ICv2 has confirmed that Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, is removing 100 of DC’s bestselling backlist titles from its 705 retail stores in the U.S.  The action is being taken as a result of DC’s exclusive deal with Amazon on those titles for the Kindle Fire (see “Watchmen on Kindle”), making them unavailable for Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader.  Amazon priced at least some of those titles at $9.99, or roughly half the price of the print editions (see “Kindle Launches Graphic Novel Price War”).  It appears that the action, at least for now, applies only to the brick and mortar stores; BN.com is still offering Watchmen (at $10.87) as of this writing.

Barnes & Noble appears to be making an example of DC for other publishers thinking of giving Amazon exclusive content for the Kindle, and is willing to lose some sales to make its point clear.

We haven’t heard what the term of the DC exclusive with the Kindle is, but there will be a window of at least some months, including the all-important holiday season, with vastly reduced availability of those titles in chain bookstores.  This will offer an opportunity for all of B&N’s competitors, and will undoubtedly hurt DC’s graphic novel sales through the end of the year.

As we wrote when this started, “DC’s deal with Amazon for the Kindle Fire is a potentially disruptive game-changer that could have far-reaching impacts on the market for physical and digital graphic novels in the future.”

For retailers interested in making sure they have the books that the Barnes & Noble stores will not, here’s the list of titles that DC made exclusive for the Kindle:

 All Star Superman
 All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder, Vol. 1
 American Vampire Vol. 1