Barnes & Noble To Slowly Ditch A Third Of Retail Stores

B&N will cut up to a third of its bricks-and-mortar stores, slowly and carefully over 10 years. Bookseller Barnes and Nobel has said it expects to shut up to a third of its real-world stores. CEO Mitchell Klipper has confirmed the plans in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. But underlining the considered nature of the closures, Klipper said they would happen slowly over 10 years, reducing the store count by about 20 every year down to about 450 or 500. Whilst that sounds terrible, and will impact retail staff employment, it's a careful and considered reaction to the inevitable decline in in-person buying of goods, thanks to the Net, and of the rise of the e-book at the expense of the printed one. Klipper is confident of his business plan, and has been expanding B&N's digital book business to compensate. British book and newspaper retailer W.H. Smith, now over 220 ye...