I have been getting lots of reports this weekend that Barnes and Noble intends to announce a competitor to Amazon’s Kindle as soon as October 20th.

That is the date for an event to be held at Chelsea Piers in NY that B&N has been sending out a slew of exclusive invites for. They are promising “a major event in our company’s history”, which I am betting will be the long-rumored formal debut of their Ebook Reader.

The initial device is expected to sport a 6 inch black and white digital ink screen. On top of that it is rumored to be made by Plastic Logic and to actually be running Android under B&N’s Ebook software (B&N just announced they are a partner with Motorola and are creating an application for the Android based Cliq, so they seem to be committing to Android though they have already released software for Windows, Mac, iPhone and Blackberry). B&N’s reader will support EPUB like Sony’s Ebook reader, but their Ebook store will not allow access by Sony Readers or Kindles. All this seems pretty standard for the rapidly growing Ebook Reader market, but B&N could have some surprises in store…

First and foremost, that Barnes and Noble Ebook Store could be a big deal. Launched back in July,  B&N claims it features 700,000 books compared to the 300,000 Ebooks available on the Kindle via Amazon. If the keys to Ebook Readers are content, features and price that at least they have the Content side covered.

As far as features, it sounds like they may be tossing something new into the ring…a way to conveniently lend Ebooks you purchase to another person to read on THEIR reader .

The New York Times is reporting the following…

But B.&N. has been talking to publishers about a new model, whereby users are granted a license to “lend” an e-book to a friend. This could help the bookseller market the device to members of its book clubs program. However, publishers are pushing back on this feature and the two sides are currently engaged in discussions about how many loans a year publishers will allow.

Finally, one publishing executive currently engaged in talks with the bookseller says that Barnes & Noble wants to make it easy for customers to walk into any of its more than 700 stores and try out the device on the store’s Wi-Fi network. “Fourteen million people walk into those stores every day, and Barnes & Noble feels pretty strongly that they have a beautiful chance to convert a whole bunch of regular readers to e-books by selling them a wider array of devices, and the chance to go into a store and browse digital,” this person said.

Connection to an in store WiFi network? That seems to indicate that the B&N Reader would use WiFi for accessing the Ebook store and not a 3G connection that requires a third party data plan (as the Kindle does). That will immediately make the device very attractive and easy to market internationally, since there would be no need for setting up a partnership with a carrier like AT&T as Amazon did for their international Kindle.

Another advantage is the fact that Barnes and Noble HAS physical stores where people can go, play around with the device, and buy one immediately rather than having to order devices on the web and cope with buying a device sight unseen, often with waiting lists. Having a cash and carry option is ALWAYS attractive especially if they are trying to interest the larger consumer population who may not have considered buying an Ebook Reader.

So that covers content and features…what about price? No idea yet. I am hoping they will undercut the Sony Pocket Reader’s price of $200, getting closer to the magic $100 price point, but who knows.

Barnes and Noble seem to have big plans for this device and are already apparently preparing it’s sequel. Engadget has reported that a Barnes & Noble rep named Daniel Joresson was shooting his mouth off at CTIA and claimed that the second version of the B&N Reader will also be produced by Plastic Logic, be out in the Spring of 2010 and feature a color display.

All in all, it sounds like this event on the 20th could be very exciting for Ebook fans.

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).