Maybe you saw my unfounded rumor posting the other day. I simply seemed to me that Wal-Mart could do well to buy B&N and Smashwords. Since then I have seen two other mentions of the possibility of buying B&N. The most recent one was this morning from DBW.

In a post entitled “Amazon: A Cheetah Hunting Gazelles (Publishers)” we read this

Real Competition From Barnes & Noble? 

Industry consultant Joseph Esposito has also been studying Amazon and its competitors and shared the Digital Book World stage with Brad Stone. In talking about Amazon’s competition, calling the Yonkers, NY branch of Barnes & Noble a “disgrace.”

For those publishers worried that continued poor results at the nation’s largest bricks-and-mortar book retailer might mean its demise, Esposito speculated a way out.

“I fully expect Wal-Mart to buy Barnes & Noble,” he said.

He reasoned that companies like Wal-Mart, H-P and others that Amazon is increasingly competing with will not forever tolerate the e-tailer’s encroaching on to their territory and will fight back. In this case, Wal-Mart would be fighting back by acquiring a major Amazon competitor and propping it up.

However, B&N may not be enough. They need DRM-free ePUBs

As I mentioned in my previous article, they need something better for authors than NookPress. In fact they need something better than the Nook. They need to sell ebooks without DRM, so people can have a choice where they read. Then they can safely dump Nook while keeping the online sales—to build upon.

Related articles

• Wal-Mart promises to catch up to Amazon in two years (teleread.com)
• What if Walmart bought Nook & Smashwords? (bergsland.org)
• 4 Reasons Barnes & Noble’s Nook Crashed And Burned (businessinsider.com)