Barnes & Noble Enters the Blogosphere
Barnes & Noble today continued expanding its digital strategy by
launching a blog feature called Blogging Booksellers on its
Barnes & Noble Studio multimedia website.
Blogging Booksellers features Barnes & Noble employees at 11 locations in nine U.S. cities posting weekly short video blog entries where they discuss book recommendations, local store events, and other book-related news. To further the interactive nature of the blogs, Barnes & Noble allows customers to find stores with blogging employees via its online store locator tool. Currently stores in Surprise, AZ, Los Angeles, CA, Carmel, IN, Lafayette, LA, Eden Prairie, MN, Manhasset, NY, New York, NY, Seattle, WA and Wauwatosa, WI feature blogging employees.
Barnes & Noble is launching its new blog program following a
disappointing 2008. Financial results from Q4 and fiscal 2008 showed declines in sales, gross profit, operating profit, gross margin, and comparable-store sales. Similar results from competitors such as
Borders and
Books a Million demonstrate a general weakness in the bookstore vertical.
Barnes & Noble initially expanded its digital presence by launching Barnes & Noble Studio in April 2008, and has since featured a variety of online multimedia programming, including audio and video interviews with authors and readers. More recently, Barnes & Noble positioned itself to
enter the e-book market by purchasing e-book retailer Fictionwise.
Borders, who has offered e-books in partnership with Sony since 2007, has recently responded to declining sales and income figures with financial cutbacks. These have included
layoffs, plans for a
reverse stock split, and plans to
close most locations of its Waldenbooks subsidiary this year. In 2007, Borders launched a multimedia site called BordersMedia that offers similar features to Barnes & Noble Studio, although it does not have an employee blog.
