News flash! Barnes & Noble buys Fictionwise for $15.7 million

[pwjone1]

I think what is happening in the industry right now is that the big book sellers, like Barnes and Noble, are still figuring what to do about eBooks. Amazon's Kindles have them a bit concerned, the 300k+ recent sales there are a drop in the bucket, but it's also true that a lot of book sales are to people that read a lot of books, so for Amazon to be potentially siphoning those off, and essentially locking them up, has them worried. The major play, for a Barnes or a Borders, the thing that let them put the local bookstores largely out of business, is a lot of selection, and a bit of competition on prices. eBooks, of course, could change all that, as the selection there has the potential to be essentially infinite (again, once things get going, some technical issues get sorted out), and since there's no distribution, stocking, shipping costs, no retail clerk overheads, potentially cheaper. Maybe why the coffee shop mantra. Nobody has figured out how to do an e-Coffee. I suspect that's one of the reasons why, when one hits a Borders and shows any interest whatsoever on a Sony eBook reader, that the sales staff descends, tries to get you to buy one. Always seemed odd to me, sell me something that keeps me from coming back to the bookstore, but I guess they figure it's otherwise going to Amazon (or Sony gave them a good kick-back deal, or both). But I think what will likely happen, once Borders and Barnes get their act together, figure this all out, is that you'll see them selling eBook readers in every store, of their own or some tied-in co-brand, free wi-fi hook ups for the readers in their coffee shop, download kiosks, etc., etc. But I suspect that's all really 2-3 years down the road, due to the economy, various start-up and technological problems (mainly screen size, and the babel of eBook formats right now)

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by pwjone1

download kiosks, etc., etc.

I'm not aware of any kiosk approach that works for any electronic media. Could be that I'm just out of touch, but still....

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

An example of prices going up is Simon & Shuster. The prices for those eBook has gone u and it is not the fault of Fictionwise.

Yep, them and Harper Collins who is now charging $14.99 list for a lot of ebooks with a $7.99 pbook equivalent. They used to charge $7.99 for the ebooks too.