Target to offer Livrada's eBook gift cards

PaidContent reports that Livrada, a Los Angeles-based startup, will sell gift cards for bestselling eBooks in Target stores' electronics sections, starting July 15th. Customers will purchase a gift card for a specific title, such as Fifty Shades of Grey. The recipient of the gift card goes to Livrada's website and activates the card, and then chooses whether to get the eBooks for Kindle or Nook. Livrada purchases the eBook from Amazon or Barnes & Noble (other platforms will be supported by the end of the year,) and delivers it to the recipient's eReader, tablet or computer.

Livrada gets marketing fees from the publishers of the eBooks, a portion of the purchase price from Target, and affiliate fees from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. There's no word on whether Livrada marks up the price of the eBooks. The question is whether enough consumers will buy the gift cards to make it into a viable business. At this point, there are only six titles available; Livrada is working to get more titles, publishers and platforms.

Radio Shack to operate mobile centers within Target stores

Earlier today, Target announced that it will partner with Radio Shack to open Target Mobile centers within 850 of Target's stores in the U.S. by the end of this year and virtually all Target stores by the end of next year. This is a direct move to counter the increased emphasis on mobile at Best Buy and Wal-Mart. In particular, it looks very similar to Best Buy's partnership with Carphone Warehouse, the U.K.'s largest independent mobile phone retailer. In order to increase its mobile retailing expertise, Best Buy acquired 50% of Carphone Warehouse in 2008, and the two companies together developed the Best Buy Mobile centers that are now located in all Best Buy stores, as well as 77 free-standing Best Buy Mobile stores.

Radio Shack has been rumored to be in play for acquisition, but it seems very unlikely that Target would partner so closely with a company that might be purchased by a competitor. Therefore, it's likely that Target is in the running to acquire part or all of Radio Shack. If the in-store Target Mobile centers are successful, this could lead to some Radio Shack stores being rebranded as Target Mobile stores.

Nooks go to Best Buy, Kindles to Target

Over the last couple of days, Engadget has reported that Target is going to begin carrying Amazon's Kindle (via a listing in Target's internal inventory control system), and now quantities of Barnes & Noble's nook have been spotted in a Best Buy, with a launch date (confirmed via a listing in Best Buy's inventory system) of April 18th. There are two ways to look at these developments:

• The "glass half-full" view is that distributing their eBook readers through alternate channels will expand the overall market
• The "glass half-empty" view is that they're not selling enough readers through their existing channels, and need to sell through big-box retailers in order to get more volume

I'm leaning toward "glass half-empty". Amazon and Barnes & Noble will both make far more money selling their respective readers themselves than by selling them through big-box retailers. Neither Target nor Best Buy are known for being easy negotiators with their vendors, so they're going to make a decent margin on the readers that they sell.

My suspicion is that sales of the eBook readers have plateaued at both companies, and they see wider retail distribution as the only way to keep sales growing. It'll be very interesting to see if these moves spur big growth in eBook reader sales, or if they simply spread the same sales over more outlets.