"Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683 Million"

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Many B&Ns have toy sections usually in or near the kids department. These are not the collectible pop figures and such.

Those are the ones I heard about.
No way to get to the books without the kids seeing the "hot new"toy.
Indie stores like it, though.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Many B&Ns have toy sections usually in or near the kids department. These are not the collectible pop figures and such.

Sure, in the children's section, but I meant the collectible items that are mixed in the general store and seem to get the most focus/shelving space. Those are generally for all ages.

I know this kind of stuff bugs a lot of people, but I don't mind it, I enjoy browsing fandom merchandise and games. As long as there are also those books

Our local B&N closed down, so now we have the local Book-a-Million. I rarely go to the next B&N due to distance, but I miss their cheesecake and coffeeshop. BAM switched their coffee out for frozen yogurt. Sometimes it's the little things...

[4691mls]

The B&N in my city is in the mall, right next to one of the main entrances, so probably they get plenty of foot traffic. It's been a while since I was there so I don't know if they have the toys and collectibles. Our local Books a Million closed several years ago. It always seemed to be doing a decent amount of business - there were plenty of people browsing and there was usually a line at the checkout counter, so I was surprised they closed it. We do still have a few scattered independent stores in the area.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

...the collectible items that are mixed in the general store and seem to get the most focus/shelving space...

I know this kind of stuff bugs a lot of people, but I don't mind it...

I don't either. The grousing about toys/calendars/cards gets tiresome. Even with the space they take up in my local B&N, the store still has far more books than the large-ish Waldenbooks that was in the same mall previously.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I don't either. The grousing about toys/calendars/cards gets tiresome. Even with the space they take up in my local B&N, the store still has far more books than the large-ish Waldenbooks that was in the same mall previously.

Exactly. It can be fun looking at that stuff with other friends into the same geekdom or find random gifts for Birthday/Christmas shopping. Who doesn't need a Harry Potter Sorting Hat, Superman Piggy Bank, Alice in Wonderland Pillow, and Gremlin Funkopop?

[binaryhermit]

Speaking of the speculation about the nook... https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...has-been-sold/
To be fair, this is speculation, and people have been speculating like this ever since this sale was announced.

Not that there hasn't been speculation about the future of the nook for a long time before the sale.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

Speaking of the speculation about the nook... https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...has-been-sold/
To be fair, this is speculation, and people have been speculating like this ever since this sale was announced.

Not that there hasn't been speculation about the future of the nook for a long time before the sale.

He or she is really going out on a limb there.

It's hard to see how B&N could have lost a billion dollars on the Nook and ebooks given that B&N hasn't made any real effort on ebooks in years, but having worked in large corporations, I suspect a lot of that is accounting loses rather than money actually spent on specifically on the ebook side, i.e. corporate overhead that gets spread out to all the divisions.

As much as I would like to see B&N improve their ebook store to provide Amazon with some actual competition, I think they would have to actually spend that kind of money to be competitive. I don't see them doing that.

[MGlitch]

Losing 1 billion seems plausible when you consider the length of time BN has been selling Nook products and recall that the tablet line suffered several large blows and gross mishandling for example the Nook HD which flooded their market with too many choices.

Also factor in that BN used to do most of not all the Nook stuff fully in house that’s a big cost to them.

Personally what I want to see is BN sell the Nook off to Kobo and work out a deal to sell the devices in store. This would relieve them of the financial burden of developing Nook while allowing them to benefit from whatever sales they can. They could potentially still sell ebooks in store as well though that’s not something that they’ve really tried to do in quite some time.

This would also give Kobo a better partner than Walmart since at least BN is focused on books whereas Walmart is a general goods catch all store where Kobo is easily looked over.

And it’s not entirely unprecedented, Kobo are the ones who ultimately ended up with Nook UK customers though I believe that there was a company who had snagged them in the initial shut down before themselves turning it over to Kobo

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Losing 1 billion seems plausible when you consider the length of time BN has been selling Nook products and recall that the tablet line suffered several large blows and gross mishandling for example the Nook HD which flooded their market with too many choices.

Also factor in that BN used to do most of not all the Nook stuff fully in house that’s a big cost to them.

Personally what I want to see is BN sell the Nook off to Kobo and work out a deal to sell the devices in store. This would relieve them of the financial burden of developing Nook while allowing them to benefit from whatever sales they can. They could potentially still sell ebooks in store as well though that’s not something that they’ve really tried to do in quite some time.

This would also give Kobo a better partner than Walmart since at least BN is focused on books whereas Walmart is a general goods catch all store where Kobo is easily looked over.

And it’s not entirely unprecedented, Kobo are the ones who ultimately ended up with Nook UK customers though I believe that there was a company who had snagged them in the initial shut down before themselves turning it over to Kobo

Kobo is also the company that ended up with the Sony customers way back when. That's why I have about 200 ebooks in my Kobo library and get daily emails from Kobo.

Kobo still hasn't really shown any indication that they are particularly interested in competing with Amazon/Kindle in the US. They seem happy to focus their efforts outside the US.

Just checked the Kobo site and they seem to have improved over the last year or so. I'm going to have to give them a try.

Hum, interesting just from the standpoint of a spot check, I see that Fry's Mythos is finally going to be released as an eBook in the US on August 27th. It's in the Kindle store, the Kobo store, but doesn't seem to be in the Apple store. Kobo does have some interesting bundles and Indies.

[Raphi'Elohim]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I totally agree. I've really enjoyed reading new authors in KU. It's well worth it for my reading taste and style.

I owned several Kindles in the past and while there might be a few carrot and stick diamonds in the rough books in kindle unlimited selection most the books are bad, according to my taste, if they weren't bad then they wouldn't be in kindle unlimited but selling individually based on their own merits. But there is no argument over taste : De gustibus non est disputandum,

Anyway, I own a NOOK and if they end support for it I'll just buy books from kobo and amazon then strip the DRM and add it to my Nook glowlight plus 7.8inch via Calibre. I already have 91 books on it and since I read about 50 books a year that selection should last about 2 years.

[Raphi'Elohim]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Kobo is also the company that ended up with the Sony customers way back when. That's why I have about 200 ebooks in my Kobo library and get daily emails from Kobo.

Kobo still hasn't really shown any indication that they are particularly interested in competing with Amazon/Kindle in the US. They seem happy to focus their efforts outside the US.

Just checked the Kobo site and they seem to have improved over the last year or so. I'm going to have to give them a try.

Hum, interesting just from the standpoint of a spot check, I see that Fry's Mythos is finally going to be released as an eBook in the US on August 27th. It's in the Kindle store, the Kobo store, but doesn't seem to be in the Apple store. Kobo does have some interesting bundles and Indies.

I used to own Sony eReaders then Kobo eReaders exclusively but then I found myself in Manhattan and none of the stores sold them. They had a bestbuy that sold kindles and Barnes and Nobles that sold Nooks but no Walmarts. Walmart does not even carry Kobos anyway you buy them off the internet which makes it pointless for Walmart to sell them compared to Bestbuy and B&N as the latter stores have them on hand in the physical brick and mortar. Bestbuy used to sell both Sony eReaders and Kindles now Kindle has a monopoly there.

Why buy a Kobo , in the USA, from Walmart when you have to order it off the internet ? It kind of defeats the purpose of the walmart and kobo deal because you can order a kindle off the internet or buy one at bestbuy the same day.

Anyway, I can understand why Kobo is happy to focus outside the USA. Canada and several European nations have higher PISA scores and are more intellectual than America. America is anti-intellectual like the Roman empire meanwhile a Frenchman is more likely to have his nose in a book.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.[1] It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition. [2]

The 2015 version of the test was published on 6 December 2016.[3]. The results of the 2018 data collection will be released on Tuesday 3 December 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PISA

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Why buy a Kobo , in the USA, from Walmart when you have to order it off the internet ?

Kobo has different features than Kindle or Nook. I prefer their OS to Nook (though I do like my Nooks).

I do agree, Walmart has not been a very good partner to Kobo. I'm guessing Kobo expected more.

Anyway, I can understand why Kobo is happy to focus outside the USA. Canada and several European nations have higher PISA scores and are more intellectual than America. America is anti-intellectual like the Roman empire meanwhile a Frenchman is more likely to have his nose in a book.

I doubt Kobo abandoned the USA due to concerns about anti-intellectualism. Why would they team up with Walmart if that were the case?

More likely, Kobo struggled to find a partner in the USA once Borders closed and Kobo has been seeking an entryway back ever since.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I doubt Kobo abandoned the USA due to concerns about anti-intellectualism. Why would they team up with Walmart if that were the case?

More likely, Kobo struggled to find a partner in the USA once Borders closed and Kobo has been seeking an entryway back ever since.

Who *could* they team up with?

- Borders died, B&N rolled their own (poorly), ditto Target (but worse)..

- They tried the ABA gang and got nowhere, unavoidably, since all Indies combined barely total 5% of print.

- Rakuten should have been a fair partner but after they bought Buy.com they turned it into a B2B operation instead of B2C and they've shown no interest in helping sell content.

- eBay likewise has no interest in digital content

- Half-price is more about used books, Hudson is about location, and BAM is small and regional.

- Wal-mart expects suppliers to do the marketing and Kobo expects the retailer to do it. So neither did it.

What remains is Apple (they prefer a private garden) and Microsoft whose bread and butter is tools and technology and they gave up on ebooks too soon. By the time they realized it it was too late. Besides, they do best in corporate and hardware.

Kobo's problem is they really are too small to play in a market as big as the US and their business model only works with local partners doing the heavy lifting. (The entire company, worldwide, is 350 employees. There's only so much they can do.) Their best bet after Borders died was B&N.

They might end up buying the Nook customers if Daunt really is all about pbooks, but if he does he won't be spending money to help Kobo so it won't be too useful long term.

It's a tough nut to crack and unfortunately it's the most profitable by far.

They're trying much better than any of the other wannabes but trying isn't enough.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Kobo has different features than Kindle or Nook. I prefer their OS to Nook (though I do like my Nooks).

I do agree, Walmart has not been a very good partner to Kobo. I'm guessing Kobo expected more.



I doubt Kobo abandoned the USA due to concerns about anti-intellectualism. Why would they team up with Walmart if that were the case?

More likely, Kobo struggled to find a partner in the USA once Borders closed and Kobo has been seeking an entryway back ever since.

I agree with you on Kobo. Everything that I've read said that Kobo simply didn't want the fight with Amazon in the US. Frankly, I don't think they have deep enough pockets to fight for market share in the US against Amazon.

Of course, things change. In the news today was a group of State AG's both Democrat and Republican, are forming a task force to investigate Big Tech (i.e. Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple) over anti-trust concerns. This might just be a good time to jump in with the hopes that Amazon won't be willing to play hardball in the face of both the Feds and States investigating them. Who knows? Competing with the Kindle store is a pretty big hill to climb.

[John F]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Who *could* they team up with?

- Borders died, B&N rolled their own (poorly), ditto Target (but worse)..

- They tried the ABA gang and got nowhere, unavoidably, since all Indies combined barely total 5% of print.

- Rakuten should have been a fair partner but after they bought Buy.com they turned it into a B2B operation instead of B2C and they've shown no interest in helping sell content.

- eBay likewise has no interest in digital content

- Half-price is more about used books, Hudson is about location, and BAM is small and regional.

- Wal-mart expects suppliers to do the marketing and Kobo expects the retailer to do it. So neither did it.

What remains is Apple (they prefer a private garden) and Microsoft whose bread and butter is tools and technology and they gave up on ebooks too soon. By the time they realized it it was too late. Besides, they do best in corporate and hardware.

Kobo's problem is they really are too small to play in a market as big as the US and their business model only works with local partners doing the heavy lifting. (The entire company, worldwide, is 350 employees. There's only so much they can do.) Their best bet after Borders died was B&N.

They might end up buying the Nook customers if Daunt really is all about pbooks, but if he does he won't be spending money to help Kobo so it won't be too useful long term.

It's a tough nut to crack and unfortunately it's the most profitable by far.

They're trying much better than any of the other wannabes but trying isn't enough.

And Kobo used to sell in Best Buy; I think that is where I bought my Glo.