The Other Shoe: Borders partners with Indigo's Shortcovers for E-Books
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/borders-partners-with-kobo-to-deliver-ebooks-79339012.html
I don’t have a whole lot of commentary, considering I just read the article myself. But Kobo née Shortcovers claims 2 million titles, supports open standards, is device agnostic, and the crafty Canadians have had 10 months lead time to build up their back-end and launch their e-reader apps for a variety of smartphones (and through the kind offices of Adobe, for a number of other devices) (*cough* including the nook. How’s that taste, B&N?).
The press release says 2nd quarter 2010, though, and for retail (most retailers use a fiscal year that starts in February) that means May at the earliest, and more likely July. So a late start… but maybe six months is enough time for B&N to fix the bugs in the nook, for Sony to sell a few more e-readers, for the media to beat the whole e-book thing into the ground, and for the folks who own a nook, kindle, or sony to start asking the question: where can I get the cheapest book, without DRM?
Still and all: Borders now has a horse in this race.
