Barnes & Noble takes on Amazon in electronic book market |
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Barnes & Noble takes on Amazon in electronic book market
For a while now, Amazon.com has been the undisputed big fish in the electronic book market. But that may be changing. Barnes & Noble just made a big leap into the business today by buying Fictionwise, one of the more prominent e-book sellers, for $15.7 million. Barnes & Noble says it plans to launch its own e-bookstore later this year.
The news comes as Amazon is ramping up its own e-book strategy with the release of the new Kindle 2 electronic reader and a new Kindle e-book application for Apple's popular iPhone and iPod touch.
Fictionwise gives Barnes & Noble a strong entry into the e-book business, which is a small but growing segment of book publishing. Fictionwise offers more than 60,000 e-book titles and its own free iPhone application called eReader. Amazon has a larger e-book collection totaling 240,000 books for the Kindle and iPhone.
William Lynch Jr., president and COO of Barnes&Noble.com, told the Wall Street Journal that Fictionwise has "one of the most popular applications on the iPhone, and they really understand merchandising." Fictionwise co-founder Stephen Pendergrast estimates the company has sold as many as 5 million e-book titles.
Barnes & Noble has toyed with -- and discarded -- the idea of e-books in the past, but now it appears to be serious about the space again. It will be interesting to see how the e-book market evolves with another major bookseller taking on Amazon. A big Canadian bookseller, Indigo Books & Music, recently came out with its own electronic book application, Shortcovers, for the iPhone and other mobile devices
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