Following up on my earlier post, it looks like changes are starting to take shape:

How Barnes & Noble Went From Villain to Hero (2022.04/18)

Despite all this, sales in Barnes & Noble stores were up 3 percent last year over their prepandemic performance in 2019. The growth came the old-fashioned way, said James Daunt, the company’s chief executive: by selling books, which were up 14 percent.

…

[Daunt] repeated that approach at Barnes & Noble. While orders for locations around the country used to be placed by a central office in New York, today a diminished central office places just a minimum order for new books, leaving store managers free to choose whether to bring in more copies based on local sales.

“I get all the glory, but actually what I’m doing is getting out of people’s way and letting them run decent bookstores,” Mr. Daunt said. “All the work goes on on the shop floor.”

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The company’s reorganization has not been painless. The central office staff is half of what it was, Mr. Daunt estimated. Much of that reduction came through layoffs, including many book buyers as their duties shifted to local stores.

But a smaller central staff has allowed the company to give up expensive New York City office space. The remaining staff works out of two floors in Barnes & Noble’s flagship building on Union Square in Manhattan, which the company was already renting.