“Back in February, Barnes & Noble founder Leonard Riggio said he wanted to buy the retail stores from the struggling bookseller,” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD. “Now he’s out.”
Kafka reports, “Total revenue was down 8.5 percent, and retail sales were down 9.9 percent. And sales at its Nook division, which were supposed to be the future of the company and now are not-quite-dead, were down 20.2 percent.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iPad roadkill.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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No, Barnes & Noble is Amazon’s roadkill, not the iPad’s. Maybe iBooks had a hand in pushing B&N over the edge, but it was Amazon that brought them to the brink.
I, for one, don’t think that should be celebrated. I deplore Amazon for what they’ve done to the book industry, both paper and digital.
I agree. We should not celebrate the death of brick-and-mortar bookstores.
And Amazon’s labour practices suck…
Thanks for setting that straight, Doc. 😉
But B&N is also a victim of its own incompetence. Their online store was/is terrible. Their online store seems to occupy a completely different universe to their bricks & mortar stores.
(Sears is the same sordid story.)
Amazon is quite amazing in this regard. Their customer service is incredible, in spite of the fact that they have NO 800 telephone number or physical stores.
Amazon is as bad in software, don’t confused free with good service.
Sears. Now that’s a topic for an entire textbook on how to kill an American staple. How are they still around? Worst website in history or perhaps tied with B&N. Agree it was Amazon that killed brick and mortar bookstores. But why buy a book from B&N online when Amazon is cheaper, easier, faster, etc? Of course, you could go to the B&N store to browse, touch and even read a few pages, an experience I hate to see die. Then if you decide to reward B&N by making a purchase, they get greedy and charge you more than even on their website. Now what imbocoele thought that business model would be profitable? And how many millions did the complicit board pay them? They seem to have planned its demise.
Yet the DOJ allows Amazon to control the pricing on eBooks and physical books. Amazon undersells the competition and makes up the money from the other BS crap they sell on the site. It’s not a eBookstore anymore. Amazon is like a LEGALIZE FLEA MARKET to sell stuff below cost to destroy competition. This is allowed by the US Government to continue, and now targeting Apple for the benefit of Amazon!
Amazon will probably have the DOJ close down B&N for having a monopoly on physical book stores.
One questions whether the organisation run by and for the socialists in government, the DOJ, should be looking into exertion of monopoly pressure stemming from market dominance in the bookstore market to suppress competition.
Maybe the dullards in the DOJ might wake up from their state sponsored nap on the taxpayer’s dime to investigate market distortions caused by a monopoly exerting its economic muscle to push its main competitor to the curb.
But of course the best way to deflect a socialist’s investigation into your affairs is to be a crony of the state by paying huge wads of cash in unmarked envelopes marked ‘Holder’ or ‘Obama’.
correct, again.
Paranoid nonsense from one who has no idea what socialism is!
Socialism is taking money from hard working people, then giving it to freeloaders, so they vote for the Democrats. Quite simple really!
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”.
Uh, unmarked envelopes marked?
It’s BLN.
The feds are BIG corporations and military first, people second. Amazon’s initial complaint got the ball rolling.
Wait… I think I see the problem. YES! they did a deal with Microsoft. Remember? The Microsoft kiss of death continues it’s glorious reign. And big bonus? “Bundled with Windows 8”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57423957-75/barnes-noble-microsoft-ink-$300m-deal-on-e-reading/
“The software giant will invest $300 million in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, giving it a 17.6 percent equity stake in the company. The Nook digital bookstore will be bundled with Windows 8.”
Nokia is still standing – we must get Ballmer to kill it soon, maybe with a brand new Nokia RT tablet? Yeah, that’s the ticket!