Nooks Up, Books Down for Holidays at B&N

An official Barnes & Noble, Inc. press release reports that the bookseller suffered its second holiday season decline in a row, with sales - $1.1 billion - down 5% over 2008 for the the period from November 1 2009 through January 2 2010. Michael Cader of Publisher's Lunch reminds us that the firm's holiday sales a year ago were off 7% over 2007, so the compounded declines were sufficient cause for concern to trigger a reduction in earnings projections.

That's the bad news. The good is that BN.Com saw a 17% jump in sales from $114 million to $134 million. The hike was probably due to Nook sales which analysts place at at $10-20 million.

“We’re pleased we were able to ship all holiday orders for nook in time,” said Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Orders for nook remained strong throughout the holiday season, and, in fact, accelerated after we announced that we had sold out our initial supply. Demand remains strong in the New Year and greater than our supply, however, we expect production to catch-up with demand and be fully stocked in our stores in the next few months."

Pictured here is our kind of book nook.

RC

And the Name of BN.Com's E-Book Reader Is...(the Envelope Please)

THE NOOK!

As in Book Nook.

As rumored, the E-Ink text is gray and white like the Kindle's, but there is a color feature for the display of cover and other images. The $259 price matches the current price for the Kindle. The Nook will carry over 1 million titles, about half of which are currently not available on the Kindle.

The device does not appear to be manufactured by Plastic Logic as speculated on a number of blogs. So we still await the disclosure of the name of Plastic Logic's reader scheduled for release in 2010. "The Nook" is taken, so Plastic Logic will have to dig deep into its pool of titles to come up with something more ingenious. Until it's official, we're calling it The Teasle.

A significant difference between Nook and Kindle is the Nook's e-book-lending feature, details of which will be described in future postings.

Though the name and features of the device were not to be disclosed until later today at a press conference, the New York Times used a clever ploy to scoop most other journalists: it peeked at at an advertisement BN.Com will be running in the newspaper's book review section next Sunday. The Times's own ombudsman Clark Hoyt, who writes a weekly column commenting on the ethical (or otherwise) conduct of its writers and executives, might have a few things to say about a newspaper that uses its own advertising department as a source of breaking news. Whether the name and nature of BN.Com's device was embargoed until Sunday is not known. Still, there are some tricky ethical issues at play here.

Any comment, Mr. Hoyt?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting - AND ADVERTISING! - performed by the New York Times.

BN.Com Guy Says It's Plastic Logic After All

A B&N spokesperson interviewed by a Mashable editor made it plain that the mystery announcement scheduled for October 20 was not only about an e-book reader but about the Plastic Logic e-book reader. This solves one mystery but poses several others: why did another B&N spokesperson say "We have made no announcement of an e-book reader device"? And where did the rumor arise that BN.Com was preparing to launch its own proprietary device?

In any event you can see the B&N guy confirming it's Plastic Logic, though he did not, or perhaps was not allowed to, demonstrate the device. He did say it would have color, however, unlike a certain other e-book reader that he coyly would not name.

Nor did he mention the name of the Plastic Logic device, which in our frustration we have coined the Teasle. Can we hope that on October 20th B&N will at least announce the damn name?

RC

BN.Com Unveiling Its Own E-Reader on 10/20?

Anyone got any brainstorms for naming BN.Com's proprietary e-book reader? We dubbed Plastic Logic's no-namer the Teasle but we're all out of ideas for the device that will be unveiled at what the press release calls "A Major Event in Our Company's History". It will take place at 4:15 PM on Tuesday October 20th at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers on Manhattan's Hudson River waterfront.

Maybe call it USS United States to honor the great superliner launched a few docks south of Pier 60 back in 1952. Just don't call it the Normandie, which burned and capsized at a 49th Street pier in 1942.

According to fairly well-informed speculation, BN's wireless device will have a 6-inch touch screen and a virtual keyboard, and will be powered by Android. There is also a rumor that the device will enable downloaders to lend friends their e-books the way they lend them their book-books.

There are some mysteries revolving around the October 20 shindig. First and foremost is that Barnes & Noble completely denies that it's launching its own e-reader. "We have made no announcement of an e-book reader device," CNET's Steven Musil quoted a senior public affairs officer. The spokeswoman pointed out that B&N is "already supporting a variety of e-book reader devices."

Which leads to confusion #2. Ever since announcing its re-entry into e-books last summer BN.com has been making passes at several manufacturers, and even announced an exclusive alliance with the Plastic Logic. When that happened we wrote, "We're not sure why anyone would want to close out any e-readers, especially Sony and Apple." It now appears that the handshake with Plastic Logic was not so much an alliance as a dalliance.

One of the most interesting sources of speculation about the BN.com device revolves around that lending feature. Motoko Rich and Brad Stone of the New York Times report that "B.&N. has been talking to publishers about a new model, whereby users are granted a license to 'lend' an e-book to a friend. This could help the bookseller market the device to members of its book clubs program."

Lending e-books is a great concept but it will have to be sold to publishers, who make no money on borrowed e-books. There is a way to lend e-books via libraries, but the process is tightly controlled and the number of lenders restricted. You can read more about e-book libraries here.

E-Reads will be Pier Sixty on October 20th, cocktail in one hand and cell phone in the other, and we'll get our report to you as soon as the announcement is made. We think it's about a new e-book device, but given B&N's denials it could simply be that the company is hoping to tell us it expects to have a nice holiday season. That would indeed be "major event in our company's history", since last year around the same time B&N Chairman Len Riggio announced that the 2008 holiday was shaping up to be the worst he had seen in thirty years.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Hachette Says The Fix Is In as Europe Ponders Googlification

Arnaud Nourry, CEO of Hachette says that Amazon's fixed $9.99 ceiling on the retail price of printed books, which seems to have been picked up by Google and BN.com, could doom hardcover publishing.

“On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99,” Nourry is quoted in an article by Ben Hall on the Financial Times website. Hachette owns US imprints Little, Brown and Grand Central Publishing among many other worldwide publishing holdings.

Nourry's comments come as the European Commission considers drafting rules and guidelines governing online business. "The changes would be aimed at allowing Internet users to access out-of-print works and so-called orphan works for which it is impossible or very difficult to trace the rights holders," James Kanter of the New York Times quoted a European Union executive in charge of Internet matters. For details of the European plan see Europe Seeks to Ease Rules for Putting Books.

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Financial Times and the New York Times.

Four Big E-Book Stories to Watch

Like tributaries flowing into a river, four events in the past week have come together to increase the depth and breadth of the e-book business. Each bears watching.

1. Discord over the Google Settlement as the September 4 deadline approaches. After Endeavor William Morris Agency voiced its opposition to the opt-in choice for its client-authors, a number of other opponents entered the fray. It will all come to a head at the end of next week.

2. Sony Debuts Wireless. According to Huffington Post, "Sony Corp. plans to offer an e-book reader with the ability to wirelessly download books, injecting more competition in a small but fast-growing market by adopting a key feature of the rival Kindle from Amazon.com."
In December Sony will release the device with a price tag of $399. It features a touch screen and will carry books and newspapers via AT&T's cellular network.

Buried in the story is a Sony announcement that you'll be able to "borrow" ebooks from libraries and view them on their eReader. That appears to be a feature that other device makers have or have even given much thought to. A system like it has been in use at a number of colleges. After a fixed period of time (in Sony's case, 21 days) the loan expires and your e-book vaporizes.

3. Barnes & Noble Teams with IREX to offer New Digital Reader. Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly writes that "Barnes & Noble stepped up its efforts to compete with Amazon and the Kindle, announcing plans to partner with Netherlands-based IREX Technologies to offer a new wireless-enabled digital reading device with access to the 700,000 e-book titles available through the newly launched B&N eBookstore." iRex is a Dutch reading device that has gained some traction in Europe. We hailed it as a Kindle killer a while back, though contenders developed since then are bidding for that title.

One of them is the forthcoming unnamed Plastic Logic reader (we have nicknamed it Teasle until the manufacturer announces the official monicker). And speaking of that, we hope BN.Com will unconfuse us about something. We had the impression that BN had cast its lot exclusively with Plastic Logic. But now it's announced this relationship with iRex. Can someone out there clarify?

And as for Kindle killers, we're calling a moratorium on such declarations until Gen Next of e-reading hardware makes itself known. And we're definitely withholding our blessing until we can read on a full-color screen.

4. Amazon Kindle to launch in Europe next week? Stuff.TV asks whether Kindle is Europe-bound.

The Kindle has proved popular with bookworms in the States, but has failed to launch over here due to licensing issues, leaving British ereaders with a choice between the Sony Reader and the Cool-ER to quench their ebook thirst. However, none of these current offerings have been able to offer the Wi-fi capabilities that is the Kindle's killer feature, enabling wireless downloads of books and delivery of electronic versions of newspapers and magazines direct to the device. It could be that Amazon is hoping to get the Kindle over here as quickly as possible in order to win over the market before the launch of Sony's Daily Edition, announced in the States yesterday.

We'll update you as these four news items unfold.

RC

Plastic Logic Can Call It Whatever it Wants, We're Calling it...

Last month, we completely lost our patience waiting for Plastic Logic to reveal the name of the e-book reader it will be launching next year. "I don't think the company's directors realize how frustrating it is for us to refer to the surname but not the given name." we wrote. "Our frustration has reached the tipping point. We don't want to wait any more." So, we invited readers to make up their own name and offered an award for the one we liked the most.

Today we have a winner. Chris Christoffersen (no relation that we're aware of to the singer-actor, who spells his name Kris Kristofferson) coined the word "Teasle," a truly creative blend of "Kindle" and "Tease." Perhaps Plastic Logic hasn't meant to tease us. Perhaps it truly hasn't come up with a name. That's fine. Until they do, we're calling it The Teasle.

The naming of the gadget is no small matter. Barnes & Noble will be partnering with Plastic Logic to carry its e-books on the newly launched BN.com retail site. So it would be nice, to say the least, if the manufacturers could give BN.com a name to refer to. Meanwhile, for whatever it's worth, a teasel (note the spelling) is an herbaceous plant. Some teasels have medicinal properties. Others, we are reliably informed, are pests.

If Plastic Logic adopts "Teasle" we expect a fat tip.

Richard Curtis

BN.Com Goes Gillette

How many times have we urged the e-book industry to smarten up and heed the wise maxim attributed to King Gillette, inventor of disposable razor blades: "Give away the razor and sell them the blades." We simply can't think of a strategy better designed to advance consumer acceptance of e-books.

Well, someone finally listened to us. Mere days after launching its 700,000 title e-bookstore, which it claims is the world's largest, Barnes & Noble is now offering e-book reading software free. B&N is even throwing in a starter set of six titles. To take advantage of the offer, click on this BN.com ad.

We don't have all the specs, but presumably the B&N software will be compatible with most e-reading devices, especially the forthcoming Plastic Logic NoName Whatsit (see our gift offer for best name suggestion), but not with Amazon's Kindle or Sony's eReader.

RC

B&N Pitches E-Book Initiative on Morning Joe

Today William Lynch, president of BN.Com, went on Morning Joe, the popular MSNBC television show, to discuss the new BN.com e-book initiative. He also demonstrated on his iPhone how fast anyone can access the site, seek and select a title, order and download it. He did it in front of a camera in about 30 seconds. And what was the book? Lynch cannily chose Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough's own recently published book Last Best Hope. When Scarborough asked if he should buy a Kindle, Lynch replied that the BN store can be accessed by most other devices and especially the forthcoming Plastic Logic (No-Name) reader. However, the one device they don't seem to support is Amazon's Kindle.

You can watch William Lynch's interview here at MSNBC.

Despite his praise for Plastic Logic, Lynch seemed to make a glaring factual error unless he knows something no one else does: he described the new Plastic Logic display arriving in Q1 2010 as "plastic roll-up," which according to Plastic Logic is not going to be the case (Plastic Logic announces upcoming reader device - July 22, NY Times). The yet unnamed device will be larger than the Kindle DX, to attract more business users for professional documents, and have integrated 3G and Wi-Fi compatibility thanks to an agreement with AT&T.

Is BN.com going to win customers back from Amazon? They'll have a fighting chance now that they are looking to streamline the purchasing steps standing between readers and new e-books.

The new BN.com's "Buy Now (read in seconds)" button in their e-book section is suspiciously like Amazon's "One-Click Buy It Now" button, which is a notoriously protected feature that Jeff Bezos sought to patent and license. Currently, Kindle customers only need to press one button at Amazon's website to have the book purchased and immediately accessible to their Kindle or iPhone. Now BN.com customers will have a similar option. But one big difference between the two retailers is that the new BN.com "Buy Now" button is presently only for ebooks, not print books. If the book is going to be delivered by mail, you'd think an extra click or two won't make a difference, but this is where Amazon innovated their impressive market share by making things easier for the customer. It's good to see BN.com making a real effort to catch up in more ways than one.

RC and MG

Welcome Back, BN.COM

The last big news we heard about BN.com was in the fall of 2003:

"In a surprise move, Barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN) has stopped selling eBooks. The online retailer is in the process of e-mailing its affiliates to let them know of the program's demise this week."

That was written by a blogger, Rick Aristotle Munarriz, who like so many e-pioneers was sent reeling by B&N's pullout from a nascent e-book industry.

"With Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) as BN.com's majority stakeholder," Munarriz continued, "one has to wonder if the company is missing the high-margin potential of the medium or if the sales just aren't there. Or, for the budding conspiracy theorists out there, is BN.com simply refusing to promote a niche where its parent company can't partake or one that promotes a level playing field in an arena where publishing house suppliers are used to the advantages of size? eBook fans would like some answers. Unlike its warehouse-shipped forefathers, an immediate answer would be welcome."

Well, maybe not immediately, exactly, but six years later Mr. Munarriz has his answer. BN.com is being resurrected, and this time we think it will be here to stay. Four months ago the world's largest print-book chain acquired Fictionwise, the world's largest e-book retailer in a $15.7 million deal we declared to be a game-changer. "With this single stroke," we wrote, "B&N comes roaring back into a business it abandoned in 2003.

"Of far greater significance is that B&N is now catapulted back onto a competitive footing with amazon.com in the all-important e-book arena. Though Barnes & Noble doesn’t boast a Kindle or any other proprietary e-book reader, there is a host of devices now available or soon to come on stream capable of carrying the immense body of e-book content that Fictionwise has aggregated."

Barnes & Noble is already billing itself as twice as big as Amazon (700,000 titles vs. 330,000). Of course, most of BN.com's title list will consist of public domain books. Motoko Rich, reporting on the deal in the New York Times, points out that "More than 500,000 of the books now offered electronically on BN.com can be downloaded free, through an agreement with Google to provide electronic versions of public domain books that Google has scanned from university libraries... Currently, Google’s public domain books cannot be read on a Kindle."

So most of BN.com's books will be public domain - big deal! 700,000 books is the kind of scaled-up inventory that industry old-timers (circa 1998) said had to be achieved before the chain reaction became self-sustaining. And don't forget that public domain is the very kind of inducement that Freemongers have been advocating to stimulate e-books over the tipping point. The interaction of all those downloadables with the 1.2 million hard copies offered by Barnes & Noble's website is as tipping-pointy as you can get. (By the way, right now if you click on bn.com you get flipped to barnesandnoble.com, but in time BN.com will be a discrete e-book website.)

There are lots of issues to be worked out before launch such as pricing and compatibility with various devices. As to the latter, right now the company is trying to be device-agnostic but there's lots of talk about it teaming up with the as-yet unnamed (will it EVER be named?) Plastic Logic reading device scheduled for release in 2010. Whether that gadget would become B&N's Kindle, we don't know, but we're not sure why anyone would want to close out any e-readers, especially Sony and Apple. Publishers Lunch pundit Michael Cader says "BN said they have made 'a strategic commerce and content partnership with Plastic Logic' and 'will power the eBookstore for the Plastic Logic eReader device.'" Cader adds that "In further explanations BN said they will be the exclusive vendor of ebooks for Plastic Logic."

E-book aggregators are weaving garlands to strew on BN.com when it opens for business.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.