Barnes & Noble Eyes IPO and AI Books After Improbable Revival

To understand the strategy that’s brought Barnes & Noble Inc. back from the retail abyss, you first have to understand the pyramid. To a regular bookstore-goer, a pyramid looks like a simple stack of books piled on a display table. But, much like fingerprints or computer-generated passwords, no two pyramids on the dozens of tables inside each of the company’s nearly 750 locations are alike. Each book at a pyramid’s peak is a title chosen by a staff member at the store, intended to draw customers in closer, where the titles around it can intrigue them further. When customers take ...