Barnes & Noble Inc. opened its eBookstore for business today, starting a new chapter in the e-books market by offering twice as many titles as rival Amazon.com Inc. and e-book reading software that, unlike Amazon’s, works on a large number of devices for reading electronic books.
The Barnes & Noble eBookstore, located at BN.com/ebooks, offers access to 700,000 e-book titles, compared to the 300,000 available through Amazon’s Kindle Store, and an eReader e-book software application that consumers can download to most PC and Mac computers, Blackberry and iPhone smart phones and iPods. Amazon, which did not immediately return a request for comment, limits access to e-books from its Kindle Store to its Kindle e-reader device and Apple Corp.’s iPhone and iPod touch devices.
Barnes & Noble, No. 41 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, also announced today that it will be the exclusive provider of a forthcoming e-book reader from Plastic Logic that will compete with Amazon’s Kindle, offering unique features such as a touchscreen interface instead of the Kindle’s keypad.
E-book market analysts say Barnes & Noble’s e-book strategy will help it to capitalize on the growth in e-book sales, even if it doesn’t cut into the market share of Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
“I don’t think Barnes & Noble will be stealing market share from Amazon with this move, but will be able to capitalize on the growth of the e-book market in general,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, media analyst with Forrester Research Inc.
E-book sales grew by 196.6% year over year in May to $11.5 million, following 68.4% year-over-year growth in 2008 to $113 million, according to the Association of American Publishers. By comparison, total book sales in May fell 3.2% year over year to $673.9 million, and they declined 2.8% year over year in 2008 to $24.3 billion, the association says.
“Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time,” says William J. Lynch, president of BN.com. “Our goal at Barnes & Noble is to build a service that revolves around the customer, enabling them to have access to hundreds of thousands of titles and read on their smartphone, PC, and many other existing and future devices. We want to make e-books simple, accessible, affordable and convenient for everyone.”
According to Simba Information’s Trade eBook Publishing 2009 report, the most common device used for reading e-books is a PC, either in desktop or laptop form. “Laptops have a huge head start as a device for reading e-books,” says Michael Norris, senior analyst with Simba Information, a media research firm.
“Most people will use an existing device they already have rather than buy a new $299 Kindle.”
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