Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Again, I don't see much reason for B&N to do anything international beyond UK, Canada and maybe Australia. That alone will be an expensive and complex addition, especially since I doubt B&N has much brand awareness outside the US.
They'll get a much better ROI if they try to push into education, for example.
It really is not necessary for them to compete with Amazon for each tiny slice of the market.
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That depends on how tiny a slice of the market it is.
I don't see much sense in B&N trying to expand B&M operations overseas. I
do see reason to try to expand B&N.com and push for global ebook sales.
English is the most widely spoken second language in the world. While Hindi may be the official "court language" of India, for example, there are substantial numbers of the population who speak Tamil, Gujurati, Telugu, or other mutually incomprehensible tongues but
not Hindi, and business is likely to be conducted across language barriers in English. People in places like Scandinavia and Holland may read as much or more in English as they read in their native language. (This is particularly the case for genre fiction, like SF.)
And I expect publishers to increasingly push for global electronic rights on titles they acquire, with geo-restrictions increasingly a thing of the past.
The international market for English language titles alone is more than sufficient to be seen as valuable, especially if you expand your sales operations beyond countries where it's the native language. If I were B&N, I'd want as big a slice of it as I could get.
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Dennis