Barnes & Noble, Inc. announced that its Nook line of electronic book readers is the company’s biggest bestseller in it history.
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Unedited press release follows:
NOOK(TM) Line of eReading Devices Becomes Barnes & Noble’s Biggest Bestseller in Its History
NOOKcolor(TM) is Company’s Top Holiday Gift
Millions of NOOK(TM) Devices and Expansive Digital Catalog Combine to Result in Nearly One Million NOOKbooks Sold on Christmas Day
New York, New York – December 30, 2010 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced that with millions of NOOK eReading devices sold, the line has become the company’s biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history. The new NOOKcolor Reader’s Tablet, introduced just eight weeks before Christmas, is the company’s number one selling gift of the holiday season. Barnes & Noble also announced that it now sells more digital books than its large and growing physical book business on BN.com, the world’s second largest online bookstore. With its growth across device and NOOKbook™ sales over the critical holiday selling season, Barnes & Noble has successfully established itself as a leader in digital reading.
Demand for the critically acclaimed NOOKcolor remained high following the product’s introduction in late October through the holidays. Sales have continued to exceed the company’s high expectations. In addition to a great customer response, NOOKcolor has received high praise and critical acclaim from leading technology and consumer media outlets including being named “Editors’ Choice” and the “Best Android Tablet of The Year.” The company also experienced robust sales for its award-winning line of NOOK 3G and Wi-Fi devices, which feature an E Ink display and a color touchscreen for navigation.
The company also reported record holiday sales from its comprehensive two-million-title catalog, including nearly one million NOOKbooks purchased and downloaded on Christmas Day alone. Through Barnes & Noble’s eReading offerings, customers can buy and read their NOOKbooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOKcolor, NOOK 3G, Wi-Fi®, and using NOOK apps on popular devices including iPad™, iPhone®, Android™ smartphones and more. Among the best-selling titles of the holiday season were James Patterson’s Cross Fire, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Confession by John Grisham, and Decision Points by former U.S. President George W. Bush.
“NOOKcolor became the gift of choice over the holidays for people who love to read everything – books, magazines, newspapers, children’s books and more – in rich, beautiful color,” said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “The success of NOOKcolor, along with our unique ability to market NOOK devices to readers in our stores and through our strong channel partnerships with Best Buy, Walmart and Books-a-Million, resulted in the continued explosive growth of our Digital Content business and our NOOK line, our most successful products ever. We have a large online book business at BN.com that’s been recently growing. And the fact that eBook unit sales now exceed physical book sales through BN.com illustrates how quickly we’ve grown this exciting new business at Barnes & Noble.”
NOOKcolor is the first full-color touch Reader’s Tablet that integrates books, magazines, newspapers and children’s books – all in amazing, rich color in a device that weighs less than a pound. It features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen and is the most social reading device ever built. NOOKcolor is available at your local Barnes & Noble store and at www.NOOKcolor.com, as well as Best Buy, Walmart and Books-A-Million stores.
About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 717 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 633 college bookstores serving nearly 4 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is the nation’s top bookseller brand for the seventh year in a row, as determined by a combination of the brand’s performance on familiarity, quality, and purchase intent; the top bookseller in quality for the second year in a row and the number two retailer in trust, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than two million titles in its NOOKbook™ Store (www.bn.com/NOOKbooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOKTM eReading product offering, customers can buy and read NOOKbooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK eReaders, devices from partner companies, and hundreds of the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.
About NOOK™ from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand of eReading products makes it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOKbook™ Store of more than two million digital titles, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices. NOOK products are the most full-featured, dedicated eReading devices on the market. NOOKcolor ($249), the first full-color touch Reader’s Tablet, provides the ultimate reading experience with a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen to read all of the content you love. For book lovers, NOOK 3G ($199) and NOOK Wi-Fi® ($149) offer a paper-like reading experience with a color touchscreen for navigation. In Barnes & Noble stores, NOOK owners can access free Wi-Fi connectivity, enjoy the Read In Store™ feature to read NOOKbooks for free, and the More In Store™ program, which offers free, exclusive content and special promotions. Barnes & Noble was the first company to offer digital lending for a wide selection of books through its LendMe™ technology, available through NOOK eReading products. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.NOOK.com, as well as at Best Buy, Walmart and Books-A-Million.
In addition to NOOK devices, Barnes & Noble makes it easy for customers to enjoy any book, anytime, anywhere with its free line of NOOK software, available at www.bn.com/NOOKapps. Customers can use Barnes & Noble’s free eReading software to access and read books from their personal Barnes & Noble digital library on devices including iPad™, iPhone®, iPod touch®, Android™, BlackBerry® and other smartphones, PC, and Mac®. Lifetime Library™ helps ensure that Barnes & Noble customers will always be able to access their digital libraries on NOOK products and software-enabled devices and BN.com. Barnes & Noble also offers NOOKstudy™ (www.NOOKstudy.com), an innovative study platform and software solution for higher education and NOOK kids™ (www.NOOKkids.com), a collection of digital picture and chapter books for children.