Leonard Riggio, then chairman of Barnes & Noble, arrives at a bookstall in New York on Sept. 12, 2017. Riggio died on Tuesday.
Seth Wenig/AP
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Seth Wenig/AP
NEW YORK — Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-styled underdog who reworked the publishing business by way of construction Barnes & Noble into the rustic’s maximum tough bookseller sooner than his corporate was once overtaken by way of the upward thrust of Amazon.com, has died at age 83. Riggio died Tuesday “following a valiant fight with Alzheimer’s illness,” in step with a commentary issued by way of his circle of relatives. He had stepped down as chairman in 2019 after the chain was once offered to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors. “His management spanned a long time, all over which he no longer most effective grew the corporate but additionally nurtured a tradition of innovation and a love for studying,” reads a commentary from Barnes & Noble.
Riggio’s near-half century reign started in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million mortgage to buy Barnes & Noble’s identify and the flagship retailer on decrease 5th Street in Big apple. He received loads of latest retail outlets over the following twenty years and, within the Nineties, introduced what changed into a national empire of “superstores” that blended a sequence’s cut price costs and large capability with the comfy enchantment of couches, studying chairs and cafes.
“Our bookstores had been designed to be welcoming versus intimidating,” Riggio advised The New York Instances in 2016. “Those weren’t elitist puts. You should pass in, get a cup of espresso, sit down down and skim a e book for so long as you prefer, use the restroom. Those had been inventions that we had that nobody idea was once imaginable.” He grew up operating magnificence in New York Town, appreciated to mention he most well-liked socializing with adolescence buddies over fellow industry leaders and was once casual sufficient amongst pals to be referred to as “Lenny.” However in his time nobody within the e book international was once extra feared. With the ability to make any given e book a highest dealer, or a flop, to change the marketplace on an idle whim, Riggio may just terrify publishers just by suggesting costs had been too prime or that he would possibly join such best dealers as Stephen King and John Grisham and post them himself. He even attempted to shop for the rustic’s greatest e book wholesaler, Ingram, in 1999, however subsidized off after going through govt resistance.
By means of the top of the Nineties, an estimated one in every of each 8 books offered within the U.S. had been bought in the course of the chain, the place entrance desk presentations had been so treasured that publishers paid hundreds of bucks to have their books integrated. 1000’s of impartial dealers went into bankruptcy whilst Riggio insisted that he was once increasing the marketplace by way of opening up in neighborhoods with out an current retailer. As an alternative, impartial house owners spoke of being beaten by way of festival from each Barnes & Noble and Borders Guide Team, the rival chains every now and then putting in retail outlets in shut proximity to one another and to the in the community owned industry. Barnes & Noble changed into so recognized as an overdog that some of the Nineties’ hottest romantic comedies, “You’ve Were given Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an govt for the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the landlord of an endangered impartial retailer in Big apple. “We’re going to seduce them with our sq. photos, and our reductions, and our deep arm chairs, and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ persona expectantly broadcasts. “They’re going to hate us at the start, however we’ll get ’em after all.” Acrimony from impartial booksellers For a time, it gave the impression business dialog was once an ongoing reaction to Barnes & Noble. Publishers had been recognized to modify the quilt or identify of a e book just because a Barnes & Noble reputable had objected. “Angela’s Ashes” creator Frank McCourt discovered himself condemned by way of the American Booksellers Affiliation, the industry group for independents, after agreeing to seem in a Barnes & Noble industrial. At the flooring of the business’s annual nationwide industry display, lengthy hosted by way of the ABA, impartial retailer staff would hiss at attendees dressed in Barnes & Noble badges. When novelist Russell Banks, addressing Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder assembly in 1995, declared that he was once each a inventory holder and a cheerful B&N buyer, some impartial dealers stopped providing his books.
“You will have to know that I’ll by no means learn, purchase or promote some other phrase you write,” Richard Howorth, proprietor of Sq. Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. ”Those are the kindest issues I will bring to mind to mention to you.” Tensions resulted in prison motion when the ABA — at the eve of the 1994 conference — introduced it was once suing Barnes & Noble and 5 main publishers for unfair industry practices. One of the publishers had been so angered they boycotted the collection the next yr and most effective returned after the ABA offered the display to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair industry practices (each instances had been settled out of court docket).
The web shifts bookselling Riggio started the 2000s on the top of energy, with greater than 700 superstores and loads of others shops. However web trade was once rising temporarily and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in bodily retail, lacked the creativeness and versatility of the startup from Seattle that referred to as itself “Earth’s Greatest Book place,” Amazon.com. The net massive introduced in 1995 by way of Jeff Bezos received industry right through the 2000s and by way of the early 2010s had displaced Barnes & Noble via such inventions because the Kindle e book reader and the Amazon Top subscription carrier. Bezos would liken himself to David taking down Goliath, even though the distinction between the leaders additionally had the texture of an Aesop’s myth: The muscular, mustachioed Riggio, a boxer’s son, upended by way of the fast and suave Bezos.
“We’re nice booksellers; we understand how to do this,’’ Riggio stated to the Instances in 2016. “We weren’t constituted to be a era corporate.” Barnes & Noble began its personal on-line web site within the overdue Nineties, however such tasks because the Corner e book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to forestall Amazon. Now not even the cave in of Borders after the 2008-2009 financial disaster mattered for Barnes & Noble, which after a long time of enlargement closed greater than 100 retail outlets between 2009 and 2019. An not going best friend of impartial booksellers By the point of Riggio’s retirement, impartial dealers seemed the chain no longer as a risk, however as an best friend within the struggle towards Amazon to stay bodily retail outlets alive. On the 2018 booksellers conference, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher, as soon as enemies in industry and in court docket, praised every different all over a joint look. “My status right here, doing what I’m about to do (introduce Riggio) would had been not possible to consider a number of years in the past,” Teicher stated on the time. “The straightforward truth is that our industry is more potent and American readers get advantages when there’s a colourful and wholesome community of brick-and-mortar bookshops all around the nation.”
All through the 2010s, Barnes & Noble gave the impression unleadable and undesirable. The board introduced in 2010 that the corporate was once on the market, however nobody presented to shop for it. 4 CEOs left in 5 years and Barnes & Noble’s inventory dropped 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale lasted for months sooner than Elliott Advisors, which had up to now bought the British chain Waterstones, purchased Barnes & Noble for $638 million and employed Waterstones leader govt James Daunt to guide B&N. “I don’t omit being a industry particular person, I had sufficient of that. However I do omit the bookselling phase, serving to to seek out books to suggest to consumers,” Riggio advised Publishers Weekly in 2021.
Riggio’s roots and early bookselling ventures Bookselling and circle of relatives regularly overlapped for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served for years as vice president of Barnes & Noble and some other brother, Thomas Riggio, helped run a trucking corporate that shipped the shop’s books. After being interviewed in 1974 by way of the industry e-newsletter Faculty Retailer Government, Leonard Riggio met for espresso with the editor, Louise Altavilla, who seven years later changed into his 2d spouse (Riggio had 3 kids, two together with his first spouse, one together with his 2d). Leonard S. Riggio was once the eldest son of a prize fighter (who two times defeated Rocky Graziano) became cab driving force and a get dressed maker. Even in adolescence, he complex temporarily, skipping two grades and attending some of the town’s best prime faculties, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at New York College’s evening faculty sooner than that specialize in trade, and by way of day absorbed the bookselling international and the emerging cultural riot of the Sixties.
Running as a flooring supervisor on the campus e book retailer, he realized sufficient to drop out of college and get started a rival store in 1965 — SBX (Pupil Guide Trade), the place he allowed scholar activists to make use of the copying gadget to print copies of anti-war leaflets. SBX was once such a success he purchased a number of different campus retail outlets and was once in place by way of 1971 to shop for Barnes & Noble and its unmarried Big apple retailer. A couple of years later, he changed into the uncommon bookseller to run tv ads, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of Direction! Of Direction!” Riggio and the impartial group could have looked as if it would dangle opposing values, however they shared a love of studying and the humanities and a liberal political outlook. He was once a beneficiant philanthropist and a distinguished supporter of Democratic politicians. He was once even pleasant with the patron activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who featured Riggio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono amongst others in his 2009 novel “Best the Tremendous-Wealthy Can Save Us!”, wherein Nader imagines a revolutionary revolution from above.
“Ever since he was once a boy from Brooklyn, he’d had a visceral response to the best way workings stiffs and the deficient had been handled on a daily foundation,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who did now and then stand excluding his control friends. When some 200 industry leaders had been puzzled by way of Fortune mag within the Nineties about their political concepts, most effective Riggio supported the elevating of employee pay. “Cash can grow to be a burden, like one thing you lift for your shoulders,” he advised New York mag in 1999. “My nature is to be a ball-buster, however my position is to lend a hand other people.”
