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It’s J.K. Rowling! I can see you have the book. The book business is very, very large.
It’s much larger than the movie business or the video game business in this country.
Not everybody knows that. Harry Potter is the biggest series of books in publishing
history and the most recent book launched an incredible array of parties. Over 660 stores
around the country had Midnight Magic parties where thousands and thousands of kids lined
up to get the book at 12:01 am the minute it came out. It was a tremendous media event
for us, as well as a great sales event. Our headquarters are right across the street from
the first bookstore that our chairman and founder Leonard Riggio purchased in the 70s.
It’s a company that’s very proud of its brand. We’ve been named the number one in
retail brand in America for three years running. The environment is what’s very important
to us; creating that place where people can come and think and read and browse and buy.
We have a strategy here at Barnes & Noble to have more self published product. We had
a very successful series, a weird series we call it. Weird New Jersey was the first and
its expanding into multiple states. One of my roles is to make sure that the investments
we’re putting in these products are returning earnings to our shareholders. To be successful
as a CPA first and foremost you have to have a high level of integrity. In my role, I’m
responsible for, in addition to accounting and the typical CFO functions of treasury,
cash management, taxes, talking to wall street if you will, the analysts, our shareholders.
I’m also responsible for merchandise planning and control. Our stores on average carry about
150 to 200 thousand different titles and managing that inventory is really kind of a fun part
of the business where you can add value to the people making those decisions in terms
of what inventory should we pout in the stores, what’s the best value we can give them,
what should be on the front table. I love the product, I love to read. Certainly being
part of this environment you’re aware of so much more than you ever thought. 50 to
100 thousand new books get published every year and obviously you couldn’t even read
but a fraction of those. It’s good to be part of something that’s good for people
as well as exciting. I love to hang out in a bookstore personally.