B&N 3rd Quarter results; New tablet soon?

[charmian]

http://gigaom.com/2014/02/26/as-barn...nother-tablet/

Summary: Nook revenues down 50% from last year. Retail store revenues down 6.3%, but profits are up. Nook lost 26% of employees. They are talking to hardware partners to launch a new color device in early fiscal 2015, to "reverse the content sales decline."

I wonder what the price of this new tablet will be and whether they intend to offer two sizes as they have in the past.

[sharphamster]

Originally Posted by charmian

http://gigaom.com/2014/02/26/as-barn...nother-tablet/

Summary: Nook revenues down 50% from last year. Retail store revenues down 6.3%, but profits are up. Nook lost 26% of employees. They are talking to hardware partners to launch a new color device in early fiscal 2015, to "reverse the content sales decline."

B&N may want to look to restoring customer confidence in the Nook webstore to "reverse the content sales decline."

Poor content/customer experience is not fixed by new hardware offerings.

- Former B&N loyal customer

[tubemonkey]

Maybe B&N should get rid of the books and turn their stores into high priced gift stores

[geertm]

Originally Posted by sharphamster

B&N may want to look to restoring customer confidence in the Nook webstore to "reverse the content sales decline."

Poor content/customer experience is not fixed by new hardware offerings.

- Former B&N loyal customer

An completely new B&N website will be launched in April. This website is supposed to be much more integrated with Nook, and hopefully the customer experience will be much better.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Maybe B&N should get rid of the books and turn their stores into high priced gift stores

The phrase you're looking for is "lifestyle merchandise", as Indigo puts it.
It allows for coffee table, self-help, and celebrity tell-all books as well as the toys and trinkets.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/globe-i...service=mobile

To help create her lifestyle merchandise and experiences, Ms. Reisman will pour more money into product development and design at her recently-launched studio in New York. The private-label goods it produces are starting to take off, she said: in the latest quarter, sales of gift and “lifestyle” products rose between 28 per cent and 40 per cent.

Ms. Reisman said that in expanding into affordable gifts and home items, she’s counting on creating “an experience” for the customer.

“I’m not interested in selling a bowl,” she said. “That’s not the business I’m going to be in. I am interested in creating an experience around the table for the customer ... There is so much about what inspired and created Apple – the conviction about creating an end experience for the consumer ... the commitment to beauty and simplicity.”

[afv011]

Another tablet...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by sharphamster

B&N may want to look to restoring customer confidence in the Nook webstore to "reverse the content sales decline."

The closing of Fictionwise and transfer to B&N should have meant a big boost to B&N's customer numbers. But the bungled transfer and the appalling B&N ebook store web site have probably driven customers away.

I did eventually get my books transferred (on of the lucky ones), yet actually accessing my books is near impossible. Whoever designed their store doesn't seem to have considered people with more than 30 or 40 ebook! 1500+ seems to be just more than it can cope with.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Whoever designed their store doesn't seem to have considered people with more than 30 or 40 ebook! 1500+ seems to be just more than it can cope with.

Amazon has a similar problem but they're apparently testing a solution, albeit slowly.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20.../#.Uw8-Q47D_MI

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Amazon has a similar problem but they're apparently testing a solution, albeit slowly.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20.../#.Uw8-Q47D_MI

It may take a bit of time to load the 1500+ books in my Amazon account, and more time to navigate through them, but at least I *can* get to all the books. Not true at the B&N web site for the UK!

[hoichi]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Whoever designed their store doesn't seem to have considered people with more than 30 or 40 ebook!

Sounds like a self-confidence problem. I heard those are crippling

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I did eventually get my books transferred (on of the lucky ones), yet actually accessing my books is near impossible. Whoever designed their store doesn't seem to have considered people with more than 30 or 40 ebook! 1500+ seems to be just more than it can cope with.

Didn't Fictionwise sell internationally?

If they did, then someone like me would be SOL after a B&N transfer, as I can't buy anything there. They just won't let me, because I'm not in the USA.

I hate this world.

Me: "I want that book! Here, take my money!"
B&N: "No. You live in the wrong country."

*goes to another store*
*buys book there*

B&N: "It seems our store is not selling anything. We're not doing well...."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Didn't Fictionwise sell internationally?

They did indeed. Anyone not in the US or the UK lost access to their books. And because of the really bad opt-in transfer scheme, lots of people in the US and the UK also lost access.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

They did indeed. Anyone not in the US or the UK lost access to their books. And because of the really bad opt-in transfer scheme, lots of people in the US and the UK also lost access.

So I did remember that correctly. Did Fictionwise use DRM, and if so, was it removable? If not, that'd be VERY bad. Just making people lose access to content they paid for, without fault of their own, should be prohibited by law.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

So I did remember that correctly. Did Fictionwise use DRM, and if so, was it removable? If not, that'd be VERY bad. Just making people lose access to content they paid for, without fault of their own, should be prohibited by law.

Fictionwise had DRM-free, Mobipocket DRM, Adobe DRM, Microsoft DRM and Palm DRM files. And possibly some I've forgotten.

Perhaps B&N should try to revitalise its sales by persuading some publishers to sell DRM-free only through B&N, as Amazon did with music.

[DBDigital]

Heh beat me to it. I was going to post this last night when I read it, but fell asleep. Ah well. Anyway I think it is good to see, *if* they learn from their mistakes. So the Nook is not a dead platform yet.

I agree about the problems with the website. Back when they did a revamp...hmm in 2012 I think, or was it 2011, not sure, the site went from speedy, handy, efficient to sloth slow sludge. Eventually it was improved with a few updates to various browsers, but NOT by anything B&N did. I mentioned this to B&N several times, to no avail. Why in the world they thought this was better is beyond me.

I like websites with speed not with slow glint and flash. That is one of the problems these days. Many sites take a while to load and flip all over the place when you try to scroll due to the way they are designed. Sure they look fancy, but if it takes you 3x to get where you want, is it really better? No. But I realize that looks sell, well that is until you try to USE the site on a regular basis lol. Facebook, Google+ are two that come to mind. By contrast Twitter I never have a problem with.

B&N's site is similar to Facebook and takes a while to get where you are going. I don't generally have problems downloading books from the sites, but then I am not trying to download 1,000 books in one shot either. When I got in on the Analog deal this past December with a year of back issues free, the list of the 20 issues came in no problem. But of course they didn't download then, I had to click each one to download (On both my Nook Tablet and Nook Classic). But that only took a couple of minutes to get them all. However if you had 500 or 1000 books, yes that is going to take a bit. But I think that will be the same with any retailer currently (Kindle, Kobo etc). The book downloads automatically if you just bought it within the past few days and it is less then say 5. Anything over that you get the list and have to download them to the device by clicking/tapping on them (or bringing up the info and clicking download)

Anyway I do hope the B&N site revamp actually improves the situation. I have tried to tell them for years what the problems were (as we all have) perhaps they are finally listening. If they are, perhaps there is a chance. But we will just have to see.

---Edit---
I should have mentioned that I too had Fictionwise books that never transferred and I am the USA. However, I sent in my request on the very last day, and it may have been past the hour they were accepting them. Or it got lost in the shuffle. Didn't matter to me as I already have 1000 books in my B&N account and I didn't need another 1000. I have all of the books and I can side load them with Calibre at any time or directly (in fact many of them I have). The one great thing about Fictionwise (although there were many), was the ability to bulk download your books. Sure they didn't have devices that synced with cloud storage, but it was fast and flexible. They even gave out spread sheet files (csv) to help you keep track of your library. As far as I know, it was unique in the industry. Too bad the rest of the retailers won't allow the same features. Or at least the bulk download.