Borders, in association with the Canadian publishing company called Kobo, has become the latest company to venture into the world of eBooks. This includes both reader devices and the selling of eBooks through an online store. Although a Borders spokesperson has clarified that Borders will not be involved in the reader devices and they might not carry the devices being developed at the moment. Borders thus constitutes a growing number of competitors for the Kindle and hence for Amazon’s burgeoning eBook business. Of course, it is no secret that the market is expected to explode sometime soon. So even though companies like these are late into the game, they are still entering the market at a nascent stage.
Sure, it would be pretty interesting to see what the devices are going to be like but Borders’ intention to make the platform completely open is even more interesting. It seems like the Borders and Kobo initiative will try to please as many people as they possibly can. And by that I mean that the service will support multiple devices and will be completely platform agnostic.
According to the Chief of Indigo Books & Music (the company behind Kobo), the idea is to free the user from obligations to only one device. Once they buy something from Kobo, they will be able to read it on their readers, their iPhones, their Blackberries and anywhere else that supports eBooks. The service will be based on the open ePub publishing standard, which is already supported in nearly every reader that is there in the market right now. They intend to offer free eBooks from the Internet, as well as paid for eBooks that will start from around $10. They are looking to target light readers who “buy a couple a books a year”.