Many indie authors are part of a growing community, and we want to support our fellow authors. B&N has been a bit hostile toward indie authors when it comes to physical books.

I agree that it is in their best interest to diversify what they sell in their brick and mortor stores. Half of what I buy there isn’t books anymore, and i’m not the only one. But I’d like to see more brick and mortor stores start selling indie titles as well.

The other interesting thing I noticed over the holidays is that their devices were rarely part of the mainstream media conversation. I don’t think the media, or consumers for that matter, can keep all these devices options straight. It’s much simpler to review 3 products side by side. iPad Mini vs Fire vs Nexus. Certainly the parent companies are more widely followed….at least outside publishing.

Amazon is definitely easier to use.

This is exactly the point. Apple, Amazon, Google…they got to where they are by focusing on making their systems user-friendly and simple to navigate. Internal systems need to all be focused on the end-result instead of arguing within the minutiae. B&N stores seem to operate quite well from within, however the stores are given no voice when pitted against the vision that the executive team has laid out. Efficiencies are missed, clout in the industry is ignored…B&N has many competitive advantages right now, but is missing the boat because the executive team has an agenda unknown to the rest of the organization.

The only scenario that makes sense is No.1…Nook Media needs to be sold to someone who can effectively use that brand. The frustrating thing for a B&N fan like myself is to see people claim that the eBookstore on B&N is limited compared to Amazon. It is not limited, it has almost three times the books available! Also, Kobo and Sony have already been relegated to the dustbin, they cannot even win marketshare in their home market of Japan, even with a year head start on Amazon.

BUT I’m not ‘all in’ with B&N because I keep finding their eBook prices for the books I want (primarily non-fiction humanities) consistently $1 or more higher per title than the same at Amazon. And since I can read Kindle titles on my PC, iMac, iPad–everywhere except on my NOOK–my B&N bond is weaker than I’d like it to be.

I appreciate what several B&N store staffers tell me: Amazon sells Kindles at a loss; we don’t. If that were true (Is it?), I remain unwilling to keep buying content for my NOOK at my loss, despite liking my device very much.

Anyone at B&N listening?

Corporations are also like people in some respects. Anybody can see, and give advice to, Alf on how to get rid of that flab, but applying it is another thing. B&N has run an online business for many years and have never managed to be anything put a shadow of Amazon. That suggests very strongly that they will never be very good at it. Getting into the hardware business, especially tablets, is also looking like a very bad error on their part, a huge drain on their resources, time, and such talent as they still possess.

There is really no plausible universe in which B&N challenges Amazon, Apple, Google… the disparity is just too great. So conspiracy theory number one is probably correct, selling the Nook part of the business is their lifeline.

A good example of the problem has been my Nook subscription to the New York Times.

B&N just can’t get its act together. Recently, I didn’t receive my Times until more than 16 hours late and one issue I didn’t receive at all. So I called customer service and asked for a refund on the missed issue. We are talking a refund of 99 cents, not hundreds of dollars. The first call to customer service ended very badly. They refused to consider refunding 99 cents unless I first agreed to a factory reset of my device. I asked what that would accomplish since I had just bought an ebook from B&N and downloaded it to my device while talking to customer service, so clearly my device was working. They not only refused to give me the refund, but the supervisor refused to talk to me unless I agreed to a factory reset. They also refused to check on whether there was a delivery problem at their end.

So I called again the next day. I started going through the same rigamarole, but this time I got a supervisor and demanded the refund. She reluctantly gave it to me, conceding that giving me a hard time over 99 cents was not smart.

But this is the nightmare that B&N customer service points people through. It acts as a turnoff to customers who no longer recommend B&N for ebooks. BTW, the in-store customer service for print books is significantly different; the problem lies in their ebook customer service.

B&N is dying because B&N can’t move from being executive-centric to customer-centric.

Instead of looking for a magic bullet to slay Amazon, B&N should simply get back to basics and try to give consumers as many different reasons as possible to shop with them.

Lots of things could explain their lack of vision, but I expect it’s just B&N has a corporate history and culture that’s not suited to fast-changing, technologically demanding markets. They’ve reacted too slowly, been too focused on maintaining their publisher relationships, and have tried to negatively prevent customers from going elsewhere instead of given them positive reasons for staying with B&N.