NEW YORK (AP) – In a time of slow sales and fears of cutbacks in the book industry, at least one “publisher” keeps getting bigger: Barnes & Noble.

The superstore chain announced Monday it was upgrading and expanding its line of “classic books” such as “Moby-Dick” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Editions from the new imprint, Barnes & Noble Classics, will start coming out in May, with 100 different titles expected by June 2004.

“These books are consistent with our plan to publish books of high editorial quality and exceptional value, books that sell year after year,” Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio said in a statement.

Barnes & Noble, which last December acquired Sterling Publishing, a leading specialist in gardening, cooking and other “how-to” books, has been steadily expanding the publishing end of its business. Riggio says that about 4 percent of current sales come from books the retailer also publishes.

“We expect to get to 10 percent within five years,” Riggio said Monday in an interview.

Other stores publish books, too, but not as aggressively as Barnes & Noble. A rival chain, Borders Group Inc., has its own publishing imprint, Borders State Street Classics. But a spokeswoman said sales were “small” and that there were no plans to expand publishing.

Barnes & Noble’s new imprint means that Penguin Classics, the Modern Library and other publishers of older works face aggressive competition from the same company that sells many of their books. Barnes & Noble will place its own books at the front of its stores and offer editions for as little as $3.95, easily as inexpensive as its rivals.

“Yeah, I’m concerned,” said Ellen Chodosh, a vice president and publisher and Oxford University Press, a leading publisher of classics. “You never like to see another competitor in the field.”

Many older books are in the public domain, meaning the copyright has expired and anyone is entitled to release them. “Moby-Dick,” for example, has countless editions: paperbacks, scholarly texts, specially annotated volumes.

Barnes & Noble has long published such works, but the new versions are far more ambitious, with scholarly notes, illustrations, glossaries and discussion questions and a list of plays or movies inspired by the original text. Riggio says he wants the books to appeal to a wide range of buyers – students, reading groups and those “looking to rediscover the classics.”

Publishers care deeply about these books, which sell consistently in both the academic and general markets. Penguin is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars repackaging its popular Classics imprint, with new covers, larger print and new introductions.

The demand for older books will likely increase greatly later this spring, when Oprah Winfrey is scheduled to bring back her reading group after a yearlong hiatus. The talk-show host plans to focus on writers from the past, including Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.

The publishing director of the Modern Library, David Ebershoff, said he was not concerned about Barnes & Noble’s new imprint. He noted that professors prefer using the same texts year by year, incorporating page numbers in their lecture notes.

“The campus market works very differently from the general market,” Ebershoff said. “It’s not a matter of someone walking into a store and finding what he or she wants. It’s the professor who makes the decision.”

“We recognize that teachers tend to stick with the same edition, but they also switch,” Riggio responded. “This is a long-term investment. … Just wait until they see our edition.”