At its New York City headquarters, Barnes & Noble employs a staff of buyers responsible for meeting with publishers’ sales reps and selecting titles for specific sections of the store. Some of these buyers, such as fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley (once profiled in The Wall Street Journal under the headline “So Many Books, So Much Power”), are well known in the industry and have been with the company for decades.
Not so much power anymore. Last week, Barnes & Noble dismissed a number of buyers (firm numbers were not released), including Hensley; SF, fantasy, and graphics novel buyer James Killen; David Garber; and Lisa Echenthal, according to Shelf Awareness. The store’s statement reads, “As with so many companies, we evaluate our needs in circumstances much changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We now have almost all of our bookstores reopened and must align our head office requirements to our store priorities.”
Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt has long been promising changes to how the store buys and stocks titles, allowing booksellers in each store to have more ownership and say in what gets stocked. He’s also on the record as stating he thinks Barnes & Noble carries “too many books”—by which he means the store needs carefully curated inventory rather than a huge blur of titles. According to Publishers Lunch, Barnes & Noble is placing lower initial orders for new titles and will no longer buy movie tie-ins. Furthermore, “[Publishers’ sales reps] are no longer receiving co-op grids showing how and where books will be promoted, and they can no longer request any placement or merchandising extensions. Monthly themed promotions will now be curated by the stores for their own customers and markets.” Until now, Barnes & Noble has allowed publishers to apply for paid display space—known as co-op—although the chain has always had final say on which books were selected for pay-to-play.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
