IS NOOK MOVING? IS NOOK BYE BYE?

The New York Times wrote an article about Nook (it's still odd not to write "the Nook") and where it's headed. It said "Barnes & Noble has acknowledged that the Nook has not been profitable, leaving investors anxious about the future costs tied to it, with the need to develop new software and hardware and to advertise the products. By one analyst’s estimate, Barnes & Noble spends $200 million to $250 million annually on its Nook operations." Every good product needs TIME to grow, but what this article indicates, is that the investors do not have the patience to wait. Hmmm. "Barnes & Noble’s stock has fallen 30 percent in the last 12 months. The company attributed the revision primarily to lower-than-expected sales of its black-and-white Nook devices, acknowledging that it had ordered too many of them."

"One possibility is that Barnes & Noble could sell part of the Nook business to the public and maintain a majority ownership stake. Mr. Lynch did not rule out the option of selling the Nook business entirely." Another of their ideas is to open up a separate boutique for Nook devices. That would be crazy in my opinion. For one, people who come into the stores to look for book products find themselves looking at Nook readers and vice versa. They'd be losing that synergy. Second, they spent a ton of money making those lovely Nook centers VERY RECENTLY! What a waste of money!

Badly managed? Bad plans? I think so. I think B&N is just staggering along and not thinking of a long term plan - having a map from day one if you will. And they should have. Think of Apple. They clearly were modeling Nook centers after Apple. Apple took years and years and years to get to where they are now! You can't give it two years and hope to make some bang huge profit. And what about the bookstore aspect? Do they abandon Nook and go back to selling books again like before? Half their stores look like toy stores and gift shops at this point. How does all of this get fixed? I'm worried.