A lot has been said about Barnes and Noble’s new eBook reader, nook. It’s got a lot of innovative features, and it looks to be the first legitimate contender to the Amazon Kindle, the current king of the castle.
One feature that’s been getting a lot of press is the “LendMe” function which allows you to take a book you have purchased and “lend” it to a friend (with a nook) for a limited period of time. Just like a real book, when you lend something out, it gets removed from you library.
At first it seems like a pretty solid feature, but when you think about it, it misses the point. B&N is banking on the fact that people have this established behavior of lending books, and that when you lend a book you no longer have it in your possession. However, this behavior also operates on the notion of physical scarcity (i.e. “This is my singular copy, you may take it from me”). With digital distribution, there is no scarcity. Due to the nature of the medium, just because I have one, doesn’t mean you can’t. We can both have it at the same time because it exists in 1’s and 0’s not covers and pages.
I know this idea goes contrary to their business model, but one has to think that if a company continues to build business models on outdated ideas and concepts, they’re backing themselves into a corner already.
My name is Matt J McDonald and I'm a New Marketing Strategist based in Charleston, SC.
