Barnes & Noble and Nook are splitting into two separate companies

Barnes & Noble said on Wednesday that it planned to spin off its Nook business, once viewed as the company’s best hope for surviving in an age of a dominant Amazon.com, as a separate public company. The announcement moves Barnes & Noble forward on a plan it has considered for nearly two years. Over the last two years, the retailer has brought in Microsoft and the publisher Pearson as minority investors in the Nook business, in part to help defray the costs of building and selling e-readers. But the Nook — which Barnes & Noble once trumpeted as its best answer to Amazon.com and its wildly popular Kindle device — instead fell increasingly behind. Barnes & Noble has moved to downsize the unit, focusing more on media sales and teaming up with Samsung to build the devices.