Barnes & Noble: We Will Not Carry Amazon Publishing Titles In Our Stores

About half an hour before Amazon announced Q4 earnings this afternoon, Barnes & Noble released a new statement saying it will not carry titles published by Amazon -- including the Amazon titles that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is selling in print -- in its “store showrooms.”

Barnes & Noble has said repeatedly that it will not carry print books in its stores if it cannot sell the digital versions. This is the first statement Barnes & Noble has made about the matter since Amazon announced that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s “New Harvest” imprint will publish the print versions of titles from Larry Kirshbaum’s division. So I was wrong when I suggested New Harvest was a workaround that Barnes & Noble would accept without some other capitulation from Amazon.