Friday, January 10, 2014

Can I say, "told you so!" ?

Shouldn't I be allowed to say, "told you so," once in a while?

Barnes and Noble announced a 66.7% drop in sales of the Nook e-reader.  And a 27.3 drop in digital content.

This has the whiff of death to it.  Who' s gonna buy the 'Betamax' of e-readers?

The Nook is fighting "...the dominance of tablets over dedicated e-reading devices, where B & N can barely compete..."   Which is pretty much what I thought would happen.  I thought they would be hammered by the Kindle, the market leader.  Otherwise, it is much like buying a "word-processor" when a full computer can do the same job, plus+++++++++++

There has also been "...a slowdown in the growth in popularity of e-books."  Again, something I thought would happen.  There is definitely less talk of e-readers in my store these days.  I had only my gut instinct here -- I'm a huge reader and I had zero interest in an e-reader.   I wasn't tempted and still am not in the least bit tempted.  When you run a store, you trust your gut.  If I had that little interest, I had to assume that there were others like me.

I don't think e-readers are going away.  They may get bigger.  But so will books.  What I've had to do with competitors like the mass market stores and the internet is acknowledge their power, and try to work around them.  It doesn't mean I can't win in my own way.  I think books will win in their own way.

Meanwhile B & N sales of book/books seem to be stable.  Imagine what they could have done if they weren't spending so much time, attention, money, space and resources to sabotaging their own business...

But what do I know?  B & N stock prices are up.  

1 comment:

Kevin said...

Here is the thing:

I got a Nook for Christmas and I love the thing. It's great for listening to music on Pandora, playing games, looking up things online, and checking out the news and weather.

Oddly enough, I haven't downloaded a boatload of books. Just two because with the Nook came a credit for $5 and my Scottish blood won't let me ignore a discount. Truthfully, I don't see much difference in the cost of ebooks and the real paper ones. And my preference is to the honest to God book.

I am probably not using my Nook to it's full potential or for what B&N hoped... but hey, it's great for tunes and reading entertainment news on the treadmill.