Bol.com goes into ebooks

[Sweetpea]

A small piece in the newspaper caught my attention this morning:

Bol.com will start to sell electronic books this summer. The books will be in epub format. They will also start to sell an ereader, a Sony. While it doesn't say which Sony, they did put a picture next to it of the 700, and mention it is not for sale yet in the Netherlands at this moment.

Isn't the 700 available in Europe already? Or will they start selling it this summer?

[HarryT]

No, the PRS-700 is not currently sold in Europe.

[SecondoMe]

It's a very interesting news.
Sweetpea could you please tell me which newspaper did you read it in?

Thanks!

[JSWolf]

This is very interesting. The way it's going with ePub outside the USA, it's going to be very hard for Amazon to sell the Kindle outside the USA due to it's lack of ePub support.

[Sweetpea]

Local newspaper, Dagblad van het Noorden.

Found a Dutch article on ZDNet:



http://www.zdnet.be/news/101397/bol-...nische-boeken/

Bol.com kiest een andere strategie dan Amazon.com, dat met zijn eigen e-booklezer (Kindle) en elektronisch boekformaat op de markt kwam. De Nederlandse onderneming, zo blijkt uit een online presentatie van marketingmedewerker Michel Schaeffer, kiest voor "vriendelijke DRM" en wil klanten lokken met doorzoekbare fragmenten van titels, vergelijkbaar met Google Book Search.

(translation:

Bol.com choses another strategy than Amazon.com, that came with its own e-bookreader (Kindle) and e-book format. The Dutch corporation, as is shown by an online presentation from marketing employee Michel Schaeffer, choses for "friendly DRM" and wants to lure customers with searchable fragments of titles, comparable with Google Book Search)

For those non-Dutch persons (I think there may be a few of those around), Bol.com is one of the largest Dutch online store of books.

The more I read about it, the more I feel they really want to make work of this:

Ook geeft hij aan dat er content zal moeten zijn voor er hardware verkocht kan worden. Het is een klassieke kip-ei situatie volgens hem: zonder hardware geen ebooks, maar als er geen ebooks zijn, dan zal ook de ereader niet verkopen. Dit probeert hij op te lossen door te zorgen dat uitgeverijen ebooks gaan produceren en zo via Bol.com in de markt te zetten. Een top 1000 van bestsellers is dan ook een minimale marktvereiste. Verder zou er selectief naar de backlist gekeken moeten worden.

(translation:

He also indicates that there has to be content before hardware will be sold. It is a classical chicken-egg situation according to him: without hardware no e-books, but if there are no e-books, the e-reader won't be sold either. He wants to solve this by making sure that publishers will produce e-books and put them on the market by Bol.com. A top 1000 of bestsellers is then a minimum market requirement. Furthermore, they should look selectively at the backlist)

They are apparently talking with three large publishers...

Let's hope they have actually seen the light and they will break open the e-book market in the Netherlands!