DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) launched an eBookstore that plans
to offer products for platforms including Apple Inc.'s (AAPL)
iPhone and iPod Touch, BlackBerry smartphones and most Windows and
Mac laptops or full-sized desktop computers.
The largest U.S. bookstore chain by revenue also said it will be
the exclusive eBookstore provider on the Plastic Logic eReader
device aimed at business professionals. The ultra-thin
8.5-by-11-inch wireless eReader is to debut early next year.
The eBookstore will offer more than 700,000 titles, including
hundreds of new releases and bestsellers for $9.99. The company
expects to offer more than 1 million titles in the next year,
including every available eBook from every book publisher and every
available eBook original.
Also available from the eBookstore are more than a half million
public-domain books from Google Inc. (GOOG) that can be downloaded
for free. These titles include classic works as well as obscure
books. Google last year agreed to pay $125 million to settle
lawsuits regarding the company's plan to digitize, search and show
snippets of copyrighted books without the express consent of the
rights holder.
"Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which 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 William J. Lynch, president of BN.com.
Other booksellers and publishers have been developing eBooks and
readers as consumers increasingly want to use mobile devices for
entertainment as well as communications. In June, CBS Corp.'s Simon
& Schuster book-publishing arm struck a deal to sell nearly
5,000 digital e-books titles on Scribd Inc., a Web site that allows
people to post and read documents online.
And Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) in May launched a new version of its
Kindle bookstore optimized for the iPhone, suggesting the Internet
retailer could be moving toward a multiplatform electronic book
strategy.
Booksellers have been hurt by the slowdown in consumer spending,
while online competition has cut into sales from brick-and-mortar
bookstores.
Barnes & Noble's shares were down 0.7% after-hours at
$21.96.
-By Kathy Shwiff, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2357;
Kathy.Shwiff@dowjones.com