"Barnes & Noble holiday sales drop on Nook slump"

[Scarpad]

The only thing I lement about in this news is that it might cause the B&N Stores to go away and I would not like that, I think we need physical bookstores, most mom and pop's are gone, caused by B&N and Amazon unfortunately, and if B&N go I would miss having no where to go to browse all the latest books and Mags. Well other than the library

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Scarpad

The only thing I lement about in this news is that it might cause the B&N Stores to go away and I would not like that, I think we need physical bookstores, most mom and pop's are gone, caused by B&N and Amazon unfortunately, and if B&N go I would miss having no where to go to browse all the latest books and Mags. Well other than the library

Get yourself a can of this and browse the Nook store online

[hoichi]

And I bet for all that decline B&N still don't sell e-books internationally.
Baaad Amazon

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Scarpad

The only thing I lement about in this news is that it might cause the B&N Stores to go away and I would not like that, I think we need physical bookstores, most mom and pop's are gone, caused by B&N and Amazon unfortunately, and if B&N go I would miss having no where to go to browse all the latest books and Mags. Well other than the library

The B&N bookstores have been going away for years now.
Its a slow motion fade that won't be slow much longer.

The current XMAS sales show same store revenues roughly flat, the same as 2012 and 2011... despite *adding* all sorts of toys and trinkets. So their book sales have been steadily declining on a per store basis and all their added "higher margin" merchandise has achieved is patch the bleeding. 50% of all book sales are online--both e- and p-. 50% of fiction is now ebooks. Factor in reduced shelf space for everything but bestsellers and that fabled traditional bookstore browsing experience is already gone from the few places that ever had it.

And then there is the ongoing plan to shut down a third of their sites altogether.
Just yesterday B&N announced a closure in Pasadena and another in NY, fifth avenue to be exact. (Word is, their landlords in NYC are constantly fielding questions from other retailers about when their sites will "become available".)

And the thing is, companies that embark on triage downsizings have always ended up doing bigger, faster closures. Especially when they announce openly that the expect to be doing it for a decade or more. Once they stated they were downsizing the side of the business closest to profitability by a third, they made a 50% downsizing almost a certainty, and not in ten years, but in five or less. Maybe a lot less.

Because their statements and actions (and retractions and inactions) have driven a lot of people to worry they won't be around for the long haul. Which drives them to act accordingly and look elsewhere.

Unless they can reassure people that they are going to be around, more customers will go elsewhere which will lead to more bad news which...

They're called death spirals for a reason.
Customers adapt, even if the company can't.
This has happened before; it will happen again...

[tubemonkey]

If it's sooner, here's hoping they still have Nooks available for clearance pricing

[Mel]

Originally Posted by VictoriaP

Those commercials were enough to turn me off their devices and store forever.

2. is a corollary to number 1.--BN's pricing is very often higher than Amazon's, sometimes by quite a bit. I received a gift card to BN this year, and decided to use it to finish purchasing a series I'd started buying at Amazon. Every single book in the series is $2 more when purchased from BN. With five books in the series, that's $10 just wasted--easily the cost of another book or two. Owning a Nook is means your content is more expensive than Kobo (which offers discount codes) or Kindle.

This. I recieved both B&N and Amazon gift cards as gifts and I had a hard time spending the B&N card as every book I looked at was $2 less on Amazon.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

The weird thing is, as a tech geek, I think the Nook HD+ and the Nook HD are both very good tablets.

And personally I vastly prefer my Nook ST with glowlight over the wife's Kindle Paperwhite.

The Nook HD+, especially, at $120-$150, has to be the best bang/buck large tablet. Hi-rez screen, decent CPU/RAM, nice hardware. And unlike the other the other cheap competitor, the Kindle Fires, they have the Google Play Store.

All I can figure is that they're being drowned by Amazon's dominance of the ebook landscape.

Personally, I found the build quality (gaps between frame and housing) of Nook HD a disaster. Nook HD+ is okay, but nothing special. In direct comparison I very much prefer my both Kindle Fire HDs. But of course all those bargain tablets quality-wise can't compete with iPad or Surface Pro and the likes.
So I think, B&N struggles on both ends: On the bargain side from Google and Amazon, both available globally (you only get Nooks in Europa via direct order from the US = potential problems with warranty and such) and on the high end from Apple, Microsoft and the likes...
I really don't get, why in a global market some players still focus on a single market (albeit the US of course are a huge market, but still only maybe 1/3 of the potential).

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If it's sooner, here's hoping they still have Nooks available for clearance pricing

If it comes to that, I expect to see Nook STRs hawked on QVC as sixpacks.

Dunno how many they contracted for, but after three years they still have ample stocks of those.

[DBDigital]

OUCH! Personally, I have owned Nooks and don't really care for Kindles. I have owned 3 models and (so far) no problems with them. But then I haven't dropped mine on concrete pavement (but that will kill almost any device). I have found the durability to be very good. I don't like the new power connector that B&N came out with on their Nook HD line. At least with the old one you COULD get it to charge, even if slowly with a regular USB cable. Now though, forget it. That is my only gripe.

I think one of the biggest mistakes B&N made was taking SO LONG to get international. That and they dropped support for the Nook Classic as soon as a newer model came out. The same goes for Nook Color or Nook Tablet. Still nice machines, but no longer supported (although still work great).

One reason I decided to go with Nook long ago instead of anything else is because they can be side loaded and used without B&N. If they go down, I can still use my devices without any issues (other than wireless downloading of books but I can sideload them). They can read epub which kindle does not.

While it is true that they reserve some space for B&N content (books etc), it is MUCH smaller than it use to be. For the nook tablet it use to be 1gig personal storage even if you got a 16 gig device. Later on they changed that and you could bring in your device to have it repartitioned (and all data wiped). I think then it was 2gig B&N content or something like that after repartitioning. But regardless all you have to do is plug in a SD micro card and you have as much storage as you want. Not somethin kindels can do. Heck even Google's Nexus 7 doesn't have a micro SD card slot (which has always surprised me, and the reason I decided on a B&N tablet instead of a Nexus 7).

Also B&N's tablets are fairly easy to hack and make a full andriod tablet if you want. And if you don't want to void your warranty, just get a external card loaded and read. Plug it in and you are good to go.

I hope B&N can turn this around, I would hate to see them go under. Last large bookseller in US, with the exception of Amazon.

BTW-I agree about the commercial. That was terrible, I can't imagine what they were thinking.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by DBDigital

I think one of the biggest mistakes B&N made was taking SO LONG to get international...

Are they international in the meantime?
I thought, outside of the US you only could get the Nook series in Canada and UK? Anywhere else?

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Personally, I found the build quality (gaps between frame and housing) of Nook HD a disaster. Nook HD+ is okay, but nothing special. In direct comparison I very much prefer my both Kindle Fire HDs. But of course all those bargain tablets quality-wise can't compete with iPad or Surface Pro and the likes.
So I think, B&N struggles on both ends: On the bargain side from Google and Amazon, both available globally (you only get Nooks in Europa via direct order from the US = potential problems with warranty and such) and on the high end from Apple, Microsoft and the likes...
I really don't get, why in a global market some players still focus on a single market (albeit the US of course are a huge market, but still only maybe 1/3 of the potential).

The Nook HD+ is $149, tops, typically can be found as a 1-yr "refurb" straight from B&N for $129 (I think these are really new/offloaded hardware).

The Kindle HDX is in the $300s and even the old 8.9" Kindle HD is still $229.

Nook HD+ can't be beat for the bang/buck IMO if you want a big tablet. I had one for a while but flipped it - I prefer 7" tablets.

Originally Posted by VictoriaP

3. Durability--this one is based on a small sample size, but everyone I personally know who has owned a Nook of any model has seen that device fail after what I'd consider a pretty short lifespan. One friend in particular went through three in three years, while I was still reading on my original Kindle 2. I upgraded out of choice, she did it because she had to. (She's since given up & reads on an iPad; as such, she no longer buys books from BN either.)

The person I know with Kindle Fires has 4 of them in her family. 3 of them are basically paperweights at this point (won't hold a charge at all). *shrug* Anecdotal evidence also.

My daughters used Nook Colors as tablets (with CM7 on them) for a couple of years. I saw a Nook color survive almost 2 years (from ~4 to 6), tossed around, dropped all of the time, left on floor, etc. No problems.

IMO I would never buy a Kindle Fire unless I put CM10 on it as I want the Google Play store and gapps. The hardware is a good buy, but Amazon's separate walled-off ecosystem from Google with no Google apps (Gmail, Google Maps, etc) is a no-go in my book. A Kindle Fire is an absolute no-buy in my house for that reason, despite the fact that my wife is basically an Amazon fiend otherwise

[pholy]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Are they international in the meantime?
I thought, outside of the US you only could get the Nook series in Canada and UK? Anywhere else?

Nope, it's US and UK only. Absolutely no clue why Canada has been ignored.

But it does make choosing easier...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Are they international in the meantime?
I thought, outside of the US you only could get the Nook series in Canada and UK? Anywhere else?

They are contractually obligated to open local ebookstores in several markets this year or they forfeit a couple hundred million from Microsoft.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And then there is the ongoing plan to shut down a third of their sites altogether.
Just yesterday B&N announced a closure in Pasadena and another in NY, fifth avenue to be exact. (Word is, their landlords in NYC are constantly fielding questions from other retailers about when their sites will "become available".)

The Fifth Ave location was a college book store only. It's located a couple of blocks from their Union Square flagship store. With a lease in the low seven figures it was a financial black hole. Makes sense to close it down. Fifth Ave was the original store opened in 1930s and probably kept open for sentimental reasons.

Most current leases expire in 2016. That should be an interesting year for them.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Are they international in the meantime?
I thought, outside of the US you only could get the Nook series in Canada and UK? Anywhere else?

At the end of last year the Nook windows 8 app was rolled out to 32 countries:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/nook...ies/379004138/

I expect (this is just my personal opinion) that a further international rollout with devices and apps will follow after the launch of the new B&N website in April.
The recent update for the Nook HD tablets already added several foreign dictionaries.