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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
B&N acquired Fictionwise fairly recently. Customer service has gone downhill and technical glitches have increased since they did. They don't have much experience running an online ebookstore.
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I suspected then as well as now that the reason for the Fictionwise acquisition was for their technical expertise. Rather than poach a few key tech people, the big fish ate the leetle fish in order to get their whole tech model as well as their obviously successful business model. Plus maybe part of FW's catalog came at a better price than B&N could negotiate with the publisher.
You know sorta like that Amazon did with Mobipocket who was the best of the bunch and, thus, picked first by the biggest fish.
Really, look at the Kindle Store, it is not terribly sophisticated. As I recall it was only recently they added the ability to add books to a wish list...and forget searching in any sort of organized drill down fashion, then again that might be the weakest point across the whole Amazon site...searching is not great, fast but not really as good as it should be at this point in time.
So, perhaps B&N is doing essentially the same thing. Grabbing the IT part of the equation in order to improve their core site rather than re-invent the wheel, just by the company which already makes them.