Barnes & Noble Stores Nationwide to Offer Free Wi-Fi
In-Store Access to Over 700,000 eBooks On World’s Largest eBookstore
Customers Can Download Barnes & Noble Free Apps and Get Access to the World’s Largest eBookstore — Exclusive Content, Customer Reviews, Information about In-Store Events, Locate a Store, and Much More
Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, announced today a strategic agreement with AT&T that will provide complimentary in-store Wi-Fi to any customer that visits a Barnes & Noble bookstore nationwide. All customers shopping in Barnes & Noble stores can now freely download and preview any of the over 700,000 eBook titles with hundreds of thousands of public domain titles available from Google. The company said its number of eBook titles is expanding everyday and expects to hit the one million mark soon.
“Barnes & Noble pioneered the concept of retail stores as community centers,” said Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble, Inc. “By providing no-fee Wi-Fi access, we are not only meeting our customers’ needs, but extending the sense of community that has always been in our stores.”
Mr. Riggio added, “This is a natural progression of our digital strategy to provide customers with more choices in how, when and where they want to read.” The existing AT&T Wi-Fi network at Barnes & Noble has been available to customers since 2005. Now, anybody walking into a Barnes & Noble store anywhere in the country will have complimentary and unlimited access to the network at all store locations.
As a part of the Wi-Fi offering announced today, customers will soon be able to opt-in to receive personalized messages from Barnes & Noble — such as a coupon to the in-store café, notices on an author book signing or details on where to find a new book release in their favorite genre — on their Wi-Fi enabled devices when they enter the store.
“We are pleased to expand our relationship with Barnes & Noble as we work together to enhance and deepen customers’ overall experience within the retail stores,” said Ron Spears, CEO, AT&T Business Solutions. “We currently offer the majority of our AT&T customers Wi-Fi access throughout our more than 20,000 U.S. hotspot footprint, including Barnes & Noble, with their qualifying AT&T services. Now, we’re excited to be able to offer every Barnes & Noble customer the same great Wi-Fi experience at no extra charge whenever they enter a retail store.”
