Business

Barnes & Noble: e-books take lead over traditional books in online sales

Laura Donovan Contributor
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Barnes & Noble Inc said that sales of digital books made through its website now exceed those of traditional books that it sells online.

Barnes & Noble, which introduced its Nook electronic reader last year to compete with Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle, said customers bought or downloaded 1 million e-books via the Nook on Christmas Day.

A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said that figure included free e-books, but that most were paid downloads.

Barnes & Noble, which put itself up for sale last summer, is under pressure to show that its share of the e-books market is growing fast enough to mitigate a longstanding industry-wide decline in book sales. Barnes & Noble says it has a 20 percent share of the e-books market.

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