Barnes & Noble Aims to Take Down Kindle, by Hook or by Nook

Friday, November 20, 2009

It doesn't matter whether Amazon Kindle has 60 percent market share, or that Sony has its powerful brand backing its Reader. Barnes & Noble wants in on the nascent e-reader market.

For reasons not apparent at press time, Barnes & Noble is calling its new electronic reading device the Nook, officially launching it during a late-afternoon Eastern time press event Tuesday in New York City. A Wednesday conference call was scheduled for media, but plenty of Nook information had already leaked out before the Tuesday afternoon event via a Gizmodo report last week, a Tuesday morning Wall Street Journal story -- and Barnes and Noble's own Web site, which went live with images and details about the Nook several hours prior to the press event.

Those details make it clear that the real-world bookseller, with more than 700 physical locations in the U.S. and an online store, is making a serious attempt to dethrone the Kindle as the early e-reader market leader. What's also clear is that the entire e-reader market is getting as crowded as the Stephen King section in a Barnes & Noble.

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