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BARNES & NOBLE, the world’s largest bookseller, promoted the 30-something boss of its online business to run the whole company. William Lynch, who only joined the company 13 months ago, is now the chief executive. He has vowed to continue expanding the retailer’s e-books business, which he said was "key to our future".
The company has launched its own e-reader device, called the Nook, since Christmas last year. "Given the dynamic nature of the book industry, William is uniquely qualified to lead the company’s transition to multi-channel distribution and drive the continuing expansion of our e-commerce platform, e-books and other digital content and products," said Leonard Riggio, the former chief executive. And Mr Lynch himself said: "The bookselling, publishing and media industries are quickly evolving, and we are well positioned to take advantage of the big opportunities. Our commitment is to provide consumers convenient access to the physical and digital products they want virtually anytime, anywhere." The Nook was designed as Barnes & Noble’s answer to the success of Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, which was locking its users into buying books from Amazon’s own digital store. Mr Lynch also promised that bn.com would expand to stock more than a million titles, including 500,000 out-of-copyright books supplied by Google, which has been digitising the world’s libraries. The urgency of carving
out a place for Barnes & Noble in the world of e-books has
increased since Apple’s announcement of the launch of its iPad
tablet device, which will be another rival e-reader, and an associated
iBookstore, selling digital downloads. Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble’s
bricks and mortar business has
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