Barnes & Noble has been exceedingly quiet on the ebook front since it was acquired two years ago. Once it stopped being a publicly traded company, it no longer announced its quarterly revenue, including its ebook sales.
Your search for nook got 1015 results
It has been over two weeks since hackers had their way with B&N’s servers, and the retailer still hasn’t fully recovered.
The hack, which has since been confirmed as a ransomware attack, originated in B&N’s corporate offices before spreading to their servers, store computers, and even the cash registers. All parts of B&N were affected, and while most functionality was restored within a few days, B&N’s Nook service is still only semi-functional.
And that includes the author side, as well as the reader. I got a comment last night from an author whose book launch has been delayed as a result of B&N’s server issues:
This is even effecting the authors back end of Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately my book was supposed to go live on the 22nd, we get vague updates about how the “dashboard is working” but they are “still working on other issues”….it’s not the 26th? oof. I know one other author who hasn’t had their book live since the hack day itself. every day authors can’t sell books after the pre-marketed publish date is a wasted sales day, every day is a missed book sold opportunity.
Over on the reader side, I can report first hand that my library of Nook ebooks is still mostly inaccessible. I have two Nook accounts, and the one with my thousands of Fictionwise purchases cannot be accessed via the B&N website and it is still not syncing with the Nook app on my Android smartphone. My second, test account can be accessed via the B&N website, but it’s also not syncing with the Nook app.
Just about the only thing that can be accessed from the Nook app are new purchases made in the app itself.
This could not happen at a worst time for B&N. We going into the holiday sales period during a time when ebook sales are increasing as a result of the pandemic. This would have been a great opportunity for B&N to reinvigorate ebook sales and start turning around its digital division, but instead this is looking more like another nail in Nook’s coffin.
I am pleased to report that, when it comes to B&N CEO’s opinion on his digital division, nothing has changed in the past couple months.
RetailDive published an interview (which Good eReader subsequently pirated) where Daunt was effusive in his praise for the Nook.
You would think, then, that Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader would be destined to continue to languish on Daunt’s watch. Indeed, Waterstone’s, under Daunt’s direction, gave up its e-book business in 2016, tying up with Rakuten’s Kobo platform instead.
But Daunt sounds ready to give Nook the attention it has desperately needed, as Amazon’s Kindle has run away with the space.
"I absolutely love Nook, and I think my predecessors had fallen out of love with it," he said. "It’s under-promoted to our customers, it became the sort of wayward child that had become embarrassing. But if you want to read digitally, the app is fantastic. I’m a champion of digital books and digital book retailing, but above and beyond that I’m a champion of reading. There are many reasons why people want to read digitally, but Nook needs to be much better supported within the Barnes & Noble ecosystem."
That is good to hear, although not really news. Remember, that is more or less what he said two months ago.
In any case, Daunt has his work cut out for him. Nook revenues totaled $92 million in the 2019 fiscal year, which ended in 27 April 2019. (B&N did not file a fiscal report with the SEC in 2020 because, as a privately held company, it did not have to do so.) That is down from its peak around 8 years ago of over a billion dollars a year in revenue.
While we do not know its current state, the retailer appeared to be having money troubles this spring. This likely turned around as the year wore on due to the boom in ebook sales, as reported by NPD.
Barnes & Noble isn’t just remodeling its stores during the pandemic; it’s also updating the Nook.
I was just reading over at MobileRead that B&N has issued an update for the Nook Glowlight 3:
I got an update on my 2015 Glowlight Plus and Glowlight 3.
The updates only said performance improvements and bug fixes. But I’m seeing some small, but nice changes.
On the Nook, I like stacking by author. Previously, if I did that, authors with a single book would show as King, Stephen. But stacked authors would show as Stephen King. With the latest update, all authors now show first name last name. It looks better. Less broken.
Also, on stacked authors if you’ve read some but not all of there books, there is a progress bar.
There’s likely other changes I haven’t noticed. But these little changes are nice.
I can’t find any relevant details on the B&N website, but I am thrilled to see that the Nook isn’t dead.
Have you spotted any changes?
When B&N was acquired by a venture capital firm last year, and James Daunt named CEO, many feared that he would shutter B&N struggling digital division. Daunt was seen as anti-ebook, after all, and Waterstones ebook sales certainly did not thrive under his leadership (in fact, since Waterstones' Overdrive-powered ebookstore was closed way back in 2016, the bookseller had no ebook sales).
I had been wondering if B&N would even bother to ship another Nook model, or just make my April Fools Day joke come true, and now it would appear we have an answer.
The Bookseller published an interview of Daunt on Friday where he said:
He also referenced the US e-book operation Nook, part of Barnes & Noble. “Evidently it has been helped by the pandemic, but things have turned around for Nook. The perception that I am anti-e-books is wrong. I am very in favour of them if I can sell them, and I have not been able to do that [in the UK]. One of the things where I differ from my immediate predecessor at B&N is that I consider the ability to sell e-books to be a great strength, and the company had stopped investing in Nook. That will change. We will make Nook very much part of what we do [in the US].”
He said questions about selling e-books in the UK had been parked during the coronavirus crisis, but added that it would be looked at again. “I wouldn’t hold your breath, but all other things being equal, it is something we should aspire to do. We sell an awful lot of e-books in the US.”
I know that Mark Williams has made a big deal about Daunt supposedly rewriting history about his being anti-ebook, and I think Williams is mistaken.
The problem with labeling Daunt as anti-ebook is that it lumps him in the same group with the major US trade publishers. The Big Five actively sabotaged their ebook sales, and even engaged in a conspiracy to to rig ebook prices, but Daunt has never engaged in any action showing that degree of hostility to ebooks.
I would instead say that Daunt was really good at selling print books, and really into the print book buying experience. I would say based on his public statements that it’s not that he hated ebooks so much as he knew how to sell print books, and could grow a business built on physical bookstores, while ebooks required a different bag of tricks.
To give you an analogy, folks, I do not know how to play a cello, but that doesn’t make me anti-cello. It just means I am doing other things. The same applies to Daunt.
That said, we live in a post pandemic world. Retail is going to change radically in the next few years, and Daunt’s new opinion on ebooks reflects that fact that he is building a new business in a new era, one in which ebooks will likely be more important than they were this time last year.
Barnes & Noble’s hardware section is going to be a little smaller when its stores reopen to the public. Someone on MobileRead noticed, and I can confirm, that B&N has removed its 7″ Nook-branded budget tablet from its site.
It’s not just gone from the menus; I chckded, and even the product page is gone. This is an ex-tablet.
B&N launched this particular tablet in December 2018, so it was getting a little long in the tooth, but that segment of the market hadn’t changed much in the past several years. There was little reason to replace the tablet, and B&N could have kept it another couple years.
The tablet had been developed by a Chinese company before being licensed to B&N, and I had expected that if it were retired B&N would license another tablet to replace it.
But they have not. Instead B&N chucked the tablet out the window.
YOur guess is as good as mine what it means for B&N;s hardware plans.
The hot news in the book world this week is the sale of Barnes & Noble. Elliot Advisors, majority owner of UK bookstore chain Waterstones, has completed its $683 million acquisition of the struggling retailer. The deal was closed weeks ahead of schedule and only involved one lawsuit. (I was surprised; I expected B&N to fire at least 1.2 CEOs before Daunt took up the reins.)
Now that the deal is done, Daunt has said he will be spending about 75% of his time in New York City. Kate Skipper, COO of Waterstones, will run the chain in his absence, although I don’t see why that would be necessary; with modern telecommunications, one is never more than a Skype call away from a meeting.
Once Daunt settles in, he will have the unenviable task of turning around a retailer that has, in recent years, changed its policies about as often as the average person buys coffee while playing musical chairs with the CEO seat. At the same time. B&N lost over a billion dollars in market value in the past five years as the stock price was dragged down by bad earnings reports.
So how is he going to do it?
According to the NYTimes, Daunt is going to focus on the stores, giving them a degree of independence that is virtually unheard of in US retailing.
The changes have filled Waterstones’ 289 shops, mostly in Britain, with books that customers actually want to buy, as opposed to the ones that publishers are eager to sell. And store managers have been given plenty of leeway to transform their shops into places that feel personally curated and decidedly uncorporate.
“He’s essentially created a series of independent bookstores,” said Tom Weldon, the chief executive of Penguin Random House Books U.K., “with the buying power of a chain.”
So what does this mean for the Nook?
Barnes & Noble’s ebook division has lost most of its value in the past five years, going from $264 million revenue in FY2015 to $92 million in FY2019. At the same time B&N has released new Nooks at a snail’s pace, updating the Nook ereader an average of every other year.
What do you think Daunt will do? Will he invest in Nook, and give us a new ereader this year, or will he cut his losses and sell off the customer lists to Kobo?
I am hoping for a new Nook; yes, it is simply rebranded Netronix hardware, but there’s still an opportunity for B&N to launch a new model as the focal point for its digital revival as it turns around its fortunes.
So tell me, do you think we’re going to get a new Nook this year?
It turns out that the positive revenue report from the third quarter was a fluke rather than the start of a turnaround.
Barnes & Noble reported sales and earnings for its fiscal 2019 fourth quarter and fiscal year on Friday. Its sales totaled $3.6 billion for the full year and $755 million for the quarter, falling 3.0% and 3.9% from the prior year periods, respectively. Comparable store sales declined 2.3% for the fourth quarter and 1.9% for the full year.
Nook revenues totaled $92 million for the fiscal year, a decline of 17% from the previous year.
The consolidated fourth quarter net loss was $18.7 million, compared to a loss of $21.1 million in the prior year. Fiscal 2019 net earnings were $3.8 million compared to a net loss of $125.5 million in the prior year.
Those details, plus the SEC filing, is all we will have to go on because B&N has announced that they will not be hosting a conference call this quarter to discuss the results. They’ve pointed at the Elliott deal as their justification.
That deal won’t be completed until October, so this is more of a cop out than a valid justification.
image by JeepersMedia via Flickr
It’s been four days since B&N launched their 7.8″ ereader, the Nook Glowlight Plus.
It has shown up in B&N stores, as promised, and what’s more, several members of MobileRead report that they were actually able to buy one today, two days before the device officially goes on sale.
Alas, early reports are not sounding good.
There’s a discussion over on MobileRead where two new Glowlight Plus owners reported that their units had defective pixels right out of the box. One owner even found a dead pixel on the replacement unit:
Got a replacement, same stuck pixel at the same spot (or something under the substrate that’s reflecting the back light).
Manufacturing defect?
While we don’t know the scale of this issue, of the five units purchased by MobileRead, three have proven to have defective pixels. That is the kind of failure rate we haven’t seen since the original Nook Glowlight in 2012, when B&N was in too much of a hurry to beat Amazon, and rushed an ereader with a defective frontlight to market.
Barnes & Noble is making the least effort possible to sell their device; not only have they neglected to do QA on the initial production run, they don’t even care enough to release the specs and support into. While a version of the user manual (PDF) was uncovered by a MR sleuth, this device still hasn’t been listed on B &N’s website, so at this time we still don’t have all the information.
I actually had to find out via Mike Cane that the Glowlight Plus didn’t have a card slot:
Micro USB port. No card slot. Nook home button is very small. Page turn buttons are nothing special. Bezels are too damn large even in person. No way to get to Android Settings, so the version number is a mystery. Android Open Source legalese is 607 screens (pages)! Plus side: It has a headphone jack. And seven typefaces, one of which is Open Dyslexic.
I don’t know about you, folks, but this almost looks like sabotage, and at the very least it rises to the level of intentional neglect. This launch helps explain why B&N’s digital revenues fell 20% last quarter, to $24.3 million; Barnes & Noble is making sure that the Nook division can’t recover under any circumstances.
So it would seem that new Nook ereader that showed up on the FCC website last month is not a replacement for the Nook Glowlight 3; instead, it is a larger model.
Barnes & Noble sent out a press release on Thursday announcing the Nook Glowlight Plus, a 7.8″ ereader designed and built be Netronix. This device has not been posted to B&N’s website, so right now the press release is all I have. (The image at right is a placeholder until the official images are posted,)
I don’t yet have all the info on the Nook Glowlight Plus, but I can tell you it is waterproof, and has 8GB of storage, a color-shifting frontlight, and also page turn buttons.
According to the FCC paperwork, it also has a headphone jack, and was tested for Wifi and Bluetooth.
“We are thrilled to bring the new NOOK GlowLight Plus to customers with our largest high-resolution E-Ink screen yet,” said Bill Wood, EVP; President, Digital at Barnes & Noble. “The waterproof, upgraded design makes reading easy, wherever you are. This new NOOK is in stores just in time for summer reading, Father’s Day, or for any book-lover that wants to experience the latest in digital reading.”
The ereader will be B&N stores on 27 May (Monday) and will be on sale on 29 May (next Nook Glowlight Plus). Retail is $199.
Speaking of refurbs, the latest Nook Glowlight is now available as a refurb on B&N’s website.
This is the 2017 model that is going to be replaced soon by the model that showed up on the FCC website last month, but it still presents a decent value (if you like the huge bezel, that is). This model was built by Netronix, and it has a color-changing frontlight over a 300ppi Carta E-ink screen. It also has 8GB storage, Wifi, and page turn buttons.
It is selling for $89, or $30 less than the retail price.
Why oh why couldn’t this next story have come across my desk last Monday; it would have added an extra level of detail to the joke about Author Solutions.
A helpful bot just informed me that paperwork for B&N’s next ereader has cleared the FCC’s website.
B&N has embargoed almost all the interesting details until October, so we know very little about the device, the BNRV700-A. I can tell you it was tested for BT and Wifi, and that it is described as an ereader. It also has a headphone jack, and is apparently also sending data on its battery to a repository.
Edit: Oh, and we can infer that it probably is an ereader because this device was submitted by B&N. B&N’s tablets, on the other hand, have shown up at the FCC bearing the brand and FCC ID for the Chinese OEM that made them.
If you have a Nook you might be able to measure the "N" logo on your and infer the size of the new model. Me, I will have to wait for the announcement before I’ll know more.
I am guessing the new model will be launched in the next couple weeks, or by the end of May at the latest. When it does arrive, it is a tossup whether it will be sold in stores. B&N has been stripping any sign of the Nook from its stores, first removing the Nook kiosk, and then taking down the banners that promote the Nook. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that B&N might remove the remaining Nook displays (I have reports it’s already happened in a few stores).
The Nook division generated $24 million in revenue in B&N’s third fiscal quarter 2019.
I think we just found out why B&N Press has been periodically adding new features while at te same time B&N has been stripping any sign of the Nook from its stores (one, two).
A friend has slipped me an early copy of the press release where B&N announces it is selling its Nook division to Najafi Companies, the parent company of Author Solutions. The announcement isn’t scheduled to go out until Thursday, but I got a copy because my source knew I would be able to get the attention of authors and others who would oppose this deal.
As you may recall, Najafi Companies bought Author Solutions from Penguin Random House in 2016. The price was not disclosed at that time, and we don’t know the sale price of the Nook division, either. It was valued at a couple billion dollars at one point, but that was before the bubble burst.
B&N launched the Nook back in 2009 only a few months after buying Fictionwise. Over the next several years the Nook quickly grew into the second largest ebook retailer, and then for reasons no one understands, B&N’s ebook bubble burst in the 2012 holiday season.
The Nook division has been in decline ever since, totaling only $24 million for its third fiscal quarter.
I had been hoping someone would come along and turn around the Nook, but to be honest I would rather B&N pass on this deal. Selling Nook to a company that wants to combine it with Author Solutions is a deal that is frankly worse than death. Anyone would have been better than Najafi, including Amazon.
I wonder if Rakuten made an offer?
press release:
Najafi Companies. today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Barnes & Noble’s NOOK digital business, a leader in the e-book marketplace. Najafi Companies said it plans to use NOOK as part of its overall digital strategy, including by integrating NOOK and B&N Press into Author Solutions, Najafi Companies’s self-publishing services company.
“The Barnes & Noble Board of Directors carefully reviewed strategic alternatives, and believes this transaction is in the best interest of shareholders, authors, and readers. It will strongly support our transformation efforts,” said Leonard Riggio, Chairman. “This sale will allow Barnes & Noble the flexibility and runway it needs to complete the transformation required to adapt to a changing retail market."
“The purchase of the Nook digital business is an important part of our strategy to capitalize on the growing ebook services market, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital services in the consumer and education segments,” said Jahm Najafi, CEO of Najafi Companies.
William E. Wood, EVP and President of Digital at Barnes & Noble, will oversee the transition, and will assume a new position of VP, NOOK, at Najafi Companies.
“The shift to digital is putting the world’s libraries, newsstands, and bookstores in the palm of every person’s hand, and is the beginning of a journey that will impact how people read, interact with, and enjoy new forms of content,” said Wood. “This deal will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We’re at the cusp of a revolution in reading.”
About Najafi Companies
Najafi Companies is an international private investment firm based in Phoenix, Arizona, targeting education, media, consumer products, internet services, and direct marketing sectors. The firm makes highly selective investments in companies with strong management teams across a variety of industries, often in areas undergoing rapid transformation. Najafi Companies funds its investments with internally generated capital, not through a fund. The firm is able to move quickly and decisively when investing and make investments that create maximum value for the long term.
About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) is the nation’s largest retail bookseller, and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The Company operates 627 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s premier e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). The Nook Digital business offers a lineup of popular NOOK® tablets and eReaders and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store®. The NOOK Store (www.nook.com) features digital books, periodicals and comics, and offers the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through Free NOOK Reading Apps™ available for Android™, iOS® and Windows®.
General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained by visiting the Company’s corporate website at www.barnesandnobleinc.com.
P.S. April Fools.
image by MikeKalasnik via Flickr
When Barnes & Noble started taking the Nook kiosks out of its stores this summer, they moved the hardware to the customer service desk and put up big signs that promoted Nook hardware and B&N’s ebook platform.
Now those signs have come down.
I was at a Barnes & Noble today while waiting for a vet visit to wind up, and I noticed that the signs over the customer service desk no longer mention the Nook. Now one promotes picking up online orders in B&N stores, and the other generically recommends the hottest new releases.
Yes, the hardware was still there, but you would have to look closely to spot it, kinda like you would have to look carefully at B&N’s quarterly SEC filings to spot any mention of B&N’s Nook revenues.
The Nook revenues weren’t mentioned in either the press release or earnings call in the most recent quarter, but the 10-Q report showed that Barnes & Noble sold $21.7 million in ebooks and hardware in the quarter ending 27 October.
That is a steep decline from the Nook’s heyday of 2010 to 2012, when the Nook occupied prime real estate at the front of B&N stores, when B&N was even talking about rebuilding stores to give them a whole Nook department.
Alas, that plan never got beyond a few pilot stores like the one in Fredericksburg, VA. Instead, the Nook imploded in late 2012, and it has been in a downward spiral ever since.
Interestingly enough, B&N’s plans shrank with Nook revenues. They’ve abandoned their large concept stores in favor of stores with footprints not much larger than the Nook dept in the Fredericksburg store.
The store planned for Fairfax, VA, for example, is listed at 8,630 square feet. In comparison, at its peak B&N stores exceeded forty thousand square feet.
Those larger stores are mostly closing now as their leases expire, a relic of a different era.
Yesterday’s story about the MobiScribe ereader reminded me about a story I had been waiting a few weeks to see if it developed.
The ereader importer Icarus has apparently gone out of business. A reader discovered in mid-November (after the company stopped responding to their emails) that the Icarus site was down (Thanks, Chris!). I was still waiting for either confirmation from a source or something solid like bankruptcy paperwork (the financial details would have made this story so much more interesting) when another site reported the company was dead.
The Icarus website is down, and their FB page has been deleted, and there’s only a couple employees still listed on LinkedIn (neither responded to my messages). Liquavista was still showing more signs of life than this when I finally managed to confirm its demise in October, so there’s no reason to wait on Icarus.
Icarus, or to use the company name, DistiRead, started importing Chinese ereaders in 2010. The ereaders ranged in size from 6″ to 7.8″ and 8″. They were sold under the Icarus brand, but were sourced from small OEMs like Boyue (as well as several I was never able to identify).
Their hardware was of so-so quality and usually a little more expensive than the OEM version, but the local support in Europe did make up for it. This enabled Icarus to continue announcing ereaders right up until September 2018 (there’s no word on how many they sold, however).
It’s not clear what happened to the company, although it probably came down to poor sales. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, there was no sudden exodus of employees; most of the ex-employees listed on LinkedIn left years before the company shut down. (Of course, there’s no rule that you have to list former employers or even have a LinkedIn profile, so that doesn’t mean anything.)
One of the details I was waiting on was legal paperwork for the company pertaining to bankruptcy or reorganization. A friend in the Netherlands was unable to find any, but there’s always a chance it will be filed later.
If you know what happened, I am all ears.