Waterstones has revealed that it will no longer sell ebooks and will instead divert shoppers to digital book specialist Kobo.
The books retailer, which stopped selling Amazon’s Kindle e-readers in October owing to declining popularity, has unveiled that it will stop selling digital books altogether.
Waterstones has partnered with Japanese-owned ebook specialist Kobo and will divert its shoppers to the latter retailer’s platform for future digital book purchases.
Waterstones boss James Daunt said Kobo offers “an excellence of service we ourselves are unable to match”.
The books retailer, which saw its losses narrow to £4.5m and sales rise 1% to £392.4m in its full-year results in February, has reported a resurgence in demand for physical books as sales rose 3% in the first half of 2015.
From June 14, Waterstones will begin sending emails to shoppers that have purchases ebooks instructing them on how to transfer their libraries to Kobo’s platform.
Kobo chief executive Michael Tamblyn said: “We are pleased to be working with Waterstones, where we can help a great print retailer by supporting their customers who also love to read digitally.”
Waterstones has invested in broadening its range of physical books, opened a new Tottenham Court Road store and has installed Café Ws across 28 of it shops to drive customer footfall.
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