Barnes and Noble Nook Sales Fall 25% Over the Holidays

I returned my Nook Glowlight Plus. There were three ways in which the GlowlightPlus was worse compared to the SimpleTouch.
1)Worse background color when light wasn’t turned on. Granted, the background color was fine when the light was turned on, but I read with the light turned off to save battery life- and thus e-reader life.
2)Reduced font choices-it would cost very little to increase font choice. That was a false economy.
3) Pressure on edges got you out of the book you were reading back to the home screen. That is an inconvenience which can be mitigated by changing the way you hold it, so perhaps this third problem wasn’t that big a deal.

Instead of being better than the 4 years-old SimpleTouch, the Nook Glowlight Plus was in those three ways WORSE than the SimpleTouch. You don’t completely destroy the old model- you build on it. The Nook SimpleTouch was and is a pretty good e-reader. Why not keep its good features in the new model?

I suspect that the hotshot engineers who designed this did little consumer testing of the GlowlightPlus. Or better said, management didn’t mandate much consumer testing.

I was willing to support B&N with the purchase of the Nook Glowlight Plus. I was sorely disappointed. I am not surprised that Nook sales tanked over the holidays. My experience with B&N store personnel is that they have been quite helpful with my questions about the SimpleTouch, so my complaints with B&N are solely with its upper management. B&N is committing suicide.

They’ve lost 70% of their market cap in 4 months and, in their market segment, that’s a bad thing to do. Very bad. They’re not comin’ back from this and no e-reader in the world is gonna save them.