Barnes and Noble nook “shipping soon”, or is it? no comments
The nook ereader was supposed to begin shipping yesterday, Nov 30. Purchasers who were first in line and whose nook was supposed to ship yesterday have received emails telling them that their ereaders will not arrive now until December 9. As compensation, affected customers are told that they will receive a $10 gift certificate and an overnight shipping upgrade.
You were smart to order your nook early for 2 reasons:
You’ll be one of the first to have one. Your nook is shipping soon and
we expect to have it to you by December 9th. As an added bonus, we’ve upgraded you to overnight shipping!To thank you for being one of the first proud nook owners, we’re giving
you a $10 Barnes&Noble.com Online Gift Certificate. You can redeem it for cool and stylish nook accessories, bestsellers, exciting new DVDs and Music, and Toys & Games; and beginning in mid December, you’ll be able to redeem it for eBooks!
As you can imagine, Barnes & Noble’s nook related forums are full of angry voices. B&N appears to be turning what could have been a very successful new product launch into a fiasco. There are no doubt many reasons this is happening, but to name a few of the more obvious possible causes:
- B&N totally underestimated demand. Amazon is secretive about how many Kindles it sells, and this is a strategy that pays off when competitors are bringing a new ereader to market, as it is much harder for them to judge the demand, and therefore try to figure out how much product that they will need.
- Production delays. There are always glitches and delays when bringing a new gadget to market, and this is made worse when said gadget is being rushed for the holidays. Remember that shiny new thingie you bought last Christmas that wasn’t fully functional until the software update that came out six months later? What is really kind of worrying about the nook ereader is that no one has been able to review or demo one yet, so we really have no idea how functional it really is or isn’t. You can’t even view the manual online as of yet.
- Spring Design’s intellectual property lawsuit against Barnes and Noble. Yes, that elephant in the reading room. It could be that B&N is holding off of putting demos in stores and shipping nooks until the judge in the case decides whether or not to issue a preliminary injunction against B&N. In all fairness, the lawsuit could also have to do with the paucity of informative tidbits coming from the Barnes & Noble campsite.
- My impressions (and please do keep in mind that these are just my impressions) of the ebook section of the Barnes & Noble store pre-nook was that it was kind of the ugly stepchild department in the basement of the B&N Towers and that the rest of the company didn’t really take it very seriously, and it probably didn’t have much priority or get much love. Gift cards that don’t work for ebooks, no member discounts for ebooks, etc. When B&N announced that they were getting back into the ebook business back in July, I took a look at their store and was not overly impressed. The searches were sloppy and parts of the ebook store just didn’t work very well. It has become better in the intervening 5 months, and after the nook pre-orders have sold so well I’m sure the ebook department has a much more important role in the company, but all of this could help explain the apparent disorganization.
Whatever the case, Barnes & Noble is not making new friends and winning awards by the way in which it is handling the nook affair. The company needs to be more forthcoming as to the reasons for the delays, as it is rapidly loosing the trust and confidence of its customers. The worst thing that they can do is to keep delaying and missing shipment dates with little or no explanation. It is also important that B&N start treating their customers like adults – that email is just plain insulting.
With competitors like Barnes & Nobel who needs friends? Indeed, B&N and its nook ereader has so far proven to be a good thing for Amazon and its Kindle ereaders. First it announces the nook and its features long enough in advance of its actual release that Amazon has a chance to fill the gaps in the Kindle’s feature set. Then it gets everyone all hot and bothered about its cool looking ereader (probably even a lot of folks who were not even thinking of getting an ereader until the nook showed up) so that they want one for the holidays. Then it doesn’t have enough ereaders to meet the demand it has created, and now apparently B & N cannot even deliver on the orders it has taken by the promised dates.
I suspect that a lot of disappointed people will decide to buy a Kindle instead, especially if B&N continues to just let the situation fester. I think it is pretty safe to predict that the Kindle 
