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June 14 – 20, 2010 Edition BNs E-Book Market Share Grows Under New CEO
NEW YORK, NY/AUTHORLINK NEWS/June 14, 2010–Barnes & Nobles new CEO William Lynch is making rapid headway for Barnes & Noble in the e-book market. According to Crains New York, Williams has increased BN.coms share in e-books by nearly 20%, making it a distant second to dominant player Amazon.com.
Brothers Len and Steve Riggio, who had run the company for decades, appointed Lynch chief executive in March just 16 months after the-39-year-old executive came on board to run BN.coms online bookstore.
Barnes & Noble’s relationships with publishers, which were not always so friendly, have become the company’s secret weapon in its fight to survive the digital transition and avoid becoming the book industry’s Tower Records.
Publishers absolutely want us to succeed, Mr. Lynch told Crains New York. That’s driving their cooperation with us in the digital world.
That cooperation has taken the form of some publishers allowing users of Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader to lend titles to friends, giving the device one feature not available with either Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iBookstore. Nook owners can also stream books via Wi-Fi in Barnes & Noble stores.
Not everyone has been persuadedabout 50% of BN.com’s catalog is lendable, while about 70% is available for in-store streaming. But publishers credit Mr. Lynch with being a straightforward player who heeds their concerns. Not so at Amazon, which has a reputation for pushing publishers around. Bad feelings linger over a recent pricing war between Amazon and publishers which saw Amazon pull one publishers buy buttons from every single title. The rift was eventually settled, though few details are available.
Read more at Crains New York.
