Quicknotes: No Nooks in B&N stores yet—plus info on a new e-book site in Germany

B&N has missed several major marketing opportunities. I came close to preordering, but at the last minute decided not to for several reasons.

(1) The return policy is onerous. There is no way to check out the device but if I preorder it and don’t like it, I have to pay a restocking fee and possibly reimburse shipping costs. Plus only 14 days to return. Contrast this with Amazon.

(2) I’m a B&N member so I get discounts on things I buy at B&N. Consequently, I spend a lot of dollars a year on books (just spent $150 last week) at B&N (and Fictionwise). And I have been a B&N member for years. Plus I have the B&N Mastercard. So what special deal do I get for being a loyal long-time B&N customer? None. The discount doesn’t apply to either the Nook or accessories. A smart marketer — and this is where Amazon generally shines — would cull its member lists and offer a special deal to its more valuable members.

I’m one of those people who is more likely to spend more with the right inducement. I’ve been a member of Fictionwise only since May and between join and now have purchased more than 70 titles from Fictionwise. During that same period, I have bought more than 25 pbooks (mainly hardcovers) from B&N (and have another bunch on order), and have bought books at the Sony store, Smashwords, and other book retailers. Seems to me I’m the kind of buyer that B&N would want to give the Nook to nearly for free — or at least at a special price — because the return prospects are so great. So why not cull membership lists?

Well I have decided to wait to see the Nook at my local store because there is no reason to preorder. If I like it, I may buy it; otherwise, I’ll stick with my Sony 505, which I do like very much, and take a look at the Sony Daily Edition and the iRex 800. B&N is losing an opportunity to bring me closer to it.

I concur: B&N’s missing a huge opportunity in not having their wonderful upcoming reader in the stores for people to see and pre-order. If there was one there, I’d at least go and look, even if I wasn’t planning to buy one (which, for the record, I’m not). But if I was impressed enough with what I saw, I just might buy. Having never seen a Kindle up close before or upon its launch, I had absolutely no inclination to get one, and afterward… I already knew better.

Rich A.,

If you already have a nicely functional Sony 505, why even be looking at another reader at this time? The cost of another reader will buy a lot of books.

Admittedly Sony doesn’t offer everything through their bookstore yet. My publisher (www.excessica.com) has been working to get all our titles out to Sony and we’re finally told that they should be there soon, certainly before the end of the year. But the Sony reader is a good unit and prices will only fall in the future.

Steve J.,

B&N still has several problems. Of my 11 titles on Fictionwise so far, only the oldest 5 made it over when B&N acquired them. I’m still waiting to see when (if?) the rest of my titles will be available in the B&N eBook store who keeps advertising just how many more titles they offer than anyone else. It’s been months now, but now my publisher is trying a second avenue into them. I’ll believe it when I see them listed.

While it’s nice to have an all-in-one store to go shopping in, the only place I know where every one of our titles is available every day is our publisher’s site itself. They have disappeared off of other sites, only to return mysteriously later, for perhaps being too adult.

Other publishers sell their own titles off of their sites as well, so that can be a resource. Now if someone just made a specialized search engine for searching out books on publishers sites the way indeed.com searches just job listing sites (worth knowing of when you’re unemployed) life for the reader might be much better.

–DB_Story

D.B.,

I was interested in the Nook for several reasons, even though my Sony is fine. First, my plan is to get a new device for myself and give my wife the Sony. She wants it but because I rarely let it out of my sight, it isn’t shareable.

Second, with the Nook I can get a New York Times subscription and wirelessly download it at breakfast. That would allow me to switch from my current p subscription to an e subscription.

Third, I had foolishly assumed that my B&N membership would get me ebook discounts like it gets me pbook discounts. I buy virtually all my pbooks at B&N so I viewed this as a “keeping it in the family” situation. And I also thought (again foolishly) it would be great to be able to use my B&N gift cards to purchase either the Nook or ebooks. But B&N has killed both those options — neither the member discount nor B&N gift cards can be used. (How dumb is that?)

And there are other reasons but not worth reiterating here. So in the end, I will look at (and probably end up with) the Sony Daily Edition. I like what I read about the iRex 800 but I do not like the idea that it is stylus dependent. Too easy to lose/misplace a stylus. If it were true touch screen I would be more inclined to the iRex even at $450.

B&N just isn’t being smart. It has a tough competitor in Amazon. Amazon has made a lot of mistakes, including a badly designed device, but it has made no mistakes where it really counts — ebook pricing, device returns if dissatisfied, and gift cards. B&N has made all those mistakes PLUS made B&N members unhappy, and the B&N members are the ones who spend the most on books. You can’t treat your core constituency the same as the occasional shopper in this case.

I went to check out the nook at B&N in Atlanta today and of course it wasn’t there and they had no idea when I could see one. They said maybe January. I don’t want to buy unless I can see it first, especially since it’s not easily returned. What are they thinking. They just lost my sale.

oh PLEASE!!! This is a sad thing, that amozon is more loyal than b&b!!!!!