bn.jpgBarnes & Noble announced it will separate its retail and e-book businesses from its college offering, making it a standalone company. Barnes & Noble Education will be come a separately publicly traded company in August, the company announced this week.

With negative news surrounding B&N over the last couple of years due to its declining business with its store fronts and Nook division, the college segment has been a bright spot for the company seeing gains in revenue.

Currently, B&N is working on a plan to expand its college bookstores to 1,000 units as part of a five-year plan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the split had been planned since last year, but recent sales data from the holiday season showed a 55 percent drop in Nook revenue. Thus making it a hard sell to investors.

Investors looking to focus on the education side of the business, get a more focused option.

“We have a talented College management team in place, led by CEO Max Roberts, and we will continue to invest and innovate to support the mission of our campus partners, expanding to new colleges and universities, students and faculty and increasing our presence in the growing market for digital educational content and services,” said Michael P. Huseby, Chief Executive Office of Barnes & Noble, Inc., in a release.

1 COMMENT

  1. It’s amazing that college bookstores have hung on as long as they have. Some call themselves a college store to emphasize the fact that they sell many other things besides textbooks. The advantage of being in an inelastic market (rising costs don’t cause commensurate declines in demand) is largely responsible for that longevity.
    Ultimately, though, they have no future. The market for textbooks is ripe for change. On the one hand, we have the open textbook movement and on the other, we have publishers trying to supplant the textbook with digital “learning materials” delivered directly to students via Learning Management Systems.
    This is just B&N whistling in the dark.

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