March 6 - 4:55pm EST   Barnes & Noble has recently purchased Fictionwise for $15.7 million, a retailer of electronic books, says a Friday Wall Street Journal report, and will launch a new e-book store later this year. William Lynch Jr., president and CEO of Barnes & Noble, said the retailer bought Fictionwise because it has "one of the most popular applications on the iPhone, and they really understand merchandising," among other reasons.Fictionwise was the first e-book retailer to offer third-party e-books supported by Amazon's Kindle reader back in 2007. [full story]

December 11 - 3:05pm EST   Amazon's hyped Kindle book reader now has third-party support, an electronic book publisher has announced. Fictionwise says that over 15,000 titles are available for the Kindle from its MultiFormat category, including works by the likes of Mark Twain, Franz Kafka and Poppy Z. Brite. Shoppers cannot however download directly to their readers, as they can with official Amazon books: they must either download to their computer first and sync via USB, or else have Fictionwise e-mail books to their Kindle with a 10-cent Amazon surcharge. [full story]