Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes and Noble, walks into a bookstore in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. (AP)
NEW YORK, Aug 28 (AP): Leonard Riggio, a brash, self-described maverick who revolutionized the publishing industry by turning Barnes & Noble into the country’s most powerful bookseller before his company was overtaken by the rise of Amazon.com, has died at age 83. Riggio died Tuesday “after a brave battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” his family said in a statement.
He resigned as chairman in 2019 after Barnes & Noble was sold to hedge fund Elliott Advisors. Riggio’s nearly half-century-long reign at Barnes & Noble began in 1971, when he used a $1.2 million loan to purchase the company name and flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Over the next 20 years, he acquired hundreds of new stores and in the 1990s founded a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined the discount prices and huge selection of a chain with the cozy atmosphere of sofas, reading chairs and cafes. “Our bookstores should be inviting, not intimidating,” Riggio told the New York Times in 2016.
“These weren’t elite places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you wanted, and use the restroom. These were innovations that nobody thought possible.” He grew up in working-class New York City, liked to say that he preferred hanging out with childhood friends to other businessmen, and was so easy-going with coworkers that he was called “Lenny.”
But in his day, no one in the book world was so feared. Riggio had the power to make any book a bestseller or a flop, and to change the market at will. He could terrify publishers by simply suggesting that prices were too high or that he could sign and self-publish bestsellers like Stephen King and John Grisham. In 1999, he even tried to buy out the country’s largest book wholesaler, Ingram, but backed out in the face of government opposition.
By the late 1990s, it was estimated that one in eight books sold in the United States was purchased through the chain, with the front table display so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to have their books featured there.
Thousands of independent retailers have been forced to close, despite Riggio’s insistence that he would expand the market by opening in neighborhoods without existing stores. Instead, independent owners spoke of being overwhelmed by competition from Barnes & Noble and Borders Book Group, with the rival chains sometimes opening stores in close proximity to each other and local businesses.
Barnes & Noble became so known as an overdog that in one of the most popular romantic comedies of the 1990s, You’re in Mail, Tom Hanks played a manager at the Fox Books chain and Meg Ryan played the owner of a dying independent store in Manhattan. “We’re going to seduce them with our space, our discounts, our deep chairs and our cappuccino,” Hanks’ character explains confidently.
“They’ll hate us at first, but we’ll get them in the end.” “Len’s vision and entrepreneurial spirit changed the retail landscape and made Barnes & Noble the largest bookstore chain in the United States,” the bookstore chain said in a statement. “His leadership spanned decades during which he not only grew the company but also fostered a culture of innovation and a love of reading.”
