Leonard Riggio, a dashing, self-styled underdog who transformed the publishing industry by building Barnes & Noble into the nation’s most powerful bookseller through the rise of his company Amazon.com, has died at 83.
Riggio died Tuesday “after a courageous battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to a statement issued by his family. He stepped down as chairman in 2019 after the chain was sold to hedge fund Elliott Advisors.
“His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also fostered a culture of innovation and a love of reading,” reads a statement from Barnes & Noble.
Riggio’s nearly half-century reign began in 1971 when he used a $1.2 million loan to buy the Barnes & Noble namesake and flagship store on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He acquired hundreds of new stores over the next 20 years and in the 1990s launched what became a nationwide empire of “superstores” that combined huge capacity with the discount prices of a chain and the cozy appeal of couches, reading chairs and cafes.
“These were not elite places.”
“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio told The New York Times in 2016. Use the restroom as long as you want, these are innovations that we had that no one thought of.”
He grew up working class in New York City, prefers to say he prefers socializing with childhood friends to business leaders, and was known as “Lenny” among associates. But in his time no one else was afraid of the world of books.
With the ability to make any book a best seller or a flop, to change the market, Riggio can scare publishers away only to charge too high a price or sign up top sellers like Stephen King and John. Grisham and published them himself. He even tried to buy Ingram, the nation’s largest book wholesaler, in 1999, but backed out in the face of government resistance.
By the late 1990s, an estimated one in eight books sold in the United States was purchased through a chain, where front-table displays were so valuable that publishers paid thousands of dollars to include their books. Thousands of independent vendors have gone out of business even as Riggio insists he is expanding the market by opening in neighborhoods without existing stores.
Instead, independent owners reported being overwhelmed by competition from both Barnes & Noble and Border Book Group, with rival chains sometimes setting up stores near each other and near locally owned businesses.
Impact on indie bookstores
Barnes & Noble became such an overdog that one of the most popular romantic comedies of the 1990s, “You’ve Got Mail,” starred Tom Hanks as an executive of the “Fox Books” chain and Meg Ryan as the owner of a beleaguered store. Independent stores in Manhattan.
“We’re going to woo them with our square footage, and our concessions, and our deep-arm chairs, and our cappuccinos,” Hanks’ character declares confidently. “They’re going to hate us in the beginning, but we’ll get them eventually.”
For a while, it seemed like the art conversation was an ongoing response to Barnes and Noble. Publishers have been known to change a book’s cover or title because a Barnes & Noble official objected. “Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt condemns himself American Booksellers Association, Barnes & Noble is the trade agency for independents after agreeing to appear in advertisements. On the floor of the industry’s annual national trade show, long hosted by the ABA, employees of independent stores would hiss at attendees wearing Barnes and Noble badges.
When novelist Russell Banks announced at Barnes & Noble’s annual shareholder meeting in 1995 that he was a stockholder and a happy B&N customer, some independent sellers stopped selling his books.
“You must know that I will never read, buy or sell another word of your writing,” Richard Howarth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to him. “Those are the kindest things I could say to you.”
The tension led to legal action when the ABA — on the eve of the 1994 convention — announced that it was suing Barnes & Noble and five leading publishers for unfair trade practices. Some publishers were so outraged that they boycotted the convention the following year and returned only after the ABA sold the show to Reed Exhibitions. In 1998, the ABA sued Barnes & Noble and Borders for unfair business practices (both cases were settled out of court).
The Amazon effect
Riggio began at the height of its power in the 2000s, with more than 700 superstores and hundreds of other outlets. But Internet commerce was growing rapidly, and Barnes & Noble, with its roots in physical retail, lacked the imagination and flexibility of the Seattle startup that called itself “the world’s largest bookstore,” Amazon.com.
The online giant, launched in 1995 by Jeff Bezos, gained business throughout the 2000s and displaced Barnes & Noble in the early 2010s with innovations such as the Kindle e-book reader and the Amazon Prime subscription service.
Bezos likened himself to David’s takedown of Goliath, though the contrast between the leaders also had the feel of an Aesop’s fable: the muscular, mustachioed Riggio, the son of a boxer, is enraged by the quick and clever Bezos.
“We’re great booksellers; we know how to do it,” Riggio Recognized by The Times in 2016. “We weren’t structured to be a technology company.”
Barnes & Noble started its own online site in the late 1990s, but ventures like the Nook e-book reader and a self-publishing platform failed to catch Amazon off guard. Even Borders’ decline after the 2008-2009 economic crisis was not significant for Barnes & Noble, which closed more than 100 stores between 2009 and 2019 after decades of expansion.
At the time of Riggio’s retirement, independent retailers viewed the chain not as a threat, but as an ally in the fight against Amazon to keep physical stores alive. At the 2018 Booksellers Conference, Riggio and ABA CEO Oren Teicher, once enemies in business and on the court, praised each other during a joint appearance.
“Me standing here, what I’m going to do (introducing Riggio) would have been impossible to imagine several years ago,” Teicher said at the time. “The simple truth is that our business is stronger and American readers benefit when there is a vibrant and healthy network of brick-and-mortar bookstores across the country.”
turn the page
In the 2010s, Barnes and Noble seemed unreadable and unloved. In 2010 the board announced that the company was for sale, but no one offered to buy it. Four CEOs left in five years, and Barnes & Noble’s stock fell 60% between 2015 and 2018. New rumors of a sale swirled for months before Elliott Advisors, which previously bought British chain Waterstones, bought Barnes & Noble for $638 million and hired Waterstones. Chief Executive James Daunt will lead B&N.
Riggio told Publishers Weekly in 2021, “I don’t miss being a business person, that was enough for me. But I miss the bookselling part, helping customers find books to recommend.”
Selling books and family often overlap for Riggio. His brother Steve Riggio served as vice chairman of Barnes & Noble for years, and another brother, Thomas Riggio, helped run a trucking company that shipped store books. After being interviewed in 1974 by the trade publication College Store Executive, Leonard met Louise Altavilla, an editor for Riggio Coffee, who became his second wife seven years later (Riggio had three children, two with his first wife, one with his second wife). .
Leonard S. Riggio was the eldest son of a prizefighter (who defeated Rocky Graziano twice), cab driver and clothing manufacturer. Even as a child, he advanced quickly, skipping two grades and attending one of the city’s top high schools, Brooklyn Tech. He studied metallurgical engineering at night school at New York University before focusing on commerce, and by day absorbed the world of bookselling and the growing cultural rebellion of the 1960s.
While working as a floor manager at the campus bookstore, he learned enough to leave school in 1965 to start a rival store—SBX (Student Book Exchange), where he allowed student workers to use copy machines to print anti-war copies. Leaflet SBX was so successful that he purchased several other campus stores and by 1971 was in a position to purchase Barnes & Noble and its single Manhattan store. A few years later, he became the rare bookseller to run television commercials, with the catchphrase “Barnes & Noble! Of course! Of course!”
Riggio and the independent community may seem to hold opposing values, but they share a love of reading and art and a liberal political outlook. He was a generous philanthropist and a prominent supporter of Democratic politicians. He was even friendly with consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who cast Rizio, Ted Turner and Yoko Ono in his 2009 novel “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”, in which Nader envisions a progressive revolution from above. . .
“Ever since he was a boy in Brooklyn, he had a visceral reaction to the way the workplace was tough and the poor were treated on a daily basis,” Nader wrote of Riggio, who was at times estranged from him. Management colleagues. When Fortune magazine asked nearly 200 business leaders about their political views in the 1990s, only Riggio supported raising workers’ wages.
“Money can become a burden, like something you carry on your shoulders,” he told New York magazine in 1999.