Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/07/barnesandnoble_buys_fictionwise/
Barnes & Noble muscles Kindle with e-book buy
Gets Fictionwise
Posted in Music and Media, 7th March 2009 01:28 GMT
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Barnes & Noble is stumping $15.7m to buy the indie e-book seller Fictionwise.com as part of the mega-chain's second attempt to sell digital books online.
The cash acquisition comes just days after Amazon extended its Kindle e-book store to support the iPhone (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/04/iphone_kindle/) and iPod Touch for US customers. Amazon may be making small concessions towards making its digital bookstore available outside the Kindle's despotic proprietary format, but B&N appears to sensibly be taking the open format route to compete against its established rival.
Fictionwise currently sells its e-book in a variety of formats (http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm) to support most of the major e-book readers and mobile devices, so long as the book publishers allow it. The site's co-founder Scott Pendergrast told the e-tome blog TeleRead he was only willing to sell to a vendor who shared is open format philosophy — and hopefully that vision can survive the throes of a B&N acquisition.
Barnes & Noble at least is saying it will give the new e-book biz some space, stating it will run Fictionwise as a separate business unit with the site's founders still running the show.
Keep in mind the mega-chain is currently 0-1 for starting a digital book store. Back in 2001, it opened Barnes & Noble Digital, hoping to tempt publishers and authors alike with slightly higher royalties on e-books than their physical equivalent. After investing at least $20m into the project, B&N discontinued sales of e-book three years after its launch.
But consumer interest in digital books has increased somewhat towards this end of the decade. Or perhaps curiosity is a better word for it — largely thanks to Amazon's creation and devoted pitching of the Kindle and Kindle 2: Electric Boogaloo (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/09/kindle_2/).
Barnes & Noble said it will roll Fictionwise into its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year. Meanwhile, Fictionwise says (http://www.fictionwise.com/bn.htm) Fictionwise.com and the various other sites it runs will continue to run as e-book retailers. ®