A Peek Inside Barnes & Noble…Corporate!
Does anybody know what it’s like to work at Barnes & Noble in the corporate offices on Fifth Avenue in New York City? I mean in the building opposite the famous Barnes & Noble bookstore at 17th Street & Fifth Avenue. Are brothers Chairman Len and CEO Steve Riggio on premise? Do you get to elevator-speak with them? What are those guys like, anyhow? Are they knee-slappingly funny? Whose big black limo is that lurking just around the corner all day long?
Hand raised and waving frantically! I know! I worked there as a marketing consultant with the title Director of Marketing, Special Sales. Remember the buzz about Great Expectations–Your All-in-One Resource for Pregnancy & Childbirth by Sandy & Marcie Jones in late 2004? GE was published, gasp, by the spawn of B&N, Inc., none other than Barnes & Noble Books! I was asked to slap that baby on the fanny and send it out into the world to compete against arch enemy Peter Workman’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
You do know, don’t you, that B&N Books has very aggressive and smart publishers who crank out hundreds of books a year and a stable of young (or not so young!) sr. editors and just plain editors who are always casting about for nonfiction book ideas to feed the monster and tilt the P&L toward the P. I won’t call it a sweat shop, but I’m telling you, it’s busy and fast-paced in that warren called the 7th floor. “I have a reputation for burning people out,” one publisher told me–to the sound of teeth being sharpened for a morning meeting.
There are books stacked everywhere: on shelves, on filing cabinets, on desks, on the floor, in the lunch rooms (”Catfight on 10 for free books!”) and in the arms of the chairman, the CEO, the president, editors, publishers, and messengers moving across floors and between floors.
I think of B&N Books as being about as traditional as a publishing house can get, ordering up ”meat and potato” books, but trying to fly under the publishing radar screen to avoid making independent bookstores and traditional publishers any madder than they already are! What audacity! Having hundreds and hundreds of maximart bookstores and a clickin’ good website AND self-published books from B&N Books and, yes, Sterling Publishing, to make sure the coin-of-the-realm continues to trickle upward and that readers can find anything and everything they want and need related to books, books. books.
And, it’s true, you do get to ride the elevator with Len and Steve. I did. I chatted amiably with Len (Mr. Riggio to you!) about golf (my nephew caddied for Len at Atlantic in Bridgehampton; initiation fee $300,000?) and Italy (a B&N employee won a fabulous trip; no it didn’t include an all-expenses-paid shopping spree, Len said.) Len is one sharp dresser. Very natty. And he’s quite charming. Or he was to me, anyway. I don’t know why everyone walks around mumbling: “You don’t want to make Len mad. Don’t make Len mad.” I also rode with Steve, but my mouth was duct taped each time before I was allowed to enter the elevator with him.
For lots of fun info about B&N, a trip to their online Annual Reports makes for great reading. They’re practically bodice rippers. I particularly like the part where everyone pats himself on the back because a book has sold 10,000 copies. As an author, only 10,000 copies sold would assure me of yet another year in the poorhouse. Yes, Len and Steve would see my body plunging past the 10th floor windows at 122 Fifth Avenue if one of my books was considered a raging success at 10,000 copies. As a publisher, 10,000 here; 10,000 there; 10,000 copies x hundreds and hundreds of self-published books…well, you can do the math and work the profit margins.
You can guess who the limo belongs to, can’t you!
Here are some topics I’m mulling over for future posts: Wrestling over the reins with Google. (Oh, that’s right, they’ve already got them.)
Editor/author and agent/author contracts. (Are you getting into bed with a partner or adversary? Should you have sex with the lights on and your eyes open?)
Well, you get the idea!
January 29th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Well it’s great to finally see someone with as flagrant an ironic sense of humor as me on the web. I am sick and tired of all the pundits roaming about the halls of internetherland and have been yearning for someone to make me guffaw at the absurdities of ‘what’s in the news’ these days. Cheers Lynne and keep it up girl!
January 30th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
So many books AND so much time; a dangerous combination! Fine and sharp glimpse inside the tower of power, Lynne, especially the lesser-known pub end of things.
I spent so many years at the far end of the pipeline, in the frontline bookseller trenches at an independent (and I’ve known so many frontliners who labored on B&N’s sales floors) that I sometimes forget there are these islands in the sky where things move and things shake.
For some reason, your post made me think of the Edward Gorey classic, “The Unstrung Harp: or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel.” At one point, Mr. E. delivers the manuscript to his publishers, Scuffle & Dustcough, and Gorey describes the building as follows: “The stairs look oddly menacing, as though he might break a leg on one of them. Suddenly the whole thing strikes him as very silly, and he thinks he will go and drop his parcel off the Embankment and thus save everyone concerned a good deal of fuss.”
Later, at a “literary dinner,” Mr. Earbrass continues to bemoan his fate: “The talk deals with disappointing sales, inadequate publicity, worse than inadequate royalties, idiotic or criminal reviews, others’ declining talents, and the unspeakable horror of the literary life.”
That’s Gorey in 1953. God bless us every one.
And welcome to blogland!
February 2nd, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Do you ever want to work in corporate America again???? Geezoweeee!!! Your comments are so sharp and biting, and insiderish…Your wit is tremendous and your writing is crisp.
Jim
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:03 am
Robert Gray’s comment says it all.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Dear Lynne,
I want to share my short experience with this anoying place, yes that one on Fifth Ave. between 17th and 18th street, at the fourth floor, yes with the manager of Human Resources. As a job seeker, I applied for a job call, it was entitled as Editor. The job’s description was wrong, because they were looking for an Editor Producer or Production Assistant at least. Anyhow, I submit my resume and got an interview request sooner than usually is nowadays, when you are luky enough. This manager made me lost my time and frustrated. She called me because she has nothing else to do, I think. She has no idea what is publishing, not even, I am sure, has read a book in her life in any language.
For me this was the one and only experience I would have in this place. I don’t think I will ever buy a
book over there in my life.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Hi, Sandra. I don’t know what happened to you on the 4th floor in Human Resources and B&N, Inc. My interactions with Human Resources were always fine. That said, as I read your email and struggled a bit with your sentence structure, I realized that English was your “second language.” Imperfect sentence structure and punctuation when writing or editing would handicap you as an editor of books written in English. That might have been the problem. (Great shot of New York City from Weehawken, New Jersey on your Web site. Most people don’t know about that spectacular view!)