Could Barnes & Noble Be Bought Without the Nook?

Taking a page out of Michael Dell’s book, Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) Chairman Leonard Riggio has made it clear that he’s interested in buying up the company. Oddly, he doesn’t want the Nook.

The bookseller has been struggling in recent years as new technologies shift the paradigm for readership and few people need to visit bookstores. Barnes & Noble was already planning to shut down up to a third of its brick-and-mortar stores, but Riggio could change plans if he took control.

One especially curious point of trouble for the bookstore is its Nook division. While the tablet technology flourishes and readership migrates to digital sources, the Nook is struggling against the odds. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Barnes & Noble had a 4.6 percent share of the tablet market with its Nook, but the same period a year later saw the Nook’s share drop to 1.9 percent and sales of the devices actually fell, making Barnes & Noble the only company in the top 5 positions for tablet sales to see a decline in sales between the two time periods…