When Barnes & Noble Goes, Only Then Will Most People Notice The Game's Changed

The news of Barnes & Noble laying off key senior staff is the signal that this bookstore giant--like Borders about a decade before--is now on its deathbed and will follow its former competitor to the elephant graveyard. This means that the bookstore chain world, for all intents and purposes, is now all about used books that sell new books. (e.g. Half-Price Books)

It's not the 1990s. The world's business environment is different now. Barnes & Noble, being tied to Traditional Publishing, failed to adapt to an environment that favors convenience- something the online business world does far better, which is why Amazon and other online retailers and publishers are eating B&N's lunch.

On a related note, the authors who are also tied to this sinking ship are now discovering that they too shall be pulled under due to the lack of business skills and acumen that they have due to letting the publishers handle it (or not, as most of them find out too late).

Meanwhile, the indie world has its many actors furiously attempting to fill those gaps and spread the knowledge of what does or does not work and why; they share because one of the first things they discovered what that there was no competition per se between authors- a fact further elaborated recently when Nick Cole & Jason Anspach found out via data review for their sales: readers follow genres, not so much authors, as they seek to scratch specific itches. (This is true for film, TV, and games also.)

The collapse of Barnes & Noble, and its disappearance from the world, is what it will take for the majority to realize that the world in publishing is now very different and that they must adapt or die. When those stores are gone, their spaces empty, only then will it really hit them that this is not the days when you have to get on your knees and abased yourself before an agent in hopes of getting a standard two-book New Author deal that may not pay out its advance.

It's the old pulp days once more, only we don't have to worry about Street & Smith losing its way (or any of its competitors) as we are now all of us Street & Smith. The Pulps Are Back, and it turns out that--like old-school D&D--it really was the true path all along that should never have been abandoned.