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Is This the Device That Will Revolutionize Reading?
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Yesterday, Barnes and Noble unveiled its e-book reader, the Nook, but despite modern bells and whistles, it's one of the most low-technology concepts that may challenge the primacy of the mighty Kindle.
Barnes & Noble may have found the perfect angle from which to attack Amazon's mighty Kindle. With its new e-book reader, the "Nook," the retail chain is embracing a familiar, low-tech concept: lending a book to a friend.
In an industry first, Nook owners will be able to digitally lend their e-books to a friend's Nook, smartphone, or computer for two weeks. Lending won't be available for every book on the Nook—but it's not offered at all on the Kindle, the reigning champ of e-book readers, which requires users to buy their own individual copies of each book.
The $259 Nook, which Barnes & Noble unveiled yesterday in New York, boasts an impressive feature set that includes a sleek design, wireless capabilities, and a color touchscreen for navigation. For book publishers, however, the Nook's main asset seems to be the fact that it isn't a Kindle.
Features such as book lending have the potential to transform the present relationship between consumers and their e-books.
Larry Kirschbaum, the former head of the Time-Warner Book Group, was quoted by The New York Times saying "people are happy to have a competitor" to Amazon's e-book reader. And why shouldn't they be? Analysts predict that Amazon will sell 1.5 million Kindles this year, dominating the market for e-book readers, and the publishing industry has become suspicious of the online retailer's growing clout.
"Publishers and authors want to make sure there’s healthy competition so that Amazon and Kindle don’t become the equivalent of Apple and iTunes,” Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, told Bloomberg earlier this year. "We want to make sure there are a number of successful companies selling e-books on devices."
In its e-book store, Amazon offers most bestsellers for $9.99 (and reportedly pays publishers a few dollars more than that, apparently selling these books at a loss). Publishers fear that Amazon will use its hegemony to dictate even lower prices from them in the future. Enter the Nook: the publishing industry was evidently so eager to see Barnes & Noble field a strong competitor to the Kindle that it agreed to unprecedented new consumer-friendly features that the Kindle doesn't support, like book lending.
It's too early to tell whether the Nook can steal significant market share from the Kindle. The Nook, which is set to ship November 30, will join several other new e-book readers—from electronics giants, like Sony, and also from smaller firms, like IREX—competing vigorously for holiday shopping dollars. It will also contend with a cut-price Kindle, recently reduced to $259, as well as an international edition that works in more than 100 countries. (The Nook is initially being sold only in the U.S.)
But even if the Nook is unable to dethrone the Kindle, it may accomplish something even more important: features such as book lending have the potential to transform the present relationship between consumers and their e-books.
Downloading an e-book on the Kindle has always felt somewhat restricting, more akin to renting a movie than buying a book. There are several reasons for this: You can't resell your books after you've finished reading them. Earlier this summer, Amazon remotely deleted e-books from some users' libraries in the middle of the night. (The company apologized and said it wouldn't happen again.) And you can't lend books to your friends.
By introducing e-book lending to the marketplace, the Nook will have empowered consumers a bit and helped forge a model that's more friendly to users—and ultimately, much closer to the experience of owning a book.
Nicholas Ciarelli is an assistant product manager at The Daily Beast.
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I'm planning to buy one of these devices for when I fly the atlantic and spend a couple of weeks in a country where there will be no English language books and for part of the time no electricity. Do any of them have batteries that last for thirty hours? Is it possible to take an extra battery?
The Kindle battery lasts for many, many days....much longer than 30 hours.
This one is supposed to last up to 10 days (with wifi off). Others are said to last two weeks on a single charge.
Not sure about swapping batteries.
I read the reviews from owners of the Kindle, who were unhappy with it. Besides books being deleted without a refund, Newspapers and magazines were only available for a week. I couldn't find any information on what newspapers and magazines were available on th NOOK and for how long. Do You know?
I have a Kindle, which I recently took with me on a two-week trip around Europe. I didn't charge it once - and I had plenty of hours on planes and trains to spend reading. Just make sure that you turn the wireless function off; it doesn't work in Europe anyway (although it will on the new international version) and it only drains the battery faster.
As of now, there's no interchangeable battery for the Kindle.
Learn some new languages. Most Europeans know more than one, especially the Swiss.
i have mixed feelings about the book-lending feature on the nook. on the one hand, i'm a voracious reader and i see the value in lending generally. on the other, i'm an author, and i'm concerned about where the rights of the author fit into this model -- mainly the right to earn a royalty percentage every time the book you wrote is "acquired." for me, it really begs the question of what a book is. is it an experience? a commodity? what?
kim green (live a little, paging aphrodite and is that a moose in your pocket)
It will be interesting to see how Kindle responds to this foray by Barnes and Noble. The lending capabilities as well as the brick and mortar distribution channel would seem to make this a legitimate threat to some of their market share.
Maybe Kindle will pull an Ipod/Itunes and let people register books on 6 Kindles?
For the most part, you can put a book on 6 kindles. If all are registered to your account, you can put the book on as many kindles as the book allows (usually 6).
BTW, will foreign language books be available as well? If these two products are only available in English, they're useless to me.
I've been reading e-books for years: first on a Franklin, then on my Palm, and now on my iPod Touch. The attraction for me is the portability and ease of use. I have an entire library at my fingertips at any given time, most of the books are free. Although the Touch is smaller and does not have constant wifi access, it fits into my pocket, has a backlight, and provides many different utilities besides being a reader. With the convenience of the e-books always with me, I have read many more books of different types than I probably would have read in paper. Fifteen minutes waiting for the doctor, pharmacy, microwave oven, or in line at Starbucks becomes an opportunity to read just a little bit more of a fascinating book. I also think it is an amazing way for students to get their assigned "classics" for English classes. Most are free!
I just returned from a trip to Florida. I was reading my kindle on the plane and several people stopped to ask about it. I've never taken it somewhere, where at least one person wanted to see it. I just hope they with with the pricing program. 9.99 is high enough. I also hope B&N is a bit more astute on distribution that Apple was today. I got an email telling me I could get their new mouse at my Apple Store. I drove over to get one and guess what? They don't have them yet. Same for Best Buy. Not smart.
I own a Kindle, and am fed up with it, I love to read off it, but Amazon uses a restrictive DRM policy, so when I damaged my 1st kindle and had to replace it I lost all the rights to books I purchased from Amazon. I literally stopped purchasing books from Amazon now they want to charge me to download a book on their "Free WiFi".
One of the issues I have is that when I purcase an e-book, I should get to use it on any e-device I own. Because of the DRM policies in place when I purchase a Nook, I will lose all the content I purchased from Amazon, what a ripoff.
There are a couple of websites that do not create DRM liscencing on their ebooks, I highly recommend using them to purchase books. Two I have used recently are Baen Books (Sci Fi) and Guttneberg (free expired copyright).
Are you sure this is right? I believe that you can re-download books that you've purchased from Amazon (can't you even have them on 5 devices simultaneously?), but that you're on your own after 14 days for periodicals, i.e., Amazon will store an extra copy of the periodical for 14 days, and after that you're able to copy the periodical to new devices if you've saved a backup copy of it somewhere yourself.
Bummer experience.
A couple clarifications, though. The nook is not much different than the Kindle in terms of DRM. Books bought from BN.com will still only be readable from a BN-provided device, whether a Nook, mobile app or desktop reader. This is true of the Kindle too -- I regularly read my books in other formats and don't have to re-pay for them. The Nook will have the limited "lending" feature where you can let others borrow your book which is a nice differentiator from the Kindle. I accomplish this within my family just fine with the Kindle since I can send the books I buy to multiple devices within my account. So I send books to my Kindle, my iPhone, my wife's iPhone and my son's iPod Touch all with only one purchase. BN is promoting the ability to get free content from Google's massive public domain book library and that's great. You can do so now with the Kindle too - not as an integrated feature but simply by using your USB cable and downloading them into the Kindle - as well as millions of other books from non-Amazon sites.
I think the Nook looks like a not evolution on the Kindle as a device. I want to hear how well the battery life holds up in actual testing - wat they "claim" is not that useful. My Kindle has gone a full month with me having read multiple whole books on a single charge, as long as you only turn the wireless on when you need it which is not often.
What do you mean about Amazon wanting to charge you for free wireless access? Assuming you are trying to use the network from the device you bought, it comes with lifetime free access of the network.
My biggest concerns about the Barnes & Noble solution right now is content. I have read a couple dozen books on my Kindle since I got it earlier this year and as an experiment I tried looking them all up - and their authors - on the BN.com site. About 60% were available and for each author roughly half as many titles were available. I found only one case where an author had a book on BN.com that wasn't available on Amazon. I also found more interesting free content on Amazon than BN.com. There were books I got for free on Amazon.com that are going for $7.99 or $9.99 on BN.com. So for the moment, Amazon seems to have the relevant (which I define as contemporary book releases) catalogue edge over BN.com. Hopefully that will change as competition is good for us. Amazon also tended to have better pricing on average. About 70% of the sames I looked up were the same price but whenever there was a difference, Amazon had the advantage.
I think you're mistaken about replacing books on your kindle. I damaged my kindle and was sent a replacement. Under manage kindle, you decide where to send the books. So if you want to send it to your current kindle, you just select that. There also is no "free wifi" on the kindle. Its the Spring network (unless you purchased the international edition). Of course they charge you for new books (if that is your complaint). The nook will as well. But if you want to keep your kindle books and you have a new kindle, they can just be redelivered to the new kindle (which will have a different name than your old kindle).
I owned a Kindle1 and upgraded to a Kindle2 a few months ago. I experienced no problem transferring all my books/magazines. It was no problem at all. Also I have re-downloaded numerous books without a problem.
I have been eying the e-readers since the Kindle 1st came out. I especially am attracted to a device that is more similar to a book then an Iphone, or computer. Then, Amazon took back 1984 without notification. That made me aware of all the problems of a device that stores YOUR material on their server. This is also true of the new Nook EBook [terrible pun, btw].
There are other choices . The Cooler-E made in Britain is one, but, it is so popular, there is a waiting list. There is also the BeBook from Holland, which I just purchased. [Delivery next week by Fedex]. Both of these use SD cards for storage, and the books are downloaded via your computer. They also will store any other document etc you want to take along. HTML and Adobe etc are both allowed. The BeBook also lets you plug in an MP3 player. They are not wireless. The batteries are rechargeable, and if you are just reading, the battery charge lasts for about 7000 page turns. What's that? 10-20 books?
You can also download true type fonts rather than Times Roman [which I dislike] and adjust the font size to suit your eyes. They both have the same ink like screen as Kindle and Nook. Same price range -$250/$260. I found them by doing a google search on e-readers.
I'm reading a lot of misinformation about the Kindle in these comments. Newspapers and magazines can be kept on the Kindle, or backed up to any drive,indefinitely. The confusion lies in the fact that are not available on Amazon's servers for more than a few weeks.
Kindle e-books can be shared on up to 6 different devices on your Amazon account. This includes other Kindles as well as iPhones and the iPod Touch. In the event that a Kindle you have needs to be replaced, you can absolutely download everything you previously purchased to a new Kindle, except, unfortunately, for subscription items, which are unfortunately DRMd to the original Kindle.
Amazon also just announced today that will soon release an application that will allow Kindle books to be read on your PC, with a Mac version to follow in a few months.
If you want have questions about the Kindle, check out www.kindleboards.com. There are lots of experienced users there who are happy to answer any questions.
The ONLY way that "ebook" devices will be useful and fair is when the companies allow you to purchase a book, keep it forever, and do whatever you want with it. Other than that it's just another techno-rip-off, designed to drain you of every extra nickel. Until that time, you dupes who are so easily distracted by shiny new things can have them, I'll stick to libraries and the good old neighborhood bookseller thank you.
My understanding is that the fine print requires a lender to give the friend credit card information. That's a deal-killer. I'm tired of the fine print every corporation puts in place to control whatever aesthetic experience it wants to sell.
Thank you.
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