Barnes & Noble just finished one cliffhanger, but should brace for another. The bookseller’s architect and chairman, Leonard Riggio, has survived an attempted insurrection by the uppity billionaire Ronald Burkle. But the chain operates in an industry on the edge of an abyss. It needs quickly to find a buyer or a way to turn things around.

Mr. Burkle brought needed attention to Barnes & Noble’s governance defects. But his campaign, in which he didn’t really offer an alternative strategy, failed to win over the roughly one-third of shareholders who weren’t allied with either him or Mr. Riggio. These unaffiliated voters opted for Mr. Riggio’s group of directors by a fairly wide margin. Even here, however, Mr. Burkle managed to effect change: the two winning board members were independent replacements for incumbents who had ties to Mr. Riggio and who originally sought re-election.

Admitting at least partial defeat, Barnes & Noble put itself up for sale in August. Neither Mr. Burkle nor Mr. Riggio is a bidder — at least not yet. But the conclusion of the acrimonious proxy battle should give fresh momentum to an auction that has drawn initial interest from some 20 parties wanting at least to leaf through the book.

Barnes & Noble has admittedly taken some baby steps to fix its business. It claims to have nabbed 20 percent of the electronic reader market with its Nook device. That’s about equal to its share of physical book sales, a position it took decades to establish. And new publishing partnerships could be on the horizon. But these moves seem belated and too modest to make up for the company’s steadily declining cash flow.