Quote:
Originally Posted by vivaldirules
Well, okay, you can now buy a Reader in a Borders store who will now promote the Sony instead of the Amazon device. Maybe that would help the people who would like to see one of these things working before they buy. I'll buy that. But Borders was already in within Amazon so I'm not sure how switching to Sony helps. Maybe it does, I'm just not sure how at the moment. And I'm not sure what a "hybrid brick/digital media store" really means. Can you please elaborate on what you think this does (for ebooks, in general, not just for you and me)?
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It's actually several things happening at once. One of them is that Borders is exiting Amazon's site and doing their own e-commerce again. Borders never did promote the Amazon device, they simply farmed out their e-commerce presence to Amazon, just like Toys-R-Us and a zillion other non-book-related stores did.
Another is that Borders is now (hopefully) going to be actively promoting the Sony and e-book sales in its superstores. An in-store, physical presence, in my opinion, is essential to getting e-books beyond the niche market that it is. The co-branded store is not about getting Sony customers into Borders. It's about getting Borders customers into e-books.
The third thing is that Borders will be launching a whole new line of stores in 2008. These stores will be media-centric stores that sell digital media in a physical, browseable, shopable environment. They're already testing mix-and-burn custom CD sales kiosks, but have also mentioned "download it onto your device" media sales. It is likely that this will include the ability to browse p-books, buy the e-book edition, and load it onto the Reader right there.
What I think this does for e-books in general is expand the market in terms of physical presence, increasing awareness; expand the apparent "mainstreamness" of the market by demonstrating that one more major player sees enough future in it to invest; and help convince publishers that there really is something to this whole "e-book thing."