Three articles have sparked my thinking on this post. The are: The Charlie Stross piece entitled Cutting their own throats, Joseph Esposito's insightful post on How B&N Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon, and The New York Times article, The Bookstore's Last Stand Stross talks about how the publishing industry has allowed Amazon to use DRM as a tool against itself. Esposito suggests "B&N needs an MCI solution" while the Times piece encourages B&N to have a sense of urgency in avoiding the same fate as Borders. Rolling all of these together I have a radical, three-step suggestion for William Lynch, CEO...

As readers of my columns know, Amazon is not my favorite bookseller. It is not because Amazon doesn’t offer value or quality service; it is because I fear Amazon’s attempts to monopolize the book marketplace vertically, that is, everything from acquiring and publishing to selling exclusively. Right now consumers, especially ebookers, are happy with everything Amazon because the prices are lower, the selection is existentially broader, and the customer service is great (especially as Amazon is more interested in market share than profit from the book division). But will all that change should Barnes & Noble follow Borders into the...

EBookNewser and GalleyCat have posted an infographic from e-book sales tracking company Booklr which compares the average e-book price of the Top 100 e-books for the Kindle and Nook platforms. Based on information collected over the week of January 12th through 19th, the chart shows that the average price of an Amazon Kindle e-book is $6.48, whereas the average price of a B&N e-book is $8.94. The difference seems to be caused by fully 35% of Amazon’s titles being $1.99 or less, whereas none of B&N’s were. I wonder, though, whether this might be caused by Amazon counting...

Easily the smartest piece I’ve read so far this year. What’s more I think it’s so good it’ll hold that title until the end of the year too. This just a flavour: I don’t believe that B&N has fully tuned into the economics of working in a network environment. For all the talk of the democratization of the Internet and the Long Tail, network economies tend to be winner-takes-all. Amazon is fast approaching a position where it becomes a virtual monopoly like other tech giants before it — Microsoft with Windows and Office, Facebook with social networking, Google for Web search,...

I have a great interest in GUI (graphical user interface) design and am very sensitive to designs that cause me extra work.  As a matter of fact, after I retired from the law, one of my most interesting second careers was to help design the GUI for a GPS program (since I had been reviewing GPS equipment for years the company thought I'd have a pretty good idea about what worked, or didn't work.)  Being exposed to programmers and designers hightened my interest in GUI design even more. I decided that it would be fun for TeleRead to put up a...

You can find specially priced ebooks at the B&N Nook Daily Find page.  Today's book is Living Violet, by Jamie Reed.  Normally $8.99, it's on sale for $1.99. They also have a Nook Books Deals page for discounted books. However, unlike Amazon and Kobo, they don't seem to have a separate free ebooks page - or at least not one that I can find....

From the press release.  In addition they are offering $50 off their tablet with a subscription to People. Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced that customers who purchase a one-year NOOK subscription to The New York Times will receive a top-rated NOOK Simple Touch at no cost or the award-winning NOOK Color for just $99. Barnes & Noble customers...

From the press release: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS),the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today reported record holiday sales for its NOOK business, including devices and digital content.  During the nine-week holiday period ending December 31, 2011, NOOK unit sales, including NOOK Simple Touch™, NOOK Color™ and the new NOOK Tablet™, increased 70% over the same period last year.  Sales of NOOK Tablet exceeded expectations, while...

It looks like it was a blowout Christmas for Smashwords authors at Barnes & Noble. I'm looking at the early sales results for December 25 and December 26 for the titles Smashwords distributes to Barnes & Noble. For these first two days, sales are running about 225% higher than the daily sales average for November through mid-December. While it's too early to draw definitive conclusions, I think the numbers speak well for B&N headed into January. FREE Smashwords books were also popular with B&N customers, racking up hundreds of thousands of downloads in two days. At the current download rate, our authors with...

From the Good E-reader Blog comes this disappointing news: Barnes and Noble has closed a loophole in the Nook Tablet that allowed users to sideload in their own applications, bypassing the official app store the company runs. Recently the company released the new 1.4.1 firmware update for the Nook Tablet and it carries with it the inability to load in your own apps. Before this update dropped, it was possible to load in your own applications via the web browser. You could simply click on a APK file and it would self-install to your device. You would then get a prompt asking...

From the press release: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of digital media and educational products, today announced that it has teamed up with VIZ Media, LLC, the largest distributor and publisher of anime and manga in North America, to bring the digital manga (graphic novel) experience to NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color customers. Debuting in the NOOK Store™ today, VIZ Media’s collection includes 18 series, featuring 107 volumes, from its popular Shojo Beat, Shonen Sunday and VIZ Signature imprints. Volumes are available for purchase and fast download in the U.S. and Canada for...

I previously mentioned Barnes & Noble selling refurbished Nook Colors on eBay for $130, but it turns out that’s not the only great e-reader deal the site is offering. CNet notes that, today and tomorrow only, B&N is listing the new, not refurbished, Nook Simple Touch e-reader on eBay for $74.99 ($25 off the current sale price elsewhere) with delivery by December 22. It notes that only a limited quantity of the readers are available, and it seems to sell out and get resupplied throughout the day. That’s $25 less than Amazon’s touchscreen Kindle With Special Offers. Might be...