Adobe and Barnes & Noble.com Team to Offer Adobe PDF-Based eBooks

January 2001 -- Adobe Systems Incorporated and Barnes & Noble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN)(www.bn.com) today announced the availability of the free Adobe® Acrobat® eBook Reader(tm) 2.0 and a range of new graphics-rich Portable Document Format (PDF)-based eBooks. For a limited time "Survivor II: The Field Guide," an exclusive title about the upcoming season of the blockbuster television program Survivor: The Australian Outback, will be available exclusively at Barnes & Noble.com for the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader. The eBook, published by TV Books, contains interactive components, including a printable scorecard enabling users to participate in the show week by week.

Additional new eBook titles formatted for the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader available today from Barnes & Noble.com include: "Orpheus Emerged," by Jack Kerouac, published by LiveREADS; "Evolve!" by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, published by Harvard Business Press; "The Physicians Desk Reference: The Family Guide to Prescription Drugs" published by Medical Economics Co.; "The Playground," by Ray Bradbury, published by RosettaBooks, LLC; and "Personal Injuries" by Scott Turow, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which is digitally signed by the author.

The Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader 2.0, an upgrade to the Glassbook Reader, which Adobe acquired last year, offers consumers vivid, visually accurate representations of graphics-intensive eBooks, such as cookbooks, children's books, college textbooks and travel books. eBooks delivered in Acrobat eBook Reader 2.0 and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) offer a rich, high-fidelity experience that can display, and when enabled by publishers, print electronic titles with colorful pictures, complex graphics and rich fonts, exactly as intended by the publisher.

"The Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader provides the most true-to-print rendition of graphics-intensive texts that I've seen," said Michael Fragnito, vice president, Publishing at Barnes & Noble.com. "The use of Adobe PDF allows readers to have the same visual experience as reading a printed book, but with the added benefit of interactivity and the option for the publishers to allow printing."

Among the new features of Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader 2.0 are an easy-to-use, intuitive interface that allows for full-text search, bookmarks, text highlights and annotations. In addition, the Acrobat eBook Reader has a unique personalized library that stores and organizes eBooks by subject, author or title. The Acrobat eBook Reader, which supports the Adobe PDF and Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) digital rights management standards, includes a built-in Web browser, enabling readers to purchase eBooks on the Internet from within the application.

"While eBook titles for novels have gained considerable interest, there are volumes of other types of content, such as children's books, cookbooks, textbooks or financial reports to make available digitally," said Mike Looney, senior director of eBooks, Adobe Systems, Incorporated. "Adobe and Barnes and Noble.com understand that the future of eBooks is making all types of content available online to consumers. It's also about delivering an experience that replicates the printed book experience, is printable if desired, and addresses the needs of publishers and authors, such as preserving the original format and secure delivery."

TV Books is a private publishing and digital content company with strategic ties to broadcasters and independent television producers. "Making Survivor II: The Field Guide available as an eBook is an outstanding use of the technologies and content available to modern electronic publishing," said TV Books founder and president, Peter B. Kaufman. "Adobe's breathtaking new Acrobat eBook Reader is truly the perfect platform to showcase the graphically rich text, color images, audio, and video that we are digitally publishing in this eBook."

About Barnes & Noble.com

Barnes & Noble.com is an Internet commerce company offering a comprehensive range of books and related information products. With more than six million unique visitors per month to its Web site, www.bn.com, the company has the largest audience reach of any brick and mortar company with an Internet presence. It stocks the largest in-stock selection of in-print book titles, supplemented by more than 12 million listings from its nationwide network of out-of-print, rare and used book dealers. Its college textbook store offers a vast selection of new and used textbooks and its recently introduced eBookStore has established the company as a leader in the delivery of digital content and intellectual property.

Barnes & Noble.com's excellence in e-commerce extends to the music business, where it was cited by Forbes.com as the No. 1 music site on the Web, for being "best-of-class for anyone who wants to learn about the music they're buying." The company's product ranges now include a full complement of information products, including DVD, video, software and PC games.

The company's focus on information products is manifest in its recently launched Barnes & Noble University, a distance learning forum offering free classes. Ranging from "Introduction to Programming" to "Introduction to XML" to "The Night Sky: An Introduction to Astronomy"" to "Walking through Shakespeare," Barnes & Noble University has quickly established itself as a leading Internet hub for learning and community.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems Incorporated (www.adobe.com) builds award-winning software solutions for Web and print publishing. Its graphic design, imaging, dynamic media, and authoring tools enable customers to create, publish and deliver visually-rich content for various types of media. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Adobe is the third largest U.S.-based personal software company, with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion.