Amazon

Following my earlier report on Barnes & Noble’s plans for the German market, Amazon now seems to be taking up the challenge with a new ad campaign, according to Germany’s Buchreport.de.

The news and information portal of the principal magazine for the German-language book market shows a banner and tent installation campaign across the German rail network, with one of the major slogans roughly translating as: “Please change … to the text size of your choice.”

Amazon“Is this Amazon’s answer to the Tolino offensive?” asks Buchreport, referring to the German publishing industry’s own Tolino e-reader platform, featured at the bottom of the same article. Other slogans in the Amazon campaign read: “So the station becomes a library” and “Reading comfort: First class.”

The Kindle Paperwhite, sold in Germany for €129 ($171.85) and described on Amazon’s own site as “the most advanced eReader in the world,” is the main subject of the campaign, but Amazon has recently been using TV ad slots and other media to promote its other devices.

And, as the German reporters point out, Amazon is not above taking pot-shots at the competition—especially Apple, with an iPad with Retina display compared unfavorably to the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD. As the German advertising press underlines, Amazon is also calling on German e-book readers to change over from competing platforms to the Kindle.

Rail passengers in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Munich and Stuttgart are the beneficiaries so far.

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