Barnes & Noble (BKS) Keeps NOOK Promotional Pricing Going; Are Soft Sales the Culprit?

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) is pressured Monday amid speculation that its NOOK tablets are failing to gain any notable market share and its pulling out all the stops to do so.

In a press release today, Barnes & Noble said it was extending its "Best Ever" prices on NOOK devices following last week's Father's Day promotion.

One portion of the release curiously points to all the Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) features of the NOOK line, including the Chrome browser, Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Maps. All of those features are available on just any tablet running Android or can be accessed via Internet on most any tablet.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) sells its Kindle Fire starting at $159 while Google's Nexus 7 starts at $199. Barnes & Noble's NOOK HD starts at $129 for 8-gigabytes of memory with the promotion, while its NOOK HD+ begins at $149.

It could be that Barnes & Noble simply wants to sell more content, which generally boasts higher margins, and potentially phase out the NOOK next year. In any case, more promotions mean an item isn't selling as good as it could be.

Shares of Barnes & Noble are up 1.2 percent.

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