Interesting article on how Barnes and Nobel's new e-reader, the Nook, could be very bad for them in the long run. Basically, B&N's brick and mortar stores have been losing them money. The company is poorly positioned to compete with Amazon because they haven't followed the internet model nearly as well. The Nook will try and combat that as B&N is offering special in-store services for Nook users. The article suggests that the Nook will have to be crazy successful for that to work.
I used to be a B&N nut. I've worked between four and five years worth at various stores and it would be top of my list if I ever needed to dip my foot back in the part time pool. But over the last year I've almost stopped shopping there completely. Amazon is much more convenient. Their interface of recommendations and reviews is more user friendly. And it's easy enough to avoid shipping costs. B&N's prices on music and movies are generally much too high.
If my shopping experience is typical then the store is in big, big trouble.
2 comments:
There is something about browsing the stacks, though. I don't think that will ever go away completely.
Hans, I think you're right about that. I've been able to feed that monkey with used bookstores without any problem. As far as I know, there is only the one B&N locally that has a used section. Maybe more of them should incorporate this.
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