Borders Joins E-Reader Price Wars with Kobo Device, Gift Cards, New Apps, Even A Free Cup of Joe

This isn’t quite the $49 “paperback Kindle” that marketing guru Seth Godin has been urging Amazon to build, but Ann Arbor, MI-based bookseller Borders is firing another shot in the e-reader price wars brought on by the introduction of Apple’s iPad, which scared the bejeezus out of the nascent industry.

Borders has announced that it is offering a $20 gift card with purchase of its $149.99 Kobo e-reader. Plus, there’s a new Kobo app for the Apple iPhone and iPad. It’s all part of an overall digital strategy that Borders hopes will rescue it from hard times.

Borders lost about $109 million last year, as revenue fell 14 percent to $2.8 billion, making for four straight years of losses. In addition to its efforts to restructure by closing stores and reducing its workforce, Borders knows that to survive will mean to change with the times. So, the company has said that its Kobo eReader is just the first of what it says will be up to 10 different devices that it will offer by the end of this year.

Borders invested in Kobo, the Canadian company that makes the Kobo e-reader, last year, and plans to launch a Kobo-branded e-book store that’s integrated with Borders.com. Kobo’s mobile applications will be “device-neutral,” meaning customers will be able to purchase e-books on many different mobile gadgets.

With this latest gift-card announcement, Borders is sending out a message that its Kobo device, which uses a screen manufactured by Hsinchu, Taiwan- and Cambridge, MA-based E Ink, is a player in a high-stakes game seemingly dominated now by Apple and Amazon. Borders is convinced that, eventually, all readers will fall below $200, and it is already well-positioned under that price point.

Oh, and it’s throwing in one other thing it hopes will jolt customers awake. Show your Borders eBooks app on your iPhone or iPad, and get a free cup of joe at its in-store Seattle’s Best Coffee cafes.

Author: Howard Lovy

Howard Lovy is a veteran journalist who has focused primarily on technology, science and innovation during the past decade. In 2001, he helped launch Small Times Magazine, a nanotech publication based in Ann Arbor, MI, where he built the freelance team and worked closely with writers to set the tone and style for an emerging sector that had never before been covered from a business perspective. Lovy's work at Small Times, and on one of the first nanotechnology-themed blogs, helped him earn a reputation for making complex subjects understandable, interesting, and even entertaining for a broad audience. It also earned him the 2004 Prize in Communication from the Foresight Institute, a nanotech think tank. In his freelance work, Lovy covers nanotechnology in addition to technological innovation in Michigan with an emphasis on efforts to survive and retool in the state's post-automotive age. Lovy's work has appeared in many publications, including Wired News, Salon.com, the Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The Scientist, the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, Michigan Messenger, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle.