Barnes & Noble today announced that its director and CEO, William Lynch, has resigned, effective immediately.
Going forward, Michael P. Huseby will serve as CEO of Nook Media and president of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Huseby joined B&N in March 2012 as chief financial officer and previously held positions at Cablevision, Charter Communications, and AT&T Broadband.
"I appreciate the opportunity to serve as CEO of this terrific company over the last three years," Lynch said in a statement. "There is a great executive team and board in place at Barnes & Noble, and I look forward to the many innovations the company will be bringing to its millions of physical and digital media customers in the future."
Max J. Roberts, CEO of B&N College, will remain the head of the company's digital education strategy and report to Huseby, as will the rest of the Nook Media team. Huseby and Mitchell Klipper, CEO of the Barnes & Noble Retail Group, will report to Leonard Riggio, executive chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc.
"As the bookselling industry continues to undergo significant transformation, we believe that Michael, Mitchell, and Max are the right executives to lead us into the future," Riggio said in a statement.
B&N is currently "in the process of reviewing its current strategic plan and will provide an update when appropriate," the company said in a statement.
Back in February, Riggio said he wanted to purchase the company's retail business, and leave behind its floundering Nook division, which debuted in late 2009. Then, in late June, B&N announced that it was looking to hand its struggling Nook tablet division to a third party.
Barnes & Noble has been struggling for some time to compete against Amazon's Kindle lineup and other 7-inch tablets, not to mention the Apple iPad mini.