A weak slate of new offerings across the book, movie and video game businesses as well as the continuing move to e-book sales from print books led to a loss of $5.5 million at Hastings Entertainment in the third quarter ended October 31, compared to a loss of $3.1 million in last year’s third quarter. Sales fell 3.3% in the quarter, to $108.6 million.

To compete more effectively in the digital space, Hastings launched an e-bookstore November 10 at its gohastings.com Web site and on November 20 began offering the Nextbook Premium 7 tablet for sale in its stores. Priced at $149.99, the tablet will allow consumers to read e-books, watch movies, listen to MP3s as well as surf the Web and read e-mail. Hastings has also developed a free Readmor App that will provide access to what the retailer said is “hundreds of thousands” of bestselling books. The app can be downloaded on any Android device.

Taking advantage of its position in the used book market, Hastings is allowing customers to trade in their physical books at its stores for credit they can use to purchase the tablet, or to purchase digital content at www.goHastings.com.

In the quarter, book comps decreased 4.5% due to increased promotional pricing along with decreased sales of new mass market books and hardbacks and magazines, partially offset by increased sales of used hardbacks, trade paperbacks and mass market books. For the nine month period, book comps were down 7.8%. In the third period, the only categories to have positive comps were trends and café.

In a statement,Hastings CEO John Marmaduke said that economic weakness also contributed to the retailer’s soft third quarter. “We continue to be impacted by the shift toward the digital delivery of books, along with the increasing growth of rental kiosks and subscription-based services in movie rentals. Additionally, the current economic environment continues to impact consumer discretionary spending, thereby reducing average purchases, as customers are choosing lower priced products. We continue to focus on controlling our costs,” Marmaduke said. During the third quarter, Hastings closed two underperforming stores raising the number of stores closed this year to four; it will close two more stores in the fourth quarter.

For the nine-month period, total sales were down 4.8%, to $343.3 million and the loss increased to $9.2 million from $2.1 million.