William Lynch Jr., the chief executive officer of Barnes and Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the country, resigned from his position Monday. In the last two weeks the company has received reports that their attempts to compete against e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad have been unsuccessful, which is the suspected reason of Lynch’s departure from the company.
According to New York Times, Lynch was very interested in the digital aspect of the company and tried to build up their own e-reader, the Nook.
“We thank William Lynch for helping transform Barnes & Noble into a leading digital content provider and for leading in the development of our award-winning line of Nook products,” said Leonard Riggio, the founder of the company. Riggio says that because of the resigning of Lynch, the company is going to implement executive changes.
NBC News reports that Nook sales have recently fell 34 percent and doubled their losses in the past year. Because of the failure of Lynch and the rest of the company to build up their own e-reader against competing ones, they will now stop the creation and sales of Nook color tablets but continue to sell them in black and white.
They are now attempting to separate the digital and retail sections of their company. There is also a possibility that they will sell their digital division, Microsoft being a potential buyer.
Michael P. Huseby, who has been the Chief Financial Officer since March 2012, has now taken the position of Chief Executive of the Nook division.