Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore

It's disappointing that there is, apparently, no support for the Kindle. It doesn't look like there's support for any dedicated reader, for that matter. It's a software reader that can be installed on a computer, iPhone or Blackberry.

I love my Kindle. Sure, it got it's warts and I don't like DRM in principle, but it does exactly what I want it to do and it's convenient. However, it would be nice to have another source for ebooks even if I can't use Whispernet to buy them. There are a couple rinky-dink stores that aren't price-competitive with Amazon so I was excited about the Barnes and Noble announcement at first. It will be interesting to see what kind of uptake they have without supporting dedicated reading devices.

[edit]

After reading some more it looks like they've got their own format and DRM. sigh It's bad enough that we've already Amazon selling ebooks that are only compatible with one device. I was hoping at some point their store would open up to other devices, and they seem somewhat open minded to the idea considering their primary business is selling the books themselves. The last thing we need is a bunch of book sellers trying to lock customers into one format and one store.

“I don’t think they will be stealing market share from Amazon,” Ms. Rotman Epps said. “If anything I think they are contributing to the growth of the whole category of digital reading.”

I'm not so sure about this. I've been a fan of ebooks for a while and, if anything, I'm a little turned off right now.

She added that as more consumers begin reading digital books on phones and other mobile devices, it made sense to market to those readers as opposed to those who are buying dedicated reading devices like the Kindle or the Sony Reader.

It doesn't look like there will be support for dedicated reading devices any time soon.

I still think the best thing BN could do right now is to put the inventory levels of every bookstore on the store pages. I know they have them all on their intranet, since they can do searches of near-by stores to see if any neighbors have the book you are looking for. I'd just love to be able to go to bn.com and have it tell me which store (if any) I can go to today to get the book I want.

As it is, I mostly just go straight to amazon if I'm looking for a computer-related book, a sci-fi book, or a fantasy book, since my local bn's selection tends to be a bit lacking...

Books being read on iPhones et al...great time to go into optometry!