They're also ceasing to sell Apps directly. There's a post over in the BN Nook forums (the official ones) about it-
https://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com...ing-nook-books
The poster, Alex, is a BN employee who oversees the forums.
He does try to assure customers that Nook is still committed to selling ebooks, newspapers, and magazines in the US. And that there is no need to worry about those services disappearing.
Which I would find comforting if it weren't for the fact that it sound like what they told UK customers last Summer when BN shut down all their other international stores following buying Microsoft out of their share of Nook Media.
BN has shown continuous signs of shrinking away from the digital world. They outsource their tablets to Samsung. They release a eink device which just catches up to what other companies already had on the market, and which met with less than stellar reviews. And also released with the inability to load books through ADE which stopped customers from borrowing ebooks from the library. A service which has been available for ereaders for years.
It may behoove B&N to just shut the doors and sell their database to another company like Kobo. The two already use the same format for ebooks, and it would benefit both companies. B&N gets rid of an anchor to their stores profits, while Kobo gains a small footprint within the US.