Barnes & Noble today launched a new e-bookstore that now offers more than 700,000 book titles that can be read on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, RIM BlackBerry, a PC and notebook computers.
All bestsellers and new releases will be available for $9.99, and the company is expected to have more than one million book titles in its catalog over the next 12 months.
"Barnes & Noble is not trying to pick a winner," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in a statement with the Wall Street Journal. "They are betting on the whole category of e-reading."
Amazon obviously will continue to cater to its Kindle reading device, so I think opening up service for notebooks and PCs, iPods and the iPhone, and BlackBerry smartphones is a wise idea by Barnes & Noble. Reading ebooks on most mobile phones isn't really ideal, but analysts and people in the industry note the growing demand for ebooks on mobile devices.
Furthermore, B&N will be the exclusive provider for the Plastic Logic eReader device, offering a direct competitor to the Amazon Kindle. All books sold through B&N cannot be used with the Amazon Kindle or the Sony ebook reader, BN.com officials said.
I don't personally own a Kindle or any other ebook readers, but have noticed how many people at local tech shows are on the ebook bandwagon. As the price of content drops, alongside screens that are easier to read, the demand for ebooks is expected to increase over the next couple of years. Some U.S. high schools and universities are testing ebooks as opposed to traditional textbooks, because many students complain about the ridiculous price of text books.
If you're looking for an ebook reader, are you going to support Kindle and its Amazon store, or would you consider purchasing from the B&N store?
