Booksology Barnes & Noble, parent company of Daunt Books rumored to become a publicly traded company
Big warning to the above story: B&N/Daunt’s initial public offering will be a huge story. When Elliott Investment Management acquired Barnes & Noble, there were two big questions. One question is what will happen to B&N, and the other is what are the long-term goals for EIM. Rather than buy and hold, private equity typically buys, restructures, and then sells. The final destination is usually the public market. My own feeling is that Barnes & Noble has more ongoing concerns now than it did before it was acquired, but I know from B&N employees who wrote for Book Riot that it wasn’t all plain sailing. I believe a strong, independent Barnes & Noble is good for America’s reading culture. Therefore, unless they somehow acquire themselves from EIM and remain private, the only way to become independent is through an IPO. Take a deep breath.
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I’ve been wrestling with this bombshell article about Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker. He is one of my favorite writers and a writer/thinker/person that I highly respect. But as Rachel Aviv scrutinized her papers, especially her diaries, she discovered that many of the signal cases that made her major books and career just weren’t true. Not in the way we expect science journalists to do. As painful as it is for saxophone fans, it’s worth a long read. This is also a reminder that most nonfiction books are not fact-checked. But do you know who does the rigorous fact checking? new yorker.
