Quote:
Originally Posted by MGlitch
Best Buy isn’t gonna give up space for something that doesn’t earn its place somehow and neither Kobo nor Barnes and Noble have the leverage needed.
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Understood. But their online store doesn't need to give up space for niche products. They sell all sorts of items on their website that they don't carry in stores. That's true of all the big box stores with online presences along with smaller brick and mortar electronics stores like B&H Photo Video who sells lots of what I'd guess to be low volume products online.
I'm not arguing with you. I get your points. It's just strange to me that Kobo readers are only sold by one vendor in a country of 330 million people, even if they are rather obscure. And that one vendor is distasteful to many shoppers and they don't cater to a crowd that reads a lot of ebooks on top of it.
How many readers has Kobo sold to US residents over the last year? How many in Canada where they're plentiful and easy to get? I assume that they don't publicize these figures, but maybe they do. I'd think that if one other vendor sold Kobo readers online only and promoted them even just a little bit, that they'd sell enough to make it worthwhile. Could such a website sell, say, 10,000 units a year? That's a modest number, but that could make them more profit than one of the more arcane USB adapters they sell.
I'm an outsider to all this. I don't claim to understand the ins and outs of it all. Just speculating and wondering. But if Walmart really doesn't have exclusivity, I don't understand why other vendors wouldn't sell these products online. What's to lose?