The Deal is Done: Barnes & Noble Has Finally Been Sold!

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the nation’s largest retail bookseller, and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The Company operates 627 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s premier e-commerce sites, BN.com. The Nook Digital business offers a lineup of popular NOOK tablets and eReaders and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store. The NOOK Store features digital booksand offers the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through Free NOOK Reading Apps available for Android, iOS and Windows.

Earlier this year, there were rumors that Barnes and Noble has agreed to be sold to the Hedge Fund Elliott. At that time, the Board of Directors of Barnes & Noble unanimously approved the transaction considering the fact that its 5 CEO’s in the past 7 years and various turnaround strategies have all failed. On August 7, 2019, Barnes & Noble has been confirmed that it has been fully acquired by Elliott, the same company that purchased the largest bookselling chain in the United Kingdom, Waterstones.

Over the past few years, even in face of the relentless competition from Amazon, Barnes & Noble has managed to somewhat stabilize its business with revenue declines narrowing to a drop of 3.1% last year. So it might be a good thing for Barnes & Noble to sell the company.

Following the close of the transaction, Elliott will own both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, and while each bookseller will operate independently, they will share a common CEO and benefit from the sharing of best practice between the companies.

In the near future, should we expect a brand new Barnes & Noble or should we start buying books from the biggest ebooks distributor -- Amazon? By the way, the ebooks that we purchased are not totally owned by us, which means that someday they can be removed from our ebook library without any permission. So it’s high time to us to backup purchased contents. What’s more, all Nook/Kindle/Google Play/Kobo ebooks can be decrypted with Epubor Ultimate software. If you are interested in backing up your Nook/Kindle/Kobo/Google Play books, you can read this guide on how to remove DRM.