Borders is the biggest chain of bookstores in America, being active at over 700 locations nation wide and having more than 20.000 employees world wide. And as of a few days ago, they also own a e-bookstore which is though to become one of the biggest online site to sell books. The books that will be available on the newly launched e-store will be compatible with Kobo, a reading device owned by Borders and which rivals Amazon’s Kindle tablet.
Even if they are new on the online market, Borders have high goals, aiming to secure up to 17% of the online e-book market within one year of the launch. In order to have a good start, they’re launching with more than 1.5 million book titles plus thousands more free titles. All of the e-books will be made available in several formats including PDF and ePub.
Moreover there will be several applications available that will facilitate an easy reading of e-books on mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and smartphones which run on the Android operating system. Being a newcomer in the online e-book market, Borders will aim to start aggressively by employing several incentive offers such as free bestseller e-books for the people who download any of mobile applications between 9th and 10th of July.
After this recent launch from Boarders, the e-book market battle is heating up, as from now on there are going to be three titans battling it out. So far the only two major players were the Amazon e-bookstore with the Kindle reading device, and Barnes & Noble with their Nook e-book reader. Even though Amazon are much older on the market, Barnes & Noble succeeded in securing 20% of the total market share in only one year after launch. It remains to be seen how well will Borders do and if they’ll end up achieving the 17% market share that they’re talking about.
I dont think it can compete with Amazon.
I feel like i can find everything in Amazon. If they can provide competitive prices and given a lot of discounts, i think they can.
I frequently buy my books on borders.
its a good thing they launched their e-bookstore so i can finally browse their newest books. Call me bookworm, Borders is my home. Even if there’s amazon, i still choose borders and will continue to support them online.