One result of the change in management is that the book industry no longer fears that Barnes & Noble will follow Borders, which went out of business in 2011, into the void - an event that would have removed miles of retail bookshelves from the market and put a serious dent in book sales.Įven some independent booksellers - a community that once saw Barnes & Noble as an evil empire - are almost relieved at its likely survival, largely because there is a greater villain in the field: Amazon. Many of the new locations, however, will be smaller than the megastores that were typical of the Barnes & Noble footprint of yore. If the openings proceed as planned, the chain will have slightly more stores than the 627 it operated in January 2019, before its acquisition. The chain is expecting to open about 30 stores this year, adding to the 22 it has opened in its last fiscal year. How well Barnes & Noble is doing today is a bit of a mystery because as a private company it doesn’t release profit-and-loss figures, but its publicly announced expansion plans provide a good indication. The cherished works from 1927 losing their copyright protection include the film ‘Metropolis,’ a classic Laurel and Hardy short and the first Hardy Boys book.

Business Column: These historic works are coming free from copyright.

The overstory barnes and noble