Walmart Passed on Barnes & Noble Before, Maybe it Should Look Again (Yahoo Finance) Hydra is Appropriately Named (Digital Book World) Disney's Hyperion Will Reportedly Sell Off Most Titles, Focus on TV-Related Books (Paid Content) How Much Time and Effort Should Publishers be Spending on Startups? (Mike Shatzkin) Kindle Daily Deals: Illuminations by Mart Sharratt (and 3 others)...

Barnes & Noble Names Book Award Winners (Good e-Reader) Time Warner Spins Off Magazines as Meredith Talks Fall Through (Paid Content) The Insanity of Making a Wizard of Oz Film in Today's IP Climate (Techdirt) A Contract from Alibi, the Random House Digital Imprint (John Scalzi) Kindle Daily Deals: Vanished in the Dunes by Allan Retzky (and 3 others) ...

*This article originally appeared on the website of Book Business, a TeleRead sister publication. While predicting doom for Nook, as Book Business columnist Michael Weinstein put it, has become the favored pastime of the book and tech press of late, it’s hard not to read the news of B&N Chairman Leonard S. Riggio’s bid to purchase the chain’s retail stores and take them private—leaving the company’s foundering Nook Media division to fend for itself—as the beginning of the end for the little e-reader that could. (Or maybe it’s the end of the end for the little e-reader that couldn’t quite.) It’s not without a little sadness...

Will eBook adoption Flatten out at 30%  of the Market? (Dear Author) Ann Patchett on books' future: "I think we'll be just fine." (Palm Beach Post) Three e-reading tools I wish existed (Paid Content) German Book Retailers Team Up Against Amazon with New eReader (Reuters) The Three Most Important Lessons We Can Learn From B&N's Nook Setback (Eoin Purcell) Kindle Daily Deals: The Fifth Knight by E.M. Powell...

Engadget recently reported on a Nook Bluetooth speaker making its way through the FCC. Considering all the rumors and other news about Barnes & Noble lately, it’s nice to see that the Nook line isn’t being ignored. However, we’ll have to see about pricing. Bluetooth speakers are common. For B&N to sell these in any quantity, there’d better be either an awesome feature or a super price. There is a blank listing on the B&N site, with no pricing or availability information yet.  ...

Nook: Cost Cutting Coming (Digital Book World) New Service Offers Watermark DRM to Indie eBookstores (The Digital Reader) The Publishing Industry Has a Problem; ePub is not the Solution (TOC) 'Trusted Friend' is Top Book Discovery Tool (Galley Cat) Kindle Daily Deals: The Collected by Brett Battles (and 3 others)  ...

We've known the numbers were coming, and Barnes & Noble released its third quarter earnings today. A few items of interest: Third quarter consolidated revenues were $2.2 billion, a decrease of 8.8% as compared to the prior year. Third quarter consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were $55 million, as compared to $150 million a year ago. Third quarter consolidated net losses were $6.1 million, as compared to net earnings of $52 million a year ago. Those are some pretty impressive numbers. Losses of $6.1 million compared to net earnings of $52 million a year earlier. B&N did attribute much of...

Lots of rumors were flying last night about a split of Barnes & Noble. It's now been confirmed through an SEC filing that Len Riggio, current CEO of B&N, wants to buy the retail stores and BN.com. Nook Media and the college bookstores will remain a separate entity under current corporate leadership; Riggio doesn't want 'em. I can't imagine that this will end well. Many of the college bookstores are also retail stores (like the one at my son's college, Virginia Commonwealth University). Will there be separate retail terms for each entity? If so, that would be horribly inefficient. And how will...

Barnes & Noble yesterday announced that it just released a new Nook for Windows 8 app, which "enables customers to sign in and shop using their Microsoft account, dramatically simplifying the reading and shopping experience," according to a release. Jamie Iannone, president of digital products at Nook Media LLC, says that "Nook is already the highest rated reading and digital bookstore app on Windows 8," although somewhat confusingly, in the same release, he also says this: "As part of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we are thrilled that Nook is the first digital bookstore to support Microsoft account for sign in Windows...

B&N 'could close a third of stores in next decade' (The Bookseller) B&N Aims to Whittle Its Stores for Years (Wall Street Journal) Uncle Sam: eBooks for All (Digital Book World) Have Publishers Won the DRM Debate and Does it Matter? (Dear Author) Magazine Publishers Push Minimalist Apps Without Fluff (Media Shift) Kindle Daily Deals: Island by Richard Laymon (and 3 others)...

To most readers, it probably seems unthinkable that Barnes & Noble and its Nook Media division might not be around at this time next year. But after B&N announced its embarrassingly low holiday season sales figures yesterday (scroll down to read the press release), that's essentially what every media outlet covering the news seemed to be suggesting. After thumbing through a few of the stories and considering the facts myself, I've got to say that my own personal faith in the company's future isn't exactly booming—quite the opposite, in fact. If you're not current on the story yourself, here's the nut graf...

We aren't normally in the business of sharing stock picks here at TeleRead. But for the past three days, one of the biggest stories on the e-reading beat has been the news that Pearson—the British educational media company that owns the Financial Times and the Penguin Group—just invested $89.5 million in Barnes & Noble's Nook Media division, equalling a five percent equity stake. Business publications and financial journalists, of course, have responded en masse by sharing their own opinions about which companies in the e-reading space are headed for greatness, and which ones may have taken too many financial missteps already. As a...