Like the idea of reading books on an electronic screen, but don’t want to buy a Kindle 2 or other dedicated e-book reader to do so? Your options for reading e-books on a range of devices you already own have expanded with the launch of a new online e-book store from Barnes and Noble.
Most notably, the site expands the selection and sourcing for e-books to the Phone and other smart phones, using the free B&N eReader app. It’s a challenger to Amazon’s Kindle application for the iPhone, which allows you—effectively, my colleague Mike Gikas found—to buy and read Kindle titles on Apple’s smart phone and iPod Touch.
The B&N app also comes in a Blackberry version, which Amazon does not yet offer—though Amazon has promised to expand its range of smart phone apps, and Blackberry owners can get e-books from some other sites. Barnes and Noble promises to “add a bunch” of other phone apps “in the coming weeks.”
The B&N site is billed as the “world’s largest eBookstore”, with more than 700,000 titles. But that number includes more than half-a-million free public-domain books from Google. Without that library included, Amazon’s Kindle store still offers the most copyrighted e-book titles, at more than 250,000.
Like Sony’s free ebook software, the B&N app promises easy access to those Google public-domain titles, which range from old (like, a hundred-years-old) editions of literary classics along with a host of other, and often-obscure, titles. Unlike the Sony app, which allows downloads only to PCs (and the company’s own Reader devices, including the newest 700C), the B&N app makes these available on smart phones.
The B&N app also allows downloads to computers, including to Macs – which the Sony e-book app does not support. And B&N is currently offering a Merriam-Webster's dictionary and five pre-selected classic titles (three with the Blackberry app) free as e-books for downloading the app and setting up your online account.
Finally, Barnes and Noble announced that it will be the e-bookstore for the upcoming Plastic Logic e-book reader, set to launch in early 2010 and expected to be aimed at—and priced for—business users. —Paul Reynolds
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