Barnes & Noble Inc.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that "Fifty Shades of Grey" has become “one of the fastest-selling book series in recent memory.” Recently I mentioned that a friend of mine was one of the purchasers, and that she had funny experience doing so. Some readers commented that my piece was a tease (all in the spirit of the book, of course), and they wanted the full story. I finally pinned my friend down (not literally—really now!) and made her fill me in on the details. Here is my friend (we’ll call her “J”) sharing her Fifty Shades shopping experience:

Librarians working with teens have a new website to talk about: EpicReads.com, an interactive community that connects readers with some of their favorite authors and books. Launched by HarperCollins, the site acts as a hub that features all HarperTeen books and more than 400 YA authors, including Meg Cabot, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, and Walter Dean Myers. Epic Reads has two channels, or sub-sites, that consists of Pitchdark.com, a curated list of dystopian and paranormal fiction, and Storycrush.com, which highlights lighthearted romance reads and contemporary

I just read about a new book printed in disappearing ink. Published by Argentinean publisher Eterna Cadencia, “El libro que no puede esperar,” or “The Book That Can’t Wait,” features a selection of new Latin American authors, and is printed in ink that fades when exposed to light and air. Two months after you buy the book, it’s gone.

By now, it’s no surprise that tablets and mobile devices are revolutionizing the way we consume and interact with media. Although print is not expected to disappear anytime soon (63 percent of book publishers see no end­ in sight for producing printed books as part of their mix), book publishers are ramping up production of e­books with a focus on improving the overall user experience to accommodate the transitioning consumer. While more than half of the book publishers we surveyed decide how to produce a book on a per-publication basis, 30 percent are consistently producing both an e­book and printed book for each new publication.

“Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” That non-grammatical sentence — from Catching Fire, the second book in Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy, is the most-highlighted passage ever on Kindle, with nearly 18,000 readers marking it. But you can bet Amazon is collecting much more interesting data about Kindle users than that. The company isn’t willing to share such data with the Wall Street Journal, but Barnes & Noble and Kobo talk a bit about the types of data collection they’re doing in this piece. For instance, they can track where a

Barnes & Noble reported a fourth-quarter loss of $57.7 million on Tuesday, falling short of market expectations, even though sales of the popular “The Hunger Games” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the liquidation of Borders lifted same-store sales by 4.5 percent in the period.

The company reported sales of $1.38 billion for the three months that ended April 28, which was lower than expected and flat compared with the same quarter last year.

Barnes & Noble reported Q4 revenues of $1.4 billion for the period ended April 28, on losses of $1.08 per share. Following Microsoft’s $300 million investment during the quarter, B&N is now breaking out the Nook segment separately in its earnings. Nook revenues were $164 million for the quarter and $933 million for the fiscal year ending April 28.

Nook Simple Touch hurts revenues, but digital content sales increase

HarperCollins has launched Epic Reads, a digital community designed to connect readers with HarperTeen authors and books. Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, calls the network “the natural evolution of our teen digital strategy.” Epic Reads has three channels: the main epicreads.com; pitchdark.com, “featuring a curated list of titles that appeal to readers of dystopian and paranormal fiction”; and storycrush.com, which focuses on the “romance, realistic and contemporary fiction genre.” Users can sign in with their Facebook or Google log-ins, take polls and quizzes and enter sweepstakes, upload content, and chat in forums and with authors.

In his letter to the Department of Justice on the proposed e-book settlement, American Booksellers Association president Oren Teicher calls Amazon a “classic free-rider” and argues that settling publishers Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins should not have to drop the agency pricing model as a requirement of the settlement. The end of agency will hurt indie bookstores Elimination of the agency model would “significantly discourage new entry, and will lead to the departure from the market of a sizeable number of the independent bookstores that are currently selling e-books,” Teicher writes. He says indie bookstores were only able

Computerworld - The Barnes & Noble Nook tablet's Web traffic overtook that of the Kindle Fire for the first time in early June, while Apple's iPad maintained its overall dominance of the market, according to Chitika, an online ad network and data analytics firm. The Chitika report is based on a study of hundred of millions of ad impressions (where a user visits a page with an ad) on several tablets from June 4 to June 10. Chitika found 91.7% of tablet Web traffic comes from iPad devices. The June iPad total is down from the 94.64% that Chitika