Barnes and Noble Education has announced that they have shuttered Yuzu, their digital textbook division. They have closed down all of their offices in California and Washington and eliminated all of the staff.
Barnes and Noble is not giving up on digital textbooks entirely, they are just abandoning their own platform. The company has just signed an agreement with VitalSource, a part of the Ingram Content Group. Barnes and Noble will basically rebrand VitalSource as their own platform.
Max J. Roberts, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble Education said “We expect these transactions to reduce our digital spend from $26 million in fiscal 2016 to approximately $13 million in fiscal 2017, resulting in $13 million of forecasted expense reduction.”
It is no surprise that Barnes and Noble closed down their digital textbook division. The service was very painful to use and the mobile app that was launched in 2014 was very slow.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.