Barnes & Noble Posts 2nd Quarter Loss, But Nook Prevented Ever Bigger Losses

Book store chains have seen many problems recently, some even being forced to go out of business like what happened to Borders.So when Barnes & Noble reported a loss in the 2nd quarter ending on October 29th, this wasnt entirely unexpected.You dont need to be an experienced market analyst to understand that part of the loss could be due to the fact that more people are buying their books, such as romance books and the latest adventure books online rather than shopping in book stores.According to data from Market Watch, the bookstore giant has reported losses of $6.6 million during this quarter, which is around $0.17 per share.Results from the previous year werent good for Barnes & Noble either, as the company posted a loss of $12.6 million.However, one thing that is said to have saved Barnes & Noble from even more catastrophic losses would be great sales for the Nook Tablet.This device, costing $249 has been out for the past month and according to press reports, it is the best-selling version of the Nook so far.The Nook has a history which is similar to the Amazon Kindle.Both started out as simple e-reader devices, made to read electronic versions of books, as well as providing some limited online content accessibility, such as reading Wikipedia articles and checking email.However, market forces demanded that e-readers be more interactive, have color screens and have better internet connectivity overall.For this reason, Barnes & Noble has upgraded its e-reader device and released it as a tablet, offering better multimedia support, web browsing and of course a color screen.The market for online books is also growing.While previously, eBooks mainly consisted of books created by amateur authors such as erotic books, this has now expanded significantly.As such, many of the most successful and world acclaimed best sellers are now available in electronic format, due to the fact that an increasing number of people prefer to read books on an electronic device rather than on paper.This growth in popularity of eBooks has also helped boost up sales of devices that would let users read them in a comfortable way.While eBooks can be read on a desktop or laptop PCScience Articles, not everyone wants to sit in front of a computer screen while reading them.Devices such as the Nook Tablet let readers take their books where ever they want and to read them in a much more comfortable way than sitting down in front of a computer.