A quick glance around any London bus or underground station will soon reveal that Amazon’s Kindle has well and truly embedded itself in UK eBook-lovers’ psyche.
Despite some competition from the likes of Sony, Kobo and, well, Apple’s iPad (people DO use it as an eReader), there doesn’t seem to be a real contender for Amazon’s Kindle crown. But that could be changing with US bookseller Barnes & Noble hosting a developer workshop in London later this month, reports E-book Magazine.
Barnes & Noble partnered with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to create the Nook back in 2009, and whilst this latest announcement isn’t exactly confirmation that it will be launching its Nook eReader in the UK any time soon, it certainly hints that something could be brewin’.
We’ve previously written that the UK bookstore chain Waterstone’s was going to enter the eReader market in 2012, an ambitious but necessary move if it’s to effectively compete in the book space. And an obvious tie-up would be for Barnes & Noble to partner with Waterstone’s, which already has significant traction in the UK book market.
As we’ve seen with Amazon and its Kindle, consumers are becoming increasingly more comfortable with the notion of reading e-books, with the digital experience able to fairly accurately mimic its paper-based equivalent. This is a pretty obvious move for Waterstone’s if it comes to fruition, with Managing Director James Daunt saying at the time:
“We in Waterstones need to offer you a digital reader which is at least as good, and preferably substantially better, than that of our Internet rival, and you will have a much better buying experience purchasing your books through us.”
With the London Book Fair falling just one month after the London developer event, could we at last see the Nook launch in Europe this spring?
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