Leonard S. Riggio

Is there a future for a Nook-nicked Barnes & Noble? The retailer’s plan to stop making its Nook color tablets revived questions about the long-term viability of the last remaining national bookseller that’s been feverishly trying to reinvent itself amid game changing Amazon.com AMZN +0.35%.

Yes, the news that Barnes & Noble will turn over the production of its color — versus its black-and-white — Nook to a yet-to-be-named third party player signals that the chain has lost the tablet wars to Amazon’s Kindle and the Apple AAPL +1.39% iPad.

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*This article originally appeared on the website of Book Business, a TeleRead sister publication. While predicting doom for Nook, as Book Business columnist Michael Weinstein put it, has become the favored pastime of the book and tech press of late, it’s hard not to read the news of B&N Chairman Leonard S. Riggio’s bid to purchase the chain’s [...]

The post What would become of an independent Nook? appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

While predicting doom for Nook, as our columnist Michael Weinstein put it, has become the favored pastime of the book and tech press of late, it’s hard not to read the news of B&N Chairman Leonard S. Riggio’s bid to purchase the chain’s retail stores and take them private—leaving the company’s foundering Nook division to fend for itself—as the beginning of the end for the little e-reader that could. (Or maybe it’s the end of the end for the little e-reader that couldn’t quite.)

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Liberty Media, the media conglomerate controlled by John C. Malone, agreed on Thursday to buy a stake in Barnes & Noble for $204 million, but declined to buy the bookseller outright.

The deal would disappoint investors who had hoped that Liberty, whose investments include Starz Entertainment, the home shopping channel QVC and the Atlanta Braves baseball team, would acquire a majority stake. Liberty had offered in May to buy 70 percent of Barnes & Noble for $17 a share if the retailer’s powerful chairman, Leonard S. Riggio, who controls nearly 30 percent of the company, assented.

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