Published: Thursday, 6 Aug 2009 | 11:46 AM ET

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Suppose there are two rival companies — let’s call them A and B. Each wants to dominate the blossoming world of electronic books.

Source: amazon.com Kindle DX

Company A (that’s A as in “Amazon

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[AMZN  Loading...      ()   ]”) began life selling physical books online. Its reading gadget, the Kindle, stores hundreds of books in a plastic slab that weighs only 10 ounces. To accompany the Kindle, Company A built an enormous electronic-book store, filled with 345,000 books that can be downloaded to the Kindle in 30 seconds (each).

Company B (that’s B as in “Barnes & Noble

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[BKS  Loading...      ()   ]”) waited patiently. “Let’s let A get all the arrows in its back,” it said.

Then A released a free program that lets you read your A e-books on iPhones and iPod Touches. Now you don’t need a Kindle at all.

Last week, Company B finally struck back with its own e-book empire. It’s intended to be just like A’s — only better.

Instead of 345,000 books, B’s catalog has 700,000. Instead of just the iPhone and Touch, B’s free book-reading app is also available for the BlackBerry.

You get five free out-of-copyright books to start you off (“Dracula,” “Sense and Sensibility” and so on). Instead of one typeface, B’s book-reader programs give you a choice of many. Instead of just black, white or sepia, B’s software lets you choose any color scheme you like.

A slightly jerky Autoscroll option continuously rolls text up the screen, so you don’t have to turn pages at all. On the iPhone, there’s a bookshelf cover-flipping mode that’s modeled on Apple’s Cover Flow feature.

Above all, B lets you read your books on your Mac or Windows computer. That is a huge advantage; believe it or not, there are still some people who don’t have iPhones or Kindles.

The bottom line: At least on paper (does anyone still use that expression?), Barnes & Noble’s new e-empire seems to trump Amazon’s.

In practice, however, there’s more to the story.

First, there’s no Barnes & Noble equivalent of the Kindle yet. In “early 2010,” its books will be available on a new Kindle rival: a very thin, buttonless, touch-screen reader from a company called Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic markets its machine as a business-document reader — but maybe it will be good for leisure-book reading, too.

Second, B’s claim to have the “world’s largest e-bookstore” is slightly suspect. It acknowledges that, of its 700,000 titles, 500,000 are ancient, public-domain texts that have been scanned by Google’s

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[GOOG  Loading...      ()   ] Books project.

Some of them have funny line breaks and weird typos like “vzen” instead of “when” and “i86f” instead of “1861.” There are other complications. You can’t search Google’s catalog explicitly when you’re in the mood for something free; on the other hand, those obscure Google texts clutter up your search results when you’re looking for a more current book.

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Besides, if you want free, out-of-copyright books, you can get them on the Kindle, too. They await at Gutenberg.org and other free sites.

In fact, when it comes to books you might actually want to read, B’s bookstore seems smaller than A’s. Many recent (and not-so-recent) best sellers are sold by A but not by B: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Meanwhile, it’s hard to find popular books that are offered by B but not by A.

In other words, Barnes & Noble may have more books by pure quantity, but a lot of it is filler.

The real shocker, though, is how much more expensive B’s books are. Both companies offer free sample chapters and $10 pricing on current best sellers. But beyond that, check it out: “The Lovely Bones” (A charges $10, B charges $12). “The Kite Runner” ($10 versus $12). “Dune” ($8 versus $12.80). “Freakonomics” ($10 versus $16). “Lord of the Rings Trilogy” ($12.25 versus $30).

(B’s press officer countered with a list of 2009 books that cost $10 from B and more from A. But compare best-seller lists from past years, and it’s clear that A almost always underprices B.)

And remember, you can never lend, resell or pass on an A or B e-book. You’re buying into proprietary, copy-protected formats — which can have its downsides. Last month, for example, Amazon erased “1984” and “Animal Farm” from its customers’ Kindles by remote control, having discovered a problem with the rights. Amazon refunded the price, but the sense of violation many customers felt was a disturbing wake-up call.

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