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Barnesandnoble.com, through a partnership with Microsoft, will tomorrow begin selling books for downloading and on-screen reading. It will be the first outlet for digital books. Barnesandnoble.com is, of course, the online arm of Barnes & Noble. In addition to providing a new version of its software, Microsoft will be adding considering marketing muscle through a sizable advertising and promotion campaign.

The site will begin with more than 2,000 digital titles – available in the new Microsoft format – and will add about 150 new titles a week.

Already skeptical analysts see online reading as a risk as well as an opportunity. As the first major outlet for digital books, the bookseller has its foot in the door for other, newer, more profitable online possibilities. It was widely criticized a few years ago for sitting by while Amazon.com took the lead in selling books over the Internet. However, this undertaking is likely to strain Barnes & Noble's relationship with book publishers. As now set up, the retailer will be in direct competition with its major suppliers.

Furthering the risk, onscreen reading – especially over a long period of time – has become regarded as awkward and uncomfortable. Analysts wonder how consumers will accept reading novels on screen when they've acknowledged having difficulty reading newspaper articles, magazines, even press releases.

Barnesandnoble.com is betting, of course, that readers will accept the online library. It has already invested $20 million in Mighty Words, a publisher of short digital books. It has also spent millions on improving the technology for downloading and storing large amounts of information. One service it hopes will attract shoppers is the ability to bookmark and store their digital books and come back to them as often as they like.

Barnesandnoble.com could certainly use a successful new venture. It recently posted wider-than-expected losses and missed its projected revenue by 10 percent. The stock price tumbled 25 percent to close Friday at $3.75 a share; its 52-week high, posted last fall, was $23.50. Of course, Amazon.com has had some highly publicized troubles of its own. Its stock price has tumbled, as well. Last week, it lost its president, Joe Galli. And there's speculation about how much longer the company will be able to pay its bills.