Melville House Books

It wasn’t a great day for Barnes & Noble yesterday, although it wasn’t exactly a disaster, either. According to this Reuters wire story,the company “reported a net loss of $32.1 million, or 58 cents per share for it fiscal 2010 fourth quarter ended May 1, compared with a loss of $2.1 million, or 5 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the bookseller lost 89 cents a share.”

Definitely not good. And yet there were some interesting numbers buried beneath the loss. For one thing, actual print book sales were up slightly, and “Overall fourth quarter sales rose 19 percent to $1.3 billion.” What’s more, sales at its website, BN.com, sales increased a wopping “51 percent to $141 million during the quarter from the year ago. It said it expected it website sales to rise 75 percent to $1 billion in fiscal 2011.”

Still more interestingly, “Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William Lynch, who oversaw the development of the Nook and was named CEO in March, said in a statement that the retailer’s share of the e-book market now surpasses its share of the retail book market.”

So why the loss? According to CFO Joseph Lombardi, “spending on its e-book business explains a large part of the loss in the fourth quarter.”

In fact, as a Publishers Weekly report notes, B&N board chairman Len Riggio says the quarterly report has inspired the company to make a more significant investment in its digital efforts, particularly the Nook. “The explosive growth of digital books has created the most compelling opportunity in Barnes & Noble’s history,” he says. “We have found that Barnes & Noble Members, our best customers, have increased their combined physical and digital spend with us by 17% since purchasing a NOOK, and by a phenomenal 70% in total units.”

As for online sales — always weak against arch-rival Amazon.com — BN.com is “having easily the best year in its history,” says PW, and projections are that the site “could hit sales of $1 billion this year.”

Of course, as this Forbes article notes, Amazon also seems on target for a billion dollar ebook business, especially after cutting the price of the Kindle, making still more ebooks available, and making the Kindle reader available yesterday on Android-based devices.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.