Barnes & Noble.com launches eBookstore featuring Microsoft Reader technology

Barnes & Noble.com has opened an eBookStore, featuring Microsoft Reader technology for desktop PCs and laptop computers. The store features works from more than 30 publishers, including special promotions from Robert Ludlum, Nicholas Sparks, Orson Scott Card and Scott Turow. The eBookStore also offers free downloads of 100 of the world's great classics-from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities'' to Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter.''

The eBookStore provides Barnes & Noble.com's customers with access to hundreds of eBook titles through Microsoft Reader, a new software application designed to deliver an on-screen computer reading experience rivaling that offered by traditional paper-based text. Microsoft Reader is available free for immediate download at the Microsoft Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/reader/.

Barnes & Noble.com is the only major e-commerce retailer to support three formats of eBooks: Microsoft Reader, Rocket eBook and Glassbook. In all, the eBookStore offers thousands of titles in these three formats.

"We are encouraged by the prospects of the distribution of digital content, of which eBooks are an important element,'' said Steve Riggio, vice chairman of Barnes & Noble.com. "Our job is to bring readers and writers together, and this instant form of delivery is a big step forward as the Internet evolves from a transactional medium to a content-driven resource.''

Among the major publishers featured in the eBookStore launch are Time Warner, Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martins, Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Walker & Company.

Microsoft Reader is the first product to include Microsoft's ClearType display technology, designed to improve font resolution on LCD screens for users of desktop or laptop PCs running the Windows operating system as well as dedicated reading devices. Microsoft Reader provides a clean display; ample margins; full justification; proper spacing, leading and kerning; and tools for bookmarking, highlighting and annotation.

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08/08/00 Source: Barnes & Noble.com