A FEW IDEAS FOR BARNES AND NOBLE

A CNet, Harry McCraken gives a few ideas as to how B&N can help boost sales and save the company. As he says in his article, all he saw when he walked into B&N recently was the Nook booth and the push of digital offerings at the magazine area, people at the cafe, and a bland offering of books. Below are a few of his suggestions to make the store better:

"A more inventive selection, more inventively displayed. Sorry, B&N, but my favorite local bookseller is Green Apple Books, an independent in San Francisco that's filled to the brim with fascinating stuff. I can't go in there without immediately stumbling across several books I want to buy. By comparison, today's B&N stores have a bland, cautious feel: They're largely about the books I already know, not the ones I'd never discover otherwise.

More art books. Nooks, Kindles, and iPads still aren't great when it comes to heavily illustrated volumes. Their screens are too small and they don't have enough pixels. I suspect that coffee table books will still sell well even after novels and other more text-oriented books have mostly gone digital, so the more of them B&N stocks, the better.

Discounts! When B&N stores first started popping up everywhere, the chain's slogan was "If you paid full price, you didn't get it at Barnes & Noble." Somewhere along the line, the company ditched automatic price breaks on non-bestsellers in favor of discounts granted only to members of a club that costs $25 a year. (It must be a profit center--at the store yesterday, a cashier was trying to browbeat customers into joining up.) Given that B&N's principal competitor is Amazon, where discounts of 30, 40, and 50 percent are the norm, its books almost always feel overpriced. Might it sell many more if it charged a little less?"

You can read the whole article here.

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.

BARNES AND NOBLE PULLS DC COMICS FROM SHELVES

Last week Amazon launched the Kindle fire and because DC comics agreed to be exclusive and not allow BN's Nook to sell DC products electronically, BN made a big decision and decided to pull all of DC books from its shelves. BN said in a statement: "Barnes & Noble works with thousands of publishers to bring customers the world's largest selection of physical and digital reading content. However, regardless of the publisher, we will not stock physical books in our stores if we are not offered the available digital format."

Wow. This is a huge decision. My question is: are they in such a great position to making this kind of move? Also, clearly the line between bookseller and publisher has been blurred beyond recognition. Also, I find this especially ridiculous since graphic novel/comic book readers mostly don't like to read on e-readers!

BARNES AND NOBLE CHILDREN'S DEPARTMENT GETS AN OVERHAUL

There are some big changes coming to the B&N Children's Department. They are getting rid of many categories, such as pop-up books, some of the favorite characters such as Thomas the Tank Engine, and the nonfiction picture book section is no more. Also, section such as "Science," have been replaced with "Up in the Air," etc.

B&N wants to create an "experience." Their research has been that shoppers want to shop in a certain manner and that creating these new sections will help foster the experience that shoppers are looking for.

Make a trip to B&N and take a look around at the new arrangements as they unfold and tell me what you think. Is it an improvement? Or do you wish some of the sections should go back to the way they were? Happy? Outraged? Speak up!

THE BAD AND THE UGLY HAVE MET BORDERS

Say goodbye to the Borders chain. It's over. “I think it’s horrible that Borders is closing,” said a customer from Naperville. “It’s a sign of the times that video games and electronics are taking precedence over books in our culture." That is a scary thought, isn't it? What does this mean for B&N? No competition? I read that employees are not allowed to discuss when final sales will occur. Almost 11,000 people will lose their jobs, which is a sad thing. How did B&N survive when Borders failed? NPR suggests that one reason may be that BN put its money into digital investments. While B&N was busy building its website, Borders outsourced its online sales to Amazon. That was a huge mistake, as this customer explains: "I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it." Borders hadn't made a profit since 2006 says NPR. NPR concluded with this interesting theory: "With Barnes & Noble staking its future on digital technology, Raff says, it's likely the big bookstore will only live on in big cities."

B&N NOOK UNDER FIRE

B&N is being sued by Spring Design for "stealing" design features now existing in the Nook. I'd known about this for a while and had read the actual court documents via Wikileaks. But apparently the lawsuit is going forward. The judge this month said there is enough evidence to go to trial. I don't like this!!! (I have my reasons).

FROM PC WORLD NOV 2009:
"According to court documents, Spring Design first presented their design for Alex to a Barnes & Noble consultant on February 17, 2009 – five days after both sides signed a non-disclosure agreement. On March 20, Spring Design met with Ravi Gopalakrishnan, head of B&N software development, who allegedly told Spring executives that B&N wanted a product that would compete with the Kindle.

"In April and May, Spring Design met with other B&N executives, including William Lynch, president of B&N.com and Kevin Frain, B&N's CFO. Lynch and Frain were given a product demo and shown a PowerPoint presentation for an Android-based e-reader known as Alex.

"Lynch warned Spring's Albert Teng that he should not consider Amazon as a content partner, because Amazon was likely to steal Spring's unique idea without ever buying anything from Spring," according to court documents.

"Thanks for coming and showing us your innovative work," Lynch wrote in an e-mail after the meeting. "Kevin [Frain] owns these partnerships and I know he's excited to work with you. Looking forward."

In July, B&N requested a summary of Spring's product development and on October 1, B&N had a meeting with Spring's CEO to discuss possible revenue sharing for Spring's Alex device in the university textbook market."

LAW 360 SAYS:
In his Dec. 27 opinion Judge Ware said the evidence B&N and Spring submitted showed "extensive dispute" over whether prior e-reader devices had "disclosed all aspects of plaintiff's trade secrets" and that the evidence was divided on whether B&N had developed the Nook independently.

"Comparing the specific features of the Nook with [Spring's] alleged trade secrets is a fact-intensive task best left to a jury," the judge said.

In December 2009, Judge Ware denied Spring's motion for a preliminary injunction in the suit, allowing B&N to market the Nook while the lawsuit continued. At the time, the judge found that Spring had not shown sufficient likelihood of success on its merits or that an injunction would be in the public interest."

What will become of all of this? What if B&N couldn't make the Nook anymore? Would they go back to focusing on what they did prior? PRINTED BOOKS? What if what they owed was too great? Can the industry survive without this giant? I know on a personal level I cannot. Hmmm.

My own vote is that the Nook looks far better than Alex design wise. So whether features were taken or not, they definitely improved upon things. And as you know, I'm not a fan of e-readers - but if I HAD to pick one, I would pick the Nook. It looks better. I always go by looks. I would pick the iPad but it's too big/heavy to carry around and therefore doesn't work for reading purposes. It works more as a laptop without the keyboard.

What would you pick?

B&N REORGANIZES?

B&N let 45-50 people go last week, most of whom were buyers. The company claimed that they were focusing more on digital operations. Uh-huh. This is one quote by a publisher: "The growth in digital is great, but someone has to be in charge of getting books into the stores." Books? What are books?

At the beginning of this month B&N announced "solid gains" in the physical book category for holiday sales. PW wrote: "B&N said that sales of physical books, especially hardcovers, exceeded expectations." Yes, digital books will continue to GROW, much more so than their physical counterparts. This is because they're new. They're different. They're exciting. There is plenty of room for growth. Books have been around for a long, long time. But one can't expect ebooks to keep upping on the graph for ever and ever. There will come a point when the ebooks plateau. The question is when and at what point? We know where the physical book stands. The ebook is still a gamble. A big one. I don't think physical books and bookstores and book buyers and booksellers should be disposed of. Big, big mistake.

E READERS FOR KIDS - LIKE WATCHING TV?

If you've been following my posts you may have guessed that I'm not a big fan of e-readers. I have my reasons. This is another reason why I think they're problematic:

B&N's Nook folk have designed applications for its reader and for the iPad: "Where the best children's stories come to life." Their re-design of classic books has made them "come to life" so much so that you may as well just pop in a DVD and forget the book entirely.

Here's an example:

GO, DOG, GO!, which is a beginning reader, starts out in a male voice--"There they go... Look at those dogs go!..."



And as the voice prattles on the screen zooms in on the image:



Hmmm. Where did the text go? As a beginning reader, I think the text probably needs to be present for the child to learn how to read. As is, the "book" presents itself more as a movie... or it tries its darndest to be one. It's too bad, isn't it? It's unfortunate that all books don't eradicate all of their words and just have omniscient voices that shout out from their speaker boxes and characters that animate themselves from behind the plastic screens for the children of America.

1) I had a hard time learning to read. This will take the pressure off other kids. Perhaps they won't get an eye twitch like I did.
2) We don't need more literacy, do we?

EBOOKS -THE GOOD AND THE BAD

There are so many reasons why I find ebooks problematic. Barnes & Noble has what’s called Pubit. It’s a self publishing platform. Anybody can upload what they've written and illustrated. B&N takes 65% of titles listed under 9.99 and 40% of those listed over. The cool thing for most people doing this is that THEIR BOOK gets to be placed on the BN website along with standard edited, designed, copyedited PUBLISHED BOOKS! How great is that? For THEM.

Here’s where I think things get VERY problematic. When you browse for a children’s ebook Goodnight Moon and this book may be side by side!



The below book is Number 23 in children's ebooks.



Somehow when I look at it I can't hate it. The character is kind of cute. But...it has no design to speak of. It's not done be a professional illustrator, designer, etc. And who knows what the text of these books reads like! One can only imagine. The Number 2 rated children's book is written and illustrated by the same folks. I went through the list on the BN ebook site up to 200 and saw very few books published by traditional publishers. Publishers need to wake up and see what’s going on! The price point for many of these ebooks is so low--only 99 cents. If THEY are what people are buying and being disappointed by (I've read some of the comments) then where will traditional books be in a few years? Can the buying public differentiate between a published book and a self published book? Will they go for the cheaper buy and then be disappointed? Will they then not want to buy picture books? I feel the same way about celebrity books but that's a discussion for another day.

Below are some other interesting covers that I found.





The above cover is accompanied this description:
"Recommend Highly-- another great children's story by this new author!
Read all her books and this moo ving story is one not to miss! Every wish upon a star and graze into the night. Read a good children's story like this and follow your dreams!" At first when I saw the cow cover I thought--aw, how cute, a kid is doing some books! But I guess not.