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From my perspective, there was nothing wrong with B&N's DRM scheme except that Adobe left it optional in ePub readers, and all of B&N's competitors chose not to include it. What a surprise! Of course, when they changed the key, and discontinued ebook downloaded from the website, and stopped supporting the Windows 7 ebook readers, it made it a lot harder to download the books I had purchased. Not a great move, but I could live with it.
I liked my Nook Simple Touch, and one of the most important features for me was the micro SD slot, as I already purchased enough ebooks from Fictionwise and B&N to fill the internal memory card, but then B&N made the bone-headed move to a new ebook reader that had no micro SD slot, and basically no space for sideloaded books.
Although it took me a long time to make the move to Kobo, partly because I could still get a 10% discount on my books with my credit card cash back bonus B&N gift cards, I eventually realized that a lot of the time B&N is more expensive than either Amazon or Kobo unless the publisher has something on sale at B&N. Kobo's loyalty program makes some of the sale prices cheaper than everyone else, Kobo's price matching allows me to get books on sale when only Amazon is discounting them, and I like my Kobo Glo HD, which I upgraded to a 64 GB reader. I still have some gift card credit at B&N, but it's rare that I bother to go to B&N to buy something. I just wish Kobo sold gift cards in the US and that one or more of my credit cards would have then in their rewards program. I don't know if it's just that B&N's margins are too low for them to include ebooks not covered by the agency pricing, but it's always annoyed me that they've excluded them from their loyalty program and coupons.
I buy way too many ebooks, and I really wanted to stick with B&N, but they're just not very friendly to ebook buyers that aren't willing to paying list price for every ebook. I suppose that made me unprofitable for them and they're probably happy that I'm gone.
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