Plastic Logic and Barnes and Noble have very recently announced a partnership between their new eBookstore and the long awaited Plastic Logic ebook reader device – still yet to be named. Barnes and Noble yesterday announced the launch of the Barnes and Noble eBookstore, claimed to be the largest ebook store in the world and accessible through Barnes and Noble.com. The ebook store will apparently offer customers options for a wide range of ereading platforms including iPod/iPhone, Blackberry smartphone and Windows and Mac platforms. However, the new Plastic Logic ereader platform will use B&N as the exclusive ebook provider.

Barnes and Noble are hinting at a rapid growth in ebooks available from the store, with the current 700,000 titles to grow to over a million in a year. This will include every eBook from every eBook publisher, rather than a selected few like some other stores. The price of bestsellers and new releases is to be set at around $9.99 USD which is very competitive compared to Amazon.

The ebook store will also accommodate the 500 thousand or so public domain books from Google that will be downloadable for free. This will include the majority of the classics that are already offered for free by many ebook stores and ebook reader providers. However, Barnes and Noble will also make available some of the less well-known titles, weird and wonderful, and forgotten about gems that aren’t so common in the public domain. New users of the ereader will also benefit from free ebooks such as the Merriam-Webster Pocket dictionary and classics such as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, Little Women and Last of the Mohicans. The device-neutral eBook application is an upgrade of the Fictionwise application that Barnes and Noble acquired back in q1 2009. This application will support wired and wireless accessibility to the new eBook store. 

The Plastic Logic reader that was previewed here on thinkeink is on track for a release in early 2010. The partnership between the ebook store and the extremely thin 8.5 x 11 inch eReader will mean a comprehensive and holistic ereading experience for the user. Barnes and Noble seem to have opened up the ebook market that one step further with it’s “Every Device” strategy.“Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time,” said William J. Lynch, President of BN.com. “As America’s #1 bookstore and newsstand, our goal at Barnes & Noble is to build a service that revolves around the customer, enabling them to have access to hundreds of thousands of titles and read on their smartphone, PC, and many other existing and future devices. We want to make eBooks simple, accessible, affordable and convenient for everyone.”

We are still not sure what this announcement will mean for the UK, but with Amazon’s announcement of a Q4 launch of the Amazon Kindle, we’re hoping for only a short delay for a UK launch. 

This news article was written based on a report at Engadget