The Harry hump is over, and Barnes & Noble is hurting. The brick-and-mortar bookstore chain is suffering due to the lack of a new Harry Potter book in 2017, Bloomberg reports. The release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child last year spiked sales, but now same-store sales in the last quarter have fallen 6.3 percent. About half of that decline is just Harry Potter drop-off, Bloomberg notes.
Barnes & Noble has struggled to compete against Amazon, although it is now abandoning efforts to make up sales in non-book items like board games and will "place a greater emphasis on books, while further narrowing our non-book assortment," CEO Demos Parneros said in a statement. Earlier this month, shares jumped 8 percent following reports that Sandell Asset Management had proposed to take the company private, although Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio said he "has no intention" of following through.
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