B&N CFO "thrilled" about holiday sales

[Fbone]

Also, B&N's unique DRM hinders people from shopping at their website. If they went international, they would still lock out the Sony, PB etc owners from purchasing ebooks.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Also, B&N's unique DRM hinders people from shopping at their website. If they went international, they would still lock out the Sony, PB etc owners from purchasing ebooks.

<shrug>

What makes that any different from Amazon and the Kindle eco-system? Amazon wants to be your only vendor for purchased ebooks, because they get a cut of each sale. B&N wants the same thing, for the same reason.

Yes, they're locking out Sony, PB, and other users. But they are in competition with Sony, PB, etc., because they are selling devices as well as books.

You can get the nook app for a variety of platforms, just as you can get the Kindle app, so they are only locking out competing hardware.
______
Dennis

[geertm]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Also, B&N's unique DRM hinders people from shopping at their website. If they went international, they would still lock out the Sony, PB etc owners from purchasing ebooks.

At the end of last year Adobe finally released its new Mobile Reader software including support for B&N's DRM (which B&N has licensed to Adobe).
So hopefully manufacturers like Sony will release firmware updates for their e-readers this year, based on the new Adobe software, and add support for the B&N DRM to their e-readers.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by geertm

At the end of last year Adobe finally released its new Mobile Reader software including support for B&N's DRM (which B&N has licensed to Adobe).
So hopefully manufacturers like Sony will release firmware updates for their e-readers this year, based on the new Adobe software, and add support for the B&N DRM to their e-readers.

Let's hope so.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Let's be clear what we mean by an opportunity cost. In economics, an "opportunity cost" is the cost of the next highest valued alternative use of the resource....

Yep, that's what I'm talking about.

B&N does not have unlimited capital, credit, or internal resources to expand every element of its business at once. Given a choice between emphasizing "education" or "international," the latter is a much smarter move.

Nothing is guaranteed, but IMO international expansion is, when compared to education and other domestic markets a) much less likely to produce higher returns, b) doesn't leverage their existing assets and connections, c) requires a much higher investment. I.e. it carries more risks with no guarantee of larger returns.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

We need to consider time frames. One of the complaints (justifiably) leveled at a lot of US enterprises is an emphasis on short terms results at the expense of long term growth and profitability....

True, but that doesn't change the fact that B&N has limited resources, no international presence and has some very serious issues that it needs to work through, as in Right Now. There's no benefit to long-term planning if your core business is on the verge of utter decimation.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

And if I'm B&N, and I'm intending to do it, I'm almost certainly not going to fund the effort out of ongoing revenues....

Uh, noticed this little thing called an "international credit crisis" lately?

Credit is no longer cheap or easy, especially for a company that used to be worth $40-45 per share, is currently at $16 on a good day, and is desperately trying to get bought out to fix a messy proxy fight.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

And how did those hard parts get "already done"? Someone was thinking longer term and made the investments needed to put those pieces in place.

Sure, but does that mean B&N needs to match them in every category and market? Should B&N start selling digital cameras, blenders and kitty litter online too?

Originally Posted by DMCunney

Amazon is a catalog retailer. The catalog is on the Internet. The Internet is global. It's a short step to realizing that if the entire globe can view your catalog, you have the potential of selling to them, and should put the pieces in place to do so.

Sure, if you're running a business from an armchair.

Again, I listed numerous things that are not going to go away any time soon, that drive up the cost and complexity of doing business abroad: taxes, VAT, regulations, legal fees, accounting variations, customer service (preferably by people who sound like locals), credit card processing, government and customer favoritism for local businesses, and so forth.

As global as the Web may be, people still tend to shop local. Do you also recommend that Waterstones, Blackwell, WH Smith and Dymocks go after the US market? After all, it's a shared language, a US customer can browse their web sites, and the US book market utterly dwarfs the UK book market. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Can != Should. And running a multi-million dollar business in 5 countries, let alone 50 or 100, is a very complex undertaking -- no matter who can view the web page.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

Who's talking about translations? That's a whole separate issue. There are people all over the globe who can read books in English, even if it isn't their native tongue....

That doesn't necessarily mean they prefer to do so. Especially if they're French. Or Japanese. Or Chinese. Or....

Plus, who's going to be B&N's business abroad? Perhaps Amazon, but more likely FNAC, Waterstones and Dymocks -- some of whom will sell both English and translated editions.

(By the way, you must be an American, if you don't think sales of non-English books matter. )

Originally Posted by DMCunney

Yes. So? they began in England, published by Bloomsbury, who is a UK publisher. Bloomsbury doesn't have a US operation, so there had to be a separate US publisher. Scholastic picked them up here.

So, why not just set up shop in the US? How hard can it be to, oh, operate a business on another continent?

Originally Posted by DMCunney

(And I suspect Scholastic has had the odd thought that they might have been better all told not to)....

I find that difficult to believe. They knew for years that there was going to be a limited number of books in the series and that this was a unique phenomenon.

I'm not sure what you're referencing with a Scholastic resignation. Richard Robinson has been President of Scholastic since 1974 and CEO since 1975, and he's still there -- and HP is still making money for them. I'm fairly confident that if he dropped the Rowling contract halfway through because it was making too much money, they'd bury him in a pile of returned hardcover books.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

Depends on what rights you are talking about. For print editions, that may be the case. I might have a book published in the US by one publisher, and in the UK by another. But does having the electronic edition of my book offered by several different publishers with restrictions on where they might sell it make sense?

Yes, if you actually care about sales abroad.

A US publisher is highly unlikely to do a good job of advertising, marketing and promoting a book in the UK, Australia or even Canada -- especially if it's a small publisher. By assigning the rights to the foreign publisher, they've now got an investment in promoting the book -- rather than treat it as the work of a foreign competitive interloper.

Or: If you want to promote Marks & Spencer in the UK, who do you hire -- an ad firm in London or Los Angeles?

Now, if the author doesn't care, then it's not a problem. But in those cases, I expect the international market for that book is going to be small anyway, and that's not going to offer a comprehensive solution.

Originally Posted by DMCunney

Yes, there is all that back catalog tied up by existing contracts. But the contracts aren't forever. Rights eventually lapse and revert. What happens then?

Uh... So far I haven't heard of any book contracts that expire and revert automatically. There are cases where the author explicitly requests the electronic rights, and the publisher agrees; and others where electronic rights aren't mentioned at all.

I.e. I can't imagine this problem will get resolved by some form of automatic contract expiration.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

B&N does not have unlimited capital, credit, or internal resources to expand every element of its business at once. Given a choice between emphasizing "education" or "international," the latter is a much smarter move.

I think you meant former

Nothing is guaranteed, but IMO international expansion is, when compared to education and other domestic markets a) much less likely to produce higher returns, b) doesn't leverage their existing assets and connections, c) requires a much higher investment. I.e. it carries more risks with no guarantee of larger returns.