Quote:
Originally Posted by PatNY
What I don't get is that you dismiss every suggestion by everyone on how B&N might start to at least turn the corner. Yet you make no suggestion of your own. Are you saying they should just stick with the same old strategy and wait to die? Even if steps are successful in only helping them turn the corner but they eventually fail, isn't that at least the better road to take? Try some things new?
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The problem is that the obvious suggestions are all for things they should have done several years ago.
They are expanding internationally far too late. If they had managed it years ago it might have been profitable, but now they are just retreading group that Amazon and Kobo have already covered. They haven't concentrated on just the US market, they haven't expanded early enough, they've ended up in a mess between the two. Do or do not do, there is no try.
If they had entered the UK market before Amazon, when all that was on offer was the lackluster Sony bookstore, they might have had a chance at selling an integrated ecosystem. But the UK now belongs to Amazon, and B&N aren't even a blip.
They had a chance to be a first-mover, but now they are just offering something that seems frankly inferior to what Amazon are already offering. And for those that don't want Amazon, Kobo is already available. So why should anyone care about B&N?
It is frankly hard to think of anything that they
should do that would make a huge difference now, but easy to think of things that they
should have done.