Barnes & Noble was just sold...

[RonClinton]

If they reimagine B&N in the Waterstones mold -- a revamped model of true bookstores that has been praised and successful in the UK -- then it will likely be a successful union. If they try to just tweak it without the vision of an overhaul of business-as-usual, I have every reason to believe that B&N will continue its progressive, protracted downward slide into irrelevancy and bankruptcy. What Waterstones' motives are for the buy are unknown right now, of course, but time will tell.

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[Dan Hocker]

Back on the B&N subject though I really hope they sort out the Nook line and maybe redo the back end for loading products on their store. It's one of the worst interfaces I've had to deal with. It used to be so clean and simple and just worked, but they overhauled it a couple of years ago and completely ruined it by trying to give it more "functionality" that no one asked for.

[Dan Hocker]

Hopefully a revitalization. Brick and mortar media stores (bookstores, record and movie shops) are such a part of my life that I'm dismayed that they continue to struggle. There is nothing like wandering the shelves and stumbling across something new. Browsing the internet is quite the same...

I don't think we'll see brick and mortar books stores go away anytime soon, the world hasn't adopted digital books the same way it's adopted digital video and music. Not much could've really been done about music though, CD's as a media are pretty much dead it won't be long until they don't even put the players in cars anymore. Actual records have kinda made a resurgence, but that's really a specialty market and stores won't be super common. Movies are going the same route as music, just not as quickly. Digital streaming has mostly changed the way the populous consumes movies at home. There's still a fairly large subset of consumers that are still interested in Blu-Rays but once the technology jumps again and 4k is the standard and 8k is the top end Blu-Rays won't be able to handle the data sizes anymore. So they'll either have to switch to a new media type, probably something solid state like a SD card or a proprietary cartridge like portable game systems use, or it'll go full digital.

For movies though, if you're someone who really cares about the visual quality, the best way will always be either a physical media or a purchased digital file that actually downloads to whatever you're watching it on. If it's streamed in anyway there will always be compression, which lowers the quality.

[Sock Monkey]

Hopefully a revitalization. Brick and mortar media stores (bookstores, record and movie shops) are such a part of my life that I'm dismayed that they continue to struggle. There is nothing like wandering the shelves and stumbling across something new. Browsing the internet is quite the same...

[RonClinton]

Will it be a revitalization for B&N as seen with Waterstones...or asset selloff and bankruptcy?

Barnes & Noble has been acquired by Elliot Management Corporation in an all-cash transaction valued at about $683 million. Elliot acquired U.K. bookseller Waterstones in 2018. Waterstones CEO James Daunt will also become CEO of B&N and will be based in New York City. — Publisher’s Weekly