Barnes & Noble Is STEPPING It Up

Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) will start selling its Nook e-readers in the U.K. starting October, putting the company in step with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the rapidly growing e-book marketplace in the country. Amazon has also made a big expansion move in the region after announcing a deal with Waterstone’s earlier this year to sell the Kindle e-reader in over 300 stores.

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Barnes & Noble said on Monday it would announce partnerships with “leading retailers” in Britain at a later time.

“We’re confident our award-winning technology, combined with our expansive content – including books, children’s books, magazines, apps, movies and more – will bring UK customers the option they’ve been waiting for,” William Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in a statement.

The U.K. Nook store will start with more than 2.5 million titles, including books, magazines and newspapers. Barnes & Noble will sell its black-and-white e-readers, the Nook Simple Touch, and Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, but not the Nook Color Tablet.

Barnes & Noble has struggled lately in the reading device and e-content market as the devices of Amazon, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad, and new entrant Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Nexus 7 take away significant market shares. While Barnes & Noble continues to insist it has 27 percent of the U.S. e-book market, it has had to cut the prices of the Nook line. The stock has suffered. While Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced it was making a big investment in the Nook line in April, leading to a surge in the shares of Barnes & Noble, investor thrill has died down as the two companies remain vague about the partnership.

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