Starting out as a small bookstore like many others, Barnes & Noble was not always the behemoth #1 book retailer in the United States that it is today. The company originated in the late 1800s, early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s that it started growing to be in over 600 communities like it is today. It was precisely in 1971, when Leonard Riggio – owner of the Student Book Exchange – bought Barnes & Noble that students could say goodbye to affordable books and school merchandise.
Barnes & Noble serves 1369 colleges, roughly a third of all degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States. They continue to profit off of making the same style of merchandise with the same few retailers for all of these schools. Between Champion sweatshirts marked up from $45 to $80 because they say the school name and those Chicka-d corded crewnecks that are in literally every color (I’m looking at you, light pink Bucknell crew necks) that are marked up from $50 to $75 because there’s cursive writing on the front, it is impossible to get away from the markups. While this can sometimes be most noticeable in the clothing, it is important to see how powerful Barnes & Noble really is for college campuses.
When a school is a part of an interlibrary loan system, students can loan books from libraries other than the one at their school. This can be really helpful when students need to read a book for class but don’t have hundreds of dollars to shell out for it. Barnes & Noble stops students from using the interlibrary loan system for books that the professor has marked as class materials that can be rented from Barnes & Noble. They have monopolized the back-to-school market, especially as sites to pirate books are getting shut down faster than ever.
The book corporation has also altered school policy. Bucknell strictly states that no alcohol-related items can be in a student’s room if they are under 21. The exception to this rule is if the shot glass is from Barnes & Noble, because the University bookstore wants students to buy from them. While Barnes & Noble is the only store in Lewisburg that sells some of the official merchandise for Bucknell, it is important to realize that there are other places to get quality Bucknell clothing. Jordanna Adams, just a couple doors down, makes really nice and quality sweatshirts that, while still a little pricey, are made locally and most of the time more personalized to the Bucknell experience.
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Barnes & Noble is shutting down small family-owned bookstores because we let them. We need to be choosing to buy from local stores when we can. We need to push back against their predatory policies when possible. Barnes & Noble has the capacity to be good and bring thousands of books to our community, but we cannot let them have unlimited power over pricing and where we can get our books. They are an option, but should never be our only option.
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