Bookstores: Health Recap

As writers, it’s good for us to take the temperature of bookstores by doing a health recap. When I first worked in publishing, the health of the publishing industry depended on the health of bookstores. Multiple bookstore chains gave ample outlets through which readers discovered their next read, the next book to buy a s a gift,and to leave the store with way more purchases than they intended.

It’s a new world, a new day. That was before Amazon. That was before digital books. That was before downloadable audio books.

All those forces—and more–brought about the declining health of the bookstore. Each year more chains closed. Eventually, only a few clung onto life support. I watched anxiously for the biggest of all to fail–Barnes & Noble. It seemed inevitable. From 2010 to 2020 130 B&N stores closed.

Bookstore Rescue

Enter James Daunt, Barnes and Noble CEO and head of Waterstones, the largest bookstore chain in Great Britain. Both chains were headed to the mortuary. Daunt took charge of Waterstones first. What he learned there he then applied to Barnes & Noble when he became that chain’s CEO. Let me summarize the results by saying that Barnes & Noble opened 60 new locations in 2024. Quite the dramatic turnout in just four years. Growth remains the name of the game for both Waterstones and B&N.

The secret sauce contains few ingedients. It basically comes down to understanding what people want from a bookstore and giving booksellers real power to make decisions that fit their local community.

Why Local Decisions Work

Local teams choose the titles they carry. They create their own displays. They recommend the books they love, not the ones they are required to shelve. And now B&N is back to creating best-sellers. For example, Katherine Rundell’s Mona’s Eyes became a breaktrhough debut in part thanks to the enthusiasm the B&N local bookstores’ support.

“We excel at serendipitous discovery and browsing,” Daunt told the Authors Guild Bulletin (issue Winter 2025-Spring 2026). “Human curation beats algorithmic recommendations.”

But wait, if readers love to buy books in real stores, why couldn’t B&N keep their stores open?

Daunt explains it this way: “There’s a contradiction between the disciplines of chain retailing and bookselling. Chain retailing is about uniformity and consistency and imposing…controls necessarily to achieve that. That works in most branches of retail, whether you’re selling clothes or shoes or sneakers. Unfortunately, if you apply that to books, you’ll end up with a pretty dull bookstore. You’re running identical bookstores that don’t please anybody.”

The Pandemic Effect

While Barnes & Noble closed their stores during the first portion of the Pandemic, they spent that time reorganizing stores, going through the inventory, and refreshing physical stores to fit their communities.

Meanwhile, a different type of Renaissance was occurring in independent bookstores. Many had always meant to develop a vibrant online presence, but the need wasn’t felt strongly enough to make that happen. But with Pandemic readers unable to visit stores, the staff had nothing but time–and the desire to see their store survive the Pandemic–caused them to dive into creating websites through which buyers could make selections. Some readers came by the bookstore to pick up their books, others had the books delivered or even mailed.

Along with sudden online availability, people, with nothing but time at home on their hands, turned to baking bread, starting new hobbies, and reading War and Peace (book clubs were formed to plod through tomes). Hence, a double-digit growth surge took place starting shortly after the shutdown and lasting for about five years. Books were “in.” People rediscovered the joy of reading.

According to the American Booksellers Assn., 422 new bookstores opened in 2025, a 31% jump from 2024.

Health Recap: Going strong with no signs of weakness.

Bookshop.org Gives Bookstores a Boost

Fortuitously launched in January 2020, this online site was designed to provide book shopping that would pay 80% of each sale to the buyer’s local independent store(s).  Meant to compete against Amazon for easy online book-buying, it also saw itself as a way to infuse more sales into local stores.

Many bookstores turned to bookshop.org during the Pandemic for help in keeping their doors open.  Five years later, they’re keeping a running tally of how much money they’ve provided local stores. Today that number is