"Barnes & Noble holiday sales drop on Nook slump"

[John F]

"Nook segment sales in the nine weeks ended Dec. 28 fell 61%, including a 67% slump in device and accessories sales. Digital content sales were down 27%."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bar...%20MarketPulse)

[fjtorres]

Ouch.
27% drop in digital sales...
Store sales flat (before inflation) despite all the toys and trinket sales.

CATCH 22 dept: last xmas, Nook tanked because "nobody" bought their new tablets, this year because they *didn't* have new tablets.

[tubemonkey]

I see someone waiting in the wings

[fjtorres]

CNET'S take:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-576...ay-nook-sales/

Total Nook revenue, which includes digital content, device, and accessories sales, reached $125 million for the nine-week holiday season that ended December 28, the bookseller announced on Thursday. That's down 60.5 percent compared to the same period in 2012.
Barnes & Noble was especially hurt by Nook device and accessories sales, which fell 66.7 percent year over year. The company blamed the decline on fewer sales and lower average selling prices. Digital content sales were $36.5 million for the holiday period, a 27.3 percent decline compared to last year.

[Fbone]

We can do some estimates using these figures.

$125-36.5 = $88.5 million in device and accessories.

$36.5 million in content = $579,365 per day in sales (or about 100,000 books a day).

I suspect there are still a lot of unused gift cards out there. Perhaps, January numbers will be good.

[nesler]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I suspect there are still a lot of unused gift cards out there. Perhaps, January numbers will be good.

Um, they've already received payment, at the point at which the gift cards were purchased. So shouldn't that income already be accounted for?

[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.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by nesler

Um, they've already received payment, at the point at which the gift cards were purchased. So shouldn't that income already be accounted for?

Nope. I am pretty sure accounting rules require that gift card income not be counted until the gift cards are used. In part, I think that is due to the fact that you never can be sure of the profit until you know the wholesale cost of the items purchased with the gift card.

--
Bill

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

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

I'd say it is the steady stream of dubious and bad news over the past two-plus years; it's created a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline.
It's not as if Amazon is comparing their hardware to Nook's or going out of their way to undercut their ebooks.

[FizzyWater]

I'd add that all those wonderful Kobo coupon codes made it a whole lot easier to shop there than B&N.com.

[LovesMacs]

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.

Speaking as someone who doesn't own a Nook HD or Kindle Fire, the Nook models look like good hardware. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the Nooks had been out for quite some time. Compare that to the Kindle Fire lineup, which had new models and lots of publicity. New often equals better to many shoppers.

If I am wrong about the Nooks, then it's partially my fault for not keeping up, and partially BN's fault for inadequate marketing.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

The Nook HD+, especially, at $120-$150, has to be the best bang/buck large tablet. Hi-rez screen, decent CPU/RAM, nice hardware.

I'd agree, price wise it's hard to beat and I've recommended it to quite a few people. That said I have both the HD+ and the Fire HDX 8.9 and prefer the HDX hands down, even though I had to "sideload" a few apps (Moon+ Pro, Mantano, Vudu, Kobo) that I wouldn't have had to with the HD+.

[Xanthe]

Their stupid Christmas commercial didn't help.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Their stupid Christmas commercial didn't help.

Not only stupid and annoying, but did you notice the boy had absolutely no females on his Christmas list?

[VictoriaP]

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

Setting that aside: here's the thing. I can hunk of four reasons off the top of my head why I don't recommend the Nook versus the Kindle.

1. Sideloading--the Nook, as I understand it, limits the number of non BN purchased books that can be loaded. DRM with the intent to lock you into a system is annoying enough, but seriously, keeping you from loading your own content is an automatic "do not buy" as far as I'm concerned.

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.

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.)

4. is the straw that breaks the camel's back: the stories like the one at the start of this thread. I have ZERO faith that BN will continue selling the Nook, and only marginally more faith that they'll stay in the ebook business.

Given all this, why would anyone recommend going with a Nook versus Kobo or Kindle? It just makes zero sense. But it's sad to see. I spent many an hour in Barnes and Noble in my pre-ebook days, and I hate to think of it going out of business at some point.