Barnes & Noble To Spin Off Nook Media, Will Take It Public 51
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by
samzenpus
from the split-up dept.
from the split-up dept.
Nate the greatest writes It looks like the recent rumors about B&N splitting up were true. Along with could-have-been-worse financial news, Barnes & Noble just announced that it's going to spin off its two-year-old ebook subsidiary into a new publicly traded company. The move won't be finalized until 2015, but when it happens the new company is expected to have both existing parts of Nook Media, including the less than successful ebook division and B&N College, which is still managing to turn a profit.
What B&N needs (Score:1)
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Whew! For a second there I thought you were going to say "M".
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I have both, and the Kindle has an easy of use about it that more flexible Nook cannot match.
Easy of use can be much more important than most geeks think.
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My father, a 75 year old senior citizen who never used computerson the job, has no problem at all using a Nook. I can't speak much more the simplicity than that.
B&N (Score:1)
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Bricks & Nothing?
I wouldn't say that.
See, I've noticed that Amazon, not only is collecting sales tax but, has also raised prices. Many times, when you add in the S&H, the book actually costs MORE than if bought in a bricks and mortar store.
If my local B&N doesn't have it in stock, they order it for me and just charge list price; which many times is LESS than Amazon's with S&H. AND I get it faster than standard shipping.
See, people have been trained into thinking online == lowest price and don't shop. And it's
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Other people have been trained to consider their free time to have no value. There is nothing I could possibly want to buy a a B&N that could provide enough discount to offset the the time I would spend getting there.
Re:B&N (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because other people do things with their free time that you don't personally value doesn't mean that they don't value it. Some people just enjoy browsing in bookstores.
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The post I was responding to was specifically referring to buying things at B&N because of the lower price, and failing to account for the time spent when doing so. In that case my value of my free time is irrelevant to AC's failure to account to count for the AC's value of the AC's free time.
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I actually like going there. I do read more on my phone than on dead tree books, mostly because when I find time to read, I usually want to do it now, not whenver I next get to the book store.
GP also raises a very good point. Electronic books used to be cheap enough that it was hard to justify paying for the paper copy just to support a store I kind of like. Now, the paper copies are only a little more, and what the heck, I can grab a coffee while I'm there, browse around, etc. If ebooks stay(ed) cheap,
Going Public (Score:2)
Isn't the aim of going public to get investors? Is there anyone on the planet who is going to invest in the failure that is Nook?
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I sure hope so. I'd love to short it. I like B&N, but Nook has been a disaster.
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Amazon.
Because they're really close to becoming a monopoly.
The DoJ thought Apple was screwing with everyone by selling ebooks and raising prices. Except well, they seemed to keep competition happy - everyone except the market leader. And it seemed vibrant - you had Amazon, B&N, iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, etc.
Now the DoJ has practically killed the iBookstore by scrapping all agreements and limiting Apple to 1 agreement per 6 mo
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And yet I can read my Amazon-sourced ebook on a Kindle, Android device, iOS device, Windows Phone, WindowsRT device and many others. How many devices could I read my ebook sourced from Apple, Nook, Kobo or Sony on?
Amazon deserves to win the market.
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I can't read Nook titles on my Windows Phone, for a start, and the portability of ePubs are no good if they are DRMed, as most of the Nook store is...
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It's not Nook that's interesting, it's the College Bookstore business. Very stable, solid margins.
My advice to readers (Score:2)
Don't chuck your dead-tree books just yet!
After the likes of Barnes & Noble have done away with them, and some years
of 'Verelendung' (see wiki), all those paper books will regain a new worth.
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After the likes of Barnes & Noble have done away with them, and some years
of 'Verelendung' (see wiki)...
Wikipedia has no article for this "Verelendung", and the only two mentions of in the entire (English) site are in the titles of listed works by two Germans.
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all those paper books will regain a new worth.
Not all of them. Only the hardcovers printed on acid-free. The rest of them are destined for the dust pile, or to be used for starting fires.
Nook! (Score:4, Informative)
I love my nook. The form factor is perfect, the interface is almost perfect (please let me have several books open at once and let me scribble notes), and I have a snazzy embossed leather covering so they'd better not alter the shape or size of any future models. Also user-changeable batteries for longevity would be splendid. Besides that though screen contrast is the only needed improvement, no attaching LEDs to the inner face isn't the same thing. Actually i could go for customised bodywork too if they made the design moddable.
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The form factor is perfect even though it doesn't have interchangeable batteries? One defines the other.
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Have you the Nook SimpleTouch [with GlowLight] (the black one) or the Nook GlowLight (the white one)? I just upgraded from the SimpleTouch to the GlowLight and if I thought that the device couldn't be any more perfect, I was wrong!
Actually the new one has a better screen and runs better (faster), but the old one had a better body. I so missed the curved back that I modified the new one to have similar ridges.
Champagne corks pop at Amazon (Score:2)
B&N bought Fictionwise, where I was buying about $2000/year of eBooks before the publishers managed to kill just about every eBook store that carried their stuff except Amazon and B&N. Neither of them is as well-run or as reader-friendly as Fictionwise and Books on Board were (hint: shopping cart, "tell me when new books by author (x) are available", and store credits along with publisher-over-priced eBooks which could be used to buy more books).
Amazon has more than just books, so they can hang in t
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B&N also lost my support when they bought Fictionwise and along with it eReader and my library of 500 odd ebooks - I received an email from B&N saying they were migrating my library to the Nook library:
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Oddly enough, were they dead tree books, you wouldn't even have been bothered by the whole thing. .50-$1.00. Searching by specific authors is difficult, but on a sidenote I often find other things to read.
I can get paper books from my local library for
The technology is selling us supposed convenience at the cost of control and access.
Nook e-reader (Score:5, Informative)
The Nook Simple Touch (E-Ink) reader hardware is excellent and IMO way better than the E Ink Kindle. The firmware handles sideloaded epub books with ease and there's also a slot for an sdcard, something sadly lacking on the Kindle.
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Except you can't get it any more. The only e-ink Nook left is the Nook GlowLight, which removed both the MicroSD card slot AND the physical page-turn buttons.
Me, I'm hanging onto my Bookeen Cybook Opus. It actually has buttons instead of a touchscreen. I don't need gestures, swipes, and text entry. I need 'push here for next page' and 'push here for previous page' and a D-pad for selecting books and working menus.
I've tried the Nook and Kindle touch readers, and they drive me absolutely batshit insane. Touc
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Except you can't get it any more.
Almost true, but not quite. Amazon has eight left in stock [amazon.com] (and there are several on eBay at about the same price. The price hasn't come down any since release, but it's still a good device.
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>Me, I'm hanging onto my Bookeen Cybook Opus. It actually has buttons instead of a touchscreen. I don't need gestures, swipes, and text entry. I need 'push here for next page' and 'push here for previous page' and a D-pad for selecting books and working menus.
I have a 10" Onyx Boox because I wanted the larger form factor, ePub support, and better PDF support. I'm right with you on the need for physical buttons, but the Boox also comes with a stylus that allows faster navigation in some situations.
From what I can tell, every e-reader has their own problems, mostly because of the HTML support of their reader software, but there are also some UI and usability issues as well. The Boox is basically stupid, with no catalog for books, but that means I can just copy b
Thanks for the stock tip! (Score:2)
It's sad.... (Score:3)
Back when Amazon was just a book seller, B&N was competing with them toe to toe. But then Amazon just got too big and started using it's leverage to squeeze B&N.
Amazon doesn't get nearly enough flack for it's shady business practices. In some ways they are just as bad as Google and Facebook. Amazon is slowly but surely cornering the market for eBooks. Did you know that Amazon, at any time, can shut off access to eBooks that you have bought and paid for? Did you know that it's impossible to remove a transaction after you have bought something on their website? It's there forever. The new Fire phone is taking information gathering to a new level.
B&N, on the other hand, just strikes me as more of a mom and pop bookstore. Their eBooks use a more open format. I've never really heard anything about them abusing customer data or coming up with sneaky little tricks to gather it. They just seem to want to sell you books. You can go into one of their stores and browse for hours and nobody will say anything. No pressure to buy anything.