Comments on: Should Barnes and Noble Break Up?

By: Tom Simon

Tom Simon — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:26:28 +0000

Just a thought: At least dividing the assets would be easy. Barnes can have the barns, and then Noble gets the Nook.

The real question is, why would anyone want to own shares in Barnes’ barns?

By: Mary Sisson

Mary Sisson — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:26:09 +0000

Just a wonky little note–the Forbes blog is quoting an article in the Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/29/investors_circle_barnes_and_noble_as_it_plans_nook_spin_off/

By: Barbara Morgenroth

Barbara Morgenroth — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:39:37 +0000

I love my Nook Color.
Support at BN stinks. It’s not great for a Fire either, actually, as I proved last week going up 3 tech support levels in an afternoon.
You can buy a Kindle or a Nook at Walmart. You don’t need a big building for that.
What they need is great tech support and a couple videos that explain everything.
If I can figure it out, it’s not that complicated.
Right now the Nook and digital content is Cinderella before the ball to BN. If they took it seriously, then they could compete.

By: Passive Guy

Passive Guy — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:25:33 +0000

Good points. I think the only reason the Nook was able to make headway against the Kindle was the opportunity to try out the Nook in the stores, get help if necessary, etc.

The problem is that the book stores are becoming boat anchors. Ideally, you would keep the Nook business together with the retail stores until the moment the stores finally began to pull the company down, then split off the Nook business and let the stores sink, Unfortunately, you can’t be certain you can call that moment correctly and you may have problems pulling the Nook out cleanly if the stores go into bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

By: DDW

DDW — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:53:19 +0000

These calls for a split always make me wonder. Because I do not believe Nook would have had a prayer of getting anywhere near the piece of the pie they’ve managed to carve off were it not for them being displayed and pushed in the B&N retail stores. What better place to sell an ereader could you come up with. Not only a constant stream of regular readers for potential customers, but you get a face to face shot at showing all those readers who’ve heard of kindle and brushed it off because they are intimidated by technology that maybe it’s not so confusing as they feared. And all this despite the fact that pushing Nook devices isn’t really in the long term interest of the retail store employees.

And if they split … do they split the website? If they managed to make a better site, that would of course be good, but if they’re just going to run two crappy sites instead of one… hmm.

By: Bridget McKenna

Bridget McKenna — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:00:58 +0000

Why should they start now?

By: EC Sheedy

EC Sheedy — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:27:23 +0000

Love this! I hope BN is listening…

By: Barbara Morgenroth

Barbara Morgenroth — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:36:28 +0000

BN can do whatever it wants with the physical buildings.
Nook should be split off and become a content provider.
And there are cool reading devices that people can buy from them as well with a coupon for 10 ebooks and neat skins.
Be the content provider.
Because actually Amazon isn’t although they seem to be.
Hire a couple famous editors from NYC. Hire coders. Create Nookling books for children. Create Nooklettes for shorts/singles. Welcome new content providers, treat them like gold, give them gold.

By: brendan stallard

brendan stallard — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:45:32 +0000

P.G.

Before my FIL bought me the Ipad, I was thinking seriously about the Nook. I’d heard a lot of good about it. However, I made enquiries and the $1500.00 or so of books I had bought on the Kindle were now toast, can’t be read on the Nook. Unless I were to get creative with busting the DRM.

I couldn’t care less about the shops. I honestly haven’t purchased anything in bricks and mortar for years other than groceries. Publix/Costco is it.

I realize that is a consumers only viewpoint, but the tide has long passed for Barnes and Noble for me. I only ever went there once, was nice, great big queue. There was an Olive Garden nearby:)

brendan