Competition is growing between providers; this market should grow, delivering new products to consumers, though it remains to be seen how many people will gravitate toward e-books. One market segment with great potential wopuld appear to be new readers, youngsters for whom computing is a part of growing up, always present, and not a new development.
Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader, the Nook
The Nook, which runs on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, boasts a 6-inch e-paper display from E-Ink Corp. for reading and a smaller color-touch screen for control and typing. It features 3G cellphone and Wi-Fi wireless connections to download books from the retailer's online bookstore.
Barnes & Noble unveiled the Nook in Manhattan at an event well attended by CEOs of many of the industry's biggest publishing houses. Those connections helped the nation's largest bookstore chain win a concession: the ability for buyers of some e-books to lend their purchases to friends for as many as 14 days at a time. The shared books can be read on other Nooks, cellphones or computers, but a single copy of a book can only be read on one device at a time and can only be lent one time. Most other commercial e-book stores, including Amazon's Kindle store, don't allow sharing e-books.
In due time the restrictions will fade away, as they have on other media.
Several publishers, who asked not to be identified, said that they haven't yet decided on whether to allow Barnes & Noble to lend their e-books.
However, W. Drake McFeely, president of W.W. Norton & Co., said, "You can lend a physical book, so as long as it's sequential, I'm fine with it."
Precisely.
Digits
Barnes & Noble said it would also offer subscriptions to more than 20 newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times—and eventually expects to offer, in digital form, subscriptions to every major U.S. daily.
The Nook also features integration with Barnes & Noble's retail stores. Users who bring the device into the store will find that special offers, content and discounts pop up on the Nook's screen. Eventually, the company says, customers will be able to read entire e-books for free inside the physical store.
As one can with the physical book.
video: First Look at Barnes & Noble Nook E-Book Reader
Mitchell Klipper, chief operating officer of Barnes & Noble, said that he expects the Nook to help build traffic in the stores after it goes on sale. "What other device can you road test in a store?" he asked. "This could be our biggest traffic builder for the holidays."
Barnes & Noble also announced that it was shifting its e-book copyright-protection system to software from Adobe Systems Inc. That could usher in a day when protected e-books can be read more easily across many different devices. The e-book store used by Sony also uses Adobe's copyright-protection software, but Amazon still uses a proprietary format for Kindle books.
The e-equivalent to PDFs.
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