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

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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