This week, news appeared that Barnes & Noble’s Buzz Score—the word-of-mouth measurement of consumers’ reactions to advertising, a way to discern what the general public is hearing about a specific brand name, as measured by YouGov Brand Index—is quickly closing the gap between its name and Amazon’s with the adult 18 and over market. This spike in its score, rising from 16.4 on April 25 to 24.6 on May 17, brings it closer than it has ever been to Amazon’s score, which stood at 37.7 as of Tuesday.
The Brand Index report was based on Barnes & Noble’s new advertising campaign for its color Nook, but this new campaign is meant to build momentum leading up to an important announcement this coming Tuesday, which coincidentally happens to be the closing day of the International Digital Publishing Forum at the BookExpo American event in New York.
After rumors abounded that Amazon had not one, but two major announcements, first with the Coyote and Hollywood tag-team of Amazon tablets in the works, and now this week’s unveiling that Amazon may be in the process of publishing ePub files for the Kindle, making it compliant with the industry standard for digital publishing, one has to wonder what exactly Barnes & Noble is cooking up that can compete with those possibilities.
We may soon find out, after an announcement was made earlier today that Liberty Media had offered to buy Barnes & Noble for $1.02 billion, a 20% increase over the closing price of B&N stock. Despite word that Barnes & Noble has not come to a decision on the sale, it would be naïve to think that this offer was made without something huge forthcoming in Tuesday’s announcement, which comes on the heels of Barnes & Noble filing with the FCC on a new e-reader device.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
