Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Books by Cellphone? Thanks, Borders!

Something useful may be coming soon to your cellphone: According to MarketingWeek, "Borders is to become the world's first bookseller to distribute content to mobile phones. The retailer will send sample chapters to customers' phones free of charge before books are released and a the book can then be purchased in-store for a discount of up to 20% using a barcode." The article didn't say whether this will happen in the U.S., the UK, or where.

Here's my suggestion to Borders and publishers: Send the text from book jackets and leafs. Cellphones are not a good format for book pages! Maybe a few sample paragraphs, but not pages! I guess I'll take a wait-and-see attitude before I fully judge, but I can't imagine wading through all that text on a small screen. Even an iPhone is going to make reading a book on a screen very hard (see article below).

Still, I like the idea of receiving book recommendations on my cellphone. Maybe as an e-mail that I receive by way of my cellphone.

I couldn't find confirmation of this story on any Borders Stores Web sites, which is curious.

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