Barnes & Noble's strategy for grabbing market share as a publisher is as simple as it is aggressive: publish high-quality books, stack them up front and sell them cheap. Look for big, prominent displays of B&N-branded books in the chain's stores this fall, said CEO Steve Riggio, who revealed details about the company's publishing plans in a recent conference call to analysts. Those books will include Law & Order: Crime Scenes by series producer Dick Wolf, an illustrated gift book priced at $30. On the literature side, B&N is bringing back the acclaimed 1972 novel Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman, which is the subject of a recent documentary film.
Other gift books will include Tuscany: Inside the Light, a book of photographs by Joel Meyerowitz priced at $30; an illustrated hardcover of A Christmas Carol, illustrated by Mark Summers; and The Ultimate Bartender's Guide, a 256-page spiral-bound hardcover. Riggio referred to the latter as the "definitive guide" and touted its low price. "At $9.95, it's an impulse buy. We think it kind of makes people want to buy more than one. At $12.95 or $14.95, you're in another league and we don't want to be there," he said. "We want to be driving sales, driving the top line by showing customers that B&N-branded books are for value and quality."
Riggio made it clear B&N has a strong incentive to price its books lower than those of other publishers, explaining, "We will maintain much, much higher margins on the books that we publish versus those we buy from regular publishers, even with pricing them low."
