Articles by Matt Blind

Beyond the Big Box, or, A Plan to Save Barnes & Noble

4 March, 2018 // 16 Comments

With both Barnes & Noble and Amazon building smaller bookstores, one might think the day of the big box bookstore is over. Matt Blind, formerly a bookseller with B&N, has a different opinion. [Read More ...]

Hardwired for Stories

4 October, 2015 // 2 Comments

Pareidolia is the scientific term for our tendency to see faces in objects. Actually, pareidolia is more than that — it encompasses several phenomena, from seeing animals in cloud shapes to hearing [Read More ...]

A Once-in-a-Century Opportunity to Re-invent Publishing, and Books

30 May, 2014 // 6 Comments

The working title for this article was, “These Days, Monopoly is Just a Board Game.” I started to argue that Amazon wasn’t and isn’t a monopoly, but then I also managed to argue myself out of [Read More ...]

New York Times Reports 17-Year-Old “News”

31 March, 2014 // 3 Comments

“Rising rents in Manhattan have forced out many retailers, from pizza joints to flower shops. But the rapidly escalating cost of doing business there is also driving out bookstores, threatening the [Read More ...]

The Fallacy, and the Truth, of “Big Publishing”

26 February, 2014 // 4 Comments

Editor's note: this post is effectively part 2 of Matt Blind's guest post on publishing and Amazon. You can find the first part over here. In the last 20 years, two multi-billion-dollar bookstore [Read More ...]

Forbes: Please Hire Someone Who Understands Books, or Math, or Both.

11 February, 2014 // 1 Comment

Forbes just put up Amazon Vs. Book Publishers, By The Numbers – claiming at least on the face to “ignore the overheated rhetoric for the moment and focus on the raw data.” Fine. But can you [Read More ...]

E- versus Print? Burgers and Steak

11 November, 2013 // 6 Comments

where’s the beef? actually, I suppose that should be “what’s the beef?” beef /b?f/ noun secondary, informal use: a complaint or grievance. synonyms: complaint, criticism, objection, cavil, [Read More ...]

35 Years Ago: when one third of all hardcover books were sold in New York City alone.

27 August, 2013 // 0 Comments

“Once upon a time book retailing was about as exciting as watching haircuts. Hardcover books were often sold in musty downtown stores by fussy bibliophiles, and many readers turned to paperback [Read More ...]

Nook speculation at this early stage is dangerous, and likely useless

7 January, 2012 // 3 Comments

Full Disclosure: Barnes & Noble signs my paychecks, and I own trivial amounts of BKS through a company sponsored 401(k). But I am field management, in stores, and so not privy to corporate [Read More ...]

Can we talk about reasonable copyrights?

9 April, 2011 // 5 Comments

Now, I’m all for author rights — I’m an author myself — but my personal take is that folks like J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer would make out just fine even if their rights to their [Read More ...]

Books Are Not Retail

21 February, 2011 // 8 Comments

Matt Blind runs a bookstore for one of the major chains here in the US. Occasionally he picks up a keyboard and gives us an inside view of bookselling. --- Retail pays the rent, but isn’t what [Read More ...]