Last September, Barnes & Noble (s BKS) launched two new tablets. The Nook HD and HD+, ranging in price from $199 to $299, were designed to be reader-centric devices. They included features like children’s accounts and curated “channels” to help readers discover new books.

These features, Barnes & Noble hoped, would be enough to attract buyers — but they weren’t kidding themselves that users would be persuaded to buy a Nook instead of an iPad. “You have an iPad, I have one,” a company exec said at a briefing at the time, seemingly acknowledging that the Nook HD wouldn’t be anybody’s first choice. Rather, Barnes & Noble clearly hoped that the Nook tablets’ prices and features might be enough to entice users away from other lower-priced tablets like the Kindle (s AMZN) Fire and Nexus (s GOOG) 7.

It didn’t work. Fast-forward a year and Barnes & Noble’s Nook business is…