If you are looking to purchase a new Barnes and Noble Nook Color, you are simply out of luck for at least two weeks, while the company is doing nationwide inventory.
B&N has quietly depleted all stock in many of their retail locations and either sent them all to the Nook headquarters in New York, or has not had further shipments fulfilled. This goes the same with other companies whom sell the color e-reader on their behalf. Wallmart and Bestbuy both have the items listed as “out of stock” and the Barnes and Noble official site says the device is ‘back-ordered.’ The company is apparently doing major inventory to find out how many Nook Colors are in circulation. The entire process was told to be taking around two weeks and most B&N stores does not have ANY Nook Colors at all. Considering the Valentines day shopping season is quickly approaching, Barnes and Noble might miss out on some solid sales figures.
The Nook Color is currently the most successful e-reader to date launched by Barnes and Noble and is shattering the companies sales records and has already 650,0000 subscriptions to magazines and newspapers via the Nook Newsstand.
Update: Some users are saying Nooks are still in their home town, Barnes and Noble is not doing all of the stores at once, but are doing it on a region by region basis. Some rumors suggest they were pulled to load in the Android 2.2 update. While others suggest there was a bad shipment of Nook Colors, hardware wise and they were pulled from specific locations.
Update 2: Rumors are swirling as sources at Barnes and Noble is saying that Nook Colors will pulled to load anti-Rooting fixes. As you know, people have been rooting the device to be a full tablet, bypassing the need to buy ebooks exclusively through Barnes and Noble. The reason why the the hardware is good and cost effective for the price, is because B&N hopes you will buy enough ebooks to justify the low hardware cost. Since people are rooting the device, they are either buying books though Android applications such as Amazon, Kobo, Borders and Sony.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
