The Failure Of Barnes And Noble's First Store

176 Words1 Pages
Barnes and Noble’s first store opened in 1917. Their website was launched in 1997, which many speculated was to compete with the rising Amazon website. Later that year, B & N sued Amazon for using the slogan “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” due to their lack of titles in comparison to their own (which was close to 200,000 titles). While the suit failed, critics of B & N believed this showed an, “old, tired, unhip giant – exactly the wrong image to project to the burgeoning Web audience” Many also complained their website was slow, buggy and difficult to use. However, Barnes and Nobles following allowed them to survive through the dot-com bubble. Since the Nook was released in 2009, Barnes and Nobel has captured 27% of the eBook market. Expanding