The Nook e-reader is the rising star of Liberty Media (Nasdaq: LCAPA) Chairman John Malone's $1 billion bid to acquire the Barnes & Noble bookselling empire. But the stores themselves are not about to be abandoned, Malone said.
The stores, he said, "will shift around in terms of their focus (but) there will be a physical presence for a long, long time to come and it will be a profitable physical presence."
Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei said that the company might take a page from Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) retail store book as he positions the Nook to compete with the iPad and Amazon Kindle. "We've seen great interplay between how Apple has been able to drive devices in the stores and we'd like to think Barnes & Noble is at the beginning of that trend," Maffei said.
For more:
- the Denver Post has this story
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