In a conference call with investors yesterday, Steve Riggio described the Nook as a great success and the company's best selling product. The former is predictable, but the latter is kinda weird. You typically wait to have
more than one own-brand product in order to describe anything as "best-selling," but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's comparing the Nook against books published under the B&N name. It's still disappointing that,
much like Amazon, Barnes and Noble refuses to issue actual sales figures. The closest we get to that is Steve's boast that the Nook's release has fueled a 67 percent increase in online ebook sales -- an effect that would have been even greater if the company had more
stock of the device to sell. In the long term, he sees the Nook as a stimulant of traffic and sales, both in its retail and online stores, and a central component of his company's strategy. As to the iPad? Steve skirted that question by noting that B&N ebooks are also available on PC, Mac, iPhone and BlackBerry devices. Which is good to know.
posted February 24th 2010 9:16AM
You shouldn't call him "Steve"... that makes me think of another Steve :/
@Kaboof
Ballmer or Jobs? There are far too many Steves in the technology business as it is. This guy needs to change his name if he's planning on getting B&N any farther into the technology business.
@Delta
Steven?
Steve who?
@Delta All Steves appear to be crazy, secretive, crazy-secretive or secretly-crazy.
Come March, he will be crying.
what other product do they have?
@htd
Public toilets for the homeless!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/124868/saturday-night-live-barnes-and-noble
@htd Books. They have a line of B&N labeled classics.
Of course, being a retailer, he may be referring to all the products they sell. Which would include items made by others that are sold in the B&N stores
@htd
Books sold at B&M retail without a hint of a discount off list price.
How is this business model sustainable? Amazon routinely sells for 30-40% less. Understood that running a retail store costs money, but I don't think consumers place such a value on that as to pay so much more for the same product.
B&N better pray this nook thing works out for them or they will become the Blockbuster of books.
In addition to that, B&N has managed to keep hardback bestsellers at $9.99, when Amazon has failed. I love my [rooted] nook.
@TSIG I can't wait for the day when I can choose where to buy my books on my e-reader. That's coming soon right?
Wait till he gets the warranty bill, mine died after 4 weeks and took 2 weeks to get it replaced.....
Only 67% increase? Damn, I bought almost 20 ebooks from BN.com in January. Thank god I found some free EPub sites.
Just spent 3 hours in a Barnes n Noble yesterday. Somehow they decided to assign a man only selling Nook. But he was reading his Nook painfully the whole time and not even a single customer came up to talk to him. http://twitpic.com/14yovy
@ZachZ
Haha same at the University book store at WSU.
So, this outsells books at B&N? (I can see why it's "critical to success".)
Or, are they comparing the sales of the Nook to individual book/magazine/etc. titles?
@MAS no, it's their best selling e-reader!
Nook will help drive sales for E Books. Also, B&N has special offers that you get when you bring Nook into the store. It brings more traffic in the store, and that helps with sales too. Most people will still buy a book if they like the Author, or that particular series, despite owning Nook. Plus, with e-books, B&N doesn't have to spend money on retail stores, retail employees, electricity bills of stores, etc. Just profit.
And, Nook is actually in most stores currently. They are in stock at most B&N stores across the country.
Raw software that delivers nothing but a laggy interaction with the device (yeah, like much in line with eInk refresh rate so that everybody will feel comfy about this solid and uniform product), battery issues ("up to ten days or read' - oh, what a nice BS folks) - that's helluva success if you ask me. In f*cking up your customers that is.
Yours, early adopter.
@spaceye Totally agree. I read the reviews and thought the lag couldn't be THAT bad. Thanks Barnes and Noble for making me feel bad about myself and the starving kids in Africa - the money I spent on this shit, could have paid for shit-free, drinkable water in their village, for a year.
@swmc The other thing I've omitted in the original post is my guess whether the hardware part is actually capable to run Android fine enough at all so people will have to wait till the software part is refined with future updates or they've just really pushed a dead beat to the public in attempt to get some eBook market share. The idea is nice and - not comparing it with Alex - it works for many people. But hell the hw/sw realization sucks balls.
Well, maybe if they priced things the least bit competitive, they might sell more books. I often go to B&N's website to see if they can sell me something I would otherwise buy at Amazon. And I can't remember more than once or twice that they beat Amazon for price. And they rarely are even close.
And don't even get started on their stores.
Or the reviews of the nook comparing it to the Kindle and other eBook readers. Just wait until the iPad decimates them. It's a colorful world, folks, and not just for the icons.
Gigantic necktie is gigantic! RAR!
Well, Rowan Atkinson does get around ^_^
Why the hell are there so many CEO's named Steve?
Is it me? or does he look like Mr. Bean?
Is he really little? or is that a massive necktie...
I think in the coming year(s) we will simply see tablets and ebook reader convergence there is no need for multiple devices.
He reminds me of a well educated Chuck Norris
I have a feeling the big B&N's next move is to subsidize the nook if u get a two year contract where u promise to buy one or two books a month or have to sign up to some dumb ass book club where certain books are loaned to you free for a month mark my words it is coming