BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

One man believes there is hope for the brick and mortar bookstores yet. Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio wants to buy the company’s retail business, but not the Nook.

Riggio bought the store and Barnes & Noble brand name in the 1970s and still owns 30 percent of the company, according to an Associated Press report on mercurynews.com. If the deal is approved, Riggio would acquire the company’s stores and its website.

Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom said the company was attractive to Riggio because it and did not require capital to keep going. Wahlstrom said, according to a Reuters report on NBCNews.com, "Riggio loves the retail business too much to let it go."

Barnes & Noble reported a 26 percent decline in revenue for Nook sales during its fiscal third quarter. CEO William Lynch said the company would be readjusting its Nook sales strategy, calling its sales over the 2012 holiday period an “obvious disappointment.”

The device has been reviewed favorably, but has not competed well with Apple’s iPads or the Amazon Kindle Fires. “The Nook is not a failure, not technically,” said analyst James McQuivey, according to The New York Times. “The problem is the fact that the overall tablet market has actually blown way past the Nook’s performance.”

According to Andrew Marder of Motley Fool, the idea that bookstores are dead is a misconception. Marder reports that in the previous quarter, sales excluding the Nook were up two percent, and the retail end was the only division to earn a profit. He notes that sales at Barnes & Noble are still more than 60 percent physical.

Marder suggested that Barnes& Noble can compete with its competitors if it refocuses on being a bookstore, because there are currently no meaningful chains out there.

Barnes & Noble stores located in New Jersey can be found here.