Posts about Barnes & Noble

New Nook With Reading Light Is Probably Cheaper Than A Divorce Lawyer
Barnes & Noble has launched a new $139 version of its Nook Simple Touch e-reader with a lighted e-ink screen that promises you can read in bed without disturbing your sleeping spouse. More »

Barnes & Noble Gets All Braggy About Charging Six Times The Original Price
Haitham was on a quest for a simple blackjack strategy card, so he used his online search skills to check out prices. He found what he wanted at Amazon, but because they were going to charge him twice the price of the card just to ship it, he went elsewhere. And sure enough, Barnes & Noble found a way to not only gouge him even worse, but then they went and bragged about it. More »

Why Don't We Have Color E-Ink Readers Here In The U.S.?
While there are a number of full-color devices like the Kindle Fire or the Nook that are sold as e-readers, there is a segment of the e-book reading world that views them as dumbed-down tablets with too-bright backlit screens that suck up battery power. Many of these people have been waiting for a color version of the E-Ink technology used in all the non-Fire Kindles and a few other readers to eventually become a reality. Well, now it is, but you won't be seeing it stateside in the near future. More »

Barnes & Noble Eyeing The Idea Of Breaking Up With Nook
Things with Barnes & Noble and its main squeeze Nook are a little frosty at the moment, as the company says it's looking to separate from the costly e-book business. B&N didn't do as well in the e-reader market this year, and keeping the relationship going would be more expensive than they'd like. More »

Barnes & Noble Now Selling Electronics, Furniture, Rugs & Just About Everything Else
For years, Barnes & Noble's website has been competing with Amazon for the online book market. The two companies even square off directly in the realm of ebooks, each selling its own proprietary eReader. But aside from dabbling in music and movies, B&N has let Amazon be the online superstore where you can buy almost anything. Until now. More »

Barnes & Noble Won't Sell Physical Copies Of Kindle Exclusive Comics
After DC Comics gave exclusive digital rights to Amazon for a few of its comic book titles, Barnes & Noble is getting revenge by refusing to sell physical copies of those books in its stores. More »

Barnes & Noble Greets Borders Customers With Letter From CEO
Now that Borders has gone belly-up, Barnes & Noble could totally sweep in and be all like, "na na na na na na!" But instead, it seems they're taking the high road and being pretty cool to the formers Borders customers grieving over their bookstore. More »

Judge Holds Up Borders Sale Due To Privacy Concerns
Things are so bad for Borders that the company can't even seem to fail properly. A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge threw a hurdle in front of the proposed $15.8 million sale of intellectual property to Barnes & Noble, demanding that paperwork must clarify privacy rights for 48 million customers whose data will be swapped in the transaction. More »

Touchpad Seekers Flood Barnes & Noble Phone Lines During Textbook Season
James ordered his law school books for the semester from Barnes & Noble, and an issue that would only be a tiny hiccup under normal circumstances is now holding the whole darn thing up. That's because customer service lines are so flooded with customers calling about their HP Touchpad orders that he can't even get through. More »

Adventures In Ordering A Clearanced HP TouchPad
RIP, HP TouchPad. A long time ago—well, about three months ago—HP claimed that their WebOS-based tablet would be the greatest on the market. Now, our tipline is buzzing with customers clamoring to get their hands on a TouchPad tablet: not because it's a hot tech toy, but because the product's being discontinued, and retailers dumping them for $100 or $150 depending on storage capacity. More »

For the first time ever, a Nook has beaten the Kindle in the Consumer Reports ratings. More »

Barnes & Noble Unveils Its New Nook Simple Touch Reader
Fans of the Nook e-reader who don't want to shell out $250 for the color version will be happy to hear that Barnes & Nobles has finally introduced its newest, cheaper e-Reader today, turning up the heat for Amazon's Kindle. More »

An Open Letter To You From An Employee At A Liquidating Bookstore
Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of a clerk behind the register at your favorite bookstore which is being liquidated in a bankruptcy sale? What do they make of all of it? What are their hopes and dreams? Are they just mentally picturing making everyone's head explode? Well nows your chance to plumb those depths, as McSweeny's has published a humorous open letter written by an employee at one of these stores *cough* Borders *cough*. More »

Barnes & Noble Wants Submissions For Nook Apps
Barnes & Noble is looking for help in making its Nook e-reader more versatile. The bookseller has opened itself to app submissions, allowing garage code-tinkerers everywhere to dream that their creations will be used by people who own the device. More »

Microsoft Says Nook Infringed On Its Patents
Believing the Nook e-readers are ripping it off, Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble and the manufacturers over the devices, which it says infringe on several patents. More »

No One Has The Power To Refund My Barnes & Noble/GameStop Order
When you buy a video game from Barnes & Noble online, the order is actually fulfilled by GameStop. A nice little bit of corporate synergy and specialization, right? The problem is that when you make a mistake or something goes wrong with your order, you enter a strange state of e-commerce purgatory, with each retailer claiming that the other is the only one empowered to change or cancel your order. That's what happened to Patrick, whose order has now lurked in corporate synergy purgatory for an entire month. More »

Barnes & Noble Bot: Your Order Is Canceled And You Get No Refund (Updated)
UPDATE: Barnes & Noble refunded Meghan's money and gave her a $25 gift certificate. The original post follows: More »

Book Chains Won't Honor My Exchange Unless I Buy Discount Cards
Clifton says two book stores, both part of large chains, refused to accept his receipt-less returns unless he signed up for the stores' discount cards. A former bookstore employee, Clifton balked at clerks' assertions that the exchanges weren't possible unless he signed up. More »

Nook Deletes All Your Files, Barnes & Nobles Shrugs
If you own a Nook, you better make sure you regularly update its software, otherwise you might lose all your files that are not B&N books. That's what happened to Michael, and customer service told him that it can happen if the device hasn't been updated recently. The updates are too much for it to handle so it has to spontaneously jettison all foreign objects! Or something like that. More »

Barnes & Noble Canceled My Order, Doubled Price
Beth ordered two copies of a gift set from Barnes & Noble, only to see the order canceled and the price hiked from $11.14 to $22.50 on a different listing of the same item. More »

Barnes & Noble's Digital Textbook Rental Service Is Great, Except For The Downloading Your Textbook Part
Before you spend money on a time-sensitive e-textbook rental from Barnes & Noble's new NOOKstudy application, take a look through the complaints that have popped up in the past few days on the bookseller's customer forum. Several threads exist where students are complaining that their rentals aren't coming through, but it seems B&N's tech support was away for the weekend because there's been no official response yet. More »

When Do Chain Stores Become Part Of The 'Neighborhood Fabric'?
Two decades ago, when Barnes & Noble stores began popping up in every shopping center, strip mall and vacant lot in America, community advocates and fans of locally owned stores pointed at the chain as another example of a homogenized corporation coming in and erasing part of a neighborhood's identity. But people still shopped there, and most people have gotten accustomed to the B&N being part of their local landscape. So much so that the NY Times has penned an elegy to one Manhattan Barnes & Noble that is closing its doors. More »

Barnes & Noble Wants To Sell Itself, But Who's Gonna Buy It?
Barnes & Noble shares are soaring after it announced that it was up for sale and may even go private, or merge with Borders. More »

Puppy Game Features Ill-Advised Phallic Puzzle Shapes
The Barnes and Noble website says that the Golden Puppies 500 piece shaped puzzle has "surprise shapes hidden within." Indeed it does. More »

E-Readers Getting Rolled Under Tablet Juggernaut
Remember when e-readers like the Kindle came out and everyone got all excited and companies jumped in to copy them and make their own e-readers? Yeah, turns out that wasn't such a good idea. Seems if you're not Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Sony, your e-reader model won't survive the onslaught of tablets like the iPad. More »

Amazon Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcovers
Hardcover books have a lot going against them — they're expensive, often unwieldy, easily damaged. And now Amazon.com, which first made its name by selling books at deep discounts online, says it sells significantly more titles for its Kindle e-reader than it does in hardcover. More »

After Replacing My Broken Nook Four Times, Barnes & Noble Has Given Up
Lisa's luck with the Nook e-reader is bad enough to make Xbox 360 owners weep. Since buying her first Nook in February, she's had to warranty it out five times. On the first four occasions the customer service department was quick to replace the busted device, but the fifth go-round has been anything but charming. More »

If You Sell A Nook For $259 + $50 "Free" Gift Card, Then Drop The Price More Than $50...
Here's a puzzle for you. B&N just cut the price of the Nook e-reader by $60. Over the Father's Day weekend, the Nook was $259 with a "free" $50 gift card. One PC World reader who got this deal called B&N to ask if he could have a refund of the price difference and was told he could only have $10 because he got a gift card. Now he wants to know if he's been shafted. More »

A Weird And Expensive Way To Get A Free Cup Of Coffee At A Bookstore
If you're one of the few people who own a Nook and enjoy taking it to Barnes & Noble to read a digital file you bought rather than paging through something off the shelf for free, you're in luck this month. Barnes & Noble has some free coffee to reward your labor intensive, counterproductive, fiscally unsound practices. More »

Once You Break Your Nook, No One Can Repair It
If you buy a nook from Barnes & Noble and think there might be any possibility whatsoever that you could drop it, be sure to buy a protection plan for it. That's because if the nook breaks and you didn't buy an extended warranty, no one at Barnes and Noble can fix it. Not even if you offer to pay for the repairs. More »

Barnes & Noble Sells Me Broken E-book, Won't Refund
Brantley says he bought an e-book from Barnes & Noble via his Nook device, but improper formatting gutted the content. He feels burned and asked for a refund, but B&N refuses. More »

Barnes & Noble Offers Great Battlefield Bad Company 2 Deal, Then Changes Its Mind
For a brief, shining moment, Barnes & Noble let customers pre-order the upcoming PC game Battlefield Bad Company 2 for $19.95, far below the retail price. Gamers were skeptical, but placed orders anyway. Their skepticism was well-founded, since the retailer caught the error and canceled all of the mistaken pre-orders...nine days after the deal began to go viral. More »

Barnes & Noble Is Unfailingly Polite While Breaking Promises To Customers
Did you think that perhaps Barnes & Noble's epic problems getting the Nook e-reader in the hands of customers by Christmas would be over after Christmas? Not quite. Jesse Vincent blogged about his experience of broken promises, mysteriously canceled orders, and how Barnes & Noble still hasn't even sent the famous $100 gift card that Nook customers were promised. More »

Barnes & Noble Promises Nook Arrival By Christmas, Unless You're In Alaska
Laurie in Alaska tells Consumerist that she ordered a Nook from Barnes & Noble that was intended as a Christmas present. The shipping date kept getting pushed back, but customers were assured that their e-readers would arrive in time for Christmas, no matter what. Except Laurie's order shipped early this morning, USPS Priority Mail, which normally takes at least a week to reach Alaska. More »

Barnes & Noble Will Send You $100 If Nook Doesn't Show Up By Christmas
Barnes & Noble keeps pushing the delivery date for pre-ordered Nooks back. Realizing that many of the e-readers were purchased as Christmas gifts, they're sending a $100 bribe gift card to the delivery addresses for pre-ordered Nooks that aren't slated to arrive by December 24th. More »

B&N Ebook Reader Lets You Loan A Book Just Once

—>One of the big selling points about the Nook, the new ebook reader introduced this week by Barnes & Noble, is that unlike Amazon they'll let you virtually "loan" your ebook to a friend for up to 14 days (if the publisher allows it). What they don't tell you—some smart readers over at MobileRead sussed it out—is that you can only do this one time per book. You'd better lend wisely—and your friend had better finish that book within 14 days.  More »

B&N Wraps Public Domain Books In DRM To Protect Authors' Copyrights. What?

—>The ebook "war" is a race to the bottom, apparently, with Barnes & Noble trying to out-do Amazon on DRM stupidity. A reader emailed B&N customer service to point out that their "free books" offer consists of 5 public domain titles that are no longer protected under copyright, yet are still locked down with digital rights management (DRM). Their response? "For copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed."  More »

Free Wifi For All At Barnes & Noble Stores

—>The new ebook offering from Barnes & Noble may not be that compelling—it's all the DRM badness of Amazon, but not always the lower prices—and yet something awesome has come out of it. Starting immediately, all customers can access free Wi-Fi in any B&N store.  More »

Get Ready For More AT&T Data Slowdowns

—>Oh jeez, AT&T, don't you have enough on your plate? You can't handle your iPhone customers as it is. TechCrunch says some customers' voicemails go missing for days or even weeks, you can't enable MMS because there's no room for it on your system, and the "faster" 3GS isn't any faster at all on your network. Now comes word that you'll be the one providing so-called "connectitivty" for Barnes & Noble's new ebook reader coming out next year. The result: more congestion for every AT&T customer.  More »

Academic Publisher Pays Professors For Shill Amazon Reviews

—>This story is a little old, but was just brought to our attention this weekend. Elsevier, which is sort of the Death Star of academic publishing, was caught offering $25 Amazon gift cards to professors who gave the book five-star reviews on Amazon.  More »

Barnes & Noble's new iPhone app comes with a virtual coupon--there's a one-time-only code you show the in-store barista to receive a free cup of coffee. [MocoNews.net]  More »

Barnes & Noble College Bookstores Sends Email Reminder That You Don't Want Them To Send You Email

—>Gosh, this is really thoughtful of the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the Georgia Tech campus. They sent Steve an email reminder that at some point in the past, he explicitly opted out of receiving any email communications from them in the future. See, he may have forgotten that he didn't want to be contacted, and how else would he remember it if B&N didn't contact him to let him know? Update: Shane at Mississippi State University received the same helpful reminder from his campus bookstore, also run by B&N.  More »

Barnes & Noble Error Leaves Gift Card Unused, Doubles Charges On Credit Card
It's bad enough when a glitch on a retailer's side screws up your method of payment, but Barnes & Noble took so long to investigate and respond to one customer's emails that by the time they acknowledged they'd made a mistake, they said it was too late to do anything about it. More »

The Friendly Reminder Amazon And Barnes & Noble Would Prefer We Kept To Ourselves
Are you listening?  More »

Illiteracy at Barnes & Noble Deflates Coupon

—>Shouldn't the base minimum requirement for a Barnes & Noble clerk be the ability to read?  More »

Consumers Speak: Barnes & Noble's Four-Day Cancellation Delay
experience, in the spirit of holiday outrage. Ho ho ho!Take a look at her perfectly reasonable complaint letter after the jump. The gist? BN.com waited four days before they told her that they wouldn't be able to fulfill her order. Sort of makes it hard to get stuff by Christmas, doesn't it?  More »