Pages

Monday, July 20, 2009

Kindle and Amazon Have Got Some Competition

Barnes and Noble don't want to go down without a fight. As digital content becomes more accepted, book stores, like record stores before them will go away. To stay in business, Barnes and Noble needs to adapt to a changing business model. And you can't let Amazon and Kindle get all the book business. "The book retail giant just announced its new e-book strategy. It includes:
An e-book store with 700,000 titles and pricing competitive to Amazon's, including $9.99 bestsellers. An exclusive deal to provide e-books for the forthcoming Plastic Logic e-book reader, which will debut early next year. More than 500,000 public domain books from Google, which are free."

Will they beat out Kindle; hard to say. The Kindle name has gotten more awareness and buzz, both good and bad. Having not played with either device, it is hard to say which will come out stronger. My neighbor has a Kindle and raves about it. In fact, he was thrilled to show it off except he forgot to turn off the wireless and he drained the battery. No reading material for him at the pool! Still, it holds a lot of books and newspapers in a small package. I still believe that Apple should enter the fray. Their experience with the iPod and iTunes and their App store give them a competitive advantage to build and distribute a device that offers reading content. I hope they announce one soon!