The reality of book selling today, is many readers prefer to get their reading material on electronic devices, whether it’s actual text or an audio book. This means more and more readers don’t even bother going to a book store anymore.

Because of the change in readers’ preferences and advances in technology, Barnes & Noble, one of the biggest brick and mortar bookstores, has been feeling the pain for a while now. Its stock value has dropped over 66 percent in the last ten years, and went down as low as $7.25 a share in the last 52 weeks. The high was $13.98. It closed the week down 9.2 percent at $11.51 per share without any major fluctuation in price over the last two weeks.

The stock has been rated a SELL since a downgrade from a C- to a D in March, 2016. Over the last two years, the company mostly had a HOLD recommendation, with a few drops to a D, and then a bounce back to a C. But since the March downgrade to a D, it saw a rating drop as low as an E+ in June.

Barnes & Noble needs a major change in their business to become more relevant to the everyday reader. It has the Nook, a book reading tablet, but it’s not much competition to Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad. Unless the company comes up with some new revolutionary way to read books, their customer base will continue to dwindle.

So what can be next for Barnes & Noble? Well, most likely it will either be bought by a tech company like Amazon, or it may simply go out of business. In the case of a buyout, Barnes & Noble stock holders would benefit, as the share price is likely to rise if an offer is made. An acquisition would be good for both the shareholders and the acquiring company, as it would potentially bring aboard at least a portion of its customers. Everyone seems to be glancing over at Amazon as the primary candidate to offer a deal for Barnes & Noble, but nothing official yet. And maybe never.

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