New TeleRead sponsor: NAEB Cybook

January 5th, 2008

You may have noticed a few days ago that we added a sponsored ad on the right from the NAEB Cybook buyer’s club.

Both David and I are familiar with the Cybook family of devices and like the company. Regular readers may know that a buyer’s club loosely affiliated with BAEN has been trying to arrange a mass order of e-book devices for interested buyers. It’s a bit cheaper than buying directly from Cybook and includes a few extra accessories as well.

Cybook has indicated a commitment to supporting open standards and maintained a balance between that and supporting one DRM standard (Bobipocket). In addition Cybook (and even the NAEB people) have a much more open product development process than, say, Amazon. Although Kindle is an interesting device with lots of features, the opaque development process doesn’t inspire confidence and gives the impression that it is not terribly interested in hearing consumer feedback prior to its media blitz. Also, although the NAEB buying club project took a while to get off the ground, Derek Benner has certainly been accessible and answers a lot of questions on the Cybook section of MobileRead and can do the same in the TeleBlog. The Cybook compares favorably to other Vizplex-enabled devices.

My Cybook hands-on

I’ve handled this device and played with it quite a bit. It’s lightweight and elegant. But it is not without its warts, and it certainly is not the only device out there to enhance the reading experience. It is a good alternative for readers who don’t wish to be dependent on a single vendor for commercial ebooks. Given Bookeen’s track record with its previous ebook reader, I’m cautiously optimistic Cybook will offer .epub support somewhere down the road.

Online buying clubs are still a new concept in the United States, but they have always been popular in Asia to help consumers obtain volume discounts/wholesale prices on new items. Time will tell how successful this particular venture will be. Here are FAQ about the NAEB online store and contact information. One problem with ebook devices is that frequently devices are marketed only to one region, leaving people outside of that region unhappy. Sony Reader was not really available to Europe, the Iliad hasn’t really been available in the U.S. and the Chinese Hanlin devices haven’t been available in Europe or US.

Buyers’ clubs are one way to allow people to have access to devices from other regions and still have support contacts in their own region. With NAEB, they still provide warranty/servicing inside the US (which saves money and time for all). Their website reads:

For the Cybook, NAEB handles our customer’s warranties for Bookeen. We follow their policy which is quoted below.
Limited Warranty Coverage
Bookeen standard Product warranty is one (1) year after date of delivery.
If a defect arises and a valid claim is received by NAEB within the Warranty Period, NAEB will repair the product at no charge (except shipment costs see below), using new or refurbished replacement parts or replace the product with a comparable product that is new or which has been manufactured from new or serviceable used parts and with at least functionally equivalent to the original product.

…

Return process
The customer should review the online help resources before seeking warranty service. If the product is still not functioning properly after making use of these resources, please get in touch with our Technical Support centre at support@naebllc.com to characterize the defect and get the procedure to ship back the defective units.
The shipment of the defective units to NAEB’s office is taken in charge by the customer, the shipment back of the repaired units to the customer is taken in charge by NAEB.

That said, TeleRead will always try to make you aware of reading alternatives regardless of who is advertising on our site, or not advertising (the biggest item this morning is about the noncommercial XO laptop). The market changes quickly, and we’ll strive to provide up-to-date and reliable information for consumers wishing to invest in a reader.