Amazon stole the tablet show, unveiling its new Kindle Fire tablet while revealing its price will be $199.
Ouch, said Barnes & Noble, America's largest bookstore chain which relies heavily on sales of its Nook and Nook Color. Amazon's Fire tablet is $50 cheaper than the Nook Color. Amazon also announced it will slash prices on its.Kindle ereaders

Investors trashed Barnes & Noble's stock on the news, sending company shares down 6.89 percent, or 91 cents, to $12.30 on the day. That may seem like a quick over-reaction, but there's more to it than that.

Here are five reasons Amazon could drive a nail in Barnes & Noble's coffin:

1) The Nook has arguably saved Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp, positioning the company well in the digital realm as sales at brick and mortar chain bookstores shrivel. Borders went bankrupt, for instance, because it was too late and too weak with its digital entries. The Nook has sold been solid, and respectable, but it has also been a drag on BN's earnings. Now, BN is forced to slash prices on its Nook products based upon Amazon now having set the pricing bar -- low.

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1. BN can't afford to lose money on hardware sales like Amazon can.

2) BN has reportedly been moving toward launching its own new tablet, reportedly called "Acclaim." Reports have suggested the product will be priced at $349. But since Amazon has more content, including streaming movies with its Prime subscriptions, it isn't likely that a higher priced tablet will have much of a chance competing against Amazon's lower-priced tablet. So not only will BN have to slash prices on its Nook products, including the Nook Color, but the company may have already lost on the Acclaim before the public has really even heard about the product.
The company can't afford to move backwards, because Chapter 11 is too close behind.

3) BN's online presence was better than what Borders ever had, since Borders was so late into that game. For years, Borders simply let Amazon run its online bookstore before the company launched its own site not long before filing bankruptcy and dissolving. But while bn.com has helped keep BN in business, the website is suddenly getting quite inferior to Amazon.com.
Simply, Amazon.com, and its Prime $79 annual subscription, gets stronger and stronger. The company is adding more content, including recently signed deals for movies and TV shows with CBS and Universal pictures. BN just doesn't have the money to get there. It's a case of the strong getting stronger and the weak getting left behind. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggested at today's Kindle Fire unveiling, it's about much more than the hardware.
That's true. Amazon has much more. And BN has less in comparison with each and every passing day.

4) BN's big advantage with the Nook is supposedly that it has brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country from which to sell the products. But that's more of a liability than an advantage. It's a costly way to sell digital products, since that real estate is not cheap. Because the company is laden with so much expensive retail real estate it doesn't have the nimbleness in e-products pricing that Amazon does.

5) Amazon's expected mass success with its Kindle Fire tablet -- most observers think Amazon will sell millions of the new product rather quickly -- will only further entrench the company's position as the ebooks leader. Sure, BN hasn't been too far behind, but that gap is likely to grow. And the farther Amazon pulls ahead, the less attractive BN becomes for investors when the company needs to raise capital.

In full disclosure, this isn't a wish that BN will die. The opposite is true. America's needs its largest bookstore chain. It's just that Amazon has just thrown down a competitive gauntlet that BN, already on shaky ground in a slowing book-sales world, simply can't afford. (end of David’s piece).

So, we’re watching all of this. As far as e-books, I was talking with another naysayer last week who tells me e-books are not credible; “they’re sleazy.” I informed him – not true anymore – many are credible, in fact, some top rated authors have benefitted. I will write about this in coming weeks.

As an Apple fan, I always wonder where “IT-The Great Apple” comes in. Obviously, the iPad can do anything better than anyone else. 

But apparently, the late, great Steve Jobs said “no Apple e-book” and no one believed him. In an article in Venturebeat.com by Paul Bouton on September 11,

“I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

He said Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this time, and also noted that Amazon never says how many Kindles is sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

Venturebeat then says, according to input, the Internet’s vote is in: Why believe him(Jobs)? Guardian correspondent Bobbie Johnson unearthed past quotes in which Jobs bluffed on video iPods:
“One of the things we say around Apple, and I paraphrase Bill Clinton from the 1992 presidential race, is ‘It’s about the music, stupid.’ … You can’t watch a video and drive a car. We’re focused on music.”

When author, speaker and leadership development coach Jacqueline Wales launched her business on living fearlessly six years ago, the economy was still on a twenty-year economic roller coaster - and risks, like gambling on the stock market, seemed like the American thing to do.
 

It's a book:  BERLITZ COMPLETE GUIDE TO CRUISING & CRUISE SHIPS 2012
It's the cruise expert - who has spent most of his life on the water: Douglas Ward
It's the 27th edition: the first 26th were effective.

October 19th --it's here. With an App.

Now in its 27th year, the eagerly awaited guide is the only cruise book you need –while the Berlitz Cruise Ships 2012 App provides easy search among 285 ships

Douglas Ward, as always, provides the industry with the list of highest ranking heavy hitters -- which ships are best in class? And then he goes on to reveal, in practical terms, as he provides guidance to all kinds of people -- families, singles, those seeking culture or just some good times, about how to make the best choice for your cruise vacation.

With an economy as turbulent (and unpredictable) as the waves themselves, it's become clear that a cruise vacation is a first choice for Americans watching their finances.

But it's also a first choice for families who want to enjoy vacation time together without having to slave over a hot stove while missing time at the beach. And... cruising has become a top choice, for adventure and luxury, providing trips through exotic waters (like the Amazon and Gambia Rivers), once-in-a-lifetime excursions; and chefs with many stars.

As Americans book cruises in record numbers, the cruise lines work hard to provide fresh choices in salty water, such as more theme cruises, language-specific ships, family reunion and occasion options, and freestyle dining. There are butlers and suites and the Royal Shakespeare Company, orchestras, rap music, so many kinds of bars and grills, and some lines will even pick up your bags from your home and you can find them in your stateroom when you board in another country.

The Complete Guide, filled with lively, no-holds-barred text and vibrant color photos (including maps of principal cruise destinations), is independent and is in no way subsidized by advertising or sponsorship

Cruising has become a very imaginative business. And with Mr. Ward spending up to 200 days a year on the seas researching first-hand what’s best (and worst) in all aspects of  cruise travel, we always look forward to his book. He's spent a lifetime sniffing out the new and different, and can tell you at the snap of a finger what's improved, where quality has taken a dive, and which ship has the best selection of delicate pastries.

Simply put, Ward says, the guide provides “a wealth of information and evaluations about the ships, life and services aboard them and how to get the most from the cruising experience.”

If your preference is to “cruise for your cruise” digitally, the Berlitz Cruise Ships app (US $9.99), which has enjoyed high ratings in its first year, allows users to instantly search though the array of cruise ships with just a couple of taps. The 2012 version features an enhanced interface, which helps lead the cruise-goer to his/her best possible cruise match-up, and is loaded with every ship review, current background on cruise lines, ship photos and a new design.

Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships 2012 can be purchased from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powells.com, independent bookstores and wherever fine books are sold for $24.99. The Berlitz Cruise Ships 2012 App can be purchased on the iTunes App Store for $9.99.

Feel free to write me - and I'll pass it on to Douglas: what is the most memorable detail of a great cruise experience you ever had? (I'll tell you mine and maybe if we're lucky, Douglas will give you some really interesting anecdotes about his adventures.) He has a great one about Antarctica.

In a Media Post piece, The Fast-Paced Future by Rick Bruner, posted on September 30, 2011, he said:
"In the few days since I was invited to write this, Google+ went public, Facebook announced Timeline, Amazon debuted its tablet, Fire, and its cloud-based browser, Silk, and the IAB reported ad spending on the Internet grew by 23% in the first half of 2011 compared to last year. The pace and scale of change in media we are witnessing is difficult to fathom, much less summarize in a few hundred words."

He highlights the trends - which we saw at OMMA - this way:

More media fragmentation. How many ways can you watch your favorite TV show? Pirated, DVD, DVR, streaming, VOD, downloaded to mobile, tablet, and on and on. And, oh right, broadcast. The landscape of media is undergoing radical, frenetic change. And beyond an explosion of new technological channels for consuming professionally produced media, a sea-change is the increasing popularity (and competition for professional media makers) of amateur social content, such as blogs, Twitter, homemade YouTube videos, Facebook and so on. This trend will continue. A limited counterbalancing trend is media aggregation platforms, such Facebook, where people browse media from all those channels in one spot. But the main impact for marketers is more work required on the part of media buyers combined with more technology attempting to reaggregate audiences, such as advertising exchanges. Complexity reigns for the foreseeable future in targeting audiences for appropriate brand messages.  

More intelligent personalization. Facebook, FlipBoard and Amazon (both as a marketing and in the form of its new Silk browser) are all good examples of how media companies and marketers are harnessing knowledge about people's interests, based on algorithmic analysis of digital media and shopping data exhaust, to better customize unique and hyper-relevant experiences for media consumers. Expect this to continue. The next most powerful shift we should expect is services able to aggregated such data from across siloed data stores presently to improve knowledge of people's tastes across media and shopping experiences. Imagine a service that mashed-up everything Facebook knows about your tastes with everything Amazon does, plus your account info from NetFlix, iTunes, Pandora/Spotify/LastFM, Yelp, IMDB and so on. Rather than hoarding this knowledge in secret for use only in behavioral targeted advertising, a winning service will deliver this as a direct user experience, with superior recommendations for a range of consumer desires. 

Advertisers will become "ROI Managers, managing ROI against sales impact. Advertisers are only beginning to get the upper hand on the blizzard of data generated by all of the new media and marketing systems that drive consumers' lives today. Mostly those programs remain disconnected and reactive. Winning marketers of tomorrow will excel at changing their perspective on ROI from simple campaign measurement to iterative, integrated, cross-channel management. At the heart of succeeding in that transition will be spend-to-impact analysis across and among marketing programs, providing an equalized basis for evaluating the impact of every marketing investment from television to direct mail to billboards to search advertising to social media programs. 

To this last issue, my fave Social Media expert, Steve Goldner, aka Social Steve, says:
"For the better part of two years, I have been suggesting the importance of the social media marketing funnel within social media. Today, I am here to say it has past its relevance. Key issues are 'sales' and 'ROI'. A marketing funnel has always had a 'sales' stage. I am suggesting that sales NOT be something that is measured for social media. Thus we should not look for social media ROI, but rather social media ROE (return of engagement).

This is not another loose definition of measuring the relevance of social media for business, but rather I provide some concrete parameters that really show a return to the business. Check out his article, “Social Media Model that Defines the End of the World as We Know It” at http://wp.me/pxjrG-k5 and add your thoughts."

What Steve is saying reminds me of how some clients view PR activities as they are practiced through traditional media placements (and now, social media). Small-to-mid sized companies want sales from PR. Corporate communications wants ROI based on reports generated by companies like Cision that have complicated dashboards that measure how much a company is talked about -- where the article appeared-- how many words etc. 


There are two things wrong with this:


1. A company's customer may be talking about his/her experience and refer to that company once in a front page article of say, The Wall Street Journal. Cision will weigh the value of that article (which was generated behind the scenes by the PR company) based on the client being mentioned only once -- and the article not being fully about that company. In fact, getting a third party endorsement from a customer in print is the most valuable PR any company can receive. It's real life anecdotes that engage readers' interest and build Reputation and Influence for the client. 


2. If some of the most credible, hard-working journalists were aware that their articles are being referenced and rated in ROI shekels, they would not be too happy. As a PR person and sometimes journalist, I always thought this was not only an inefficient way to rate the value of placements, it's also not smart. It means putting CONTENT AND ENGAGEMENT in a numerical system --- and what comes out the other end is garbage.


Yes, I know you need SOMETHING, but I would judge an article by its LEVEL OF ENGAGEMENT AND INFLUENCE, much as Steve has suggested for social media. The same principle applies to traditional media placements.