NOOK Media LLC, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, announced today that it will begin shipping its highly anticipated NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, the lightest HD and full HD tablets this week. NOOK HD, which features the world’s best 7-inch display, and the 9-inch NOOK HD+, more than 20 percent lighter and nearly half the cost of the leading full-size tablet, start arriving throughout the week to customers who pre-ordered the devices online at NOOK.com and in Barnes & Noble stores. This week both devices will roll out into Barnes & Noble’s nearly 700 conveniently located stores for demonstration and purchase, and into 15,000 additional locations through leading retailers that include Target, Walmart and Best Buy this holiday season.

Both tablets feature must-see displays for superior reading and entertainment and NOOK Profiles™, a unique feature that creates an instantly personalized tablet experience for each family member. Both NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ offer access to the NOOK Store’s 3 million books, a large selection of magazines and apps, and newly launched NOOK Video™ and NOOK Catalog™ content for virtually endless reading and entertainment at customers’ fingertips.

“Our two new tablets offer the best quality reading and entertainment experiences, at the best price,” said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. “There’s no shortage of new tablets in the market, but with NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, every book read, every movie watched, every game played is rendered in a digital quality never before seen and unmatched by those other tablets. We’re pleased to be shipping our record amount of pre-orders on time, and look forward to customers being able to experience these stunning new tablets in stores this week.”

With the highest resolution 7-inch display, reading and entertainment content looks better than ever, so customers will want to take it everywhere. That’s easy because the new NOOK HD is extremely light and a joy to hold. At only 11.1 ounces (315 grams) and just 5-inches wide, it fits beautifully in the hand, and is more than 20 percent lighter and nearly a half-inch narrower than Kindle Fire HD. Its dual-core 1.3GHz high-speed processor makes it lightning fast, highly responsive, smooth and faster than Kindle Fire HD for a nimble overall experience that’s 80 percent faster when it comes to graphics processing for smoother, faster animations, renderings, apps experience and more. The world’s most exceptional 7-inch reading and entertainment tablet is available in two colors, “Snow” and “Smoke,” starting at just $199 (8GB) and only $229 (16GB) – both featuring expandable microSD memory storage and extra-long battery life.

For those who want to enjoy reading and entertainment on a larger scale, NOOK HD+ offers a must-see full HD 9-inch display for up to 1080p for movies, magazines and more. The fully laminated display reduces glare and provides excellent viewing angles, perfect for personal or shared viewing. At only 18.2 ounces (515 grams), NOOK HD+ is the lightest full HD tablet ever invented. It’s power-packed by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor for a fast, smooth customer experience, whether browsing the Web, reading books and magazines, watching videos, enjoying apps or checking email. Offered in the color “Slate,” and featuring great battery life and expandable memory for even more storage, NOOK HD is available for $269 (16GB) and $299 (32GB), two amazing prices for a brilliant, super-light 9-inch full HD tablet.

Both NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, introduced by Barnes & Noble just last month, offer a range of new features in addition to access to an expansive collection of content:

• NOOK Profiles: A personalized experience that instantly transforms the device in hand to any family member’s very own tablet so only you can see your content. According to research by Barnes & Noble, more than a third of tablet owners report having content on their devices they don’t want others to see. Adults can use personal passwords to easily access their books, magazines, videos, apps and more, while their children can dive into digital picture books, educational apps and kid-friendly videos.
• NOOK Video: Favorite standard and HD movies and TV shows are available for rental or purchase. With an incredibly rich display and partnerships with the leading studios and content providers, NOOK Video brings a collection of classics, new releases, and favorites to the brilliant NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ screens for enjoyment anywhere.
• NOOK Books™: Find more than 3 million books, interactive children’s picture books and chapter books, comic books and graphic novels; and picture-perfect art, photography, travel guides and cookbook titles.
• NOOK Newsstand™: An expansive collection of favorite magazines and newspapers are available by subscription and single copies including the largest selection to top 100-bestselling magazines available. The all new NOOK Magazine experience adds a new visual table of contents to view thumbnails of the entire magazine and super-fast, 3D-like page turns, NOOK’s innovative ArticleView™ lets the reader focus only on the text, customized to their needs. NOOK Magazines also feature the breakthrough new NOOK Scrapbook™, where magazine readers can virtually clip pages of interest and save them in customized digital scrapbooks. NOOK Newspapers have an all-new design on NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ that make it even easier and more fun to read newspapers digitally. View and choose each of the paper’s sections on the left column to tap and read in a snap.
• NOOK Catalog: A convenient browsing and shopping experience through a selection of colorful, complimentary catalogs from leading retailers including Pottery Barn, L.L. Bean, Frontgate, Garnet Hill and Harry & David – with 100 top catalogs available this holiday. Catalog readers can also enjoy the new NOOK Scrapbook feature, collecting pages from both magazines and catalogs into customized collections.
• NOOK Apps™: The growing catalog of high-quality NOOK Apps includes all the most popular and bestselling top 100 app titles for tablets available anywhere. Find a wide range of titles for the whole family, including the hottest games, as well as lifestyle, productivity, news, entertainment and reading apps. In fact, only the NOOK Store provides helpful age recommendations for parents and lets customers browse by subject area to find the perfect app for their child among the broadest and the most curated app collection of kids’ educational apps on any Android store.
• Must-have Tablet Features: Optimized to deliver unparalleled experiences in the areas that company research showed NOOK tablet owners use most, NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ offer unmatched reading experience, featuring beautifully rendered text, magazines in spectacular HD and lightning fast page turns. Top-end processors make the newly designed Web browser super-fast, simple and smooth to surf favorite sites with a tap, pinch and zoom. ArticleView allows customers to tailor their online reading experience. And an all-new built-in email app offers new features in an easy-to-use, clean format that supports a host of popular personal and work-related email services including Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync.
• NOOK Channels™: A new shopping experience that allows customers to easily shop by department or explore Channels based on personal interest.

For customers shopping for the perfect holiday gift this season, Barnes & Noble offers Always Free NOOK Support in all of its neighborhood bookstores and NOOK Digital Shops™. Barnes & Noble NOOKsellers™ across the country will be on hand to demonstrate and answer any questions about the latest additions to the award-winning NOOK portfolio.

For more information on NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, customers can visit www.NOOK.com or visit the NOOK Digital Shops and displays in one of Barnes & Noble’s bookstores or retail partners. Barnes & Noble invites customers to experience NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ at any of its nearly 700 bookstores beginning later this week.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) is a Fortune 500 company and the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The company operates 689 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). Its NOOK Media LLC subsidiary is a leader in the emerging digital reading and digital education markets. The NOOK digital business offers award-winning NOOK® products and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store™ (www.nook.com), while Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC operates 667 bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion and is one of only 50 U.S. companies so named. Barnes & Noble.com is ranked the number one online retailer in customer satisfaction in the book, music and video category and a Top 10 online retailer overall in customer satisfaction according to ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index (Spring Top 100 Edition).

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

NOOK®, NOOK Store™, NOOK Video™, NOOK Video Apps™ are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners.

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About NOOK Media LLC

NOOK reading and entertainment products make it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to the expansive NOOK Store™ of more than 3 million digital books, plus periodicals, comics, apps, movies and TV shows, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through free NOOK Reading Apps™ and NOOK Video apps, available at www.nook.com/freenookapps. NOOK owners receive Always Free NOOK Support in any of Barnes & Noble’s nearly 700 bookstores. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.nook.com, as well as leading retailers including Best Buy, Walmart, Target and many others. NOOK products are available in the United Kingdom through www.nook.co.uk and leading retailers.

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