Next chapter in bookstore rivalries
By AP
Barnes & Noble is on the defensive—again.
More than a decade ago it was the emergence of cheaper books on Amazon.com that threatened the largest chain of book stores. Now, it's digital books, led by Amazon's Kindle. Already an old fashioned price war has broken out between Amazon, Walmart.com and Target.com that has cut the price of some books to $8.98.
Barnes & Noble is fighting back with an e-reader device called the Nook, but analysts say it won't help much.
“Each sale through a Nook is not just unprofitable but potentially replaces a higher-margin sale at stores," Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter wrote in a client note.
E-book readership is small, but growing. Forrester Research predicts 3 million e-readers will sell in the U.S. in 2009 and twice that many in 2010.
In trading for the day, shares of Barnes & Noble fell 31 cents to $17.18. Shares have traded between $10.77 and $28.78 in the past 52 weeks. Amazon's shares fell $2.57, or 2.1 percent to $122.07.
DATA: Thomson Reuters
Associated Press
