Last night, Eric Eldon and Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch reported:

Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC, the digital book and college book joint venture with Barnes & Noble and other investors, according to internal documents we’ve obtained. In this plan, Microsoft would redeem preferred units in Nook Media, which also includes a college book division, leaving it with the digital operation — e-books, as well as Nook e-readers and tablets.

The documents also reveal that Nook Media plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year as it transitions to a model where Nook content is distributed through apps on “third-party partner” devices.

For a while now, Microsoft has been the only major tech player without its own e-book storefront. This looks like an attempt to buy into the market with an already-established brand. I'm not convinced that the Nook e-bookstore is worth a billion dollars, but this certainly would be the easiest way for Microsoft to play catch-up with Amazon, Apple, and Google.