Gemstar Open eBook Store

In the last newsletter, I reported that Barnes & Noble had ceased its distribution partnership with Gemstar, leaving Powells.com as the only source for Gemstar ebooks. Since then, Gemstar launched its own online ebook bookstore, the Gemstar eBookstore.

Powells.com and the Gemstar eBookstore have very comparable pricing. A random sampling of 105 titles (1/2 from trade publishers and 1/2 from epublishers), found that Gemstar had an average price of $8.26 compared to $8.43 at Powells. However, the ebook discovery experience with Powells' interface is far superior to that of Gemstar. For example, in the Gemstar Bookstore, once a user selects an ebook title from a search result list , the data has to be reposted before the user can return back to the search result list. It is quite obvious that Gemstar is still learning the ropes of the online bookstore business.