Barnes & Noble opens e-book store to compete with Kindle

While Amazon.com got a big head start on the electronic book market, Barnes & Noble has been aggressively nipping at its heels. Today the giant bookstore chain took another major step with its e-book strategy, opening its own online eBookstore along the lines of Amazon's Kindle store. Barnes & Noble said its e-books can be read on the iPhone and iPod touch, and BlackBerry smartphones. It also announced an exclusive partnership with the upcoming Plastic Logic eReader.

Barnes & Noble is offering 700,000 electronic book titles, though more than 500,000 of those are free public domain books scanned by Google (Amazon currently offers more than 300,000 Kindle titles). B&N is adopting Amazon's e-book pricing model, with new releases and bestsellers priced at $9.99.

Amazon has successfully used the Kindle electronic reader to build a market for e-books. Barnes & Noble doesn't have a comparable device, but it's now hooking up with Kindle rival Plastic Logic. Barnes & Noble will power the eBookstore for Plastic Logic's 8.5 x 11-inch wireless eReader, scheduled for launch in early 2010. Both B&N and Amazon are making e-books available on the iPhone and other smartphones.

Barnes & Noble this spring bought e-bookseller Fictionwise, maker of the popular eReader application for the iPhone, and unveiled its own Barnes & Noble iPhone app last month.

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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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