By Truman Lewis
ConsumerAffairs.com
July 7, 2010
Everyone bemoans the supposed death of the printed word but there's no shortage of big players competing to sell books, magazines and newspapers electronically. The latest to enter the e-book wars is Borders, which today stocked its e-shelves with no fewer than 1.5 million titles, all available in a number of different formats.
Amazon claims to have more than 620,000 books in its online catalog. It's not quite clear how many titles Apple is offering. Google has assembled millions of titles but is not yet aggressively promoting its library.
Borders says consumers can thumb through its catalog, then purchase, download and read books using existing applications for the iPad, PC, Mac, iPhone and through new applications just being launched for Android and Blackberry phones.
Borders admits it's a bit late to the party but says it's confident it will capture at least 17 percent of the e-book market over the next year.
So, with all this competition, prices should be headed straight down, right? We checked today's price for Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." Here's what we found:
• Borders $7.15
• Amazon $7.15
• Barnes & Noble $7.15
Hmmmm, you think they're looking at each other's Web sites?
For reasons apparent only on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the book publishing industry has been desperately trying to drive up the price of e-books, an effort that may be hard to sustain as deep-pocketed players battle for market share. While fervent promotion, low prices and expanding selections may be bad news for publishers, it's hard to see how it's anything but good for voracious, and even occasional, readers.
e-Reader rampage
Meanwhile, the battle rages over in the e-reader aisle as well, with prices being slashed and new models being introduced almost daily. B&N is selling its NOOK Wi-Fi model for $149, the latest Amazon 3G Kindle is $189 and the iPad Wi-Fi -- which, in fairness, is a lot more than an e-reader -- starts at $499.
Besides selling e-books, Borders is also wading into the hotly competitive e-reader market. It's selling the $149 Kobo eReader and the $119 Aluratek Libre eReader, as well as the Sony Touch and Sony Pocket readers.
