July 29, 2009

B&N offers free thingy to people with one of those whatchamacallits

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It’s years late and yet the timing — given the recent train wreck that Amazon has become — couldn’t have been better: Days after Barnes & Noble “fired a shot across the bow of Amazon.com and its Kindle e-book reader” with its announcement of its ebook reader and its ebookstore (see the earlier MobyLives story), the company has announced that it’s going to make it easier for customers to download ebooks to those devices by offering free Wi-Fi in its stores.

According to a report from Macworld, “the move to make Wi-Fi available for free in all Barnes & Noble stores seems partly geared to build customer awareness of the new eBookstore, along with promotional content like bestseller lists, new releases, celebrity book signings and more.”

Of course, in the midst of its admirable if plodding successes against Amazon of late, the company couldn’t leave well enough alone, throwing a quote from CEO Steve Riggio into the press release about how “”Barnes & Noble pioneered the concept of retail stores as community centers” …. making lots of internet wags wonder well, why then didn’t you do this five or six years ago like everyone else?

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

  • http://www.petelit.com Pete

    This will also make it more convenient for customers to find an interesting book on B&N’s shelves, look it up online on a laptop in the coffeeshop, and then buy it from Amazon at a steep discount to B&N’s store price. Whereas before, customers had to jot down the title and author, and wait until they got home to look it up and buy from Amazon. B&N is definitely enhancing the customer experience.

  • http://www.petelit.com Pete

    This will also make it more convenient for customers to find an interesting book on B&N’s shelves, look it up online on a laptop in the coffeeshop, and then buy it from Amazon at a steep discount to B&N’s store price. Whereas before, customers had to jot down the title and author, and wait until they got home to look it up and buy from Amazon. B&N is definitely enhancing the customer experience.

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