Here's a story that makes me give pause and hope that it is not accurate. Per the MSNBC site, Barnes and Noble plans to split off its Nook digital business from its retail business. I am dumbfounded and find this strategy a sure sign of the collapse of the B&N book business. I can only point them at the fiasco generated when Netflix announced its plan to separate its streaming business from its DVD business. Was no business lesson learned.
The Nook is a wonderful product for the digital age and the B&N bookstores are, like the DVD, a declining business. But there is tremendous synergy and sticking together longer. Like Apple, the store provide both a distribution and service platform that set it apart from its other rival, Amazon. The stores offer tremendous opportunities to adapt its retail business by expanding its merchandising with other goods. And the stores enable more marketing opportunities to futher the Noook brand. A separation of the two businesses does neither side any goog.
So hopefully smarter heads prevail; otherwise, such a split will lead to the loss of a great bookstore chain and a collapse of the Nook business as well. And that would be a great shame.
Great blog post. Not a smart move by Barnes and Noble.
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