schmiddi’s posterous

Now, Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) has come up short on the inventory of units for its device–the Nook. The book retailer chain said “Preorders have exceeded our expectations.”

Barnes & Noble and Sony came into the e-reader market to challenge the extremely successful Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle which has established a large enough market to prove the devices are popular. Several research firms say that they expect e-reader sales to hit three million this holiday season. Amazon is the only competitor in the field which has effectively managed its inventory. That leaves Barnes & Noble and Sony with little more than the embarrasement of botched launches.

reading stories like these just make me wonder who is paying people like douglas mcintyre ... but it certainly explains why they don't allow comments on their site.

so more or less what doug says is that b&n sucks because it's nook is selling like hot cakes ... and he praises amazon because the kindle is sitting idle on store (at least virtual ones) shelfs. yes the nook won't be shipping before christmas, but that is only for those people that haven't ordered one yet. those that have will get theirs before christmas ... and there seem to be so many of them that is by far outstripped the plans of b&n which very likely are based on sales forecasts for ebooks like the one cited by doug.
in the past the business press has been fairly pessimistic for ebook readers and their sales potential. so now that one company is having success in selling one it gets dinged for underestimating the market potential.
i am sorry, but what doug is missing here is a bigger story and that is that ebook readers are becoming much more popular than most people following the space have thought so far. at least that is what this tells me.