http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2014/06/fly-little-nook-fly/#comments

[discussion of B&N splitting the Nook off to a separate company]


TRX June 27, 2014

B&N's problem is mostly that they don't carry the kind of books people want to read. At least, nothing *I* want to read, and judging from their perennial financial woes, I'm not alone.

The one I went to a few times had lots of cookbooks, travel books, NYT best- sellers, and bargain bins. The genre shelves were maybe 80% romance, 10% horror, 5% mystery, 1% SF, and 4% everything else. A single lonely rack of stale computer books. Videos. Games. And a lot of tchochkis and a coffee shop. Other than the stale computer books and remainder bin, nothing was more than a few months old.

Sorry, that's the same selection EVERY OTHER STORE has, from Hastings to Wal- Mart to independent bookstores. They can't compete on price, they're not even bothering to compete on selection, and they don't offer any reason to deal with stumping through their mega-store when I can get the same schlock almost anywhere else.

Any particular copy of a title is fungible; a copy of "Knight Moves" is the same wherever I buy it. But the titles themselves are not fungible; if I'm looking for "Walter Jon Williams," "Danielle Steele" is not equivalent.


TRX
June 30, 2014

Wait. I thought ebooks were kicking paper butt, and B&'s storefronts weren't doing to well anyway?

The Nook is a whole ecosystem, just like the Kindle and i-thing, and it's an established brand. Spinning the Nook off as a separate corporate entity doesn't make sense... unless this is going to be one of those setups where the same execs are on both boards, and they're asset-stripping B&N before riding off on the Nook horse.


http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/open-carry-issues-discussions/189439- books-million-carry-friendly.html#post3229785

TRX
April 22nd, 2014

Originally Posted by Brad426
What's a book? Is that like an old Kindle?

...pretty much, except it doesn't need batteries, or an internet connection, or have copy protection. In fact, mostly made with all-natural organic, sustainable materials, and readable with natural or artificial light.

Books-A-Million, at least the one we had that finally folded a few years back, is the place where old books go to die, after the warehouses decide they're not worth the storage space. Sure, there'll be some NYT "best sellers" in racks up front, with the tchochkis and videos, but after that it's just "Amazing DOS 3.1" and "Prodigy for Dummies." And they were all priced at full retail, sometimes with an additional price increase to adjust for inflation.

I dunno, all this paper and electronic ephemera... get it wet, or any of a dozen other occurences, and it's gone. Baked clay, now *that* is permanent storage! They're still digging four thousand year old baked clay tablets out of the ground; how long do you think that stack of backup tapes and DVDs is going to be readable?