Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt in Conversation with Maribel Pérez Wadsworth

We wanted to start this convening with a conversation that might be a little bit different. And the journalism industry, which you all know, we talk to ourselves a lot, which is important. We're learning a lot from each other, but we need to look outside as well. And so, we were thinking about who should we invite as a keynote speaker to talk about. And we thought, how about someone who has helped turn around a struggling industry? We don't know anything about struggling industries here, right? And so the first person that came to mind was James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble. And we are very fortunate that he said yes to this invitation. And then we're going to get a chance to spend some time here talking about what that took, how they think about audience when it comes to book selling, how they think about community engagement, all of that. And the perfect person to lead the conversation with him is our president and CEO Marbel Perez Wadsworth who has spent her career in journalism specifically a lot of it in local and she's thought about audience for many many years and she's been in charge of initiatives around innovation around thinking about product when it comes to audience how we tell stories differently in this day and age and so without further ado I'd like to bring James and Marbel to the stage for a conversation. >> [applause] >> Good evening everyone. >> Kind of sounds like school. You're going to school and maybe a little church. First and foremost, I want to add my thanks, James, for you agreeing to join us. Um, I know how busy you are. It sounds like you really crammed in a lot of site visits today, so you're making use of your time in Colorado. >> Yeah. And and deeply flattered to be here as well. So, thank you. >> Um we thought as as Emily said, you know, not only um is James in a business that I think is very relatable to us, you know, the ritual of the bookstore, um you know, the reading experience, etc. but the turnaround story and what a comeback story it is. Um, not your first one. You're a bit of a comeback architect. Um, as as I've been learning. Um, but I think what I'd like to do is start um by talking a little bit about this comeback. You uh you speak about book selling as a vocation. You believe very much that these businesses can be turned around. uh you inherited at the acquisition of Barnes & Noble a business that had been uh had lost about a billion dollars in market value in the five years before that acquisition and last year opened what 60 new stores and you're opening how many this year? >> Another 60 stores. So growing, expanding, thriving again. How do you do that? >> The core of the business is fine. People love bookstores. We all understand that and actually they really do love bookstores. But if the bookstore loses its confidence and begins to behave irrationally around that, fails to invest in a bubble in its people, then it creates a a negative cycle of increasing undermining of the core principle of what it should do, which is run good bookstores, people and staffed by happy book sellers in creating this this welcoming environment that people naturally and people really want to to be nice, but they cut costs and they fail to invest and they undermine the quality of what they have and then they take shortcuts and they start selling Duracell batteries and very warm Fiji water and all these things and that's not what bookstores do. And then the sales drop and then they do even more of the bad things and then it gets into this frankly into this death loop and it's entirely unnecessary. We don't know anything about that, do we? Sounds very familiar. Sadly, you I I I saw somewhere you spoke about this um the idea of, you know, much more sort of patient decision- making. The decisions you make today, you might see pay off three years from now, four years from now, five years from now. How how do you how do you manage that under the pressure to drive results to improve the financial outlook today as I'm sure many people in this room feel? >> Well, you do have to recognize the financial reality in which you find yourself and and as you say, I've I've done it twice. In fact, I've done it three times because when I first opened my bookstore and I was extremely young, uh thought I knew what I was doing and I clearly didn't. I I was in big big trouble for the first three or four years. So I needed to sort that out and then I needed with the UK equivalent of Barnes & Noble Waterston. Um so you you you have to be very careful and you have to cut your costs and that photograph of me which is at least 20 years old is not because I'm vain. It's because I've never spent any money to do a second photograph. So it's the only one. So you do have to be careful in that respect. But then it's what matters to us. What what is the core of of what we need to do and just concentrate on that and and in our case a lot of that core is our people. And if we can invest in our people, the rest may be able to follow and because they're doing a better job or enough of them are, we make a bit more money and then we can invest in. And as you say, always look at everything we do with a view to improving the business. And if anything that we need to do is short-term or might detract from that, just rule it out. Don't do it. >> You you just referenced the the bookstore that you opened ended up how how many dump books in London. >> There are now I've got 10 bookstores, but it six of them are called Don Brooks. >> Yeah. Um which he still owns and still runs. Uh that obviously has no doubt brought much of your learning and the expertise you now have. Um how transferable is what you learned running DOM books to now running Barnes & Noble? >> Well, it turns out to be entirely transferable. Of course, nobody would have ever known that if there had been no other alternative. Um nobody wanted to do anything with water stems. Nobody remotely was prepared to touch it and everybody assumed it was dead. So giving it to somebody as I then had six bookstores was like well >> maybe he know >> maybe maybe and and in effect it was the same with Barnes & Noble which is well you know this limey across the pond seems to have sorted out something. So you know maybe it maybe it could work. Let's let's just see you know but let's cross our fingers and securitize the inventory and make sure that we can get a dime when it all goes horribly wrong. Yeah. Um I want to uh dig a little deeper into what some of those key elements are that um are leading to success. And you talk a lot about the team. So clearly that's a core piece, but what about the team? What makes a good team running a bookstore? >> I I I don't think this applies to everywhere, but it very might apply to journalism. I think almost certainly does and certainly applies to book selling which is you have to abandon what is a natural reliance on a hierarchy that in our case you know the shop manager is the store manager. It's not the store manager. It's you got to flatten the hierarchy and really concentrate on the team and what is the assembly of skills that you need because you need a a a an effective arsenal of of people around you who can deliver against your key priorities as a business. In our case, we need people who can run a kids department. We need people who can run the back room and do all the inventory and sort out the ops. We need somebody who can do the social media. We need somebody who loves being at the front being the customer service and helping people. We need somebody who can do the history and the non-fiction. And we need somebody who can do the new stand and somebody who did the It's all of those people. And it you probably won't have all of them to begin with, but you have to then put in a plan to fill in the slots and identify talent and look after talent and retain talent. And if you're able to then stitch that together amongst a group of people who enjoy working together and we are hugely fortunate to be invocational industries, you can bring those people together. And in our case at least, not tolerate anything. My my the most important world word in my world is nice. I need people who are nice, who look after each other and are nice to each other. Nice to customers of course, nice to suppliers, nice to everybody else, but nice above all to each other. And so not uh leaving any room for the primadonas and the people who are actually not very nice. >> Right. Um one of the things that may play into that as well is you you did a lot to reshape the uh the shape of your workforce from very heavily reliant on part- timerrs who are probably fairly transient um to much more full-time focused stuff. Is that does that follow this idea it's a vocation and creating a sense of team and people who actually work well together and like each other? >> Yeah. I mean my my predecessors who who failed in running this business were not stupid people. They were incredibly hardworking and incredibly professional people but they were retailers and they therefore followed retail principles and one of those was you know you keep your costs low which I believe in in all other things except with my people and therefore you have minimum wage part- timerrs you never let them have benefits because benefits are really expensive and you have to get those but keep them and then turn them before you have to pay them more and it's it's a lowcost model and in fact It's incredibly inefficient and doesn't deliver good outcomes. And what you need to do is invest in your people. And but there is a hard side to that because you need to invest in people who are also investing in us, people who are vocational, people who are working hard, people who are really committing to you. And those people, you have to be able to look them in the eye and say, "I'm really doing the best I possibly can by you. I'm paying you more. I'm promoting you. I'm putting in the levels that allow you to work." And then also the people that you're attracting to your business changes. It's serious people come in, people who want to succeed in it and and actually that diversifies who who who you're able to employ, which then strengthens you in turn. >> You you've mentioned a couple of times just in this very conversation some of the um ways in which maybe journalism and book selling um are similar. Um what are some of the ways that you what some of the things you see us having in common? Well, I think it's a tough industry. It always has been and it it never wasn't. And I think we we're we're both of us perhaps a little inclined to think that there was some sort of glory time when journalists were when it was an easy profession where you turned up and you were paid enormously well and it was always good. It's it's always been a tough industry and it's always been somewhere which rewards hard work and application and also quite intellectual industries. These are ones which which make a significant demand upon you. Obviously, journalism is very different to book selling, but nonetheless, you can't be passive in either, I think. And it requires people who enjoy hard work, who enjoy applying themselves probably a little unconventionally, like they're not just turning up at 9:00, leaving at 5:00, who are going to have to work weekends. They're going to have to move themselves around. They're going to have to put themselves out there. and and book sellers also need to constantly think. It's an intellectual engagement. Uh you don't need to be hugely well educated, but you need to be clever. >> That's a I love that. That's a good way to put it. Um the other thing, of course, we have in common is we're we exist to serve a community um an audience if you will. Um people who come into your stores, people who are consuming the news and information that journalists put out. Talk about that relationship. What what have you learned in the way that Barnes & Noble and obviously Wat prior to have been able to re-engage that relationship with the customer? >> Book sellers are a tribe and book sellers in the United States are very similar to book sellers in the United Kingdom. And actually book sellers in Japan or China or Taiwan or anywhere that you go around the world where there are book sellers and there are book sellers everywhere. I mean we always think well there aren't book sellers in Caro. I mean, there really are tons of bookstores in Kairo and they're full of a very similar tribe to the tribe that we have, you know, in the store down the road. Uh quite introverted people, quite quiet people, people who are focused on values and ideals. uh who serve those in a way which is analogous I think to public librarians who do it simply actually also educators different but nonetheless you're focused on the community and you're focused on values within what you're selling and I think that is our vocation and is that a bit political at times I I would say it's about values not politics but of course values tend to attach themselves to politics in some way journalism will be much more so but but we nonetheless inhabit a very clear space and when you go to there's a d you go to different parts where you go to Chendu and you meet the Chinese book sellers they're the same people they're having a tougher time than us but uh you know something it makes me think about is the in terms of that that relationship with the audience the vocal context is what you're speaking to the values Sometimes the local context um has implications for how people think, the things they care about, the things they think are important. How important has it been for your bookstores to be really true and authentic to that local sensibility? >> I think the chain bookstore, which just as a as a as a brief advertising uh blast, chain bookstores are great. All right. And and I never believed that because I'm an independent books seller. I always thought they were terrible. And it was only when I got and started working for one that I suddenly realized, oh my lord, these things are amazing because they're huge and everybody in a community comes into them and nobody's excluded. And and my Shishi independent store is really quite exclusive. It's quite intimidating and it's actually also small, physically small. So not every, you know, you can't have 20 kids come in after school and just hang out and make a noise and be a fuss because we can't fit 20 people in my store. So they are this very inclusive place. And then the key for us was allowing each of the store teams to adjust themselves to their particular situation because they're all different and and even around you know here the Boulder store is different to Denver stores and then actually got lots of Denver stores and each of those is a little different. So, how do we let the stores themselves adapt and reflect the communities in which they are? And of course, they do understand those because they're right there in there and and they they they employ the people, the kids at the weekends, they come from the community, the seasonal people and and they live there, they work there and they really really care. >> What are the most important things then to be truly locally controlled? Uh from our perspective it is giving them freedom and giving them as few instructions as possible. Nice. Be nice. You know it's it's you know that is if you think about it just as an instruction that helps you guide an awful lot of the things you do. Use your common sense and when you sorry I was about to say something rude. When you make a mistake, recognize it quickly and correct it. Don't agonize over it. Don't hide it. Deal with it. And when you need help, ask for it. And we can give you help. And and we tend to give our help locally. So, it's we group all of our stores together and and really encourage stores to help each other locally. Uh and then we live within a wider community. The only thing that that is strangely different in the United States, United Kingdom, is the divide between the chain bookstore and the independent bookstores disappeared in the United Kingdom. Took a while, but it's completely disappeared. We're all book sellers together. Whereas here, there's our there's them and us. >> We're interesting. um the Colorado stores. You just spent a day, I think, um visiting several stores and talked about the stores in Denver looking different. Um what did you learn in your time visiting them today? >> Well, luckily, unfortunately, they're better than they were. I was actually here I've been here a couple of times, but I properly went around them about 4 years ago, and they're a lot lot better. um same people in them. So that's interesting and good. And you know, the young kid is now noticeably less young, but still really young. And the the teams have built themselves up and then they were all the same before, pretty much the same. Another not. And a couple of them were sensational, we thought, and a couple of them were really bad. I mean, awful. And then the others were in between. But at least the good people knew they were good, and the not so good people knew they weren't. And I think we will probably facilitate a bit of like, well, going out and down the road. Um, but we've also got a bit of energy and excitement because we we're opening up new stores and people are are up in Casper doing one which is miles away and and remote and and place somewhere that hadn't had a bookstore for a long time. >> Yeah. Um, what is describe sensational to us? >> I think it's coming into a store where the whole team is just moving seamlessly. you know, they're just buzzing around running a very attractive store, different looking, but with you're seeing the things you want to, but everybody's sort of saying hi, smiling. They're not doing what the less good stores do, which is basically stand to attention. And it's like, oh lord, did you really have to walk in? >> No, we're coming. >> They don't know. They never know where you're coming. So, it's like, oh dear. Um but the the happy stores just carry on you know and and then they and there's a visible sense of of energy amongst them. Um and you know they got a good customer base and they're busy and and successful stores and know they're successful and successful you know when that has has been after a period of difficulty you know they they really feel proud of it as well. This one just down the road was yeah they were really proud of themselves which is great. >> So greatly did you talk to customers while you were there? >> I we had a few customers who just because they can hear the chat who come and you know introduce themselves and and things but but you know their customers are nice as well and and they you know in this great land everybody chips in in the UK nobody does. They're all like pretending they don't notice what's going on here. They're right in there you know. Boom. Um, let's let's talk a little bit more tactically here. One of the things you've done is reduce the number of titles every store carries. Why has offering less inventory been part of a successful strategy? >> It's it's not quite that. There's there's less inventory and there continues to be a decline in inventory, but there are more titles. So, it's a different thing. We used to have uh multiple copies and sometimes huge quantities of a of a smaller assortment and now we're broadening the assortment but we often only have one copy. So most of particularly our non-fiction sections but but you know the fiction as well but but particularly non-fiction we've broadened the range that we have and we really brought in an awful lot of books that we never used to have uh good books um uh serious books and and have tried and it's an ongoing piece of work to take each subject that we're doing and it doesn't matter whether it's tennis or it's France during the occupation and making sure that we have the catalog that best accommodates that which means you have to have many more books but you don't need three 510 and you don't need like a gazillion copies of James Patterson bless Jigs Patterson because he pays a lot of bills but you don't need zillions of copies and that's moving the inventory more and then replacing it as it sells so it's it's a it's a dual think it's much more difficult for the book sellers they got to think about their subjects and they got to constant ly work them and and often they're moving how they arrange books because a lot of books can be one thing or another thing. You you can have a book that is a travel book or it's a history book and you have to decide how you're grouping to best make that interesting to the customers because people who come to bookstores now are not doing what they used to do which was decide at home the book they wanted just read it in the newspaper whatever medium it is come in say can I please have this book seller goes and gets the book and then they buy it and go now it's you come in the books have no idea what you want to buy and you just have a browser and you find things so it's for us it's about how you create interesting spaces. >> Well, which I think I imagine is very relatable to a lot of the folks in a room because you can think about a new story in the same way. It can fit in potentially a lot of categories um depending on the platform, depending on the um you know even even recycling it in in different formats. Um so I think that that's very similar out >> will as you actually try and address it you know is you're not going to survive on clickbait alone. you're going to have to actually give some good journalism and give some insights and you know we're very very pleased having maintained our news stand offer at Barnes & Noble which is a huge news stand offer but which was looking in big trouble and sales have been absolutely cratering and and it's been back and growing really nicely now and has done for a couple of years and it's quite interesting to see it's that there's there's different elements of it but it's those particularly magazines who've invested in quality who are doing well. >> What are some of those? What's so invested? >> It it's, you know, things like the Atlantic, foreign affairs, all of those. But actually, if you then go into each category, so you know, we sell lots of nature, sailing, you just go on through. But it's the ones that have got bulk, good design, have and and when you talk to the the the new stand guys, they know which are the ones that are on the up and then they're moving those forward. And it's it's really people who've had the courage to invest and get themselves over the hump. And I know that, you know, you need backing to be able to do that. You need uh you need to have capture journalism. You need to to invest in it. But it does seem at the moment to be being rewarded. you have you have said and I think you're describing a little bit that people tend to engage more in the physical um in in a physical bookstore than they would say online shopping. Um why think that is? Well, I I do think that there are many things, well, if we if just think about books at the first, there are many things around a book beyond its content that you're responding to and it's the design, it's the feel, it's the font, it's there are there are lots of other emotional things. Now, you can't judge those online and I think I think Mr. Bezos is not listening. But if he's the book you buy on Amazon is of course exactly the same book, but you're not you haven't judged it in any way. And therefore I think there is frequently a moment of just disappointment that's attached to the opening of that envelope and you pull it out and then like the colors of it garbage. And because they print on demand so much of theirs whereas ours tend to come from printing press the same book but ours feels nicer. actually is a better book and then the font's a little too small and if you're doing it in our store you don't even know that you're doing it but you pick it up and you put it down you take another one so I think and you also you walking out of a store with a heavy bag of books it's great it's just and and already you kind of feel clever like I've almost read them it's like you don't need to tell me my house has overrun It's, you know, it's just you just press buy and then like it'll turn up and then yeah, it's but no the the stores and it and it translates that into so much else that if the physical store itself is respecting you and investing and doing it well and you get nice service and things, then it's really great. Now, if the service isn't good or it looks wrong or it's dirty or the cover's dented or all those little things, then of course you've you've undone all of the magic that you have within a physical space. >> It does it does feel like magic though to to walk through the store and serendipitously find something you might not have considered. I mean, I do love that heavy bag. You're doing it with people. It's a social thing and it's and it's not just, you know, the friend you come in with or the family you come in with. It's it's other customers. You you conversations are going on all the time. We are the pickup joint for introverts. >> I love that as the tagline. >> I get into trouble for saying that. I've said it before and I I was told never to say it again. So >> yeah, >> and and follow instruction about as well as I do. I love that. Um so but let's let's pull that thread a little bit more. Um because it it comes down to people and bringing people in the store. Um and and so how first how do you get people to come in the store the first time and then what's important about them bringing them back and hopefully bringing their friends and I think bookstores are fortunate because there is an intrinsic attraction to bookstores and there's you know in most book buyers are intrinsically promiscuous. So they're they're always going to go into other bookstores. So if you've got your bookstore there, they they will come in and then we have a a cycle through the day in which the different parts of the community come in. You open at 9:00 because the older kids have been dropped off at school and then you're pushing a buggy and you need to go somewhere and you might as well go where other and that could be a cafe but it's often a bookstore and you can come in and if you come into our bookstores when we open it's full of buggies and young babies and kids and ms chatting and it's that group. They then go off because the kids get quarrelless and things and and then it's really quite an old and elderly group of people in because they're not working and they come in and they know they can find each other and you can see them in the cafes and they're playing their games and they're wandering around and then the lunchtime group come in and then again during turn all the kids come in and that's a wall of noise uh you know and just energy and then it's the 20somes who come in and then it's and you just you can see the arc of of all ages are coming in through different noises different and the team within a store responds to each of those groups of people that come in um and it's you know that is what we are >> you really are in in that way serving the entire community all demographics h how how would you encourage newsrooms to think about that uh because you you see a lot of newsrooms, you know, they they need to narrow their focus. They need to key in on a specific audience or a specific niche. That's in part driven by the constraints of the business. Um sometimes it's driven by certain expertise, but to the point that they're serving the whole community, how should what is relatable about what you've learned to their work? I think a lot of our um effort is made with people who who we don't make any money from now. You you provide and and particularly in our new stores, we invest in a huge amount of we got great Wi-Fi. We got lots and lots of sockets and you know lots of people are just working in the store or hanging out in the store. The kids are certainly the teenage kids and we know there are future customers. So and and we also know that kids are interested in news. they are interested in in in culture. They're interested in things. So how how is it that one makes that newspaper, that magazine that interesting to a to a group of people who will become your future? And I think that is a tricky thing. Obviously news things are working online now to such a degree that seems to me to be the space where you do it and relatively inexpensively. Not, you know, I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their job. But also you can use young clever people to do that. And we rely hugely on our young people particularly to work with social media magic that they do. And again I don't know how they do. I don't understand anything about social media at all. And all I know is leave them alone to do it. Tell them to use their common sense. Just don't do daft things. Not not please or not too often. And if you do just fess up to it. And then also internally to if you're in charge of these young kids and they do mess up, which they do, just tell them to be more sensible next time, don't have an existential crisis. Let the thing breathe and come alive. And I suspect you can do that within news things. And and every young kid coming up, that kid who can write, that 16-year-old who they they just aspire to be a journalist. I mean, there's a whole group of them out there. So they will come and work for you and engage with you in any which way they can. >> I think that's actually a really important thing. I I remember you know every every year having the latest crop of interns um come for the summer and and you know my advice to them was always you know I know that you feel you're here to learn but let's not forget that you're also have so much to teach us and making sure we're creating that space because these platforms are native to them and not so much to the rest of us. Um but but how is Barnes & Noble utilizing social media or you know >> No idea. >> And they are absolutely not the foggiest. >> Oh, you trust you trust the youngans. You just No. No. Again, it's this is facious. Just leave it to the ones with the blue hair. Just like it'll be fine. And and but we do we we give them time. We give them the resources and we just >> some guidelines maybe. No, be sensible. Just use common sense. You know what common sense is, don't you? And if they say yes, you're up. And it's really surprising and it's unbelievably powerful that they they are the people who are bringing so much into our stores and igniting this particularly amongst what has always been the core of our customer which is this what we call a young adult which is a teenager up into the early 20s. That's the been the core of the business since I opened a bookstore in in in the dim dim dimistant past and it's remained that way and that's where the bestsellers come from today. It's Rebecca Yaros, it's Sarah J. Massah blah blah, but it was always that. And that's why, you know, JK Rowling and Harry Potter and things you just all the way that you go through it's these book after book after book and it's that age group. And now we can let these kids just let rip into this social media thing. And I think that's one of the the real wins in in our sales that that is propelling us. That's really that's really terrific that this room is full of folks who are doing those kinds of things today, helping to lead audience development efforts in in their muse rooms. If there was one thing that you would encourage them to do to develop a relationship with their audience, what would that be? >> I think it's consistency, isn't it? You you can gain an audience and then if you take your eye off it, you you will lose it again. So, how how does one remain consistent in and and just patiently incrementally improving on what you're doing? Uh, easier said than done, but I I do feel we're sometimes guilty of sort of seizing an audience and then letting them go again. And and that that I think is the worst thing we can do. And and certainly within my own bookstore business, I'm always saying, well, you you're always developing these new and finding this new what keep with them. what was it who brought them in and keep at it and keep on investing in it. And if it was that clever intern that came in and did we and then they go off back to college or wherever they come from, well, you better get somebody else in to pick up the reigns and and hold that, keep that going. And it's tough for people leading this, which is you have to put some money in. And that, you know, unfortunately, it needs investment as well, >> which has been a theme of this conversation, you know, invest quality, be nice. Um, where do you get your news? Uh, I've read and still read the Financial Times. It's actually a really good paper. It sounds like it's the most boring paper in the wide world, but it isn't. And they've invested in journalism, and it's actually a really good newspaper, and I find it's the consistency. I'm religious about that. Um, I love the New York Times as well. I used to love the Washington Post, but they're dead to me now. they drop their books pages. Uh, and then I do I think the magazines which I fall in love and out of love with. So I I am a foreign affairs and an Atlantic obsessive at the moment and that kind of like fills me up quite a lot because I got to read a lot of books as well. Um, but I I know that I'm a little bit of a gadfly. So one of them if something and I do like to pick up other things and luckily I have a family which also read and consume massively. So the Guardian is always there and the other newspapers and and and these other magazines constantly around the place. So you you you're being but mine are Atlantic Foreign Affairs, New York Times and and the FT. So it's a lot you have to put time in. >> That's right. That's right. What's uh you speaking of books of course um what's a recent book you loved? >> Uh I think it sold at least a dozen copies and there's a new biography of Frederick Church. I've never heard of Frederick Church. Frederick Church is one of the great American 19th century landscape artists and never heard of him and he's he's in all these museums that you go into and I always went straight past them and they're amazing and the book is amazing and he is really interesting. So that was good. Um and then I'm slightly obsessed about the legal system and justice system here. So, um, uh, so I'm reading a few books about that and it's like, oh, it's an education. >> I I hate to ask what specifically has prompted that interest. >> It's just it's interesting as interesting, but again, I just read A Quiet Coup, which is been out for a while. My lord, it's interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, is there I asked you about your favorite recent book, but is there a favorite of all time, a book that if you were on a desert island, you would want that book with you? >> Yeah, I might be in a strange mood on that desert island. Um, my my childhood is is as so many of of my generation is JR talking. It's all of the rings and things, but but now it's the greats. So I I normally say Anna Karen and Toltoy. Um uh but I I reread Middle Marge. Oh my lord. I mean I had read it maybe when I was 18 or something and then you know the other end of my life and it's mind-blowingly good. So I think that these great literature are where I probably would go back to. I want to um turn the conversation over to the audience a bit. I have no doubt that we have a lot of questions that have been um surfacing as we've been talking. >> Uh thank you for a great conversation. I have probably a dozen questions I could ask. Unlike book shopping, I will just pick one. Um you talked a little bit about the difference of shopping online versus physical. Totally agree with you. Uh, how do you think about the online storefront that Barnes & Noble has in its role to support or strengthen a local retail outlet? >> We've um I mean, historically, we've had a a pretty dismal online offer um and which we're just now really beginning to invest in. So, I I think again sort of back to this about how do you improve a business? I I think you have to set your priorities and then work your way through them and frankly online came after the stores. Um, but we are in the UK very invested in our online proposition, really using the engagement through the loyalty program to recommend books and then reinforce that through the online platform and it's been spectacularly successful in the UK and sales have have gone up both in absolute terms and as a percentage of what we sell. Um, in the US that journey has just begun now. uh we just read platforms and and we do have a loyalty program that we are beginning to use. Uh and essentially that is sort of how do you sensibly understand who your customer is given we know what they buy that is that's a real marker for what they might be interested in and then how do you marshall your book sellers to give you the content to to send that down the pipe. Um but uh the percentage of sales that we get online in the United Kingdom is over double the percentage that we have in the US. Um which is curious given that it it's it's a less vibrant online market. So I I think there's a huge potential for us, but you got to do it intelligently and you got to do it very specifically to the individual and and understand that it's not one customer, it's it's when in our case 26 million individual ones. if anyone couldn't hear that that a very good question which is is the relationship between the local bookstore and and the local press if I got that right. Um it's interesting this because I think as as we at Barnes & Noble are becoming um better at what we do. So we're we're just at that stage in riding our cycle where we've the stabilizers that we had out there. We've just taken them off and we're now trying to not fall over. As you get more confident in what you're doing at the local store level, less reliant on the home office, you develop more confidence in taking risks at the local level. Then you start reaching out into your community much much more and you start working. So many more events, working with the local libraries, working with the schools, working and one of the absolute key partners are the cultural institutions that are around us. And we regard the local newspaper as a cultural institution just as the museum is or the opera houses or the art gallery or the museum. All of these that we can then start working with each of our stores in the United Kingdom does this in very different ways. But what we basically say we got the same customers, our customers are yours and we don't compete in any which way. So how are we going to help each other? and they all come up with quite different answers but it's an absolute key local relationship and and we sponsor the local I don't know what you would you call crosswords crosswords here puzzles yeah you know and you get a prize of a water's voucher if you fill out the crossword first or I don't know how the newspapers tell us which and it's little things like that but it's also feeding events working with them it's it's myriads of ways but it's a hugely powerful partnership And I I would imagine in three-ish years time, you're going to have many more Barnums in Noble reaching out to do that kind of thing because they're now beginning to assert themselves. And they're not just trying to fix what's going on in their own four walls. A quick anecdote is already question to this whole point of the relationship. Many, many years ago, um my husband was a features reporter at a local newspaper and uh the Sudoku craze had just started. So that'll give you a sense of how long ago this was. And the newspaper developed a relationship with the Barnes & Noble in Fort Myers, Florida. And he taught Sudokco lessons to customers at Barnes & Noble, which in turn then had them coming to the newspaper to do a Sudoku puzzle. So this has been going on for Time Moran. Thank you so much for showing up um this evening. You dropped many gems tonight. I want to say thank you for that. But I kind of want to go back to the topic of re-engaging audience. um double doubling down on what my colleague just said, you know, when it comes down to bookstores and then journalism. Um I'm a publisher of a newspaper in the city of Philadelphia and we are learning how to re-engage our audience. We went from a monthly newspaper to now a seasonal newspaper to the point where we're now putting our arts and culture in the front of the paper to keep people to continue to flip through the pages to get to the public news or you know the pressing news of the city of Philadelphia. So, I wanted to just ask you a direct question on how to re-engage um audiences when it comes down to print in a digital world that we're living in right now. Um I am not one who wants to give up on print. I am still pushing for print as you're still pushing for print books. So, I just wanted to ask like how are we or if you have any sentiments or words of how can we re-engage with audience through print. I completely agree obviously with that the print really matters and there's some a visceral engagement there that you're not otherwise going to achieve and then your question how are you going to get it into people's hands and you know we have a role in that we have a news stand we have cafes we put the stack of the newspapers particularly local ones and I think one of our challenges is we should be reaching out to you as well as you reaching out to us and then how do you actually get the mechanic of that to work because we're going to if you sell it, we got to take the money for it. Then we got to make sure we give you that money. And um there's there's a detail to this. If you've got at the local level goodwill, you can sort those things out. And then our challenge as as the people running the business is to facilitate that and actually professionalize it cuz if you don't do it well it's going to cause you know somebody isn't going to get paid or somebody is the deliveries aren't and all of those things. So I think these steps need to be done. Um our job is to make sure that the local people are equipped to be sensible with it. And you know I'd be interested to see if you go into that into our store there how they respond to it. um that happens to be a very uh idiosyncratic store which is exerting its independence quite aggressively. So I think you'd get probably a very good good response from them. But but we have to get them into people's hands and we have to use our collective sort of within the communities the collective uh group of us who have simil similar motivations and and we are aligned you know I we've always felt deeply aligned to public libraries um and and but it extends clearly beyond that um so how do we all help each other >> so this has been fascinating and I love what you said about consistency because over the years news rooms have chased various shiny pennies from big scaled audience to tiny small valuable audiences. How do you see memberships? You mentioned loyalty program factoring in like do you see Barnes & Noble's future as in a larger sort of like like less loyal audience or boiling it down to a much more stable membership driven organization? How do you think about that journey? uh for us the the the membership which and we have you can give us some money and then you can get a big discount. So there's a paid membership or we just have a free one where you get rewards and things. Um we need to and I was very keen when I first got here to say we got to have a a membership that everybody can participate in which is the importance of the free one. I think in in as we observe running this news stand that most of the news stand is trying to get people onto subscriptions uh normally with a huge discount on what they have to pay us for the physical and and you know I get why that happens but also sort of slightly feel that there's a they're undermining then their ability to be in physical places like ours. Um, so I think but but I think you have to each newspaper have a different audience. Each newspaper has a different how do I really focus on that customer base that audience and this is actually one of the great lessons that Amazon has given us all is focus on your customer. Really really focus on your customer and try and give them what they want. And Amazon does that absolutely fabulously in in this very pure way. Um, and I think that's something we all of us need to to engage with to a degree. Obviously, completely different answers as to how we do that. Um, but loyalty is a two-way street. I think people love being loyal. So, it's it's, you know, we want their loyalty, but also they want to know and that they're being appreciated for that loyalty. It goes both ways. >> Yes. Uh, thank you so much for uh everything you have shared tonight. Um, one of the changes that you mentioned is that you have more titles and less copies, right? So, I was wondering how can we adapt that a strategy for journalism because bookstores usually they don't publish books but we produce we publish. So, how can we adapt that? How can we sort of like translate that idea? How do you see that we can do that? Well, I suppose that the the equivalent of that is is sort of how narrow or wide you're going. And and sorry, I made that very um poor joke about the Washington Post. Um but but but it, you know, it stopped its books coverage. It no longer reviews books. Uh which, you know, for a major newspaper seems a you know, that's cailing. Now, I don't think that's sensible. They they if they've got an ambition to keep a broad audience, they need to keep and cover the broad spectrum of what you would expect from a newspaper of that quality. And I would expect reviews of books in them at least weekly and you know work out a way of doing that. So I I do think the equivalent is keep and make sure the one's got the spread that addresses the audience that you have. than in the Washington Post case, they had it's we used to open that thing up and make sure we had the Washington Post main book reviews out there and the books in a pile because people bought them not just in the DC area but but through so and now we don't I was thinking about your comment about keeping costs low except for your people and I wondered if we were to compare a pie chart of your major expenses from 5 years ago and now what would be different? How would that have changed if it has? >> It it has changed very significantly. So we the the pie that that was devoted to the home office of the head office in in New York City has dramatically reduced and you know unfortunately there there are no euphemisms to to disguise what that meant. We just chopped massively the number of people that we employ in New York City in the home office. Uh lots of very good people, lots of very capable people, but it was a huge sort of overhead sitting on the stores and we had to invest in the stores if we were going to get better. Uh we had two significant offices and we closed both of those. We moved to a a vacant floor above our uh our flagship which literally had zero cost to it. That was $10 million of rent that just went uh and and unfortunately also obviously all the people that used to fill those two buildings have also gone. So that was so we we saved 40 million or something and that money just goes straight into the stores and that then then you get a return from the stores. Now in time I suspect we will want to rebuild some of that because we did sacrifice some elements of of really good capability in our home office. But I but we were at a stage when we had to make that sacrifice. Um and then you invest in the stores um as opposed to online for example um and by you know putting in career structures and employing more full-times all of that's horribly expensive but that's where we put the money and it pays back because our sales have gone up and I don't think they would have done without that. um questions. Oh, >> hey, you've answered a little bit of this with the last question, but you you talked about investing your people, talked about the slow time for stores to change culture. You didn't walk into a cashrich business. What were the leading indicators that you were able to point to as you started to invest in people to not be fired during that period and let that kind of play out? That was probably most relevant when I did it in the United Kingdom with Water St. which was Stone Cold Dead. I mean, it was going fully out of business. Um, and we we collectively dug in and I think there was a it it wasn't just me. It was making sure that everybody felt that they were in in the home office, but but also running that down through the stores collectively knowing that we were just going to get this through this. Um, and that brought us all together. Um, it's actually creates a huge sort of sense of commandery. Um, and and that team is still in place. Uh but I was also horrible in terms of cutting out uh this home office layer at the top. Uh and we just went straight down to uh to to a core of people and and in fact asked everybody, are you in? If you if you're in it, you're in it and it's going to be really hard. It's going to absolutely break ourselves to get this thing fixed. And if you're in, you're in. and if you're out, let's let's have you out the door now. And that was a pretty awful experience, but it but everybody knew it was necessary. Uh but we also ran that through our stores as well. And we went right through. You're in, you're out. Um once I got here, we weren't we were nowhere near as challenged. So didn't have to be as as harsh as that and hard as that. But also, everybody knew it had worked once. So there was a much greater confidence. And because there was a greater confidence, I think people were able to be much more assertive in how they responded. Um, and we were lucky. Luck is always always a good thing. Yeah, luck. And the luck was uh when we came out of COVID, everybody poured into our stores and and sales went up a lot. And that and and I I don't think we were particularly we didn't cause that. It was co the lockdown that caused that, but our stores were much much better when we opened and we were able to really benefit from that. >> Okay, I think we're out of time now for questions. Um although I'm sure he'll be around as we as we leave, but please um help me thank James Stomp for joining us. Really great. [applause] Thank you so much. It's really perfect.