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B&N planning for afiliated ebookstores

There’s a story going around today about B&N and the trademarks they’ve filed with the USPTO. All the gadget blogs are focusing on the Nook2 trademark and it looks like everyone has missed the big story.

A few weeks ago B&N filed for a trademark for the term "Nooksellers" and that is the big story. Did you know that the license terms for Pubit include a line about affiliate sellers? That was very curious at the time because B&N didn’t have any. Now we can see that they’re planning to.

I wonder if the Google eBookstore was what finally made up their minds?

Speaking of affiliated sellers, Amazon have had them for the longest time. So really it’s Google and B&N that are playing catch up.

UPDATE: A friend pointed out on Twitter that B&N already have an affiliate program through Google. Problem is, it sucks. That makes me even more certain about what the term Nooksellers means.

BTW, I don’t care about the Nook2 trademark because I already knew about it. B&N filed a trademark for Nook 2 (note the space) back in June, which is when I guessed that B&N were planning to call the next Nook by that name. The new trademark is a footnote, not a revelation. I’m also not amazed by NookKids, Nookcolor, Nook Wifi, or any other term that’s already shown up in use by B&N.

P.S. To be fair, the original source did notice the term but they didn’t realize what it meant.They only discussed it in terms of the description attached to the filing, which doesn’t jibe with the connotation of the word NookSellers. The word sounds like bookseller, which to me suggests an affiliate program.

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Comments


Scott G. Lewis December 30, 2010 um 11:34 am

I might hazard a guess that the difference might be that the current affiliate plan is for people like you to link to their content and receive a commission. That will possibly stick around. Perhaps Nooksellers is a private label, private branded, hosted eBook store for OEM manufacturers. In other words, XYZ Corp can release XYZ Reader with WiFi access to the XYZ Bookstore, with B&N handling the catalog and fulfillment, but branding everything to XYZ Corp’s logo and look and feel.


Susie December 30, 2010 um 4:09 pm

I believe you might want to look towards those who are currently selling Nooks like Books-A-Million and possibly some books sellers in other countries that B&N may contract to sell Nooks and then affiliate with to sell ebooks with?

Just my opinion.


B&N Launched Their First Affiliate Ebookstore Today – The Digital Reader December 6, 2011 um 2:34 pm

[…] known something like this would be happening for over a year now. Back in December B&N filed for a number of trademarks, including one for Nookseller. I cannot recall that they […]


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