People in the publishing business have well been aware for several years now that Barnes and Noble (B&N), the last of the huge bookstore chain dinosaurs, has been stumbling. Sometime ago, B&N announced that it was changing its emphasis from books to gifts, while struggling to keep it's 600+ "brick and mortar" bookstores in business. Just recently, Elliott Management Corporation announced (https://www.wsj.com/articles/barnes-noble-to-be-acquired-by-elliott-management-for-6-50-a-share-11559906841) acquisition of the entire B&N empire, hinting interest in making each bookstore independent. Perhaps under a franchise agreement? What that means to me is that we can expect to see perhaps half of the B&N bookstores closing, leaving B&N roughly comparable in number of bookstores to Amazon Books future target of 600 or so bookstores nationwide. 

The big question now surrounds the second dinosaur: What is going to happen to Ingram Content Group (particularly Ingram's wholesale distribution effort), which has traditionally positioned itself to preferentially sell its catalog of printed content to B&N. Add to that Ingram's continued wholesale sales to bookstores of Ingram printed works over Amazon and other Print-on-Demand printer published works. Will Ingram be the next to fall? 

What does this mean for independent publishers like Savant Books and Publications and its imprint Aignos Publishing? Ten years ago we decided to bet on our own efforts, establishing Savant Distribution to favorably wholesale our works to bookstores, retailers and jobbers, and Savant Bookstore Honolulu, a combination online and brick-and-mortar bookstore. So, in spite of what may happen in the future, we're confident that we'll continue doing well.