(underlying image courtesy of Londontown)

“Attention all K-Mart Borders shoppers! Jealous of Barnes and Noble’s eBook Store? Come back in 2010, because Borders will be launching a Shortcovers Kobo Books co-branded store!

How will we be different than those “other” ebook stores? Well, we’ll be available on multiple platforms, not like the Kindle (if you ignore the iPhone/PC/upcoming Mac and Blackberry platforms), or Barnes and Noble (if you ignore the iPhone/PC/Mac/Blackberry versions), or eReader/Fictionwise (ok, we can’t compete with them for sheer devices supported). And we’ll have dedicated eBook Readers too, though we don’t have any details yet. But don’t worry, Borders is sneaking in on this whole “Year of the eBook” deal, just in the nick of time.”

All silly joking aside, Borders announced today they are partnering with Kobo Books (formerly Shortcovers) to open an eBook store in 2010. The highlights here are that the store will use ePUB (quickly becoming the standard in eBooks), and that they’re proudly calling themselves “device neutral”, which sounds great until you consider that most eBook stores are pretty diversified across multiple mobile and dedicated reader platforms.

Hopefully this will go well for Borders, as they need all the help they can get these days.

Via Mobileread