TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Barnes & Noble’ Category

By David Rothman

That’s the word from a company blog.

But what’s meant by “e-books”?

Do we mesm just the books themselves or also Nook hardware?

For now, the cards and certificates apparently won’t work—bring forth no small number of complaints from duly disgruntled customers.

By David Rothman

Borders is up against such challenges as plummeting revenue, a price war, e-book competition and high debt, says Alyce Lomax, writing for The Motley Fool financial site.

Employee morale may also be sagging.

“I used to come in early and stay late,” a Fool commenter quotes a Border site for employees, “because I loved Borders and wanted it to succeed. Now I’m ashamed to work here.”

As a reader and shopper, and perhaps a writer or publisher, too, what do you think of Borders? Is there any way that e-book tech could help save the company? Or do you think it’s hopeless because Amazon and B&N are so much stronger in the E area?

Related: Will independents outlast the big bookstore chains? by Peter Beren, who writes the SF Publishing Examiner blog.

Image: Flagship store in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

By Paul Biba

According the the Wall Street Journal, the “first wave” of Nook orders were to ship on November 30 and the second wave on December 7. The third wave is to ship on December 11 and B&N is saying if you want one for Christmas you should order it now.

By Stephen Windwalker, editor of The Kindle Nation

Amazon’s new Kindle for PC App, launched early Tuesday morning, is a smash hit. The Kindle Store bestseller list is proof, even if you must read a few tea leaves to appreciate this.

The PC App is free, and people testing it are filling their PC hard drives with dozens of titles from among the 19,890 free book listings in the Kindle Store. Why wouldn’t they?

Of course, they can also use the Kindle for PC app to download thousands of other free books from several other third-party sources, thanks to a new "we play well with others" approach from Amazon. But the Kindle Store is still teeming with traffic from lovers of “free.”

On the Kindle Store’s list of bestselling books—the one that updates hourly and really reflects the comparative velocity of unit sales regardless of price over various recent chunks of time—77 of the top 100 titles were free at one point yesterday or were priced at one cent.

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By David Rothman

The Nook is going gangbusters, with deliveries for many customers delayed while Barnes & Noble catches up.

But long term, will price differences with Amazon hurt B&N?

Some readers are up in arms over B&N’s e-books not being inexpensive enough for them, and there’s talk of buying Kindles instead.

By Paul Biba

According to the Wall Street Journal demand is so strong that pre-orders won’t ship until December 11. Originally the device was to ship on November 30, and then to the next tier of customers on December 7 which has not been moved to the 11th.

The Journal reports B&N as saying that demand has been much stronger than their expectations. This is the same thing that happened at the initial release of the Kindle when Amazon underestimated the popularity of the unit.

By Paul Biba

Got an email from dave. He says:

My wife and kids pre-ordered a nook for my birthday at our local B&N. The sales person also sold her a $100 gift card to “get my eBook collection started”. When I tried to purchase a few books, I found out that gift cards can’t be used on eBooks. How many people are going to get a nook and a gift card this Christmas only to find out they are void when it comes to eBooks.

Now that is really very strange. I suspect there will be a lot of angry customers around Christmas!

By Paul Biba

Well, this is interesting. B&N has over 600 college bookstores and they will be selling the Nook. I wonder how that audience will adapt to it.

Thanks to Nathaniel Hoffelder who sent me a link to the George Mason University bookstore site. As you can see it has a pre-order link for the nook.

By Paul Biba

Barnes & Noble has been sued by Spring Design, who produce the Alex reader pictured at the left. According the the lawsuit B&N misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties’ non-disclosure agreement by copying Alex’s features in its new Nook ereader.

Spring Design states that it first developed the Alex in 2006 and since early 2009 worked with B&N under non-disclosure. Spring says that it was unaware that B&N was copying the features of the Alex until the public release of the Nook.

The full press release is here. Thanks to Mediabistro for the link.

By Steve Jordan

As I’ve watched Barnes & Noble’s troubles in getting their Smashwords content to properly display on the B&N store (what can I say?  They obviously missed some bugs before their big rollout, but these things do happen), it occurred to me: Suppose I liked my content on Smashwords, but for some reason didn’t want it to be available on Barnes & Noble’s site?  Should it be easy for me to do one without the other?

I realize not that many authors would necessarily want to exclude their content from the B&N site.  But I can think of a few reasons to do so: Concern about security, for one; or a displeasure with the B&N eReader’s display of my books, for another.  For people like that, there should be a way to keep your material out of B&N’s site if they wish.  But does Smashwords make that easy to do?  Can you do it at all?  Should it be considered okay for them to do it without my express permission?  Or should they have to formally ask?

I think Smashwords should have an “opt-in” (or “opt-out”) button prominently displayed on its publishing or dashboard pages, giving authors the clear choice of  having their material forwarded to Barnes & Noble.

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By Paul Biba

To those who are contemplating giving an ereader for the holidays, the choices must be a bit bewildering. The market has suddenly become flooded with possibilities. I thought I might give you my own personal recommendation based on units I’ve seen or handled.

I would go for the Kindle 2. I’ve used a number of the Sony units, a Kindle 1 and 2, have seen the Nook close up and played with the Astak 5" before I sent it over to Chris Meadows for review. Plus, I handled a number of other units at BookExpo America earlier this year. Here are my reasons for choosing the Kindle:

1. Wireless: once you become accustomed to the free wireless on the Kindle you may very well find it becomes indispensable. It is just so convenient. For example, when I went into the Nook press conference I was sitting on the ferry going across the Hudson and saw someone reading a book I was interested in. I fired up my Kindle and downloaded the book before I reached the other side. Once you can do this you will be amazed at how many books you end up buying. Of course the Nook has wireless too, but for reasons mentioned below I prefer the Kindle implementation.

2. Browser: the Kindle has a built in browser. It’s not very good, but it is important because it enables the Kindle to be a far more open platform than its wireless Nook rival. With the browser you can download from the vast catalog of Gutenberg and also get books from MobileRead, Manybooks, and Feedbooks, among others. At the beach and want to read Dickens? You can on the Kindle. I have even used the Kindle to send email when I’ve been stuck in areas with no AT&T service. The Nook will only connect to the B&N store and this is too limiting for me. I wish Sony had released its wireless unit in time for this little article but no luck so far.

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By David Rothman

Just what percentage of B&N stores will offer the Nook for immediate purchase, not just demos? A PaidContent piece talked about the unit being available for on-the-spot buys at only certain stories.

But now B&N has come forward with a clarification saying that it expects that “nook eBook readers” will be “in stock in the majority” of “stores by the peak holiday season.” Furthermore, B&N “plans to have nook devices in stock in all of its stores by early next year.” Great news! The full statement from B&N spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating follows.

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By Paul Biba

That’s what B&N said in an investor presentation yesterday, according to Publishers Weekly. Evidently B&N doesn’t expect a high margin on the device, but thinks this will be offset by selling accessories and warranties. In addition B&N said that margins on ebooks are higher than pbooks because of the lower overhead inherent in ebooks. Nooks will start shipping on November 30 and they are working to see that stocks will meet their expected high demand.

By David Rothman

The Que e-reader from Plastic Logic—not just Barnes and Noble’s own Nook—will go on sale at B&N for those who want a large shatter-proof E Ink-based screen. See Plastic Logic news release, Wired News, CNet and Google roundup. Best guess is that the price could be at least $400, or far more than the $259 Nook.

As reported by Wired: “The Que proReader will handle eBooks in the PDF, ePub, eReader, and eReader DRM formats; magazines and newspapers in the GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TXT formats; and documents in the Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint formats.” Plastic Logic is continuing to position the Que as a versatile document-reader for business, rather than simply an e-book reader.

B&N already had said it would serve as Plastic Logic’s content partner after the the Que goes on sale next year. The latest wrinkle is that Que owners will be able to use WiFi browse entire e-books while they’re at a B&N store—just as Nook owners can.

Other hardware news: Bridgestone announces flexible touchscreen color e-reader, in Engadget, via MobileRead. Specs: “5.8mm thick, features a 13.1-inch touch-sensitive e-paper display (with 4,096 colors and a refresh rate of about 0.8 seconds), and some sort of unspecified mobile phone connectivity.”

Related: Not enough bricks to make the Nook click? B&N will sell take-home Nooks at only ‘certain’ stores.

By David Rothman

Each B&N store will get a demo Nook, but PaidContent reports that “only certain stores will carry the Nook for on-the-spot sales.”

Gee, I thought B&N would get behind this one. The brick factor is the big advantage that B&N could enjoy over Amazon. People are much less likely to make impulse buys if they can’t take home a unit now.

Hmm. Could the analysts be right after all in downgrading the stock? It’s great for B&N to have a digital strategy. But that isn’t necessarily the same as a well-executed strategy.

By Paul Biba

That’s what Kirk Biglione says in his MediaLoper article. According to Kirk, Publishers Lunch reported that many large publishers won’t participate in B&N’s LendMe program for fear that lending will somehow hurt the market. As a matter of fact they required B&N to reduce its lending program from unlimited to just a maximum of 14 days, and then for only one book at a time. All this, of course, completely ignoring the fact that readers regularly lend their paper books to others. Kirk says that lending seems to be the equivalent of Amazon’s text to speech problems.

If publishers want to get the prices of ebooks up, why cripple them. As Kirk notes, the perception of an ebooks’ value is what sets pricing. The more features you allow, the more you can charge. But I guess this isn’t understood very well by the powers-that-must-be obeyed.

By David Rothman

Isn’t Wall Street wonderful? Long term, the Nook just might be great for Barnes & Noble shareholders, given the rapid growth of e-books. But Goldman Sachs—yes, the some overpaid people whom D.C. pampered with a bailouts—has downgraded the stock. Nothing like encouraging investment and innovation, no? CreditSuisse is also downgrading B&N shares.

Oh, well. Greed is good, especially the short-term kind.

I agree with Goldman and CreditSuisse on the need to level with shareholders. But the focus on the short term is unfortunate. Haven’t people been calling for brick-and-click synergies? That’s what B&N will be up to, with its in-store WiFi browsing strategy and the ability of shoppers to try out Nooks before buying.

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