Is Barnes & Noble about to undergo a massive make-over? In a Publishers Weekly report headlined “Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer,” Jim Milliot says, er, maybe.

Milliot details a conference call about B&N’s third quarter results (which were mixed, as PW reported a day earlier) with CEO Steve Riggio, who “said 2010 will be a ‘watershed’ year for the company as it transitions from a bricks-and-mortar bookseller to an e-commerce retailer.” Further:

E-book sales at the company have “simply exploded” Riggio said and B&N’s market share of e-books on some titles is already higher than its share for print books. E-book sales have been helped by the release of the Nook, which Riggio said is B&N’s single biggest seller, but the company has seen good growth in e-books used across a variety of devices ranging from the iPhone to Blackberrys.

What’s more, Riggio says he doesn’t see the ebook market as “a two horse race” between Apple and Amazon, although he is “convinced … that the market will be more consolidated than the traditional bookstore market …”

Meanwhile, get ready. He says his booksellers will become “e-book evangelists.”