Book Distribution

Several weeks before Chairman Leonard Riggio sold his latest tranche of shares in Barnes & NobleBKS +2.68%, he sat down for a chat at the retailer's corporate offices in Manhattan.  Here, an edited Q&A:

WSJ: Will we see a smaller, 15,000-square foot Barnes & Noble bookstore one day?

Mr. Riggio: Yes, it's possible. You can't tell yet. Remember we had a really good holiday season. One of the things that you've observed is that it seems like the level of digital convergence from books to digital has decelerated.

Stop carving that gravestone. Brick-and-mortar bookstores aren't dead, yet. On the contrary, independently owned bookstores are growing in number. According to the American Booksellers Association, since hitting a nadir in 2009, the number of indie bookstores in the U.S. has grown 19.3 percent, from 1,651 to 1,971. The current total is less than half the 1990s peak of around 4,000.  But it still serves as a rebuke to the conventional wisdom that equates Amazon's relentless rise with the inevitable death of the physical bookstore.

Three years after bookseller Borders filed for bankruptcy, is another bookstore staple getting closer to the chopping block? Barnes & Noble NE -0.91%, the largest bookseller in the U.S., isn't a goner just yet, but the development it revealed Thursday morning is not pretty: investor Liberty Media LMCA -1.24%, which once considered buying Barnes & Noble for $1 billion, is slashing its stake and privately selling a majority of its investment in the struggling book chain.

Square Enix is partnering with publisher Hachnette Book Group's graphic novel arm Yen Press to internationally distribute English language versions of the former company's manga properties in ebook form, the companies announced today.

The initiative will launch on April 8 and grant readers access to 175 ebook titles through Amazon, the Apple App Store, Barnes and Noble, Google and Kobo. New volumes in these series will be available through these services as they are released in the future.

Visitors to the New York Public Library's website will have a new way to decide what to read next: The library is partnering with New York-based startup Zola Books to offer algorithm-based recommendations to readers. The technology comes from Bookish, the book discovery site that Zola acquired earlier this year.

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has been conducting periodic surveys of faculty members in the United States. (In 2012 the project was expanded to include UK institutions.) In 2006, the company began surveying academic librarians as well, and in 2009 that survey began to focus exclusively on library directors. All of the surveys are designed to examine the attitudes, strategies, and expectations of these key players in the creation and management of academic knowledge

Once you have a good grasp of who your customer is - or customers are - the next step is to identify which of your products and services (or combinations of products and services) your customers value. The emphasis remains on aligning the benefits you provide with the diverse needs of different customers.

Barnes & Noble's filing with the SEC for the third quarter of fiscal 2014 shows how dramatically the company is scaling back its Nook operations. During the period ended January 25, 2014, Nook capital expenditures were $7.4 million, a decline of 74% from the money spent on the group in the comparable period in fiscal 2013. For the first nine months of fiscal 2014, Nook capital expenditures were reduced 55%. The filing repeated what company executives said in the conference call last week that since

Kobo has filed objections to a Competition Bureau agreement impelling four of the biggest publishers operating in Canada to renegotiate their contracts with ebook retailers.

The Feb. 7 consent agreement - the culmination of an 18-month investigation into ebook pricing in Canada - involves Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Canada, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster Canada. It requires the publishers to remove or amend clauses in their distribution agreements that restrict the ability of ebook retailers to offer discounts.

Marvel Comics is making its subscription comic service, Marvel Unlimited, available for 99 cents for the first month until March 14. If you're a comic-book fan--either present or past--it's a great deal to try out Marvel's all-you-can-eat approach to comic reading.