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Barnes & Noble reports weak sales, hurt by disappointing Nook sales

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 · 5:33 pm · 26 Comments

“Barnes & Noble Inc reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue, hurt by disappointing sales of its Nook digital books and e-readers, and the top U.S. bookstore chain expects sales at its stores to fall this fiscal year,” Brad Dorfman and Phil Wahba report for Reuters.

“The bookseller’s sales in the fourth-quarter were hurt by returns of the device from retailers as well as price cuts put in place in February on some versions of the device to compete with Amazon.com’s Kindle franchise,” Dorfman and Wahba report. “The company, which has bet its future on staking a claim in the e-books industry, suffered a setback as Nook revenue fell 10.5 percent.”

Dorfman and Wahba report, “The Nook business lost $77 million on revenue of $163.6 million in the quarter.”

Read more in the full article here.

Categories: News

Tags: Amazon, Amazon's tiny screen Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble, earnings, iPad, iPad roadkill, iPad wannabes, Kindle, Nook

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Comment Feed

26 Comments

troy

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 5:38 pm · Reply

and they forgot to say that B&N just “partnered” with microsoft, so just like nokia, they are just domed.
- 3l3c7ro
  
  Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 6:31 pm · Reply
  
  dome |dōm| noun
  1 a rounded vault forming the roof of a building or structure, typically with a circular base:
  2 a thing shaped like such a roof, in particular:
  3 a stately building.
  verb (usu. as adj. domed)
  cover with or shape as a dome:
  domelike |-ˌlīk | adjective
  - dave
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 7:18 pm · Reply
    
    exactly:
    
    it’s like they have a big fat dome over them crushing the oxygen and life out of them.
    
    Msft and android will ‘dome’ everyone.
    - mitchp2012
      
      Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 7:27 pm · Reply
      
      1st why you keep changing yo name?
      And 2nd technically a dome would trap oxygen in and couldn’t crush anything.
      - dave
        
        Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 10:01 pm · Reply
        
        change my name?
        
        I’m not troy , I just thought the whole thing is funny.
        
        ” And 2nd technically a dome would trap oxygen in and couldn’t crush anything.”
        put an air tight dome over yourself and see what happens about “trapping oxygen in” and how long you’ll live.
        
        lol.
        man you guys are serious about spelling mistakes etc.
        
        Gstarr
        
        Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 11:08 pm · Reply
        
        I thought it was pretty obvious it was just a typo. C’mon Apple fans! Let’s not get so uptight we make M$ fans look gregarious!!
        
        Lordthree
        
        Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 6:21 am · Reply
        
        Heh. It’s just that one spelling nazi… I think the typo was pretty fucking clear to everyone and there was no need to throw it in his face with a definition of ‘dome’… LMFAO. Some people… I dunno I guess spelling is ‘all they have’?
- WhoKnows
  
  Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 10:19 am · Reply
  
  troy wrote “and they forgot to say that B&N just “partnered” with microsoft, so just like nokia, they are just doomed.”
  
  And what does that bode for Ford who partnered with MS to create MyStink? If you haven’t tried it, just think MS user experience and you can imagine.
NHL

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 6:22 pm · Reply

Barnes & Noble, RIM, Sharp, (and hopefully soon Google, Samsung, etc.). – I cannot feel any sympathy for companies that have suffered as a result of attempting to make fake iPads and to bask in Apple’s reflected glory.
- Jeff II
  
  Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 6:47 pm · Reply
  
  Actually I was really rooting for B&N and their Nook. It looked like it would fill a particular need for many people who don’t want or need a full iPad experience. I was also rooting for the Nook on philosophical grounds as I dislike Amazon’s predatory practices and their encouragement of folks to scan a book’s bar code at a retail bookstore, then buy from Amazon.
  
  I’m one of those dated reprobates who still enjoys browsing in a bookstore and holding a printed book in my hands.
  - Jean Poole
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 7:29 pm · Reply
    
    ‘Actually I was really rooting for B&N and their Nook.’
    
    So was I, in the slang English meaning of ‘root’.
  - MEES
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 8:01 pm · Reply
    
    Agreed. However, it is too close to an iPad to stand on its own merits and B&N over-promotes the Nook and try to market it against the iPad. Sort like promoting a Chevy Cobalt against a Mercedes C350.
  - qka
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 8:21 pm · Reply
    
    +∞!
  - MightyMouth
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 11:11 pm · Reply
    
    In Canada, the Inuit build Inukshuk [singular of Inukshuik]. These are built for communication and roughly fashioned in the human form. To the Inuit they say “you are on the right path” and “someone was here before you.” So, if Barnes & Noble cannot sell their ‘nuks, they could always donate them to the Inuit, who will put them to a good use showing frozen travellers the right path.
  - Lordthree
    
    Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 6:24 am · Reply
    
    meh- I was rooting for webOS (lol) but seriously… Nook runs on android.. Nuff said
    - DustyMac
      
      Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 9:28 am · Reply
      
      No. Nook does not run on Android. Android runs on Nook or, if you prefer, Nook runs Android.
- Omor
  
  Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 9:17 am · Reply
  
  The low-end Nook ereaders are very good devices, better than the Kindle and easier to use for reading than the heavier & larger iPad. B&N also carries more dead-tree books than Amazon, which is annoyingly pushing its Kindle books over paper ones. If the Microsoft connection helps keep B&N alive, I’m OK with that. Competition is good.
auramac

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 6:53 pm · Reply

I must admit that while any tech equipment I buy is from the Apple Store, Amazon is a great resource for me, and still missing Borders in all our local malls, would really hate to see B & N disappear also. I like hanging out in real bookstores with the smell of real paper, browsing and having a cup of coffee. Real books, real people. I bypass the Nook section, but don’t root for the store’s demise.
R2

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 7:06 pm · Reply

One might chalk this up as another failed 7 inch tablet, further evidence that the iPad mini is a solution without a problem. However the Nook has a list of problems chief of which may not even be its screen size, like the fact that it doesn’t have the fortune of running iOS, the best and most touch-friendly mobile operating system. It doesn’t have the high quality apps, it doesn’t have iTunes or any other parts of Apple’s well cushioned ecosystem. This means nothing in terms of measuring the potential success of an iPad mini.
- Ansel
  
  Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 7:36 pm · Reply
  
  Could of spent money on some good APPS and partnered with Apple and save themselves some $77 million and maybe even made money!
KCR

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 9:11 pm · Reply

This disappoints me. I love the atmosphere of the B&N stores, and their Nook products are the only ones other than Apple that have any style. Their “try it in store” Nook kiosks try to bring an Apple experience to a very different market segment. I have a Nook Color, Simple Touch and an iPad – different horses for different courses.

What really sinks the Nook ecosystem is the lack of apps and lack of technical expertise from a bookstore. B&N’s firmware update for the Nook Simple Touch last November broke compatibility with many different kinds of routers. It took them until March to make an update available that fixed it. No email to registered Nook owners about the update – and how exactly are people supposed to know their broke-ass Nook can now be fixed when they can’t get on wi-fi to get the update pushed to them? Stupid. Try explaining side loading a firmware update to the typical Nook buyer. I’m sure a lot of buyers just gave up and said never again.
- Gstarr
  
  Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 11:42 pm · Reply
  
  I feel your pain. I don’t know how old you are, but welcome to growing up (or old) in a world that keeps changing around you. I used to feel that way about record stores. There are almost none left. I used to love to browse cover art and chat with the employees about their favorites. Now, I only buy fom iTunes. B&N knows their days are numbered. Just like many newspapers, printeries, book stores, electronic stores (not named Apple), paper factories, logging companies, the USPS, etc., the change is happening. People and/or companies must change accordingly. People like you and me, KCR, have the time to wax nostalgic. How would you like to be president of Garmin or RIM, or Nokia, etc. right now? It’s not business as normal right now. They are scared. They don’t know what to do. What’s worse, they respond to stock holders. Stock holders are idiots who have no idea how to innovate. And on top of that, they block the true innovators in any company. Just my take. But, hey. What do I know!
Oliver twit

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 9:42 pm · Reply

I bought one for my 8 year old daughter and likes it a lot but she doesn’t use a lot of the other functionalities on it other than reading books. Plus like it was said above, there is a paucity of apps. I am rooting for it to succeed just so she doesn’t have an obsolete device on her hands. She plays all those silly games on her iPod touch. I guess the nook base is tiny?
Producer James

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 9:56 pm · Reply

This is the free market at work. If companies don’t innovate or improve their products they fail. Companies like B&N, Blackberry, Nokia & Mircosoft have experienced this firsthand. It’s show a lack of leadership, market research, and forward thinking individuals at these companies that don’t take the concept of innovation seriously. Time will tell how these companies will fair without changing or improving their product lines.
elvispanda

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 5:22 am · Reply

Goodbye Barnes & Noble, soon to be followed by Best Buy. Costco will be the only physical store to survive. What will be done with all the empty Best Buys? Shelters, maybe. Indoor miniature golf courses?
maxclarke

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - 8:43 am · Reply

I felt the BN electronic reader would be a flop as soon as they named it “Nook.” That one word conveyed so much about the people making the decisions there. For a business that’s supposed to love words, that seemed like the wrong word.

Hope they pull out of this, but the publishing industry has been losing 5 percent and 10 percent a year for several years. Houghton Mifflin filed for Chapter 11 recently.