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Barnes & Nobels ‘NOOK’ hacked down.
[The Passive Voice] Yesterday, PG posted about a severe computer outage at Barnes & Noble that reportedly took down the system Barnes & Noble’s physical stores use for orders, inventory control, etc., as well as the Nook store and the ability of Nook users to synchronize their devices, access ebooks not already stored on their Nooks, etc.

This problem took Barnes & Noble about three days from the first report PG read to fix the problem.

To the best of PG’s current knowledge, only two websites, GoodEreader (October 10) and The Digital Reader (October 13), reported on the outage.

Ergo, the entire Nook system went down and nobody noticed.
We had a report here, thanks to Rantburger and Nook owner M. Murcek.
PG suspects if Amazon’s ebook store went offline went offline for an hour or two, let alone for three days, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and major US television networks would all cover the story.

PG suggests that this is perhaps the best evidence yet that the Nook ereader and Nook’s ebookstore don’t matter any more. Perhaps they’re not dead (at least today), but are semi-comatose.

At least in North America, it appears that Kobo may be #2 behind the Zon.

Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt, the hope for traditional publishing’s future in the US, has, to the best of PG’s knowledge, had nothing to say about the ebook disaster (and physical bookstore ordering, etc., disaster) that appears to have been occurring in the US company for which he is the CEO.

If PG has missed something that Daunt or Barnes & Noble PR department has said about this matter, he would be happy to hear about it via the Contact link for The Passive Voice.

Posted by: 3dc 2020-10-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=584768