Nook gives up in UK

[Little.Egret]

I have just had this email

Upcoming Change to Your NOOK Service

Dear {LE}

We are writing to announce an upcoming change to your NOOK service and to explain what it means for you.

Effective from 15 March, 2016, NOOK will no longer sell digital content in the United Kingdom. The NOOK Store on NOOK devices sold in the UK, on the UK NOOK Reading App for Android, and at www.nook.com/gb will cease operation.

To meet your digital reading needs going forward, NOOK has partnered with award-winning Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand to ensure that you have continued access to the vast majority of your purchased NOOK Books at no new cost to you. Further instructions on how to transfer your NOOK Books to a new or existing Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand account will be sent to you by email over the coming weeks. Please ensure that you look out for these emails as they will contain important information on what to do next.

If you'd like to set up an account with Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand before the transfer takes place, you can do so. Then look out for an email over the next 10 days containing a unique link to enable you to transfer your existing NOOK Library.

After 31 May, 2016, you will not be able to sign-in to your NOOK account or download your NOOK digital content on a NOOK device or app. It is important that you transfer your purchased NOOK Books to a new or existing Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand account to ensure access after this date.

Please note that the library transfer to Sainsbury's includes NOOK Books only. If you have purchased magazines, newspapers, apps or videos from NOOK, visit our FAQs page for further instructions. On this same page, you'll also find more information on the changes we've announced and on the specific actions you'll need to take.

We thank you for patronage and are working closely with Sainsbury's to make this transition as smooth as possible.

Sincerely,

The NOOK Team

Since Nook never delivered my Fictionwise books and ceased to respond to emails I don't care very much.

[MGlitch]

They also sent out an email to US residents

We are writing to announce an upcoming change to your NOOK® service and to explain what it means for you.

Effective March 15, 2016, NOOK Video™ will no longer offer digital movies and television shows for rental or purchase.

To meet your digital video needs going forward, we have partnered with two industry leaders to maintain access to NOOK Video titles you've already purchased.
We have partnered with Disney to ensure the best experience and a seamless transition for your eligible Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars movies at no cost to you. Further instructions on how to transfer those titles to a new or existing Disney Movies Anywhere account will be sent to you by email on or before April 4, 2016.
For all your other purchased NOOK Video titles, we have partnered with CinemaNow to provide continuing access at no new cost to you. Further instructions on how to transfer your NOOK Videos to a new or existing CinemaNow account will be sent to you by email on or before April 4, 2016.
You may set up an account with Disney Movies Anywhere and CinemaNow and begin purchasing or renting new videos as soon as you'd like. After April 30, 2016, NOOK will no longer support video streaming, download, and playback on NOOK devices, the NOOK Reading App™ for Android, or the NOOK Video app. It is important that you transfer your NOOK Video titles to the services above in order to continue to access your videos after April 30.

You'll find more information about this change on our FAQs page.

We will, of course, continue to offer our full service of books, magazines, and newspapers on both NOOK devices and our standalone Reading Apps, and look forward to bringing the best in digital reading to your NOOK experience.

Sincerely,

The NOOK Team

So they're pulling back out of the UK, after having done so for the rest of Europe last year (2015), and they're ditching selling and renting video. And seem to be giving themselves an out if streaming video doesn't work properly on their devices after the transition.

I'm just glad I have my Nook linked ebooks downloaded and backed up.

It's funny, just today Kobo posted an article about a speech their CEO Michael Tamblyn gave, in which he says that this is the 'end of the beginning of ebooks'. For those interested it can be read here. But while it seems like companys such as Kobo and Amazon are reaching a comfortable pace in the sale of ebooks. Barnes and Noble is at a point that it feels the need to drop services and entire markets.

[MGlitch]

They're also ceasing to sell Apps directly. There's a post over in the BN Nook forums (the official ones) about it- https://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com...ing-nook-books

The poster, Alex, is a BN employee who oversees the forums.

He does try to assure customers that Nook is still committed to selling ebooks, newspapers, and magazines in the US. And that there is no need to worry about those services disappearing.

Which I would find comforting if it weren't for the fact that it sound like what they told UK customers last Summer when BN shut down all their other international stores following buying Microsoft out of their share of Nook Media.

BN has shown continuous signs of shrinking away from the digital world. They outsource their tablets to Samsung. They release a eink device which just catches up to what other companies already had on the market, and which met with less than stellar reviews. And also released with the inability to load books through ADE which stopped customers from borrowing ebooks from the library. A service which has been available for ereaders for years.

It may behoove B&N to just shut the doors and sell their database to another company like Kobo. The two already use the same format for ebooks, and it would benefit both companies. B&N gets rid of an anchor to their stores profits, while Kobo gains a small footprint within the US.

[MichaelH]

Does this also mean that the Nook can no longer be bought in UK? I noticed over the weekend that it wasn't in Argos's catalogue, but I don't know whether it's disappeared as a reaction to B&N's policy change.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by MichaelH

Does this also mean that the Nook can no longer be bought in UK? I noticed over the weekend that it wasn't in Argos's catalogue, but I don't know whether it's disappeared as a reaction to B&N's policy change.

I think it can be bought, IF you can find it. The older devices that is, the latest Nook hasn't been released over here.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

They release a eink device which just catches up to what other companies already had on the market, and which met with less than stellar reviews. And also released with the inability to load books through ADE which stopped customers from borrowing ebooks from the library. A service which has been available for ereaders for years.

I don't think that is true or fair. Many people like the new Nook. Also I believe it does now support ADE. Re: innovation or lack thereof, presumably you have seen the range available from Amazon and Kobo? They are not innovative and the Nook matches up well against them.

The funny thing is, for all its faults, B&N make good hardware. If they go, they will be missed in what has become an increasingly uniform and grey market.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I don't think that is true or fair. Many people like the new Nook. Also I believe it does now support ADE. Re: innovation or lack thereof, presumably you have seen the range available from Amazon and Kobo? They are not innovative and the Nook matches up well against them.

The funny thing is, for all its faults, B&N make good hardware. If they go, they will be missed in what has become an increasingly uniform and grey market.

None of this is of any use outside the US. Its just a pity they decided that a market outside of the US was too much trouble.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I don't think that is true or fair. Many people like the new Nook. Also I believe it does now support ADE. Re: innovation or lack thereof, presumably you have seen the range available from Amazon and Kobo? They are not innovative and the Nook matches up well against them.

The funny thing is, for all its faults, B&N make good hardware. If they go, they will be missed in what has become an increasingly uniform and grey market.

The Glowlight Plus caught up in terms of the available tech to the Kindle Voyage and Kobo Glo HD. Both of which had been on the market for some time before the Glowlight Plus was released. The previous generation of Glowlight, from 2013, was actually still a downgrade in terms of the available hardware at the time it launched.

People may have liked it. But that does not mean it was a successful device. It certainly did not sell very well for BN, despite a strong holiday sale price.

And yes, it does now support loading ADE books. In a process which is possibly the most convoluted manner possible. You have to borrow the ebook, download the .ascm file, load it into ADE, go to where ADE downloaded the ebook file, and then drag that over to your Glowlight Plus. As part of the initial setup of loading ADE books you'll need to register your Glowlight Plus but you'll have to do this via the account settings on the Nook since ADE will not recognize it.

Compare that to either Kindle or Kobo and you have a rather funky extra step. And Rakuten, who owns Kobo, purchased Overdrive a bit back and has stated they want to implement a portal to Overdrive for their Kobo devices which would be built in to the device.

I would agree that when ereaders were taking off that BN was a solid company in terms of the hardware they released. But that's become less and less true, or perhaps it's that their competition has become better while BN languished in the glow of their early accolades.

[geemac]

I have the Nook Glowlight and the Nook HD+.
I’ve never purchased any eBooks from Barnes & Noble preferring to load books with calibre.
So my question is if I do not migrate to Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand, how will this affect my ability to use my Nook’s, will there be any downsides?

[MGlitch]

Presumably the only issue you'd face is if you needed to de-register the Nook for any reason. Not sure how BN is handling that particular issue. It's possible that wont be an issue and you'd just be able to login again, as long as BN doesn't shutter the doors on Nook entirely that is.