5 Reasons Barnes & Noble's eBookStore Is A Kindle Killer

Do Barnes & Noble and its brand new eBookstore have the first real chance at playing the role of Kindle killer? Amazon and its Kindle e-readers are for now the dominant force in the e-book and e-reading space, but nary a week has gone by since the Kindle 2 made its debut in February that we haven't seen some new form of competition, be it rival e-readers or mobile smartphone apps.

And now this week comes Barnes & Noble's eBookstore, a massive new digital books resource from the self-professed largest bookseller in the world -- plus an exclusivity deal with a device maker, Plastic Logic, whose own dedicated e-reader now enjoys a significantly pumped-up profile.

Barnes & Noble confirmed all the bells and whistles Monday, including the Plastic Logic deal, a revised version of its eBookstore application for smartphones, and according to the book seller, 700,000 titles to choose from. Here are five reasons why Barnes & Noble's eBookstore should strike fear in the heart of Amazon:

1. It matches or beats Amazon on the book-selling specifics: Pricing for Barnes & Noble's eBookstore is in line with what Amazon offers for Kindle: $9.99 for most new releases and bestsellers. Content-wise, the eBookstore claims to offer 700,000 titles, which dwarfs the 300,000-or-so offered by Amazon for Kindle consumption and beats the 500,000 Google-digitized public domain books seen on the Sony Reader. Barnes & Noble also plans to offer a selection of free e-books to first-time users.

2. It has a multi-platform strategy: With the eBookstore bust-out, Barnes & Noble appears to be going for the same kind of visibility Amazon has: not just as a dedicated e-reading device for Kindle but as a brand name, appearing, via application or other means, on smartphones and in other media.

"We're committed to offering Barnes & Noble consumers every title available in digital format," said William Lynch, president of BN.com, in a press conference Monday.

Barnes & Noble confirmed it would be the exclusive e-bookstore to Plastic Logic's forthcoming 8.5-inch x 11-inch e-reader device -- scheduled for release in early 2010 -- but that it will also support iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry devices, as well as laptops and PCs running Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X, thanks to a tweaked version of the application Barnes & Noble developed through its acquisition of Fictionwise.

3. The wait for the Plastic Logic device is Plastic Logic's problem: Sure, the wait for that companion device from Plastic Logic means the eBookstore won't have a dedicated e-reader serving it out of the gate. But thanks to the multi-platform approach, Barnes & Noble's e-book brand is already in play as of Monday. One question Barnes & Noble didn't answer Monday: whether it would sell the Plastic Logic reader through Barnes & Noble's brick-and-mortar stores.

4. Amazon is on the defensive: There hasn't been a better time all year to challenge mighty Amazon and its Kindles. Amazon's reeling from two public relations nuisances -- a lawsuit over cracked Kindles and the misleading reaction to a mini-scandal over its removal of George Orwell books from the Kindle -- and since Kindle 2's debut, anyway, has dealt with criticism of everything from how it compensates authors to the prohibitive cost of the Kindle. In the press conference, Lynch struck a tone of assurance, suggesting, for example, that Barnes & Noble would do everything it could to leave a record of what you had purchased to avoid computer or hard drive fail snafus. "We have on-record proof that you purchased the file, so you can download as many times as you need to," he said.

5. Barnes & Noble is no e-book novice: One could argue Barnes & Noble already danced with and was denied by e-books -- its original e-book sales venture fizzled out in September 2003. But now that Amazon has created an opening for e-books and e-reading in the consumer spending mainstream, it can use what it learned from previous experiences to push the brand.

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