Classic Barnes and Noble up for sale

[ylsul]

See this Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/bu...rnes.html?_r=1

[neilmarr]

Wow! If Ron Burkle wants to copper up, I wonder if he'll face competition from Bezos or if Amazon will just bide its time and gleefully watch B&N in its death throes. Cheers. Neil

[Kindle Addict]

I totally agree with neilmarr - B&N could be in death throes soon enough - maintaining brick-and-mortar is pretty pricey when there's less and less reason to visit (physical) bookstores. I think in order to survive, the company has to go private again, and close a large number of stores that aren't drawing in traffic and sales.

Here are 10 other ideas off the top of my head - I haven't researched any of them, so they may already be implemented, but they are largely based on what I've read on this site over the years.

• Make deals to sell the Nook in strategic stores in the US as well as internationally

I'm sure that B&N wanted to ensure that the customer is 'educated' as the benefits and use of the Nook, but does it really require a 'boutique' within each B&N? I'm sure that the Kindle was primarily sold via word of mouth, although selling at Target probably doesn't hurt either.
Kobo can be purchased at Wal-Mart, among other places. The Nook should at least be available at stores other than B&N.

• Nooks should come with a no-questions asked 3-month return policy - once people use them, they'll be hooked.

• Make 'free' reading available at more locations (globally); local libraries, mall food courts, Starbucks, or other coffee shops, airplanes, etc.

Free reading is a great idea, but limiting it to B&N stores isn't.

• Press publishers hard to make all e-books available in all countries at prices lower than Amazon

This is a no-brainer; many people complain loudly about a $1-$2 surcharge at Amazon for e-books over paperback, plus international surcharges.

• Partner with local libraries to lend Nooks for reading e-books.

Seeing as Nooks support EPUB, this is also a no-brainer.

• Open up the OS to 3rd party developers.

Nook users can already softroot their Nooks to expand its capabilities. It would be great to be able to develop and deploy those apps on stock Nooks. An app store would be nice as well.

• Start programs to supply classes of underprivileged students with Nooks and books.

• Support global language sets and reading styles

Forward in Chinese and Hebrew doesn’t mean the same thing as forward for English.

• Keep innovating.

The Nook is a unique reader, but there's no reason that B&N can't release a Nook Study device that works well for text books. A large-format Nook with a touchscreen interface would do wonders for the student community.

• This may seem like a dumb idea, but the Nook and B&N's online store should support Amazon's .mobi format.

Hey, people are going to figure out this stuff anyway - you might as well profit on it.

[LorenzL]

it would be interesting to see how many Amazon kindles/ebooks are sold outside of the US. The nook has a huge disadvantage there and I don't quite get why they don't strike a deal with a major European book chain to bring the nook over here.

[ProfCrash]

Kindle has only been available overseas for about a year. It took Amazon a long time to negotiate with the necessary telecoms and deal with the different copyright law limitations before they could offer an International Kindle. I am sure that B&N is working through the same process that Amazon did.