Is B&N downhill?

[LeonardDHilleyII]

I joined the board over there a little while back, but all I heard was the echoing of my own voice and the occasional shuffling of feet.

Yep, same here.  The boards are stagnant.

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

As for the price aspect, I find the higher I price my books for Nook, the better they sell. So all are at $2.99 at the moment.

I was going to say the same thing when I saw these comments. My books that are selling the same as on Amazon are priced between $3.99 to $4.99.  In fact the books I am selling the most are priced $4.95 and $4.99.

I wonder if it holds true for other authors.

[scottnicholson]

hmm I barely pay attention to BN. My sales went down but I thought it was a summer effect. However, they are prone to reporting glitches. Or--hey, maybe they just decided to rip everybody off. Given their other infrastructure problems, a glitch is not unexpected, but let's hope it's sorted out if so. It would be almost impossible to ever audit them, especially for indies.

But with some reporting an uptick, I'd say it's just the natural rhythm of things. BN is clearly far more heavily skewed toward female readers, judging by the bestseller list, the recommendations, and the fact that erotica tends to do much, much better there (Amazon is a bit stuffy in that area).

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

Yep, same here.  The boards are stagnant.

Almost everyone agrees that BN discussion boards are stagnant, especially in comparison with kindle boards.
I have 2 questions if anyone cares to answer/comment:

1. Why it is so? The only reason appears to be lack of interest in boards by BN.  They don't lack authors and readers.

2. Is there any other place, their authors promote nook books? I am talking specifically for nook books.

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

I have 2 questions about B&N stagnant boards if anyone cares to answer/comment:
1. Why it is so? The only reason appears to be lack of interest in boards by BN.  They don't lack authors and readers.
2. Is there any other place, their authors promote nook books? I am talking specifically for nook books.

Almost everyone agreed that BN discussion boards are stagnant, but no body bothered to respond.

My sales for this month at B&N are twice as much as Amazon. It's still a mystery. So BN is still in game. I am curious if anyone else noticed this trend.

[historicalromauthor]

B&N is a HUGE mystery to me. I have no idea why certain books fly of the shelves and why others don't (of course minus the blockbuster authors).  What DOES concern me about PubIt is how when rolling over their totals into the next day, they've managed to lose some of my sales. I've immediately emailed them to let them know and they have rectified the lost books without questions. This does disturb me.

[J.L. McPherson]

I sell more paperbacks through createspace than I do ebooks at B&N. I don't know what the deal is overthere. Do people even read on Nooks anymore ?

[M.B. Ryther]

I have a Nook Color and I LOVE IT! Greatest gadget since the TV remote in my opinion. That being said, I still go to Amazon to look for books. Searching is easier, reviews are more numerous, etc., etc. After I find what I want, then I go to B&N and buy it. I've never been disappointed in the buying process or the quality of the ebooks. In fact, they seem to look better than the Kindle's overall (fewer formatting glitches and the color, of course).

Now if only my selling experiences could be as sunny. Sales have been worse than dismal there the last three three months. The funny thing is when I started in the ebook business in January, BN sales far outranked Amazon's. Now I go weeks without a sale. It's like a virtual ghost town/store. I love the Pubit! process and hope things take a turnaround. Time will tell.

Melaine



       

[Aynoit Ashor]

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and experiences.  My sales on BN have been very slow.  I am going to take some of your tips and use them. Thanks again.

[ShaunaG]

I have a Nook Color and I LOVE IT! Greatest gadget since the TV remote in my opinion. That being said, I still go to Amazon to look for books. Searching is easier, reviews are more numerous, etc., etc. After I find what I want, then I go to B&N and buy it. I've never been disappointed in the buying process or the quality of the ebooks. In fact, they seem to look better than the Kindle's overall (fewer formatting glitches and the color, of course).

Same for me, except I have the original Nook.

As far as the boards, there isnt much we can do for each other over there, except for the like button. And my sales my first month I sold twice as many on B&N than amazon then the last two months i've sold like one a week or so. They really need to do something to make customers like it better or they're gonna go the way of Borders.

[Decon]

I've only recently uploaded my 13 shorts to B&N through smashwords, although only 10 of them have shown up. I have no way of knowing If I have made sales even though every story is showing "people who bought this book also bought." The problem is all the also boughts are identical and I have a suspicion no one has bought them and it is just creative marketing on B&N's behalf. Can't wait for smashwords first sales report although I am not sure how that works.

[AmandaBixby]

I'm not sure what is going on at BN.  I put my historical romances on recently and had no sales.  I emailed support about the lack of sales on the report when there were verified sales from family members.  I received no response, two days later there were 2 sales on my report, but nothing more since then.  It's possible that my books just aren't selling, but they have sold 200+ books already this month on Amazon in the same time period.  I'm feeling a little uneasy about publishing with Pub it.

[FastPop]

Barnes & Noble is still a great eBook marketplace. Searching and discovering books is a very different experience, however. The Kindle Store is still king among eBook marketplaces.

[LilianaHart]

I've actually shown a huge increase in B&N sales. I just released a quartet of novellas, and they've sold way better on BN than Amazon, but I think it has everything to do with website placement. BN put me in a really good spot on under new releases. I'm nowhere to be seen on the Amazon new releases page. I've also noticed my BN buyers are more apt to buy my $2.99/$3.99 books.

[Gretchen Galway]

I'm also optimistic about B&N sales. My romantic comedy Love Handles does better over there than at Amazon. Just today I had a mystery spike and I had that little fantasy that somehow I'd been profiled somehow. But it's only a handful of sales, just more than usual.

I agree the large number of female Nookbook readers is to my benefit here. And that their search/display output is a mystery.

[Decon]

I was going to say the same thing when I saw these comments. My books that are selling the same as on Amazon are priced between $3.99 to $4.99.  In fact the books I am selling the most are priced $4.95 and $4.99.

I wonder if it holds true for other authors.

My compilation of shorts, Lunch Break Thrillers, is my best seller at $4.99 on Kindle. I haven't uploaded it to B&N yet

[Emeline Danvers]

Ugh.  The nook.  *muttered in a disgusted tone*

At first I loved it.  I had problems from the get-go, but their ultra-friendly (foreign) customer service helped me straighten it all out.  Eventually.

Then I found out you can't download anything, even free books, if you have no room on your credit card.  It doesn't even matter if you have a BN gift card to use--the DRM is tied to the credit card.  No credit=no books.  Oh, and if you change credit cards and/or email addresses?  A whole new hell erupts.  You will spend forever on the phone with customer service.

Ahhh, customer service.  So polite as they tell you, no matter what your problem is, that you must de-register your nook.  Or do that thing where you push the power button a bunch of times and wipe the nook.  So much fun.    Once, they insisted the only way to fix a problem was to de-register.  I eventually fixed it on my own, without de-registering it.  It was a simple fix, but no one at B&N had a clue what to do. But don't worry.  They are super polite while telling you, sometimes unintelligibly, that they are sorry you are having this problem.  Again.  And again.  Hope you love re-downloading all your books over and over again.

Oh yeah, the downloads.  Super slow compared to Kindle.  I don't have that many books on my nook, but they half of them are no longer on it.  Got tired of the re-downloads taking forever.  Many times I got an error message. Once that happens, you have to call nook customer service to ask them what the problem is.  Often they don't even know.  Their solution?  Yep, de-register and re-register.

Did I mention the slow page-turns, even after the latest update?  Now that I have a Kindle, I want to run over the nook every time I use it.  (My husband has it now.)

And that's to say nothing of the legendary crappy search engine.  It's better online, but like many others, I would use Amazon's search engine, then buy on the nook.  But that leads me too...

The fact that there are some books B&N don't carry.  Especially in the non-fiction category.  And I'm not talking indie books.  I'm talking big time books here.  That's what pushed me over the edge.  Then....

AAAAAAAAAAAAALLELUJIA!  Angels sang.  Clouds parted.  And down came the shining Kindle!  Okay, I had my husband pick it up from a local store.  But that's what it felt like!

No more frozen-up nook!  No more de-registering! No more nook wiping! Faster page turns!  Text-to speech feature (I LOOOOOOOVE that)!  The ability to return books that the author misrepresented! And I haven't had to call customer service once.  Yaaaaay!

*sigh*  I love my kindle.  And Amazon.  I don't care if some people think Amazon is the devil.  I love it.

 

[SJWrightAuthor]

At the beginning of April, my sales on B&N went totally crazy.  One one day, I ended up selling 423 books!
I still have no clue how that happened.  Anyway, since then my books have continued to sell well on B&N.
So far this month, I've sold 552 books on B&N and those same two books on Amazon have only sold 104 copies.
Weird.

[BarbaraKE]

I can't speak about selling at BN but, as a reader, I've given up on looking for books there.  It's a shame really, I'd love to support them but they make it very difficult. 

(That's not meant as a slam against Amazon.  I think Amazon is wonderful but, as a matter of principle, I dislike one company totally dominating a market.  And I'd hate to see the bookstores disappear.)

Anyway, my sons gave me a color Nook for my birthday.  I agree with the previous poster that said it is a wonderful device - and the color is exceptional - but I wish it were as easy to use out of the box as the kindle.

[Richardcrasta]

I have to say that joining Nook was a wonderfully easy experience and publishing easy too--and my first month's sales a fantastic one-third of Amazon's. But the sales have dropped by 75% on Nook in July, compared to a 25% drop on Amazon in the same period. Can't understand why.

Have people made any conclusions about pricing on the Nook and the Apple store? Whether higher prices work better for these two?

And what is the address for the B&N forum?
thanks.
Richard

[MichaelWallace]

For all that we complain about the Amazon algorithms, the B&N algorithms are far more inscrutable. In June, my books finally started to pick up in the B&N store. The last three days of the month I sold more than March, April, and May put together. And then on July 1, they stopped. I don't mean they slowed down, I mean they disappeared. I went from selling several dozen a day to selling zero. My first sale didn't come until the 8th. In the last couple of days, I've sold a handful, but it's like someone saw that my books were doing well, did a hard reset on all the algorithms, and made me start over. I can't figure out what happened.

[Steven Konkoly]

I've had my boo on both since it's launch last October, and I've consistently seen an 80 to 1 sales ratio (each month). I'm always amazed by authors that do better over there, than at Amazon. I'd love to know the secret. 

[LKWatts]

I've been published since the middle of April and I have only had 2 sales with B&N. I sell loads more books with Amazon. But I can't really say anything about their site because I let Smashwords distribute the book for me.