B&N Press Now Offers Ebook Coupon Codes

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From The Digital Reader

B&N Press continues to add features, lending credence to rumors about an impending sale of the Nook division.

I just got an email from B&N, informing me that B&N Press now offered users ebook coupon codes and better formatting control over book descriptions.

Currently in beta, B&N’s ebook coupon codes give publishers the option to create a coupon code to market and sell their books at a specially discounted price to Nook readers. There’s no meed to worry about price matching on other retail sites., and users control all aspects of the campaign so that they can find and reward Nook readers. This feature is found in the Manage Promotions section from the Projects page.

Link to the rest at The Digital Reader

PG says he hadn’t thought about B&N Press for a long time.

His initial unmoderated response was similar to one he sometimes has when he sees an article about a movie star he remembers from his childhood – “Is she still alive?”

PG also wonders who might be interested in purchasing B&N Press.

The only entity that initially came to mind was Kobo, but, given Barnes & Noble’s general ineptitude in digital matters, PG suspects any potential purchaser would discount the price offered to take into consideration the expense involved in cleaning up the electronic back office.

Since Apple has a bazillion dollars stashed away and is looking at more content plays in general, perhaps it might buy B&N Press to beef up its offerings.

The first inquiry that comes to PG’s mind for either acquirer is how much overlap there might be between the titles published on Kobo, Apple Books and B&N Press. PG suspects most authors who don’t follow the path of ebook exclusivity with Amazon do so planning to go wide. Once you get your epub up on Kobo, is there a reason not to post it on Apple and B&N as well?

An additional factor that will keep the attorneys for any potential acquirer of B&N Press busy is a potential bankruptcy filing by Barnes & Noble in the future. Care must be taken to avoid having a B&N Press acquisition sucked into that morass.

8 thoughts on “B&N Press Now Offers Ebook Coupon Codes”

  1. I make four figures a month from B&N Press, five figures a year, and as I’m wide, that’s significant to me, so I don’t consider them dead. They’ve been steadily rolling out improvements to their e-publishing over the last year–improvements to their dashboard, to their in-house promos, and other things.

    If they’d done this five years ago, the landscape might look a bit different. I hope it’s not too little too late, but I welcome anything that competes better with Amazon. I like KDP, but I want to see a robust competitive market, not one dominant player.

    Whether or not these improvements are aimed at making the Nook division attractive to a buyer, I don’t know. My impression is that they put someone who cares in charge, someone who’s been steadily working on improvements, regardless of what other parts of B&N do. It may be plugging only one hole in the Titanic while the water pours in elsewhere, but at least they’re trying–and it’s making me some money. Publishing on B&N could be a win-win, especially if an author’s already wide.

    • Who knows, there might be a couple leftovers from the FICTIONWISE days hanging around.

      Alas, I fear it *is* too little too late simply because, whatever authors and publishers may think, B&n has lost the hearts and minds (worse of all, the trust) of avid readers, the “power users” and “influencers” of the digital reading world.

      Try this:

      https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=316082

      As Nate says, at best they can (minimize defections and) gussy up Nook for sale but I wouldn’t hold my breath for significant sales growth site-wide. It will however be very profitable for anybody who can capture the last remnants of their customer base.

    • My experience with B&N over the last few years has been similar to David VanDyke’s, so I agree with his assessment.

      I don’t want B&N to go under, but if it does, I hope the Nook platform can live on under a new owner.

    • Renamed Nook Press? That ring a bell? 😉
      It’s B&N’s belated attempt to make nice with Indies.

      It only sells to Nook owners in the US: It’s a small market but it has the smallest catalog of the five majors (not sure if Microsoft counts as a major ebookstore yet) so it’s somewhat easier to reach their remaining customers.

      Once upon a time they were second only to Kindle and almost half their size. (Mid 2011) Then Agency came to BPH ebooks and B&N tried to undercut Amazon on pricing. Bad news followed leading to a “death spiral” and triage of their operations.

      Last semi credible numbers had them under 5% market share.

      • @ Felix

        “It’s B&N’s belated attempt to make nice with Indies.”

        TLTL (Too Little, Too Late)

        • Yup.
          But now we have proof that network effects work both ways, but only once. No second chances in ecosystem businesses.b
          An object lesson for the ages.

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