Following the recent speculation about a Barnes & Noble merger with Borders or Amazon.com buying out B&N, Seattle rare book dealer Michael Lieberman, who writes the Book Patrol blog, wrote to share his own theory about B&N’s future: a buyout from Starbucks!?!
Keep in mind that Lieberman first came up with this idea before Ishmael Beah‘s sales at Starbuck counters made the publishing and bookselling industries take notice, as Julie Bosman reported in Saturday’s NY Times. “They have successfully moved into the world of music and bookselling,” he says of the coffee conglomerate. “They pick up a retailer who publishes tons of their own books at a higher profit margin than merely selling them and they pick up a lot of square footage for the kids and the community to play in which is, I think, their ultimate strategy.” Stranger things have happened in the history of American capitalism, that’s for sure!