Barnes and Noble to Sell Ebooks For Plastic Logic's Device
Barnes and Noble has announced plans to build a digital bookstore that will sell books for Plastic Logic's upcoming thin electronic reading device. The bookstore will launch with over 700,000 digital ebooks.
As part of the announcement, Barnes & Noble also revealed an exclusive agreement to provide ebooks for the widely anticipated Plastic Logic e-reader, an 8.5 x 11 device that's scheduled for release early next year. (Plastic Logic uses technology developed by E Ink of Cambridge, Mass.) The deal started to come together in the spring after Barnes & Noble acquired e-book platform Fiction Wise, which had been working with Plastic Logic to develop an e-book store.
Plastic Logic vice president of business development Daren Benzi says his device is geared for business travelers, and as such will support the display of PDF files, Microsoft's (MSFT) MS Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, as well as newspapers and magazines. But ebooks are a big part of the game plan. "Will we carry every single one of those 700,000-plus titles? I don't know. We’ll announce that as we get further along," Benzi. "But we will have access to them all."
The bookstore will directly challenge Amazon's Kindle and its electronic book store. A press release about the new bookstore from Barnes and Noble can be found here.
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