Dive Brief
- Amid ongoing store closures and declining sales of physical books as well as e-books, Barnes and Noble Inc. announced on Jan. 8 that previous company chief financial officer Michael P. Huseby will take over as CEO.
- Since July 2013, the 59-year-old Huseby has also served as the company’s CEO of its Nook Media unit, the chain’s e-commerce segment.
- The assignment comes as Barnes and Noble Inc. Jan. 9 announced bottom-feeding sales numbers, especially in its e-commerce operations. The NOOK segment (digital content, devices and accessories) had revenues of $125 million for the holiday period, decreasing 60.5% compared to a year ago, according to a company press release. Of that, device and accessories sales were $88.7 million, a decrease of 66.7% from a year ago, due to lower unit selling volume and lower average prices. Digital content sales were $36.5 million, a decline of 27.3% compared to a year ago due to lower device unit sales and lower average prices.
- The company overall earned $1.1 billion during the nine-week holiday period ending December 28, 2013, a 6.6% decrease over last year.
Dive Insight
The choice of Huseby is seen as a move to bring financial belt-tightening and boot-strapping to the faltering bookseller, which is consistently outsold in the e-book market by Amazon’s lower (even money-losing) prices. The cutthroat price environment has been made possible in part by the U.S. Department of Justice’s successful e-book pricing lawsuit against Apple Inc. and various book publishers. Huseby himself says the success of e-books depends on device-specific sales, so look for a shakeup in Barnes and Noble Inc.’s pricing and offerings structure in a Hail-Mary lifesaving attempt for its Nook systems.