Apparently product launches are not the only thing Barnes and Noble is capable of messing up. There was a Nook giveaway on the Ellen Show today – except, there were no Nooks – only gift certificates.
We shouldn’t feel sorry for the audience as in addition to the Nook gift certificate they got a PowerMat, a MiFi, and perhaps best of all a Nokia netbook and a Palm Pixi.
Ellen was so into the Nook she held it upside down -
Not exactly a ringing endorsement is it?
Perhaps she thought the Nook was supposed to have a smiley face and shutter shades.
Here’s what Ellen said -
This light weight Nook is an ebook reader that can carry up to 1500 books … and can download newspapers and magazines.
It’s not even in stores yet but thanks to Barnes and Noble you all get a $300 gift card to order.
Is that it?
- Mr. Bezos lines up an interview and a hearty endorsement for the Kindle from Oprah (she called it her favorite new gadget and said that it had changed her life).
- All B&N can do is get Ellen to hold up a Nook upside down?
Ellen has also endorsed the Sony Reader in the past and no one seemed to notice or care.
As you can imagine there is very little coverage and if it weren’t for TechFlash in Seattle wouldn’t have found this. TechFlash fail to notice the upside down endorsement.
The official Nook Blog not only fail to notice the upside down Nook, they actually have it as the picture for their blog entry.
As far as Nook availability, a forum user at the official Nook Forum claims that customer service told him that Nooks will be shipping on the 7th and reaching on the 8th – that’s Tuesday of next week., Hopefully we start getting some descriptive, detailed nook reviews then.
By the way – If waiting over a month for the Nook isn’t your cup of tea, the Kindle is available now.
Filed under: Barnes Noble Nook Tagged: | nook ellen, oprah kindle
The comments in reaction to that B&N blog entry are as funny as Ellen’s upside-down endorsement. Not an ideal PR moment in a vendor blog.
B&N really has to have these in some early orderer hands by the 7th-9th – those dates are with overnight shipping, so I wonder what is holding them up from shipping already.