Hacker News Reader

At the very least, maybe it turns back into a bookstore rather than a cafe/book/music/board game/toy store. It's the board games, comic/anime figurines, and kitchy junk (e.g., polaroid cameras, overpriced drawing and writing kits, etc.) that make me feel like they've kind of lost their way.

View on HN

The board games, figurines, and the kitchy, disposable crap is what keeps them in business. The margins on those items are much higher then on books, and they sell faster than any random book on their shelves.

Source: My wife worked at Half-Price Books (Which is doing a bit better than B&N atm) for a few years. It also had multiple shelves of disposable crap, that made them a lot of money.

I was going to say this. The B&N where I live has a large pop culture area where the CD/Music section used to be. Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, Stranger Things dedicated sections with lots of Funko and similar products. Really clean and high quality stuff if your into collecting. I see this as the only way they can survive.

Frankly B&N is one of the better toy stores in some areas.

They’d be better off if they stopped selling books, profit wise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com