MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
Jan 03 – Jan 09, 2011 Edition Barnes & Noble Launches Nook kids App for iPad
NEW YORK, NY/AUTHORLINK NEWS/January 5, 2011–Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced it is extending its popular digital children’s reading experience to iPad owners with the introduction of the NOOK kids for iPad application, available for free at www.nookkids.com/ipad and www.itunes.com/appstore. The new application makes the company’s expansive digital catalog of children’s content – including 100 new interactive kids’ books including Caps for Sale, Skippyjon Jones and Sheep in a Jeep – even more accessible to customers of all ages, bringing iPad owners the state-of-the-art children’s reading experience first available on NOOKcolor by Barnes & Noble.
With an entirely new application designed specifically for children, NOOK kids for iPad offers various features exclusive to the NOOK kids reading experience. Using NOOK kids-only AliveTouch(TM) technology, kids can easily find a favorite story and engage with the books and their favorite characters by digitally turning pages, interacting with the text, zooming in and around graphics – all from the iPad. The application helps parents select which books are appropriate for their children through a password-protected Parent’s Corner.
With the NOOK kids catalog, Barnes & Noble offers the largest and growing collection of digital books for kids of all ages, with more than 230 interactive picture books, many with audio narration, for both NOOKcolor and NOOK kids for iPad owners to explore and enjoy. From the Llama Llama series and Max & Ruby to The Snowy Day and Are You My Mother?, customers can easily shop for books organized by age range, and NOOK kids books are presented in a consistent format, so parents and kids can discover a reading experience that is as familiar to them as the content itself. NOOK kids for iPad complements Barnes & Noble’s NOOK(TM) for iPad application which gives older children and adults access to more than 12,000 children’s chapter books – coming soon to NOOK kids for iPad – as well as more than two million digital titles.
“Since creating an in-store experience for kids decades ago, Barnes & Noble has helped millions of children and their parents discover books and ignite a love for reading, so we could not be more pleased to bring that experience to new platforms and expand our NOOK kids offering even further,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Digital Products, Barnes & Noble. “Since NOOK kids first became available some seven weeks ago on NOOKcolor, parents, grandparents and children continue to tell us they love our winning combination of color, touch and timeless stories. We’re excited to extend another best-in-class reading experience to iPad owners, and give parents and children more access to timeless classics and new favorites wherever they go.”
NOOK kids for iPad also lets young readers choose between reading books themselves or hearing professional recordings of the stories using Barnes & Noble’s exclusive Read to Me(TM) feature. Kids and parents will enjoy more than fifty titles featuring professional narration which are only available from Barnes & Noble, including story collections from Richard Scarry, Olivia, Thomas and Friends, Barbie and Splat the Cat, as well as popular books such as On the Night You Were Born, The Polar Express, President Obama’s new book, Of Thee I Sing, and Go, Dog, Go! – the top-selling NOOKcolor children’s picture book to date.
To celebrate the introduction of the newest NOOK app, Barnes & Noble is offering two complimentary children’s picture books to new NOOKcolor and NOOK kids for iPad customers – Richard Scarry’s Colors and Elephant’s Child, which will automatically appear in the customer’s digital library upon registration.
Two new online videos bring NOOK kids to life and let customers experience the new, fun and colorful way of reading at their local Barnes & Noble bookstore. The “NOOK Kids Guided Tour” video highlights the exciting ways children and parents can enjoy NOOK, and the “Kids Love NOOKcolor” video shows children exploring NOOK kids content with ease, swiping and tapping their way through some of their favorite reads at a Barnes & Noble book store, one of several with a dedicated NOOK kids reading area which is proving immensely popular. Learn more and view the video at www.nook.com/kidslovenookcolor, or visit a local Barnes & Noble today to let your children delight in the NOOK kids experience themselves.
About NOOK(TM) from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand of eReading products makes it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like(TM) with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOKbook(TM) 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(TM) 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 touch screen for navigation. In Barnes & Noble stores, NOOK owners can access free Wi-Fi connectivity, enjoy the Read In Store(TM) feature to read NOOKbooks for free, and the More In Store(TM) 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(TM) 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(TM), iPhone®, iPod touch®, Android(TM), BlackBerry® and other smartphones, PC, and Mac®. Lifetime Library(TM) 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(TM) (www.NOOKstudy.com), an innovative study platform and software solution for higher education, NOOK kids(TM) (www.NOOKkids.com), a collection of digital picture and chapter books for children, and NOOKbooks en español(TM) (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooksenespanol), the first-ever Spanish language digital bookstore in the United States.
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(TM) Store (www.bn.com/NOOKbooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK(TM) 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.
General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.
