Josh Spilker

great stuff from the @therealcurley & @vol1brooklyn

i’ve always loved detroit for some reason. i like decrepit, failing places i guess. i’ve already ‘detroit city is the place to be’ by binelli and finally “detropia” finally made it to netflix. i was about to dive into ‘detroit’ by charlie leduff, but now i’m taking this warning.

verge has reported that the nook is on its last legs as an entity of barnes & noble. what could they have done differently?

5. never make a tablet. at least not when B&N did.

the nook was too late in an a hot product segment.

4. consolidate the number of stores.

this is still a possibility. a smaller footprint with excellent shipping prowess—who’s in?

3. digital ebooks are obviously not going away, but that means…

just make your app really killer with loads of deals. the bookstore space is still up for grabs, and with continual app features (annotations, author extras, innovative ways to navigate like keywords or themes) could have saved/enhanced the business more than the Nook could at a lower cost.

2. or you really want a hardware device? keep it low & low.

make it low tech to compete with the lowest Kindle and low price as an entry point for the hardcore reader communities—i’m talking mystery, sci-fi, and romance. it’s not sexy, but if you would become the key device for those groups, you’re set.

1. author services.

yeah, this is a page from amazon, but you free up your space to self-published authors (for a limited time…say 2 months?) in a regional area with a hefty fee and you have one key ingredient that Amazon doesn’t have: floor space. friends & family come in and snatch these up, and then the books go away unless the author re-ups again, but they’d always be available online. maybe keep the bestsellers, but otherwise there are happy authors who recommend your store to their friends.