Carrefour launches a reading light and opened a shop of ebooks

To gain a foothold in the market for e-book, the retail giant has partnered with Bookeen, a French company specializing in the manufacture of e-readers.

Carrefour launches nolim an offer electronic books with reading lights.

EBooks, Carrefour believes hard as iron. Under the brand name "nolim" distribution group has presented a comprehensive offer on the subject, with the key to an online store to download digital books and two reading lights with electronic ink. The site is available now in the address Nolim.fr and offers a catalog of "more than 100,000 books in French" with 1500 free.

Less than 100 euros liseuse

E-readers, however, will only be available on October 14.They are manufactured by the French company Bookeen.The first model is called "NolimBook" and costs 69.90 euros.It has a 800 x 600 pixel touch screen, Wi-Fi and 4 GB of storage. Bookeen is clearly inspired by a device of his own catalog, the Cybook Odyssey 2013 Edition, which has almost the same features, but a higher (109.99 euros) price.

The second model will sell Carrefour is "NolimBook +". Its hardware is almost the same as its little brother, the only difference being that the screen is backlit for night reading. What makes up the bill to 99.90 euros.

NolimBook reading lights will be distributed to 215 spaces bookstores account group. In each of these outlets, which generally occupy an area of ​​200 m², an area of ​​10 to 20 square meters is their consecrated. Customers can come and test devices and counseling. "It is by no means replace the physical book sales in our stores. We strongly believe that digital books offer is complementary, not competing, sales in stores that will enrich one another and not cannibalize ", told AFP Rochedix Emmanuel, Director Culture France Carrefour.

This is a second attempt

However, it is not necessary to have a NolimBook to read books purchased on Nolim.fr. These can also be downloaded to a computer or a mobile device. A nolim application already exists for Android tablets, Google Play (but nothing so far on the Apple App Store). Consultation on smartphones will be "soon". The formats available are Epub or PDF files. Some titles may also play streaming.

This is not the first time that Carrefour is trying to gain a foothold in the market for electronic books. In 2010, the group had partnered with Numilog to develop an online store for digital books. But apparently without success.