Barnes & Noble Now Hawking Magazine Subs Online

Barnes & Noble’s [NYSE:BKS] BarnesAndNoble.com online subsidiary is going beyond its hardback and paperback offerings to offer periodicals to its Net shoppers. BarnesAndNoble.com will also see additional book sales revenues because of a deal inked with The Electronic Newsstand.

BarnesAndNoble.com will sell heavily discounted magazine subscriptions from The Electronic Newsstand, officials said. The Electronic Newsstand will offer more than 450 magazine subscriptions at discounts up to 80 percent off cover price to BarnesandNoble.com’s customers.

In addition, The Electronic Newsstand will sell books from BarnesAndNoble.com, as it will become the "official bookseller" on Electronic Newsstand’s Web site.

Officials from both companies said the cross-over between books and magazines is a natural one. Electronic Newsstand President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Hecht said that online magazine sales should follow the upward trend already seen in Net-based book sales. He cited not only the Newsstand’s deal with BarnesAndNoble.com, but a $10.5 million agreement recently signed with search engine concern Lycos.

On Barnes & Noble’s side of the cyber-fence, company Vice Chairman Steve Riggio said that offering magazine subscriptions online is a "natural extension of the BarnesAndNoble.com business." He added that BarnesAnd Noble.com’s magazine subscription offerings should soon increase from 450 to more than one thousand titles.

And don’t forget that one sees a slew of magazines in most Barnes & Noble stores in the "real world."

BarnesandNoble.com is now integrating magazine subject categories with its book subject areas, officials added. The process should be completed in the next few months.

Barnes & Noble is also giving away 100 free magazine subscriptions as part of its new offering. Customers who purchase a magazine subscription from Barnesand Noble.com by April 17, 1998 will be automatically entered into a drawing for the chance to receive a free magazine subscription of their choice from the BarnesandNoble.com magazine concession.

BarnesAndNoble.com is at http://www.barnesandnoble.com on the Web. Electronic Newsstand is at http://www.enews.com.

Earlier this year, Barnes & Noble predicted that its online sales would pass the $100 million mark in 1998. Company officials said they extrapolated from 1997 figures, which indicated a doubling in sales in each of its first three quarters as an online bookseller, to arrive at that mark. For the quarter ended January 31, the firm at the time projected online revenues of $8 million, doubled from the $4 million of last quarter and quadrupled from the $2.1 million in sales it had in its first quarter online, which started last May.

(Contacts: Michael Kaminer, Michael Kaminer PR, 212-627- 8098, for The Electronic Newsstand; Elisa Klosterman, Cunningham Communication, 617-494-8202, for BarnesandNoble.com)