Review:Barnes & Noble Nook E-Reader
Barnes & Noble E-Reader
The Barnes and Noble Nook reader is here and boy is it hot. Just like yesterday’s WSJ report stated, it will be available for $259 and sport dual touchscreens along with wireless courtesy of WiFi and AT&T 3G wireless. Battery life isn’t too shabby either with a reported 10 day life off of an 3.5 hour charge. Yeah, you want this.
The Nook’s tech specs are impressive – 2GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, MP3 player, micro USB plug, 3.5MM jack and of course, those dual screens with an Vizplex e-ink display up top and a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen on the bottom – but it’s the software that’s killer. The device will allow users to share books for 14 days at a time and it’s not just limited to other Nooks. The books can be read on cellphones and computers too. Then there is the standard e-book features like bookmarking, notes, and highlighting. We’ll be on hand later at the official event to see what’s up with the dual screens.
No doubt the Nook takes the ebook reader up to a whole new level of cool, but it’s just too bad that the Barnes & Noble ebook store so far doesn’t live up to Amazon’s selection. There just doesn’t seem to be nearly as many obscure titles available. So if you’re thinking of investing $259 of your money into this new device, why not spend sometime in the B&N store to ensure it has the selection you need. Don’t worry, you have time. The Nook isn’t expected to ship until the end of November.
The Nook has free 3G via AT&T which is used to shop for and download books to the reader. The Nook can be synced with other Barnes & Noble readers and devices, making it as versatile as the Amazon Kindle. Nook owners can lend e-books to friends for 14 days by “squirting” them to the friend’s reader, cell phone or computer. B&N is also touting the availability of free content available while in B&N stores.
With the market for electronic readers and digital books heating up by the day, Barnes & Noble sought to differentiate itself with the wireless feature that consumers can access in any of the chain’s 1,300 stores. Outside of the stores, customers can download books on AT&T’s 3G cellular phone network.
Barnes & Noble E-Reader
The Nook features a six inch grey and white reading display and color touch-screen controls at the bottom of the device. The price is $259, matching the latest price set by Amazon for a new edition of its Kindle reader.
Customers can begin pre-ordering the Nook at nook.com starting at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and the devices will ship in late November.
In an interview, William Lynch, chief executive of BN.com, said that the Nook’s color touch screen navigation panel could be used to find books, search through a user’s personal library, annotate text and change font size. Readers will be able to scroll through icons of the covers of their books rather than just a text list, as on Kindle.
Mr. Lynch said the company would also leverage its chain of bricks and mortar stores by setting up front-of-store displays to sell and demonstrate the Nook. The Nook also has software that will detect when a consumer walks into a store so that it can push out coupons or other promotions such as excerpts or suggestions to customers.
Because of this connection with stores and the brand name, analysts said that Barnes & Noble could fare better than other newcomers to the e-reader market like iRex or Plastic Logic, because of its name recognition. “Barnes & Noble has more of a chance than any of the new entrants to the market,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Our data shows that the prospects for e-reader devices are book-buying consumers, and many consumers still have a relationship with Barnes & Noble. They need to leverage those relationships before it’s too late to seize their part of the e-book market.”
Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the Nook is that it allows consumers to share their e-books with friends. Mr. Lynch said that customers will be allowed to share an individual e-book with one person at a time for up to 14 days. After that, they will not be allowed to share that book again, though, so it is not an exact mirror of the physical book world.
Amazon allows consumers to connect up to six devices to a single Kindle account. Kindle books can be read either on the Kindle device or on Apple’s iPhone.
For publishers, “it’s in their interest to let Barnes & Noble do things that Amazon doesn’t or can’t do,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consultant to publishers and technology vendors. “And lending is one of those things.”
Ms. Epps added that lending is what consumers already do with physical books. “It’s bringing the intimacy and sociability of reading into the digital realm,” she said.
The Nook is being made by an undisclosed manufacturer in Asia, Mr. Lynch said. He declined to say how many devices the company had manufactured for the upcoming holiday season.
The digital books in Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore are available in either epub or Adobe Pdf format. Customers who want to buy books in those formats from other digital bookstores may do so and transfer them onto the Nook, but those who want to buy e-books directly from the device will be connected to Barnes & Noble’s own bookstore.
Barnes & Noble will continue to supply the e-bookstores of the forthcoming iRex and Plastic Logic devices.
Mr. Lynch said that he was not concerned that the Nook would eventually cannibalize print book sales in the chain’s stores.
“We think it presents a huge opportunity for Barnes and Noble to grow our business as some of the business shifts,” Mr. Lynch said. He noted that the overall book business was worth about $30 billion a year. “Even the most bullish prognostications on digital have it getting to $5 billion within four to five years,” he said. “So it’s still a very small part of the overall market.”
While Barnes & Noble has made its e-book store available on a range of devices, including the iPhone, BlackBerry and coming e-readers from Plastic Logic and Irex, it has always left open the possibility that it would develop and sell its own device in partnership with an Asian manufacturer. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Barnes & Noble is set to introduce its own six-inch touch-screen device to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
Barnes & Noble declined to comment on the matter, but here are a few nuggets we’ve been able to glean about such a device:
The bookseller will likely introduce it on Oct. 20. The company has an event planned for that day at Chelsea Piers in New York, for what an invitation calls “a major event in our company’s history.” Again, Barnes & Noble has no comment.
The bookseller also hopes to make e-book lending a centerpiece of its device, according to two people in publishing who asked not to be named because talks were confidential. Readers can not lend digital books on the Kindle, although books can be read on up to six separate devices linked to the same Amazon account.
But B.&N. has been talking to publishers about a new model, whereby users are granted a license to “lend” an e-book to a friend. This could help the bookseller market the device to members of its book clubs program. However, publishers are pushing back on this feature and the two sides are currently engaged in discussions about how many loans a year publishers will allow.
Finally, one publishing executive currently engaged in talks with the bookseller says that Barnes & Noble wants to make it easy for customers to walk into any of its more than 700 stores and try out the device on the store’s Wi-Fi network. “Fourteen million people walk into those stores every day, and Barnes & Noble feels pretty strongly that they have a beautiful chance to convert a whole bunch of regular readers to e-books by selling them a wider array of devices, and the chance to go into a store and browse digital,” this person said.
The comment presumes that a Barnes & Noble e-reading device will have Wi-Fi access built in which, again, would distinguish it from the Kindle, which only accesses 3G cellphone networks.
The Nook can be pre-ordered now, but a firm shipping date has not been specified by B&N. The Nook is $259 with free shipping.
Specs:
* Height: 7.7 inches
* Width: 4.9 inches
* Depth: 0.5 inches
* Weight: 11.2 ounces (317 grams)
* Wi-Fi
* 3G – AT&T
* 2GB internal storage, microSD slot
* MP3 player
* 3.5mm headphone jack
* internal mono speaker
* USB charging, 3.5 hour charge time
* Android OS
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