Getting back into the news, Barnes and Noble issued a press release today announcing that they will be creating 1,000 square-foot Nook boutiques in retail stores to “accommodate this rapidly growing segment of Barnes & Noble’s business”.
Details from the press release:
The 1,000 square-foot boutiques will feature demonstration tables and multiple operating NOOK devices for trial. An adjoining wall and large flat panel display will feature video demos of NOOK eBook Readers and display more than 100 accessories, including NOOK covers by popular designers such as kate spade new york, Jack Spade, Jonathan Adler and Lilly Pulitzer. Each NOOK Boutique will be fully staffed by knowledgeable booksellers who will offer book lovers device demonstrations, help customers download Barnes & Noble’s free NOOK software to their mobile or computing devices, and provide ongoing support.
The boutiques, which will begin rolling out this summer and through the fall, mark yet another enhancement to the in-store experience which drives book lovers to visit Barnes & Noble stores . . .
This Week’s Free B&N eBook Classics
Each week Barnes and Noble offers a dozen free classic ebooks that normally cost $1.99 each. They are the same public domain titles that you can get elsewhere for free, but B&N, like most ebook stores, re-edit the classics so that they are well formatted and add additional info like introductions and footnotes.
This week’s free ebooks:
- Beowulf by Anonymous, John McNamara
- Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
- Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
- Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
- Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
- Three Musketeers by Alexandre DumasDigital Format
- War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The ebooks can be downloaded here at B&N’s Free Classics.