Barnes and Noble has been all over the news! Well, at least news in the publishing world. It would seem that B&N and Amazon.com are butting heads in a number of arenas. What does it mean for their future?
Firstly, the Kindle v. Nook battle. Well, the Kindle v. Nook v. iPad battle, I should say.The different devices have some fundamental distinctions. The iPad seems to come out the overall winner, as Apple products tend to do, with the ability to e-read (can you verb that?) and so so much more. But just looking at the [much cheaper than the iPad] basic e-readers, the Nook beat out the Kindle by Consumer Reports ratings. And yet, it would seem that the Kindle is less expensive, has a larger library with cheaper ebooks and has more apps and such available. The Nook? Has more RAM, more memory, a larger screen and is more lightweight. The choice is yours. It’s still unclear which is doing better sales-wise.
Secondly, B&N’s patent-infringement case with Microsoft. Word on the street is, Microsoft demands that B&N pay exorbitant licensing fees for the Microsoft Android technology used in the Nook. Bloomberg News thinks B&N will win out, but Microsoft says Amazon pays the same demanded fees for the Android tech in their Kindle Fire. Eek.
Thirdly, and most dramatically (yes, the B&N entanglements with Amazon can get still worse…), B&N made a “declaration of war” stating that they will not stock Amazon published books in their stores (though they will sell them online) in protest of Amazon’s “exclusivity” with publishers, “undermining the industry as a whole,” claiming that Amazon has “prevented millions of customers from having access to content.” Sadly for B&N, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has not such qualms with Amazon and has agreed to distribute its books in print. So, while B&N sticks their principles, Amazon still wins out in this battle and HMH snags the deal.
Barnes and Noble still stands as the world’s largest bookstore, but for how long? With Borders gone, B&N should be reaping the benefits, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. What would the world look like without B&N and with Amazon as reigning champion? I hope it does not come to this. I respect the world’s right to ebooks, but the idea that print will cease to exist is incomprehensible. Maybe print will go “underground” and become the medium of rebels and revolutionaries, oppressed by the “conventionals” with their heads in the iCloud. That’s actually a neat idea for some future-dystopia story a la Clockwork Orange or 1984, but I’d rather it not come to that.
Stay strong, B&N. Don’t leave us.
Your New Beau. 
Tags: barnes & noble, ipad, Nook