Who Owns NOOK?

Barnes & Noble launched the first NOOK e-reader in November 2009, two years after the original Kindle, in a bid to contest Amazon's fast-forming monopoly on digital reading. The Android-based device, with its distinctive dual-screen design, was an immediate commercial event, and NOOK quickly captured roughly a quarter of the US e-book market.

The early 2010s were NOOK's peak. Barnes & Noble iterated aggressively: the NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet pushed into Android tablets, the GlowLight pioneered integrated front lighting, and the NOOK Store grew into a genuine competitor to the Kindle Store. In 2012, Microsoft invested $300 million for a stake in a newly formed Nook Media subsidiary, valuing the digital business at $1.7 billion, with Pearson adding a further investment.

Then the model broke. Tablet economics, Amazon's price aggression, and management churn turned NOOK into a cash drain. Microsoft exited its stake in 2014, NOOK Media was folded back into Barnes & Noble in 2016, and the hardware line contracted. Samsung-built and later Lenovo-built tablets replaced in-house hardware, and the e-reader line settled into a small cadence of refreshes: the GlowLight 3 (2017), GlowLight Plus (2019), GlowLight 4 (2021), and GlowLight 4 Plus (2023).

Under Elliott's ownership since 2019, NOOK has operated as a niche but continuing business inside Barnes & Noble's broader retail turnaround. The GlowLight 4 gained new editions, including the Ocean Teal edition released for holiday 2025, and Lenovo-built 8.7-inch NOOK Reading Tablets extended the line. The brand has not released an entirely new e-reader platform in several years, but it remains on sale in roughly 600 Barnes & Noble stores and online, serving the chain's loyal customer base.