Nook Failure, Lack of Foot Traffic Could Spell Doom For Barnes & Noble 330
tripleevenfall sends in a story at Yahoo Finance forecasting the end of Barnes & Noble. Quoting:
"The last nationwide book retailer may be writing its final chapter. Barnes & Noble's latest quarterly results show a 7.4% drop in revenues and a $122 million loss for the fourth-quarter of its fiscal year. B&N's disastrous focus on making Nook e-Readers is weighing heavily on the chain's operations. A 17% drop in Nook revenues and stunning $475 million loss for the device division in 2013 are hobbling the company's ability to keep its stores afloat. B&N appears to be cannibalizing itself with branded tablets and cross-platform e-reader applications, which render the stores increasingly irrelevant."
Re:I go into the bookstore (Score:5, Informative)
On my way to the Starbucks in the back
It's not a Starbucks. It's the Barnes & Noble Cafe featuring Starbucks coffee.
And next time, I'm probably going to stop at the front and pick up one of those Nook HD+ 9" tablets they now have on fire sale for $150 while they still have them. It now has Google Play and all the apps available there without rooting it, and I can't see why it won't still be a decent tablet even if B&N goes completely under.
Re:Are people reading fewer paper books? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes people are reading paper books a LOT less. Every person I know has a Kindle or an iPad or like me and my wife, Nexus 7's. Paper books are great, don't get me wrong but when my mother in law even has an iPad for reading you know the death of paper books is on the horizon.
I was a bitter clinger to paper books. I graduated with an English degree and love literature. Too me paper books were sacred. Now I can't stand the thought of dealing with a paper book, storing it, watching it yellow on my shelf or having to fight with the binding while trying to read and holding the cover back. My Nexus 7 is the perfect experience. I can get books from multiple retailers on a single device while sitting in bed. I have Google Books, Kindle, Nook, Kobo and many others on my device and I shop around for prices.
Couple this with Calibre and I can manage my library any way I see fit, convert between formats and store them locally or in the cloud as I see fit.
Re:Are people reading fewer paper books? (Score:4, Informative)
Didn't you get the memo?
http://i.imgur.com/az9FCjh.jpg
Funny and not goatse.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I love the Nook (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are people reading fewer paper books? (Score:5, Informative)
He's actually a pretty terrible author who's been getting by on name recognition and PR. Have you actually read the Old Testament? Utter repetitive dreck and the main character is a bloodthirsty sociopathic asshole who'll kill people for burning the wrong incense.
Re:E-media is not to blame (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I go into the bookstore (Score:5, Informative)
I love Amazon, and I've used e-book readers since 2000. They're great if I know exactly what book I want to read, or if I know I want to read the next book from Author X. Amazon is even sometimes useful in their recommendations of what people read or looked at that were similar to the book I'm currently looking at.
What all the web based tools fall down for me is browsing. I can't look at a shelf of Thrillers, Mysteries, or Fantasy. I won't find new types of books via Amazon's recommendations, just an ever narrowing slice of books more and more similar to the ones I've already bought.
Maybe I'm old fashioned somehow, but I don't necessarily enjoy the bubble effect the web has. When I want a new book I find interesting, I can browse a bookstore and likely come out with one in 15 minutes. With Amazon, I've spent weeks trying to find a "good book" to read that isn't a sequel, or extremely similar to one I've just read.
I also find that while I'll pick up a book that may be enjoyable from a shelf based on cover art, blurb on the back etc, Amazon almost has too much information - do I really want a book that only got 3 stars? Do I read the reviews, which often take any reason to read the book away? Is it all scammed by companies? Too much work, and I rarely get a book.
Re:At least they tried (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, the whole article is trollish. They're not "circling the drain" or anything like that; rather they saw that Nook sales sucked, ate up their profits from their standard business, and decided to kill the Nook line. Also known as "adapting to market conditions" - exactly what they should do!