US book retailer and eBook/tablet vertical Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) has released its Q3 FY12 financials for the three months ending 28 January 2012.

Sales were $2.4 billion, up 5 percent year-on-year.

Net income was $52 million, flat year-on-year.

Finding a nook

Sales growth was particularly strong in its Nook business.

Taking into account digital content, device hardware and related accessories, sales were up 38 percent to $542 million.

Device sales - including the Simple Touch, Color and Tablet devices - were up 64 percent, while sales of digital content were up 85 percent.

The company also announced it would be selling a $199 version of the Nook Tablet, with reduced memory, to better compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.

It didn't comment on its ongoing investigation into rolling out the unit as a separate company, however.

Up, up

"In the third quarter, our traffic and sales in stores were the highest we've seen in five years," said William Lynch, Barnes & Noble's CEO.

"Importantly, our Nook digital content business continues to grow rapidly, and according to some of the largest US publishers, we maintained or slightly gained share in the eBook market during the third quarter."

The company ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and net receivables of $424 million, compared to $383 million 12 months ago.

[source: Barnes & Noble]