Barnes & Noble is entering the e-book market through its launch of an online store, a partnership with e-reader maker Plastic Logic, and software for downloading books onto PCs and portable devices such as BlackBerry smartphones, the iPhone, and the iPod touch.
Barnes & Noble's e-book store already offers more than 700,000 titles -- including 500,000 free books courtesy of Google's digitization of works no longer covered by copyright restrictions. The company also said it expects to be offering more than one million e-book titles within the next year.
The online strategy for the world's largest bookseller 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," said Barnes & Noble President William Lynch.
A Highly Competitive Market
Barnes & Noble also announced that it will become the exclusive online provider of e-book titles for the Plastic Logic e-reader, which will feature an eight-by-11.5-inch form factor that is only one-quarter of an inch thick with gesture-based technology. If the Plastic Logic device launches as expected in the first quarter of 2010, it will have a few advantages over Amazon's new, larger-screen Kindle DX, said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.
"Namely, it will have a touchscreen interface, and it will be less prone to breakage since it uses plastic electronics instead of glass for a backplane," Rotman Epps said. "Whether that's enough to win over consumers remains to be seen."
Rotman Epps noted that Barnes & Noble is entering a new market that is shaping up to be highly competitive. Amazon and Sony currently dominate e-book sales through their online stores and dedicated e-reader devices. Google has also announced that it will begin to market e-books online by the end of this year.
Though Barnes & Noble has long-standing relationships with publishers, the company ultimately will face the same pricing squeeze that Amazon and Google already do, Rotman Epps said. "Consumers expect digital content to be cheaper, and publishers don't want it to be cheaper for fear of cannibalizing their print sales -- especially for hardcover books," the analyst said.
The Cost Factor
New data  based on a Forrester Research survey of online consumers in North America shows that both e-book and e-reader pricing rank as top concerns. A total of 39 percent of respondents said cheaper devices would most likely cause them to consider purchasing an e-book reader, with cheaper books and other media trailing closely behind at 36 percent. (continued...)
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