B&N explains their results

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by John F

The Kobo 6" devices are dull, though. The Kindles have 300dpi, different types of buttons, different form factors, different ergonomics, ...

I agree. But they make other sizes.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Bear in mind that pricing ereaders at near cost wasn't Amazon's idea. Their pricing tracked Sony and they happily pocketed the 40% margin of the K1 and K2.

You can lay the "credit" for near-cost pricing at Nook's feet. They were the ones who reset the baseline. Amazon merely undercut them by $10 and stayed $10 cheaper. It inspired them to start the Special Offers ad business as a sideline. A "sideline" that now generates over a billion a year in revenue. Bezos owes much to Riggio.

You sure about that? I recall the 650 being expensive then they released the T1 to compete with lower priced ereaders.

edit. The 650 was out the same time as the Kindle Keyboard and was significantly more expensive. The K4 and the T1 came out at the same time. So Amazon certainly wasn't following Sony on pricing.

edit. The original Nook ereader was comparable in price to the KK and the Nook ST was released the same year as the K4 and again was comparable in price.

In short I see no evidence of Amazon being led by competition to lower price and quality in their ereaders. I don't know where you're getting your information...

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

You sure about that? I recall the 650 being expensive then they released the T1 to compete with lower priced ereaders.

Kindle's didn't become "cheap" until B&N, in June of 2010, dropped the Nook from $259 to $199 for 3G and intro'd a WiFi only Nook for $149. Amazon responded immediately by dropping the K2's price from $259 to $189. That was the start of lowering pricing, before that Amazon, Sony, B&N, etc. all had similar pricing.

EDIT: Around the launch of the PRS-650 for $229 was when the gap between Sony and Amazon/B&N began to widen when it came to pricing. Amazon & B&N had dropped prices 2 months before the 650 launched.

EDIT: Basic comparison between Amazon and Sony (may not have listed all price drops)...

Sony
2006 -- PRS-500 ($349.99)
2007 -- PRS-505 ($299.99)
2008 -- PRS-700 ($399.99, dropped to $349.99)
2009 -- PRS-300 ($199.99), PRS-600 ($299.99), PRS-900 ($399.99)
2010 -- PRS-350 ($179.99), PRS-650 ($229.99), PRS-950 ($299.99)
2011 -- PRS-T1 ($149.99)
2012 -- PRS-T2 ($129.99)
2013 -- PRS-T3 ($99.99?)


Amazon
2007 -- Kindle 1 ($399)
2009 -- Kindle 2 ($359, dropped to $299, dropped to $259), Kindle DX ($489)
late 2009 -- Kindle 2 'International' ($279, dropped to $259, dropped to $189)
2010 -- Kindle 3/Keyboard ($189 3G, $139 WiFi), Kindle DX Intl ($379)
2011 -- Kindle 4s ($110 no ads), Kindle Touch ($190 3G no ads, $140 WiFi no ads)
2012 -- Kindle 4b ($90 no ads), Paperwhite 1 ($200 3G no ads, $140 WiFi no ads)
2013 -- Paperwhite 2 ($210 3G no ads, $140 WiFi no ads)
2014 -- Basic Kindle ($100 no ads), Voyage ($290 3G no ads, $220 WiFi no ads)
2015 -- Paperwhite 3 ($210 3G no ads, $140 WiFi no ads)
2016 -- Basic Kinde ($100 no ads), Oasis ($380 3G no ads, $310 WiFi no ads)

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

In short I see no evidence of Amazon being led by competition to lower price and quality in their ereaders. I don't know where you're getting your information...

Read again.
It says "K1 and K2".
Not K3 and K4.
By the time of the K3 Nook and Kindle were already running near-cost.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/tech..._cut/index.htm

Some people consider the four hour price war to have been triggered by Kobo but Kobo's reader was older tech and lacked wireless. It was Nook that reset the market and Amazon followed because their reader was cheaper to build and they had higher volume. Plus they made money off the books. They could afford to go low. Hardware-only vendors like Sony, Pocketbook, Samsung, Acer, Asus, etc couldn't compete at those prices.

That january, at CES 2010, there were 42 ereaders targetted to the US market.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stepha..._b_436470.html

Maybe 6 actually showed up after the reset.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by tas03

I totally agree with both of these. Membership should give you a discount on ebooks. I also seem to remember that when I first became a member, there was a discount for pbooks bought on line if you were a member.

bn membership has gone through some changes over the years

Prior to Nook it was

40% bestsellers (really just an extra 10% on top of the 30% so you got into decimal places with the percentage saved but eh)

20% off adult hadcover

10% everything else (at this time it was largely still books with a few gift items, magazines, along with music and dvds)


It later became

10% off everything (where everything meant most things, but did include Nook devices).

They later dropped the savings on Nook devices.


It should be noted that for a single holiday season BN sent out some crazy coupons which did work on ebooks. You could get -any- ebook for 4.99 or 6.99, that may not sound fantastic until you realize it worked on 'box set' ebooks which could cost over 100$. They have not repeated this since that holiday season.

On occasion they will send out coupons or have member sales on Nook accessories. But these have become to gaudy and cheaply made that you're better off going third party anyway.

[Magic8Ball]

The thing I've never understood about B&N is how adversarial they seem to be with their ebook customers. You'd think they'd be a lot nicer to people who actually want to give them money, but they just keep making it more and more inconvenient to buy ebooks from them. I stopped after my gift cards ran out and the manga series I had started on Nook ended. I still read ebooks almost exclusively, but not from B&N.

[fjtorres]

It might help to understand their attitude towards ebooks if you factor in that to B&N ebooks have always been a money loser. For one reason or another they have never made money selling ebooks, even when they controlled a quarter of the market.

It's not clear how they managed that achievement so consistently but they did.
And still do.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It might help to understand their attitude towards ebooks if you factor in that to B&N ebooks have always been a money loser. For one reason or another they have never made money selling ebooks, even when they controlled a quarter of the market.

It's not clear how they managed that achievement so consistently but they did.
And still do.

Riggio said in his latest earning's report that at one time the Nook division had 1600 employees. That's 1600 mostly IT employees working in Silicon Valley.

Do the math.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Riggio said in his latest earning's report that at one time the Nook division had 1600 employees. That's 1600 mostly IT employees working in Silicon Valley.

Do the math.

Seattle salaries aren't much lower and Lab126 staffing has long been pretty large. These days it's enormous.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...e-the-r-d-race

The issue isn't the absolute numbers at the back end, per se, but rather the management of that staff. Those 1600 employees should have been able to earn their keep if properly deployed and managed. If they were over-staffed, under-utilized, or over-paid that would be on B&N management. Same as it is on their management that their website has long been substandard or that they had to buy back Microsoft's investment in Nook for non-performance.

Plenty of companies deal with those tech issues every day without incurring massive losses year after year after year. It doesn't take a decade of fumbling around to figure those things out.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by Magic8Ball

The thing I've never understood about B&N is how adversarial they seem to be with their ebook customers. You'd think they'd be a lot nicer to people who actually want to give them money, but they just keep making it more and more inconvenient to buy ebooks from them. I stopped after my gift cards ran out and the manga series I had started on Nook ended. I still read ebooks almost exclusively, but not from B&N.

Sony made a lot of bad decisions, and eventually they pulled the plug on money losers. I'm surprised Nook are still making e-readers. I guess it's only a matter of time. Amazing how these big companies can continue to make mistakes that are obvious to the outside world. I guess they get a bit crazy and locked into their bubble.

I guess the other reason for their descent is Amazon's ruthlessly efficient approach.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I guess the other reason for their descent is Amazon's ruthlessly efficient approach.

Like Microsoft in the 80's/90's Amazon has been gifted with singularly inept and short-sighted opposition.

Like the quip about the land of the blind except Amazon has both eyes, binoculars, and GPS.

[DiapDealer]

Businesses should strive to stay as inept and short-sighted as their competition. Mere competence in a sea of incompetence is predatory behavior these days.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Businesses should strive to stay as inept and short-sighted as their competition. Mere competence in a sea of incompetence is predatory behavior these days.

Sadly, yes.
Standards are low and getting lower.
Legacies must be protected!

[DiapDealer]

Yep. Why attribute to B&N's sheer ineptitude that which can be foisted upon Amazon's malicious "eptitude" and foresight?

[Pajamaman]

In all fairness, amazon had an advantage. They were born by definition an online service, and thus were better suited to provide ebooks digitally. They understood the tech. B&N was bricks and mortar. Companies do make these kind of mistakes. For example, Apple initially ignored the internet. But they played catch up first. There B&N did truly fail.