Barnes & Noble may spin off Nook business...

[Midpack]

Since there seem to be a lot of potential tablet buyers here, thought this might be of interest. I wonder if B&N thinks they might as well let traditional books and stores go bankrupt (like Borders) and emerge as a viable standalone eBook business? Evidently Amazon has hurt them so far with lower prices at all levels of tablets/readers, so they may have their work cut out for them in the eBook/tablet arena to begin with.

Barnes & Noble May Spin Off Nook Business

I've said it in other threads, I understand and accept how 'books' are (rapidly) evolving into eBooks/readers, but I will miss hardcover books for (I guess) sentimental reasons. But I no longer buy musci CD's anymore, so I guess I'll get used to it.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

Weird. I can't imagine that retail paper book sales is a growable or even sustainable business. Perhaps they have some sort of shrink or exit strategy.

Perhaps they think the nook will do better on its own, and now might be an optimal time to get their money's worth out of the project?

 

[Gotadimple]

B&N (like Amazon) loses money on every one of the low cost readers it sells. B&N (unlike Amazon) does not yet have the breadth of inventory that goes on a reader, but like Amazon, it does provide free books, every day and every week from new authors.

This looks like a simple business decision. The large-mart brick and mortar book vendor business is a failing model. If you have a product that is a money loser putting a drag on a financially imperiled business model, choices have to be made. They may have discovered they could not generate the e-book sales volume to offset the hardware costs. So, the ereader product becomes a drag on their B&M profitability (which isn't so great according to your link).

Too bad: I like the product, and the fact that is easily sincs to the library system is a major selling point. There is an active community of experts who understand the nuances of the hardware and software and who actively look for 'free books.'

I'm going over the MobileRead forums and the B&N Community to check out the buzz.

-- Rita

 

[Gotadimple]

It gets better. Also looking to sell their publishing subsidiary. See Barnes & Noble to Put Sterling Publishing Up for Sale - WSJ.com

Rita