B&N CEO Lynch resigns, replaced by CFO Huseby

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

B&M bookstores are dinosaurs on the road to extinction.

*Big* bookstores.
There's plenty of room for small, tightly focused stores.

[GreenMonkey]

I think a big problem with the Nook tablets was that they had got greedy trying to emulate the Apple own-the-entire-infrastructure model. Amazon managed to pull it off with the Kindle Fire because they had a much bigger company, and the free-app-of-the-day for months to get their Amazon appstore going.

I think if they'd launched the Nook color with Google Market at the beginning we'd have seen a lot more success. When it launched there was a place for a simpler tablet with content (books, movies, magazines) at the forefront and they were way ahead of the game with one of the few 7" tablets (and way cheaper than an original Galaxy Tab at $400ish IIRC). Certainly when the Nook Color came out it was the only reasonable 7" tablet in town - that's why I got one for $200ish while my wife was toting around a giant $400 refurb iPad 1.

If nothing else, they should have given up on their app store and gotten Google Market when the very first Nook Tablet came out, when competition was tightening up.

They were apparently too afraid of people buying Nooks and loading the Kindle app.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

I think a big problem with the Nook tablets was that they had got greedy trying to emulate the Apple own-the-entire-infrastructure model. Amazon managed to pull it off with the Kindle Fire because they had a much bigger company, and the free-app-of-the-day for months to get their Amazon appstore going.

And even there, Amazon lets you sideload apps and install alternate appstores like 1Mobile. Amazon is petty enough to pretend the Kobo and Bluefire apps are not compatible with the FIRE but not stupid enough to try and stop you from installing them.

Their other problem was that they overestimated the appeal of their brand. Nook sold very well among the B&N faithful but not so well beyond them. They expected their sales to keep on growing in 2011 and 2012 as it did in 2010 and over-ordered the hardware. That tied up too much of their cash and limited their ability to adapt to market changes.

A lot of their early success was because they were the not-Kindle. Once Apple stepped in, they became the great anti-Kindle hope and Nook lost traction.

Lots of mistakes, compounded.
They have a lot of work ahead of them.

[Fbone]

Don't forget the new CEO Michael Husby was hired in 2012 with strong approval from Liberty Media which owns 17% of B&N.

[rkomar]

It's usually a bad sign for the customers when the CFO takes over the "running" of a company. It's more often the dismemberment and sell-off of resources to maximize the return for investors who are looking to bail out.

[charmian]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...silicon-valley

“Barnes & Noble cannot ultimately escape the fate of Blockbuster and Virgin [Megastore]. But they have to make the slide into oblivion more gradual,” says Idea Logical’s Shatzkin. “Does Barnes & Noble have 3 years or 10 years? I don’t know. But it doesn’t have 20 years, that’s for sure. They have to manage their disappearance or turn into something completely different.”

Mike Shatzkin is a consultant for the publishing industry. I wonder how mainstream this view is among the big 5?

“Their business should be selling content,” says Rick Schottenfeld, an investor who’s been critical of how much the company spent on the Nook. “If they’re going to sell e-readers, they should be commoditized, not cutting-edge. Barnes & Noble should give them away: Buy one for $50 and get a $50 credit.” The company could place electronic codes on books so people can swipe and buy the digital version in stores or friends’ homes, says Norris.

E-reader with more features v. cheaper e-reader. I guess most of the readers on this forum would say the former, because most of us already have one.

[fjtorres]

There's room for both.
You need good cheap readers to bring in newcomers. You need advanced readers to serve the experienced avid readers.

[teh603]

Shame none of these CEO types bother consulting a shaman. I wonder what the spirit of some of these big companies would say.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by teh603

Shame none of these CEO types bother consulting a shaman.

At this point a medium might be more appropriate.
The body may still be around but the spirit has long fled the zombie.

[Fbone]

B&N retail stores still had a $374 million profit for fiscal 2013. This is quite good when you realize they increased their profit on declining sales. It shows their cost cutting is working.

[MV64]

That's temporary, though. A business can't stay profitable by merely cutting costs. Sooner or later you need a plan to actually boost sales.

[Rbneader]

Some things coming from B&N management make me think they're actually looking at data and making real decisions - the decision to drop tablets and stick with ereaders being one of those things. But honestly I'm not too optimistic about them. Thank goodness for Alf.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Rbneader

Some things coming from B&N management make me think they're actually looking at data and making real decisions - the decision to drop tablets and stick with ereaders being one of those things. But honestly I'm not too optimistic about them. Thank goodness for Alf.

One thing we might lose, despite Alf, is the ability to disinfect your ebooks without a connection to a server, and without having your device "authorized" by a server.

Luck;
Ken

[geertm]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

One thing we might lose, despite Alf, is the ability to disinfect your ebooks without a connection to a server, and without having your device "authorized" by a server.

Luck;
Ken

The great thing about B&N's DRM is that after downloading an ebook once, you do not an DRM server anymore. The encryption is completely enclosed within the ebook file. The ebook file is just a password protected file.
Any B&N ebook file can be copied as many times as you want to, to as many devices as you want to, without needing authorizations or server connections.
Anyone who knows the password (credit card number and name the ebook file was download with) will be able to read the ebook.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by geertm

The great thing about B&N's DRM is that after downloading an ebook once, you do not an DRM server anymore. The encryption is completely enclosed within the ebook file. The ebook file is just a password protected file.
Any B&N ebook file can be copied as many times as you want to, to as many devices as you want to, without needing authorizations or server connections.
Anyone who knows the password (credit card number and name the ebook file was download with) will be able to read the ebook.

Correct. A downside is the need to have a valid credit card on file when you download the ePub, which some people don't like to do.

Unfortunately I don't think B&N did much to promote this benefit (probably they saw it as pointing to the 'emergency exit'), and instead suffered from the myth that the DRM they use was not portable and locked people to B&N apps and devices. It is the apps and devices of certain other vendors that lock people out (if they fail to implement the workflow to authenticate B&N DRM).

Perhaps now that Nook seems to be on decline, these 'holdout' vendors (Sony? Kobo?) will realize they can offer B&N customers a migration path to their platform by implementing the workflow in their RMSDK licensing apps and devices and putting the word out that they have done so.