preserving the company’s seven locations.

Management has also assured current employees that inventory curation, staffing, and leadership will remain under local jurisdiction. Even as the sale will grant Books Inc. “access to Barnes & Noble’s distribution network and upgraded technology.” According to the San Francisco Standard, customers will even be able to keep their current loyalty points.

This echoes a similar play. Last year, B&N acquired Tattered Cover, the beloved Colorado bookstore chain that filed for bankruptcy after several years of very public mismanagement. After that chain was sold, the black hats swept in—and apparently touched very little. There was much rejoicing.

But against the Supreme Court, I’d argue that corporations are not people. So it’s a little hard to believe these sales are purely altruistic. Why is B&N getting into the indie racket? And what could it mean for readers like you?

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Allison Smith in Modern Retail observed the irony—that B&N, “once maligned as the big-box retailer that nearly killed the independent bookstore…is now fashioning itself as their savior.” Last year, my colleague Drew Broussard also considered “the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend response” to the Tattered Cover acquisition, in a thoughtful op-ed.

It’s true that B&N has seen a funny turn of fortunes. After Amazon emerged as the true Sauron of the book business, and B&N itself filed for bankruptcy in 2011, the company experienced a turn of public opinion. No longer the Joe Foxes come to crush The Shops Around the Corner, we started to see those big empty buildings as peers in solidarity. Just another third space under threat.

But a lot of this rebranding is the direct result of James Daunt’s (formerly of Daunt Books) shrewd PR work. As Publishers Weekly and Smith have reported, since taking the reins in 2019, Daunt “has increasingly borrowed from the playbook of independents themselves” by pushing to decentralize buying decisions, empowering local managers, and running each B&N store with its own character.

This “playbook” casts the acquisitions of beloved local indies in something of a different light. Not that Daunt’s been cagey about this. The behemoth-does-bespoke strategy, in which a large chain tailors its outlets to a community to echo a spirit (if not a letter) of indie-ness, has been successful across the pond. Especially at Waterstones, the UK mega book chain that Daunt stewarded before taking this job.

And though the CEO hastens to reassure skeptics that indie buy-outs are not an empire-building maneuver (“This is very much not Barnes & Noble roaming the countryside, looking for great indie bookstore chains and acquiring them”), a sprinkle of healthy suspicion seems in order.

As Drew noted re: the Tattered Cover acquisition, a big box corporation is a big box corporation, no matter how indie its insides. And “the distinction between B&N and indie bookstore is an important one to maintain.”

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“By absorbing struggling indie chains while preserving their identities—and backing them with national resources, Barnes & Noble is positioning itself not as a big-box competitor to independents but as a steward of bookstores that may otherwise vanish,” Smith writes, in counterpoint. Which, fair.

We obviously want more bookstores. Not fewer. Bookstores are the best. And if beloved, centuries-old cornerstone bookstores get to stay open care of B&N, so much the better.

But I can’t help but feel some nostalgia for the old You’ve Got Mail plot. If only for the pleasure of fighting a CEO who actually seems to value the product he sells.

Speaking of? B&N sales have been steadily growing under Daunt’s leadership. And the company plans to open 60 more stores next year.

Now where they’ll be and what they’ll be called, we’ll just have to see.