FAQs

Also known as electronic books, eBooks are digital versions of books that can be read on personal computers or mobile devices, like the iPhone or Blackberry.

Find the eBook of your choice on BN.com, then click the "Buy Now" button on the product page. If you have entered in the information for a default credit card, clicking the button will complete your purchase. Your new eBook will be waiting for you in your eBooks Library.

Note: All eBooks have a "Buy Now" button, whereas other products have "Add to Cart." There's also a Digital icon () that precedes the format type.

To complete your eBook purchase, you must sign in and enter a default credit card. You will have this option during the purchasing process. It only takes a moment.

For more details, go to Buying eBooks in the Help section.

No. Currently you cannot. By mid-December, however, you'll be able to buy eBooks with a Barnes & Noble Gift Card or Online Gift Certificate.

We accept American Express, MasterCard, Discover, Visa, Diners Club, and JCB. You must have a default payment card and billing address set up to purchase an eBook. If you do not, we'll offer to set this up for you the first time you purchase an eBook.

Please Note: Store credit issued by Barnes & Noble stores may not be used online. For more details, please review our payment options.

Yes. We use the latest encryption technology to keep your information safe. See our Safe Shopping Guarantee.

Yes, we offer thousands of eBook samples for users. Just visit an eBook page, look for the "Try It Now" heading, then click the "Get Free Sample" button.  If you choose to purchase the full title, the free sample will be replaced with the full version of the eBook in your eBooks Library. (But the sample remains on your device if you already downloaded it.)

Free titles are indicated by a "Get Free" button in place of the "Buy Now" button. Barnes & Noble.com has partnered with Google Books to bring you half a million public domain titles for free. Look for these titles throughout the website, as indicated by the icon shown below.

If you don't already have a default credit card on record when you order your free eBook, you will need to supply one at check out. It will appear as a penny, but you will be credited for this amount upon checkout.

Only books in the public domain, or out of copyright, have the download feature available.

A public domain book is one that was either never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. It might be a novel like Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (first published in 1851), an ancient work like Aristotle's observations on bees, or any one of the millions of scholarly, practical and entertaining works written since the days of clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. These books represent a wealth of knowledge that often is not easily discovered.

No, but you are required to sign into your Barnes & Noble.com account. Creating a Barnes & Noble.com account is free.

Google Books lets you find pretty much any kind of book you can imagine — fiction, non-fiction, reference, scholarly, textbooks, children's books, scientific, medical, professional, educational, and other books of all kinds. The books available for free via Barnes & Noble.com are public domain (out of copyright) works.

eBooks follow the normal tax rules of all downloadable products. Click here for details about placing a tax-exempt order.

1. Purchase an eBook or get a free sample.
2. Open your eReader and download your eBook. Barnes & Noble eBooks currently come in proprietary .pdb format. Need to install our FREE eReader application?
   

   iPhone/iPod Touch

   Download in iTunes. Or, from your iPhone/iPod Touch, go to BN.com from your phone. Once you are on the site, click "Download free B&N eReader App."

   Blackberry

   You must install the B&N eReader for BlackBerry directly from your device's built-in browser. Go to BN.com from your phone. Once you are on the site, click "Download free B&N eReader App."
   
   System Requirements: Requires at least 1.1 MB of free memory for installation.
   
   Supported Models:
   
   BlackBerry 7130
   Curve 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, 8900
   Pearl 8100, 8110, 8120, 8130, 8220
   BlackBerry 8703e, 8707, 8800, 8820, 8830
   Bold 9000
   Storm 9500, 9530

   PC

   Download Now
   System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
   Requires at least 10 MB free memory Details

   Mac

   Download Now
   System Requirements: Mac OS 8.6 or later, using CarbonLib 1.6 or later/Mac OS X 10.1 or later (Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later recommended) Details

   Other Devices

   You will also be able to read eBooks on the nook. Please consult our nook FAQ and Support.
3. If it is the first time you are opening the eBook and/or the file is encrypted, you will be prompted to unlock the eBook by entering your default credit card and credit card holder's name.

Note: Your eBooks will always be stored in your eBooks Library. From there, you can download them any time to your iPhone, Blackberry or computer. Visit your eBooks Library

You can download eBooks from your eBooks Library that have already been purchased. You will not be able to purchase eBooks if you are traveling outside of the United States.

Your purchased eBooks and free samples are stored online in your eBooks Library. You can access them at any time by signing in to your BN.com account. From there, you can download them any time to your iPhone, BlackBerry, or computer. Visit your eBooks Library

Your eBooks Library is a private page on BN.com that lists your previous purchases, allowing you to manage your eBooks quickly and easily. It is a permanent home to your purchases and free samples, no matter how many different devices you use to read your eBooks. To see your eBooks Library, sign in to your BN.com account.

In your eBooks Library, you'll find that we've already provided three great eBooks at no cost to get you started. We've also provided a handy pocket dictionary at no cost that you can use for reference purposes.

As your eBooks Library grows, you can move previously read items to your Archives by clicking the Archive link. This simply takes it out of your main view, but it is always available in case you want to download it again.

You also have the option to permanently delete a title from your eBooks Library. However, we recommend you archive your purchase in case you want to download it again. Deleting an item will permanently remove it from your collection and requires re-purchase should want it again.

To access your protected purchases, you must have an authorized credit card on record with Barnes & Noble.com. It does not necessarily have to be the credit card you used to purchase your eBook(s).

You can set up a new default credit card in your Account to use for unlocking eBooks. Go to My Account

Once you've purchased an eBook, you can access and download it as many times as you want.

First, make sure your web connection is working; if you can't connect to the web, you won't be able to download anything. If your connection is working, check the System and Device Specification section for detailed help and instructions.

You may be downloading a Google public domain title that is not available in your current location. Only books in the public domain — books whose copyrights have expired — have the download feature available. A book published before 1923 that has fallen out of copyright in the US may still be in copyright under the laws of other countries. For users outside the US, determinations are made based on appropriate local laws.

Please email Google with details of the title in the question.

Your eBooks Wish List is a safe, private list tied to your Barnes & Noble account, where you can save items for future purchase. You can access your eBooks Wish List though your account, main Wish List or My B&N profile page. In the Barnes & Noble eReader for the iPhone, you can access your eBook Wish List by going to "Categories" and selecting the Wish List option.

No, our eBooks are not printable.

We try our best to put eBooks and books on sale simultaneously, but in many cases, for reasons beyond our control, eBooks are not released on the same date as the print version.

At Barnes & Noble we value all of our customers and understand that you care about the privacy and security of your personal information. See our complete Privacy Policy.

The Help and FAQ pages on BN.com are usually the fastest way to find an answer to your question. But if you still need help, click here to contact us.

The Barnes & Noble eReader is an application used to read Barnes & Noble eBooks on your iPhone, Blackberry, Windows PC or Mac. Without it, you will not be able to read Barnes & Noble eBooks. Our eBooks are encrypted to protect the authors' work. Thus, other eBook Readers will not work with Barnes & Noble eBooks. The Barnes & Noble eReader can display styled text (italicized, underlined, etc.) and formatting as well as perform functions not found on other eBook readers. The Barnes & Noble eReader is FREE and is supported on multiple devices.

Safari on the iPhone/iPod Touch cannot download books to the device via the web browser. It is not allowed to by Apple. To download books onto your device you do it from within the eReader application following this process:

Launch Barnes & Noble eReader software to trigger the automatic syncing of your purchases to your device. You can also manually tap the 'gear' button in the lower right-hand corner of the navigation bar and then hit Account Settings. This will open a screen to allow you to enter your login information which includes your account name and password. Press Go and your information will be verified and then the contents of your on-line eBooks Library will be listed for you. Then just browse your book listings and tap on the book you'd like to download to your device. A popup will confirm your request. Press OK and the book will download to your device in the background, and you'll be notified when it has finished downloading.

Yes, as long as you have enough memory on your computer or handheld device.

No. Your credit card number is used only to unlock the eBook and is not stored on your handheld.

Yes, software updates are available to you free of charge. If you've installed the Barnes & Noble eReader, you will receive an alert when a new version is released. We recommend upgrading your version as frequently as possible, since some eBooks will only work with the latest version.

No, you will not be charged. You can download your eBooks from your account as often as needed. If, however, you delete an eBook from your eBooks Library, you will have to purchase that title again.

eBooks can be bookmarked just like paper books. Whether you're marking a passage or leaving off in the middle of a sentence, the bookmark tool helps you keep track of the things you want to keep for later.

With the Global Find tool, you can make notes in your eBooks as you would in paper books”then find them again in just a few clicks.

The highlighter feature lets you mark your eBook as you would a paper book, keeping track of the passages you want to remember.

While the eReader supports most Western European Languages, including French, German, Italian, and Spanish, it does not support characters from non-western alphabets.

You should be able to unlock the eBook from Barnes & Noble.com with this information:

Unlock Name: Full name on your Billing Address

Unlock Code: 15 or 16 digit credit card on record as your default credit card when you downloaded the eBook
Please replace the *'s with the actual credit card numbers.

If you don't have the credit card you previously used to unlock the eBook, please try adding a new credit card on your Account page. After adding a new card, re-download your purchased eBooks, and try unlocking them with the new credit card number. (You might want to delete the old copies of your eBooks first, to avoid confusion. The old and new copies will have the same file names.)

It's easy to delete an eBook when you're finished with it.
Step 1: Open any eBook and tap the menu icon
Step 2: Select 'delete' from the book menu
Step 3: Select the book you wish to delete, then press the 'delete' button

The Barnes & Noble eReader is built primarily to support eBook files sold at BN.com. These text files end in either .pdb or prc and have been specifically packaged for use on a handheld using the Barnes & Noble eReader.

Yes, you can read them on nook.

B&N is working to support many different platforms in the future, but we have not made any specific announcements yet on Linux.

We are actively working on several different platforms, including Windows Mobile. As this time we have not determined any release dates.

The Help and FAQ pages on BN.com are usually the fastest way to find an answer to your question. But if you still need help, click here to contact us.

Either you are entering an incorrect email address, an incorrect password, or both. To reset your password, click the account or sign-in link at the top of the page. Then, at the sign-in page, click "Forgot your password?" and follow the directions.

Please note: Our system does not currently recognize a password with an ampersand (&) when it is entered on an iPhone or Windows PC. When you reset your password, please do not include an ampersand (&).

Even if you have not purchased anything from BN.com, you may be in our database as an existing customer. In that case, you can sign in as a Returning Customer. If not, you may no longer be the owner of the email address you entered. If you continue to have problems, please contact us at customer support, along with a description of your assistance needs.

The first step is to find out whether or not the purchase transaction went through. You can review your eBooks Library or check your email inbox. If your purchase was completed, you'll find an email with your receipt, plus instructions on how to download your file.

If you do not have an email and your purchase is NOT in your eBooks Library, then the purchase transaction was not completed and you will need to try to purchase your eBook again.

There are a handful of possible reasons why you may not be able to download your eBook:

• If your payment was declined, a refund may have been issued for the title in question, or a charge-back may have been applied. Click here to contact us.
• If the title is a pre-order that has not yet been released, the link will not work until the book is on the market. The available download date is noted in your eBooks Library.
• Your browser's cache may be full. The browser cache holds the content of all the links and pages you have visited during previous sessions. Please see your browser Help for instructions on clearing your cache.

This may be due to a corrupt eBook file. Sometimes files can get corrupted during download. Try deleting the eBook file from your handheld and desktop PC, then log into your account to download a fresh copy of your eBook.

If you continue to have problems, please contact us at customer support, along with a description of your assistance needs.

Download in iTunes. Or, from your iPhone/iPod Touch, go to BN.com from your phone. Once you are on the site, click "Download free B&N eReader App."

You must install the B&N eReader for BlackBerry directly from your device's built-in browser. Go to BN.com from your phone. Once you are on the site, click "Download free B&N eReader App."
Requires at least 1.1 MB of free memory for installation.

Supported Models

BlackBerry 7130
Curve 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, 8900
Pearl 8100, 8110, 8120, 8130, 8220
BlackBerry 8703e, 8707, 8800, 8820, 8830
Bold 9000
Storm 9500, 9530

Note: If you are using a corporate Blackberry, you might be prevented from downloading applications. Please check with your employer. Also, to store downloaded content, i.e., eBooks, it is recommended that one install an SD card in the device. Please see your manufacturer's guide for your specific device.

Download Now
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Requires at least 10 MB free memory

1. Download the eReader here, saving the file to your desktop.
2. Double click file.
3. After a couple of easy steps, the B&N eReader will be installed.
4. The B&N eReader is now installed for your reading pleasure!
5. Locate the B&N eReader icon on your desktop.
   
6. Double click it to launch the application.
7. Simply sign into your account and the B&N eReader will synch up to your eBooks Library to get all your latest purchases.
8. Go to your All Books bookshelf and double click any title to start reading.
9. If the eBook is not encrypted, eReader will display it in a new window. If the eBook is encrypted, you'll see the following dialog box:
   
10. To unlock the eBook, enter the full name on the Billing Address of default credit card on record when you downloaded the eBook.
11. Click OK and the eBook will open.

Download Now
System Requirements: Mac OS 8.6 or later, using CarbonLib 1.6 or later/Mac OS X 10.1 or later (Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later recommended)

1. Download the Barnes & Noble eReader, saving the .dmg file to your computer.
2. Double click the file. This will create an "Install eReader" Icon on your desktop.
3. Double-click the "Install eReader" icon on your desktop.
4. Follow the instructions to install eReader.
5. The B&N eReader is now installed for your reading pleasure!
6. To download eBooks, add your titles to your shopping cart, purchase, and then follow the above instructions to download.
   To read an eBook
   1. Open the eReader folder (usually founding the Applications/eReader directory).
   2. Double click the eReader icon.
   3. From the File menu, select Open.
   4. Go to the folder where you save your eBooks.
   5. Browse and select the eBook and click Open. If the eBook is not encrypted, the B&N eReader will display it in a new window.
   6. To unlock the eBook, enter the purchaser's name and unlock code (the credit card number on record when you downloaded the eBook).
   7. Click OK.
   8. eReader displays the eBook in a new window and you can start reading!