In the middle of yet another disappointing earnings report Thursday, Barnes & Noble announced that it’s terminating the strategic partnership it formed with Microsoft in 2012. That partnership had combined Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses into a division called Nook Media, into which Microsoft invested $300 million.
Such termination will allow the Company to continue its rationalization of the NOOK Digital business and enhances Barnes & Noble’s operational and strategic flexibility. The termination also relieves Microsoft of any obligation to continue to fund support and other payments set forth in the commercial agreement between the partners.
Barnes & Noble is also buying out Microsoft’s stake in Nook Media.
When the partnership was formed in 2012, the idea was that [company]Microsoft[/company] would help finance Nook’s international expansion and that Nook apps and content would be loaded onto Windows devices, thus ridding Microsoft of…
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“The book industry is in better shape than it ever has been and it’s due to ebooks,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told an audience on Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview that addressed the company’s drone plans, its campus culture and its indifference to pain of short-term shareholders.
Speaking at a BusinessInsider event in New York, Bezos downplayed [company]Amazon’s[/company] recent high-profile spat with publisher Hachette as a run-of-the-mill fight with a supplier, adding that it’s the essential job of any retailer to fight for the best price for its customers.
As for the publishing industry and its authors, Bezos argued that $30 is too high a price for books, and that lower prices will lead to more readers, which will in turn benefit everyone. And in a remark that may have been intended to head off antitrust arguments, he urged people to consider book prices in the context of a larger entertainment market.
“Books don’t…
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The link below is to an article that looks at how ebook readers are improving reading.
For more visit:
http://theconversation.com/ereaders-arent-destroying-reading-theyre-just-changing-it-34664
Apple could begin paying out $400 million worth of cash and ebook credits to consumers by the end of the year, after a federal judge approved an unusual deal related to an Apple-led conspiracy to fix the price of ebooks.
On Friday, Reuters reported that U.S. Distrct Judge Denise Cote approved a settlement reached this summer under which Apple agreed to pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to lawyers.
Those numbers are conditional, however, on an appeals court upholding a 2013 verdict in the price-fixing case, in which Apple was found to have colluded with five big publishers to fix the price of ebooks. The appeals court will hear Apple’s challenge on December 15, but few expect that the court will disturb the verdict.
In the event the appeals court does send back the verdict to be reconsidered, Apple will instead pay only $50 million to consumers plus $20 million to the lawyers instead.
The unusual…
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At the BookShelf 
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