Barnes Noble, making a long-awaited international push, will sell its Nook e-readers and e-books in Britain for the first time beginning in October, the company said on Monday.
The move will help Barnes Noble compete with Amazon in the expanding e-book marketplace in Britain. E-book adoption there has lagged behind that in the United States, but it is quickly growing, and publishing executives see it as a major opportunity for sales.
But Barnes Noble is a late arrival to international expansion. The bookseller has long focused on building its presence in the United States even as rivals like Amazon, Apple and Borders have looked abroad. Amazon has had a presence in Britain for years, and in May the company made an agreement with Waterstones to sell the Kindle e-reader in its chain of 300 stores. Barnes Noble had been was widely expected to be the retailer to make a deal with Waterstones.
On Monday, Barnes Noble said it would announce partnerships with “leading retailers” in Britain at a later time.
Barnes Noble, by far the largest bookstore chain in the United States, has hinted for months that it would expand into Britain, but has been spare with details of when it would happen. William J. Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes Noble, said in a statement that he was proud to offer Nook products to the “discerning and highly educated consumers in the U.K.”
“We’re confident our award-winning technology, combined with our expansive content — including books, children’s books, magazines, apps, movies and more — will bring U.K. customers the option they’ve been waiting for,” he said.
The Nook store, at nook.co.uk, will initially have more than 2.5 million books, magazines and newspapers. Barnes Noble will first offer for sale its black-and-white e-readers — the Nook Simple Touch and Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, an e-reader with a backlighted screen that went on sale in April — but not the Nook color tablets.
Last week, Barnes Noble trimmed prices on its tablets, lowering the price of the 16 gigabyte Nook Tablet to $199 from $249, and the Nook Color to $149 from $169, an acknowledgment of the increasingly crowded market for tablet devices. The bookseller is expected to introduce another new tablet in the fall.
Barnes Noble, which currently has 691 bookstores and 647 college stores, will report quarterly earnings on Tuesday.
A version of this article appeared in print on 08/21/2012, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Barnes Noble Is to Sell Its E-Reader in Britain.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/barnes-noble-to-offer-the-nook-in-britain/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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