Rebel Bookseller Speaks: Barnes & Noble versus the Indies; Does Andy Laties Suffer From Confirmation Bias?

This week I made a Fool of myself: I cited a satirical April Fool’s Day article from three years ago as evidence to support my Facebook comment attacking Barnes & Noble and arguing that it’s not good for them to be “rescuing” and “saving” troubled regional bookstore chains. That satirical article includes this passage:

The goal, as stated by Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management, is to "leverage the unleverageable, create efficiencies unseen in the book business, and engage in a little world domination, which is about the most thrilling thing a hedge fund guy can do!"…Singer added that bookselling chains have been remarkably easy to turn around, making them even more attractive than his firm's typical targets. "Usually we engage in vulture capitalism," Singer explained, "but in the bookselling world, there's no need. It's taking some time to get used to, but I'm warming up to virtue capitalism. It's tolerable... every once in a while."—John Mutter, Shelf Awareness, April 1, 2022

I‘d thought this piece of comedy-writing (published in the industry newsletter Shelf Awareness) was a piece of true investigative journalism.

Instead, my citing it as fact to prove my point about Barnes & Noble’s dissembling, “vulture” nature only proved that I’m biased, when writing about my personal bete noir, Barnes & Noble.

I absolutely do not have an open mind and remain unable to believe anything positive about that company.

It’s a case of my body keeping the score: Barnes & Noble destroyed my Chicago business, The Children’s Bookstore, thirty years ago, and even though Barnes & Noble has changed hands (“Under New Ownership”), I have no reason to believe their corporate DNA has also changed.

Witnessing Barnes & Noble resume its historic pattern of buying up regional bookstore chains (it purchased quite a few in the 80s and 90s, closing those chains down and setting up B&N superstores in those towns) brings back my old trauma. Thousands of indie bookstores were collateral damage. Lots of those bookstore owners were my friends.

And really, what was Barnes & Noble up to? Pumping up their corporation’s perceived value when they were not profitable. With all that highly visible growth—all those new superstore locations--they appeared to be a huge success. People loved seeing those fancy new bookstores come to town; the Barnes & Noble share price on Wall Street went sky-high because Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public bought that stock, retail.

It was all a big show; I’d call it a financial racket. Nationally, total book sales didn’t grow: the same number of people in this country, year after year, kept buying the same number of books. I wrote a book about those years: Rebel Bookseller: How to Improvise Your Own Indie Store and Beat Back the Chains. (Reissued six years later as Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want to Fight For—From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities.)

A decade later, in the 2010s, FINALLY Barnes & Noble’s share price was in serious trouble; the company was caught with their pants down. Instead of $40 per share, like in the 90s, their shares were selling for just a few dollars. And so, in duress, the company was sold, and “taken private,” by the current hedge-fund owner, Paul Singer of Elliott Advisors.

I’m supposed to believe that this hedge fund’s business shenanigans—“opening new locations”--“buying beloved local chains to save them”--“refreshing store layouts”--is authentic bookselling?

Umm. This is a HEDGE FUND we are talking about!

Lots of industry folks say B&N is the only counterweight to Amazon.com, and the big publishers depend on the existence of this big brick-and-mortar bookstore company to justify printing decent quantities of books. So, indie booksellers should shut up and be grateful that B&N still exists. Otherwise … (?) … we wouldn’t get physical books to buy to sell to our own customers … (?)

I say, in the current no-growth total book-buying market, the ultimate outcome of the current ongoing B&N growth in number of locations will be that the independent bookstore channel will lose market share (indie bookstores will close), and meanwhile B&N will never be profitable.

(BTW, because privately held, they don’t have to reveal their true financial info. We’re supposed to believe what they say about “Oh, we’re doing well!”)

I say, this is all a game to boost B&N’s public profile to sell it onward to a sucker-buyer. Probably that’s—once again--individual shareholders, during a public offering (as happened in the 90s).

But tons of those 90s investors lost their money when the share price tanked on ultimate realization (after the appearance of the new-kid disruptor, Amazon.com) that YOU CAN’T MAKE CORPORATE-STYLE MONEY IN THE BOOKSTORE BUSINESS.

(Amazon’s profits come from being a platform for 3rd-party sellers who pay a hefty fee, NOT from Amazon.com being the bookseller themselves. And – of course -- from selling cloud-computing services to corporations and the government. And – of course -- from being a service-platform for ICE. -- And, and, and… it’s Amazon.com we’re talking about, a true American Octopus conglomerate. They do NOT make profits selling new books to readers, that’s a loss-leader activity for them.)

Let’s do a thought experiment: If Barnes & Noble had been allowed to collapse five years ago…If Elliott Advisors had not bought it five years ago…would American readers have read fewer books in the past five years? 

I don’t believe that.

Rather, I believe that from among the tens of thousands of newly unemployed B&N booksellers, thousands would have entered the field of independent bookselling, and opened a wave of marvelously creative indie bookstores.

And, as for the Real World of Today, I believe that any communities hosting troubled regional chains which B&N is now buying would be better off if those chains collapsed, and released their (very annoyed) booksellers into a highly uneasy but truly transformative personal realization that they ought to be opening their own bookstores.

Because many of those communities are capable—in emergency moments like these—of collectively capitalizing such bookstores.

Think of that! Community-supported bookselling!

In conclusion: It is a bad thing for Barnes & Noble to “rescue” troubled regional bookstore chains.

Period.

Ok, here’s the exchange (below), in which I was a Fool. And I do recommend that everyone read the April Fool’s article I cited. In my opinion, it’s high-quality journalism.

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Conversation on the Indie Booksellers Facebook Group, September 3, 2025

P.M.: Another indie bookstore with multiple locations proposes to sell itself to Barnes & Noble. This seems to be a new trend since Tattered Cover did this. Is this good news for the rest of us or bad news? Books Inc. appears saved by Barnes & Noble in $3.25M deal Books Inc. would preserve its brand identity under a proposed acquisition.

Andy Laties: There is no such thing as “Barnes & Noble” — this is just a brand name for “Elliott Advisors” hedge fund which is a cover name for its owner Paul Singer. He is a hard-right-winger who’s close with conservative Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. Both Paul Singer and his employee James Daunt are on a buying spree and will happily buy any of the small or medium sized chains worldwide — Shelf Awareness reported on this in 2022: Elliott's Book Chain Buying Spree: 'We've Only Just Begun' Short term this is good news for workers in those chains. Longer term, well — in the article Singer says that when it comes to the book business, he is trading his habitual Vulture Capitalism for Virtue Capitalism. And, no, I don’t believe it. I feel certain that longer term it’s not good news for freedom to read.

K.E.: It was April Fool’s Day!

P.M.: Andy Laties K.E. just pointed out that the Shelf article is an April Fool’s Day satire.

Andy Laties: P.M. what???

Andy Laties: Oh my god!! 

Andy Laties: It certainly fooled me!!!

Andy Laties: K.E. I was researching this topic about 6 months ago and I was stunned to find this entirely accurate yet bald-faced article. I did not realize it was from April Fool’s Day, in 2022. I think this is fascinating -- because the article is truthful. There's no question that they're really doing exactly what the article says -- and the fake quotations are so good. When I saw that you'd pointed out it was a hoax, I thought, I wonder if AI would recognize it as a hoax?

Andy Laties: I apologize to everyone on this string for using this satirical article as evidence in my post. I’m going to write a blogpost about what I did, next Monday for my weekly essay. Perhaps it’s an example of confirmation bias, where one takes something as true because it confirms one’s preexisting belief. I agree with K.E. that I should have noticed the date of the entire issue…. The underlying issue that’s really a topic for debate is the one that concerns all of us: does the fact that behind the benign James Daunt lurks the Svengali figure of Paul Singer make any difference? Is there a horrible long-term outcome of Paul Singer gaining larger and larger footprint? This industry is currently desperate for a counterweight to Jeff Bezos. That person is Paul Singer. Can we blind ourselves to the long-term risk here??