• Financial Times, Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:32 AM

Barnes & Noble is challenging Amazon's Kindle e-book service with an expanded online store that will carry more than 200,000 e-book titles for both laptop computers and mobile devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone. It will also provide free access to about 500,000 titles available on Google Books whose copyright has expired, Jonathan Birchall reports, and will be the e-book store for a wireless portable e-reader being developed by Plastic Logic that is scheduled for launch next year.

William Lynch, head of BarnesandNoble.com, says the retailer is pursuing "an every-device strategy," and expects to expand to more than 1 million titles "in the near future," adding availability on more devices as it goes. Many of the books will sell for the same $9.99 that Amazon charges for bestsellers.

The headline on Business Week's Douglas MacMillan's item about the announcement minces no questions: "Can E-Books Save Barnes & Noble?" The number of bricks-and-mortar shops operated by B&N, Borders and Books-a-Million shrank by 19% between 2002 and 2008, he points out. But "e-books are not enough to save any publisher or retailer," says Michael Norris, an analyst for Simba Information. Norris says, however, that the super-thin Plastic Logic reader "has the potential to blow the Kindle out of the water." ;

Read the whole story at Financial Times »