Online bookstore ditches e-books

Online bookstore Barnes&Noble.com has discontinued sales of e-books because of poor sales of the download format.

Customers using Microsoft's eBook reader have until 9 December to access downloads purchased from the store, while Adobe Reader customers have 90 days to retrieve any outstanding files. Meanwhile thousands of e-book titles were listed as unavailable. A statement on the website said: "B&N.com no longer sells eBooks." Company representatives did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. E-books sparked a flurry of excitement in 2000 when best-selling author Stephen King experimented with the format. Since then, however, analysts said the format has largely disappointed, both in terms of sales and in the technology used to access them.

Robert Leathern, director and senior analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, said: "Sales have been pretty minimal. E-books for a long time have been something that people have said will lead to a spike in adoption, but the technology hasn't really been there yet." The decision to end e-book sales is a setback for both Microsoft and Adobe Systems, which have been pushing new technology for digital books.

Microsoft signed a deal with Barnes & Noble in January 2000, at which time the bookstore chain agreed to build an eBook store featuring Microsoft eReader titles and aggressively market the format through its retail stores.

Since then, Microsoft has invested heavily in digital book designs, beefing up its reader software and creating new portable computing platforms such as the PocketPC and TabletPC, aimed squarely at augmenting traditional printed media formats.

Cliff Guren, Microsoft's group product manager for e-reading, said: "Certainly we're disappointed at the loss of an important retailer. That said, we understand their need to make a business decision. Any new businesses have ups and downs, and we look forward to continuing to develop these products." Guren said Microsoft does not disclose e-book sales figures for its eReader software, but said that the company has distributed about seven million copies of the program through downloads, CD-ROMs and bundled with PocketPCs. In 2000, Adobe expanded its e-book efforts, purchasing e-book technology developer Glassbooks and also signing a deal with Barnes & Noble to distribute e-books in Adobe's .PDF format.

Nielsen/NetRatings' Leathern said the promise of portability through devices such as TabletPC could help improve the outlook for e-book sales in the long term, but downplayed any short-term impact.

"The more futuristic vision is that you can carry the book around," he said. "There is some technology in the works to make reading on those screens a lot clearer, and there's some potential for that. It could become the preferred way for people to read business documents. But I doubt whether that will be the preferred way people read everyday things."

Evan Hansen writes for CNET News.com