Archive for the ‘barnes and noble’ tag
B&N will not sell books published by Amazon no comments
Don’t look for any fence mending to take place anytime soon between the two largest competitors in the digital reading space in the US. 
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Barnes & Noble will no longer sell any books published by Amazon’s publishing imprints in its stores. B&N is irate about Amazon’s growing list of exclusive ebook publishing deals.
To be sure there are a few books that are available in digital format from B&N but not from Amazon, but these are few and far between and the number of exclusives at the Kindle Store vastly outweighs those available at the Nook Store.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s stock price is taking a hit today after the company reported lower than expected revenue for the last quarter, although the company’s profit was higher than expected.
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B&N offers discounts on Nook with NYT & People subs no comments
Barnes & Noble is currently offering a free Nook Simple Touch ereader or a Nook Color for $99 (regular price $199) with the purchase of a one-year Nook subscription to the New York Times. The Nook version of the NYT costs $19.99 per month and includes access to The Times’ website.
With the purchase of a one-year Nook subscription to People magazine comes a $50 discount on a Nook Tablet, bringing the price down to $199. People is a weekly publication and the digital subscription price is $9.99 per month. The digital version does have some exclusive content not included in the print version of the magazine.
Both offers start today and run through Mar 9, 2012. The subscriptions can be initiated online at the links above and the Nook will then either be shipped out or can be picked up at a local store.
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B&N and Kobo holiday sales results; Nook may be spun off & go international no comments
eReaders and ebooks were hot sellers this holiday season, and not just at Amazon. Barnes & Noble reports that sales of its Nook devices were up by 70% over last year, while digital content sales were up by 113%. B&N says that it sold more Nook Tablets than expected but that sales of the Nook Simple Touch were below projections.
B&N’s digital business may be surging but its brick and mortar stores are seeing little growth, even now that with Borders out of the picture there is less competition. B&N is forecasting a 1% increase in comparative store sales for 2012.
Barnes & Noble says that it is exploring options for separating its Nook business and expanding it abroad.
"We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our NOOK business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value," said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. "In NOOK, we’ve established one of the world’s best retail platforms for the sale of digital copyright content. We have a large and growing installed base of millions of satisfied customers buying digital content from us, and we have a NOOK business that’s growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year. Between continued projected growth in the U.S., and the opportunity for NOOK internationally in the next 12 months, we expect the business to continue to scale rapidly for the foreseeable future."
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Kobo also reports a record breaking holiday season with a tenfold increase in new customers and a near doubling of total registered users as compared to the pre-holiday period. Kobo’s ereaders and ebooks are available internationally and some of its strongest gains were in Europe and parts of Asia.
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An internationally available set of Nook ereaders is not, of course, good news for either Kobo or Sony. The other smaller ereader manufacturers that have failed to compete successfully in the North American market will also not be overjoyed at this news.
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Trade in a 1st gen Nook ereader & get $50 gift card at B&N no comments
Barnes & Noble is offering owners of the original Nook ereader a $50 B&N gift card if they trade it in for one of the newer B&N ereaders. This offer is good in stores only through Dec 24 and applies to purchases of the Nook Simple Touch e-ink based ereader, Nook Tablet and Nook Color.
B&N has also finally enabled the gifting of Nook Books and apps. Ebooks at the Nook Book store now have a ‘Buy as Gift’ button under the ‘Buy Now’ button. A notification and personalized message are sent to the recipient’s email address instantly. Amazon
give one the option to choose a specific delivery date for gifted ebooks — Barnes & Nobel is not quite there yet.
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B&N announces Nook Tablet, lowers NC and Nook ST prices no comments
Barnes & Noble today unveiled the Nook Tablet, which will be competing directly with the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon. The Nook Tablet will be priced at $249, and B&N will be lowering the price of the Nook Color to $199 and the Nook Simple Touch ereader to $99. 
The Nook Tablet will feature streaming HD movies and TV programming via Netflix and Hulu Plus, which is a larger pool of content than Amazon’s instant video service that the Kindle Fire will have access to. B&N also will be launching a Nook Comics store that will be dedicated to graphic novels.
Stylistically, the Nook Tablet appears to feature the same elegant design as the Nook Color, and will also feature a 7-inch VividView display from LG. The Nook Tablet will be powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and comes with 16 GB of internal memory. Additional storage space can be added via a microSD card slot. Battery life is said to be up to nine hours of video or 11.5 hours of reading. The Nook Tablet weighs in at 14.1 ounces — slightly less than the Kindle Fire’s 14.6 ounces.
Some of the other specs of the Nook Tablet:
- Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x .48 inches.
- 7-inch VividView Touchscreen with IPS; 1024 x 600, 169 PPI.
- Processor: TI OMAP4 Dual-core with 1GB RAM.
- Email client with unified inbox.
- Parental controls to disable web browser.
- Video formats: MP4, Adobe Flash Player format, 3GP, 3G2 MKV, WEBM (Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VP8).
- Built-in microphone; this will be supported by new Nook Kids books with a new Read and Record feature.
It was also announced that “Barnes & Noble’s largest software update ever” will be coming to the Nook Color in early December. Finally, with this update, B&N will address one of the most requested features for the Nook Color — the ability to read ebooks in landscape mode. Netflix will also be coming to the Nook Color, with Hulu Plus to follow in the near future. 
Altogether, the update will include over 100 enhancements.
There is also a new software update for the Nook Simple Touch ereader that is available today. You can manually download v1.1.0 now or wait for it to be pushed out over the Wi-Fi connection within the next few weeks.
B&N also had a couple of announcements pertaining to its Nook platform in general: Beginning next month B&N will enable Nook Book and Nook App gifting from its website. Customers will also be able to apply their Barnes & Noble gift cards to purchases made while shopping at B&N.com from the Nook Color and Nook Tablet.
The Nook Tablet is available now for pre-order for $249. It is expected to be in stores on Nov 17, which is about the same time as the Kindle Fire will be out. Yesterday a few new retail partners for the Nook ereaders were announced; TigerDirect, CompUSA and Fry’s will all soon be offering the Nook ereaders.
Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire
Barnes & Noble has not only introduced a strong new entry into the tablet market today but with the accompanying announcements pertaining to the Nook Color and Nook Touch ereader has strengthened its ereader platform as a whole.
Neither the Nook Tablet or the Kindle Fire is out just yet, but looking at the published specs makes for some interesting comparisons:
- Pricing: The Kindle Fire is $199 vs the Nook Tablet’s price of $249.
- Styling: The Kindle Fire looks like just another tablet, while the Nook Tablet looks like a fashion accessory. Seriously, I think Amazon’s ereaders need some improvement in the Looking Good Department.
- Size and weight: The Kindle Fire (7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inches) is slightly smaller than the Nook Tablet (8.1 x 5 x .48 inches), but is a little heavier — 14.6 ounces vs 14.1 ounces for the Nook Tablet.
- Battery life: The Nook Tablet gets better battery life: 11.5 hours reading, 9 hours video vs 8 hours reading and 7.5 hours video for the Kindle Fire.
- Storage: The Nook Tablet has 16GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot; the Kindle Fire comes with 8GB of internal memory.
- Content: Personally I still like the Kindle Store best, but I also like the Nook Book store, which has improved by leaps and bounds. You are still more likely to find a contemporary ebook title at the Kindle Store, especially if it is farther out in the long tail. The Kindle Fire will also have access to ebooks from Kobo and Wattpad via the apps in the Appstore for Android. When it comes to streaming video, the combination of Netflix and Hulu Plus mean more video content will be available for the Nook. But these are both subscription services. Existing Amazon Prime members will have over 10,000 movies and TV programs to stream at no additional charge. Prime members can also read 5,000 Kindle books for free that are part of the Kindle Lending Library. Prime membership costs $79 per year and includes free two-day shipping on eligible items sold at Amazon. UPDATE: Amazon has announced that Netflix will be available for the Kindle Fire at the Appstore for Android when the tablet ships. Hulu Plus, Pandora, ESPN ScoreCenter and Comics by comiXology will also be available for the Fire.
- Other features: The Kindle Fire will be a good choice if you purchase your digital music through Amazon as you can store it and stream it using the Amazon Cloud Drive. To some extent Amazon’s cloud storage might make up for the smaller onboard storage of the Kindle Fire for many users. For web browsing Amazon’s Silk browser looks promising and should result in a faster browsing experience.
Both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet look good and both have their pros and cons. It will be interesting to have both tablets side by side to see the relative performance. The Nook Tablet looks to be a very strong contender with some stronger specs, although it is pricier. Actually, at $199 and with the addition of Netflix and Hulu Plus the Nook Color has strengthened its position against the Kindle Fire. For those who do a lot of shopping at Amazon a Kindle Fire plus a Prime membership will probably be the winning combination.
P.S. I have to say that I am not a big fan of 7-inch tablets. While they are very portable, I find that the larger 10-inch screen format is better for many of the things I want to do with a tablet. On the other hand a 10-inch tablet is often a little too large to be really portable. I have played with demo units of the 8.9-inch Samsung Tab and I think this screen size is a nice compromise.
The rumor mill has had it that Amazon is planning a 10-inch version of the Kindle Fire for early next year. A few days ago DigiTimes reported that the latest word from its sources is that Amazon will instead launch an 8.9-inch Kindle Fire in 2011 with larger sizes to possibly follow in 2012. If you also feel that the 7-inchers are somewhat less than satisfying this is good news and it may be worth waiting for a slightly larger Kindle Fire.
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Lulu announces partnership with B&N no comments
Lulu has partnered with Barnes & Noble to bring work from Lulu authors to the Nook ereader and Nook apps. Lulu is a leading self-publishing company that provides free publishing services in exchange for a percentage of sales. Besides ebooks, Lulu enables self-publishing of print books, calendars, cookbooks, travel books and other formats.
"This partnership is another step in our passionate effort to help Lulu creators reach more readers and sell more books," says Bob Young, Founder and CEO of Lulu. "We expect that eBooks, which represents the greatest area of opportunity for our creators, will continue to evolve rapidly and the NOOK reaches a whole new audience of readers to discover and purchase our creators’ remarkable works."
Lulu’s research indicates that creators who provide their works as an eBook in addition to print, sell 30% more titles than those who only sell in print. With Lulu’s enhanced print and eBook publishing tools, creators can easily offer their works in multiple formats to best serve the needs of their customers.
"We are excited to partner with Lulu.com to bring its catalog of fantastic eBooks to our rapidly growing community of millions of NOOK owners and readers," said Jim Hilt, vice president of eBooks at Barnes & Noble. "Barnes & Noble is a leader in digital reading because of our commitment to bring readers new and unique eBooks by great authors that can be found with partners like Lulu.com. Our award winning NOOK, the catalog of more than two million eBooks available to instantly read, and new titles like those offered with Lulu.com make NOOK the perfect choice for anyone who loves a great book."To learn more about publishing on the Barnes& Noble NOOK, visit www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks .
I just did a search for ebooks published at the Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble from Lulu.com and the Kindle Store currently offers just over 2,200 titles while B&N has almost 2,500 titles.
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New firmware update (v1.3) for Nook Color no comments
Barnes & Noble has released a new firmware update for the Nook Color. Besides a parental control for the web browser, Wi-Fi connectivity improvements and other tweaks and bug fixes, v1.3 also provides some new features and enhancements related to B&N’s Newsstand:
- Access to a selection of new special edition NOOK Magazines — People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Parents, and Fitness – featuring print edition content, plus video, audio and fun extras.
- Access to the largest digital magazine selection available anywhere.
- Print subscribers to People, Time, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune get free NOOK editions of those magazines.
Barnes & Noble now offers more than 200 digital magazines at its Newsstand. A handful of these are now Special Interactive Nook Editions, which offer multimedia, interactive content and other extra features. Time Inc. announced earlier this month that it would be launching tablet versions of all 21 of its magazine titles by the end of the year and these will also all be available as Nook Magazines when released.
I’ve installed the update on my Nook Color and have had a few minutes to use it. I’ve not yet noticed any difference in the magazine reader for the mags I subscribe to. The update put several new book samples in my library that I did not request, but the good news is that you can now tap and hold a cover in the library and you have the option to archive the item. This effectively lets you delete it from your device.
The update will be going out over the air beginning this week, or you can download it manually here.
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Liberty Media makes strategic investment in Barnes & Noble no comments
Rather than buying Barnes & Noble, Liberty Media has made a strategic investment of $204 million in the bookseller. Liberty Media now has preferred B&N stock that is convertible into about 16 percent of the company’s common stock. The shares were purchased at $17 per share and will pay a dividend of 7.75 percent.
After a mandated waiting period Liberty Mutual will also be entitled to elect two nominees to B&N’s board of directors. These will be Gregory B. Maffei, President and Chief Executive Officer of Liberty and Mark D. Carleton, Senior Vice President of Liberty.
Activist B&N shareholder Ron Burkle, who through Yucaipa Co owns almost 20 percent of the company, issued the following statement on the investment:
"While we have grave concerns about the process and the pricing we welcome Barnes & Noble gaining access to Liberty Media’s expertise. We have the utmost respect for John Malone as a great investor with a proven track record. A year ago we launched a proxy contest with the goal of bringing better corporate governance to Barnes & Noble. The addition of two world class directors like Gregory B. Maffei, president and CEO of Liberty and Mark D. Carleton, SVP of Liberty, whom we know and respect, as well as the previously appointed independent directors to the Barnes & Noble Board are positive steps towards better governance."
Stock of Barnes & Noble has now fallen to below the level it was at just before Liberty Media’s plan to buy it was announced.
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Barnes & Noble and Liberty Media still in negotiations no comments
The latest rumors concerning the buyout of Barnes & Noble by Liberty Media have the negotiations still ongoing, though due to financial restraints it now appears more likely that Liberty Mutual would invest in B&N rather than buying the company. This is according to the Financial Times website.
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B&N Nook Back-to-School offer no comments
Now through September 11 Barnes & Noble is offering a free collection of classics and study tools worth over $100 with the purchase of any Nook ereader. You can find all of the details here.
£149.00
£109
