Barnes & Noble says it has 25 pct of the U.S. ebook market

By Geoff Duncan Published February 23, 2011

Barnes Noble Nook Color — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Fresh on the heels of bookseller Borders filing for bankruptcy, Barnes & Noble has announced its latest financial results, which cover its third fiscal quarter of 2011. Although the company saw a significant dip in profits compared to the same quarter last year, the bookstore is making a bold claim: according to CEO William Lynch, Barnes & Noble now accounts for 25 percent of the U.S. ebook market. That’s a larger share of the company’s share of the U.S. physical book market, and Barnes & Noble says it’s selling twice as many ebooks as physical books in any format from its online store.

“We’re pleased with our financial results this quarter, but just as importantly, the third quarter was another big quarter for the company from the standpoint of key strategic progress that positions us well for the future,” said CEO William Lynch, in a statement.

Barnes & Noble’s claim that it accounts for the quarter of the U.S. ebook market is hard to substantiate: neither Barnes & Noble nor Amazon publish any specific sales figures. However, last year Barnes & Noble claimed it had about 20 percent of the U.S. eBook market while Amazon.com claimed it accounted for 70 to 80 percent, and no other ebook sellers stepped forward to contradict those figures.

The financial quarter wasn’t all roses for Barnes & Noble, however: although the company did see its revenue increase 7 percent to $2.3 billion for the quarter and say at 64 percent increase in sales from the Barnes & Noble Web site, net earnings were down 25 percent to $60.6 million and the company will be canceling its shareholder dividend to invest money back into building out its Nook platform and digital services.

Speaking with analysts, Lynch indicates that the company believes its retail locations are an important factor in selling Nook e-readers, and that the company might consider moving into some locations being closed down by Borders.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."