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The author structured his article as a rant and it shows, so I won't respond to every point. The central premise of his post is that B&N is in an innovators dil

The author structured his article as a rant and it shows, so I won't respond to every point. The central premise of his post is that B&N is in an innovators dilemma situation and will find it impossible to build ereaders. Then the author suggests it should build a reading app instead and just plow all its resources into that. Except it would have no content network behind it. Ergo: >>Or, if B&N can talk publishers off the DRM ledge and onto the watermarking perch, they could just switch to using iBooks when on iOS and have a book delivery app that doesn’t do anything but notify people when new books are ready to be copied into iBooks. Wow, why isn't this guy CEO? So in other words Amazon and B&N should get rid of their delivery networks and build a better reading application that will compete against apple which has: 1) a device 2) a content delivery network 3) a proprietary delivery format that they can add new features to 4) a builtin application And the value proposition is the reader app is better? Well, it if its you don't need to do anything the author suggests. You just need to improve your e-reading application. The author confuses needing to understand where the market is going with making up a fantasy world where nothing you have done to support your existing business should be accepted.

Terretta 14y ago
> So in other words Amazon and B&N should get rid of their delivery networks and build a better reading application... On the contrary, he says that's what B&N should not do. My guess is you misread the bullet points in the middle of the article as being his recommendation, when in fact they're another set of bullet points he says are mistaken. His final set of bullet points are the real ones, wherein he says B&N and Amazon should discontinue tablets and reader applications, and make better storefronts, letting Apple or third parties make the better reader.

Terretta 14y ago

> So in other words Amazon and B&N should get rid of their delivery networks and build a better reading application... On the contrary, he says that's what B&N should not do. My guess is you misread the bullet points in the middle of the article as being his recommendation, when in fact they're another set of bullet points he says are mistaken. His final set of bullet points are the real ones, wherein he says B&N and Amazon should discontinue tablets and reader applications, and make better storefronts, letting Apple or third parties make the better reader.