Nook Failure, Lack of Foot Traffic Could Spell Doom For Barnes & Noble

tripleevenfall sends in a story at Yahoo Finance forecasting the end of Barnes & Noble. Quoting: "The last nationwide book retailer may be writing its final chapter. Barnes & Noble's latest quarterly results show a 7.4% drop in revenues and a $122 million loss for the fourth-quarter of its fiscal year. B&N's disastrous focus on making Nook e-Readers is weighing heavily on the chain's operations. A 17% drop in Nook revenues and stunning $475 million loss for the device division in 2013 are hobbling the company's ability to keep its stores afloat. B&N appears to be cannibalizing itself with branded tablets and cross-platform e-reader applications, which render the stores increasingly irrelevant."

Comments

At least they tried

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary seems to attack B&N for trying to adapt to changing times rather than sticking their head in the sand. Even if it was ultimately futile, I don't think it was boneheaded.

Re:Are people reading fewer paper books?

[Moofie]

"the simple reality is that you can't read books or even lengthy texts as easily from a luminescent monitor as from an e-ink display."

Simply not true. I can, and do, and your wishing won't stop me.

"but you didn't have people selling their book collections when laptops became common"

That's a form factor thing, not a backlit screen thing.

eink/epaper is great. I happen to prefer the flexibility of an LCD. Neither preference should get you all hot n' bothered, because it's just that: A preference. For /my/ use case, an LCD is superior. For /your/ use case, do whatever the hell you want. It'll be OK.