Technology
Walmart sells ebooks in direct shot at Amazon
Walmart will start selling ebooks, audiobooks, and
ereaders on Wednesday with the launch of Walmart
eBooks.
Walmart.com
-
Walmart will
start selling ereaders, ebooks, and audiobooks through a
partnership with Rakuten, Japan’s biggest e-commerce
company. -
Walmart eBooks is launching Wednesday. To
celebrate the launch, Walmart
is giving customers $10 off their first ebook or
audiobook. -
Amazon currently
commands 83% of the ebook market in the United States.
Walmart is taking direct aim at Amazon’s Kindle business by
selling ebooks, audiobooks, and ereaders for the first time.
The company’s new ebooks business, called Walmart eBooks, is
launching on Wednesday in partnership with Japanese e-commerce
giant Rakuten.
The new offering will give Walmart shoppers access to ereaders
made by Kobo, a division of Rakuten, in stores and online
at Walmart.com. Kobo is one of Amazon
Kindle’s biggest competitors.
Walmart will also offer customers access to Kobo’s vast library
of nearly six million titles from more than 30,000 publishers.
Customers will be able to access the ebooks and audiobooks
through Walmart.com and through a co-branded Walmart-Kobo app
that will be available on smartphones, desktop computers, and
Kobo’s ereaders. They will also be able to subscribe to a
new Walmart audiobook service for $9.99 per month, which includes
one audiobook per month.
ebook market, which is largely dominated by Amazon. Amazon is
responsible for roughly 83% of all ebook sales in the US,
according to a report by
Author
Earnings
. Kobo, by comparison, commands just 0.3% of
the US ebook market.
Kobo’s ereaders range in price from $99 to $279. One of the
company’s most popular ereaders, called the Aura One, is
waterproof and has a slightly larger screen than its
Kindle-branded counterpart, the Kindle Oasis. The Aura One also
has a blue-light filter to help minimize the amount of blue
light the screen emits. (Studies say that blue light disturbs
sleep cycles).
“Walmart eBooks will complement our vast physical book
assortment and offer customers a comprehensive digital book
solution, introducing an entirely new category that hasn’t been
previously available at Walmart,” Mario Pacini, general
manager of entertainment for Walmart.com, wrote in a blog post
on the new partnership.
To celebrate the launch, Walmart is giving customers $10
off their first ebook or audiobook.
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