B&N, Microsoft team up on Nook, college businesses
An infusion of money from Microsoft Corp. sent Barnes & Noble Inc.'s stock zooming Monday, as the software giant established a way to get back into the e-books business.
The two companies are teaming up to create a subsidiary for Barnes & Noble's e-book and college textbook businesses, with Microsoft paying $300 million for a minority stake.
Shares of Barnes & Noble jumped $10.41, or 76 percent, to $24.09 in morning trading. The opening price of $26 was a three-year high. Microsoft's stock rose 2 cents to $32. Read more...
Amazon: E-books now outsell print books
It had to happen eventually: Amazon.com announced Thursday that it is selling more Kindle e-books than printed hardcover or paperback books.
Amazon said that since April 1, it has been selling 105 Kindle e-books for every 100 print books. Free Kindle books are excluded from that count; if free books were included, the number would be even higher.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the e-book threshold arrived sooner than expected. "Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books," he said. "We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly." Amazon has sold printed books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four. Read more...