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If it is to avoid the fates of Tower Records and Blockbuster, it will have to figure out how to compete in a world where prices are falling and nimble competitors like Amazon and Apple are offering in actuality what the superstore bookseller used to promise only figuratively: immediate, cheap, and limitless selection. Sales numbers are down, and the company is valued at a third of what it was worth four years ago. Assuming he’s right, the more pertinent question is whether they will be spending their money at a Barnes & Noble. Riggio was trying to say that, whatever becomes of books as physical objects in this new age of digital distribution, he is certain people will still pay for the pleasure of reading. We have to understand people want to own this content. “I don’t know how you can intellectualize this,” he said, “but a book is …” To continue his thought, he pulled down a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, shook it, felt its substance. Riggio wanted to say something, but he couldn’t quite find the words, so he burst out of his chair and charged over to one wall. But when he talks about books he fills with sentimentality. The founder, chairman, and guiding spirit of the company that calls itself the “world’s largest bookseller” is a slight, mustachioed 69-year-old with a Napoleonic temperament. Books had been very good to him, and now they were dissolving into the ether. For decades, he had been delivering them to consumers at monumental scale in his ubiquitous superstores, a strategy that won him more fear than love in the world of publishing but made him arguably its most powerful player. All around him, in a conference room that evoked an elegant old library, were shelves lined with hardbound classics.
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“I still like books,” he said, though it didn’t really need saying. In mid-June, six weeks before he put his company and his legacy on the block, Leonard Riggio was sitting on the top floor of Barnes & Noble’s Flatiron headquarters, facing down the relentless forces of obsolescence. From left to right, Ronald Burkle and Leonard Riggio.