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Comment by atourgates | Hacker News Reader

I keep hearing the idea that the Nook is B&N's last great hope, but I don't buy it.

Every time I go in to a B&N physical store, it's packed. They're one of the few stores I'll go to just for the experience of going in there. They're relaxing. They're pleasant places to be.

Certainly, book sales face stiff online competition, but I find it hard to believe that a company with 705 physical locations that people want to be in, (plus 636 college book stores), can't find a way to make a profit even if the Nook should fail.

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B&N sure is acting like the Nook is their last great hope.

My local store is renovating about 1/4 of their floor space to be occupied by Nook products. When you walk in to the store, your are greeted by a salesperson who asks if you are buying a Nook.

I'd imagine the margins on e-books are compelling enough to drive them to really push them as the future of their business. The marginal production cost on an ebook is the price of a few kb of bandwidth - practically free. I think you'd have to be insane to not try to shift as much of your customerbase towards electronic delivery as possible.

They've taken the playbook from Apple on its stores. When the Apple store opened they only had like 4 products to display. But they made displayed the hell out of them.

They may be packed, but that doesn't mean much by itself, because their book sales are in decline. The stores are relaxing but according to a friend who works there -- many people go there just to browse it like a library, read for a few minutes and then go buy their stuff on Amazon.

That's what I try to do, but it often doesn't work. I walk in to Chapters thinking that I'll just order the books I want from the library. Then I start reading something and end up buying it because I need to finish it now, rather than waiting the day or two it would take to get it from the library...

read for a few minutes and then go buy their stuff on Amazon.

BN.com has made its prices competitive with Amazon (finally!). I got an offer for a BN credit card, similar to the Amazon Visa, in the mail a few days ago. BN might finally be making a real play against Amazon. It might be too late, but it's nice to finally find them in the game.

I wonder of BN's stores will evolve in an Apple Store-like direction, with physical book sales that happen to match online prices.

> It might be too late, but it's nice to finally find them in the game.

I don't think it's too late - Amazon has a philosophy that seems to indicate different strengths than B&N. Apple has proven that brick&mortar stores combined with a powerful brand can work for content and device sales.

Further, in order for B&N to thrive, Amazon doesn't have to lose...

> Every time I go in to a B&N physical store, it's packed. They're one of the few stores I'll go to just for the experience of going in there.

And there's the problem - it's packed because people are in there just for the experience of going in there. That doesn't pay the bills.

Starbucks is full of people who like the experience, and they pay the bills. I realize that there is an obvious difference between B&N and Starbucks, but most of the B&N stores I've been in have a cafe, so there are at least some ways to monetize people there for the experience.

Perhaps it would make sense to have fewer aisles and make the whole store more cafe-like? It would be different from what they have now, but if the alternative is slowly going out of business due to online competition, it would be a way to do something online simply can't do.

Just imagine the margins a book seller has to have in order to operate a large store with 20+ employees. If you can walk-through the store and compare their prices with Amazon's it puts pressure on B&N not to charge as much, even if they may be more convenient. Plus a ton of people do browse.

Isn't B&N one of the few places to still carry a large selection of Music?

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