Kindle, Nook enter big-box retail chains; Plastic Logic Que to ship in June

Engadget has a few interesting reports of e-book reading devices finding new sales outlets.

First of all, when the iPad was announced with iBooks, people knew it was targeting Amazon’s Kindle. But now, apparently Amazon is “Targeting” its own Kindle, placing the device for sale in the Target big-box stores by the end of this month. Engadget has what seems to be a screenshot taken from a Target inventory management application to back this up.

Nate the Great at The Digital Reader did a bit of sleuthing of his own, phoning his local Target to confirm that the stock number displayed in the screenshot was valid and also noticing that the Target website’s login form allows logging in with one’s Amazon.com account credentials. Very interesting.

But not to be outdone, fellow big-box store Best Buy is apparently going to get the Nook on April 18th, and Engadget has another inventory management screenshot for proof. Best Buy already stocks the Sony Reader; I saw a big display of it the other day when I was checking out the iPad, across from the demonstration set-up of Beatles Rock Band I played for a few minutes.

And finally, Plastic Logic expects to ship its Que proReader in June. Engadget reports that someone who pre-ordered it in January just received an e-mail with a June 24th ship date.

Of course, it is an open question whether anybody is going to want a 4-gigabyte, 8.5”x11” black-and-white wifi/bluetooth device for $649, or an 8-gigabyte model that adds 3G for $799, no matter how big the screen is.

You can get a 16-gigabyte full color wifi device with a slightly smaller 9” screen for just $499, after all—and a 64-gigabyte 3G-enabled one will be on the market for $829 two months before the Que even ships.

Sure, the Que’s e-ink screen will be more paper-like than the iPad’s LCD, but the iPad can do so much more. Are people really going to pay that kind of premium for e-ink readability? (And for people who do prefer e-ink, the 3G-enabled 9” e-ink Kindle DX is only $430.)

Regardless, it is interesting to see how the added competition of the iPad is affecting other e-book reading devices. Leaving the Que aside, the Kindle is finally coming down off of its online-only mountain (hmm, if the iPad is “the Jesus tablet” does that make the Kindle “the Moses tablet”?), and the Nook is expanding beyond Barnes & Noble to attract the attention of tech shoppers who might not set foot in a bookstore.

Both devices are considerably cheaper than the cheapest iPad, so they might attract the attention of consumers whose budgets won’t quite stretch to $500 but who do think they’d like to read e-books, as well as those who simply prefer e-ink to LCD. They will also broaden their overall appeal by putting the devices in front of more people—there are probably plenty of potential Kindle owners who nonetheless wouldn’t buy one online sight unseen.

The e-book market is only going to speed up from here on out. And while there is some question about how much role the iPad might play in this directly, there can be no doubt that it has already done much indirectly by pushing the makers of the most popular dedicated e-book readers to put them in wider retail circulation.