[lsllc]

As a former B&N junkie (used to go there several times a week), for me at least the issue was stock. As Amazon encroached on B&N's business they made the unfortunate and classic mistake of trying to reduce costs, which generally meant keeping less stuff in stock. So now you want say "The Rust Programming Language" book and you want it now? The local B&N doesn't have it, nor do any nearby stores. They can ship to you or ship to store within a few days, or you can just get it on Amazon Prime.

Of course this is a hard problem to solve, they clearly can't have every book you'd want in your local store. But they could have regional warehouses with more stock and either same/next-day to store or even DoorDash type same/next day local delivery.

Ultimately, I think B&N were out matched by the Amazon juggernaut. Shame really, as going to B&N on the way home from dinner at a restaurant was a nice thing to do (wow, remember when you could go out to dinner?).