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In my view, B&N is failing because it hasn't been smart enough to take advantage of their loyal book buyers. I'm one of those buyers.
I buy mainly hardcovers, generally 4 to 6 a month (on average). My wife prefers ebooks and so I buy an average of 2 ebooks from B&N a month for her. But unlike hardcovers where I will buy without regard for price, we never buy an ebook priced at more than a few dollars.
Where B&N fails itself (this is but one of many failures) is that it does not take advantage of my book-buying habits. It knows my history as I have been a "member" for decades. Every time I buy a book, B&N should note the author, whether it is part of a series, and the genre. As soon as the author's next book is announced, B&N should send me a notice offering me the option to preorder at a special price and with a guarantee that should the price drop at anytime before shipping, I will be charged the lowest price. At the same time, it could promote to me similar type books at special pricing.
This is a simple marketing technique but one that B&N ignores.
Another thing B&N could do is offer an author subscription service. What I mean is, if I discover a new author that I like, I could check a box adding the author to my "B&N follow list" (which doesn't currently exist) and B&N should then offer to me the opportunity to buy bundles of other books by the author at a special price.
It is interesting that here on MR the passion for ebooks remains unabated. I am not so sure that is true in the book-buying world. The explosive growth of ebooks of past years is not repeating and most of the readers I know have taken my path, that is, dropped print for ebooks, bought largely ebooks for a year or so, and then slowly stopped buying ebooks and turned back to print. If it weren't for my wife's need to use something like a Nook, I wouldn't buy ebooks at all.
B&N can recover with some imagination but I think imagination will be hard to come by as long as Riggio remains in charge.
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