Barnes & Nobles’ troubles filtering to LTCC’s bookstore
By Kathryn Reed
With Barnes & Noble seeking a buyer, the future of Lake Tahoe Community College’s bookstore is a bit precarious.
The national book chain runs the bookstore and coffee cart at the South Lake Tahoe institution. The contract is for Barnes & Noble to pay a percentage of profits to LTCC. They are – it’s just always been the minimum.
The money is being kept in a reserve account in case the college needs to take the bookstore over again.
Hours of the coffee cart have been cut back and talk is it might stop operating completely.
As with most printed material, even textbooks are becoming obsolete. Bryan Swartout, student trustee on the college board, said he didn’t buy a textbook this quarter.
E-readers and discounted textbooks are two ways to avoid purchasing new books. Barnes & Noble has the Nook, an e-reader that textbooks can be downloaded on.
The future of the mega-book chain could be known after the Nov. 17 shareholder meeting.
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B&N, which owns 720 high-street shops in all 50 American states, announced it was calling in the investment bank Lazard to advise on strategic alternatives including “a possible sale of the company” after a 45% slump in share price in the last year.
In common with other booksellers, B&N has struggled with changes in customers’ habits. Readers are buying more books online, while digital readers such as Amazon’s Kindle are rapidly becoming popular alternatives to traditional books.
If paper textbooks were more reasonably priced less people would by the online versions. Who wants to pay $200 plus for a textbook when they could get the online version for about $75. The bookstores need to rethink the prices they charge for textbooks if they want to stay in business.
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