eBooks at Barnes & Noble = R.I.P.

[TadW]

In a short notice Barnes & Noble, once an aggressive competitor in the electronic market, announced that it no longer sells eBooks.

"We did not see sales take off as we and many others had anticipated," said Daniel Blackman, vice president and general manager of Barnes & Noble.com.

According to the Open eBook Forum, a trade organization, e-book sales totaled about $5 million in the first half of 2003, compared with $3.8 million in the first half of 2002.

[cbarnett]

Without looking at the notice, I think that stinks. Ebooks cost so little to produce and market, I find it hard to imagine why they can justify this attitude. Bah.

Craig.

[Colin Dunstan]

I received the following email from BN:

Dear eBook Customer,

As of September 9, 2003, Barnes & Noble.com will no longer sell eBooks.

If you are a Microsoft Reader customer, you will be able to download your eBooks for the next 90 days through your Microsoft Library.

If you are an Adobe eBook customer and have not yet downloaded your eBook, please remember you have 90 days from your date of purchase to complete the download via the email link you received.

After December 9, 2003, eBook titles that have not been downloaded to the appropriate Readers will no longer be accessible.

If you have questions related to your past eBook purchases, please send your inquiry to ebookquestions@book.com.

As always, we appreciate your patronage, and we regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

Well, now that BN is no more, imagine this:

You buy a new device, hard reset your current device, do a full ROM upgrade or MS does another MS Reader upgrade that requires you to redownload your eBooks, which you have, ouups, purchased from BN.com. So much for DRM5 encrypted ebooks...

[cbarnett]

Sounds like grounds for litigation (in the US anyway )

Craig.