Find eBook Readers Blog   Reading in the Digital Age

Yesterday Barnes & Noble started sending out firmware update V 1.2 OTA.  Some of the issues that the update addresses:

• Enhanced in-store seamless connectivity to enjoy free Wi-Fi, with our More In Store content and promotions exclusively for nook owners.
• Improved opening of eBooks and periodicals
• Improved response to Reading Now & Settings buttons
• Current reading page and bookmarks on all eBooks is properly saved when your nook is powered off
• Bookmarks display page number
• Eligible LendMe(TM) eBooks in My Library include a LendMe(TM) flag
• Easier navigation of daily subscription with issues rolled into one folder
• Improved “back” button functionality for navigating eBooks and periodicals
• Personal files downloaded onto nook and displayed in My Documents can be sorted by author & title
• Overall system improvements and battery optimization

There are reports that in some cases the update has corrupted contents of the My Documents folder.  This glitch seems in particular to be affecting PDF files.  It would probably be a good idea to back this folder up onto your computer if you have not received the update already – just in case.

B & N says that it will take around a week for the update to reach all nook ereaders, but you can also do a manual download if you can’t wait.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Barnes & Noble nook Review at Cnet
• No More nook eReaders for Christmas; Kindles to Get Folders
• Barnes and Noble Gift Cards Will be Usable for eBook Purchases
• Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG
• Comparing the eBook Stores

Cnet has a hands-on review of the nook which is pretty thorough considering that they probably have not had it very long.  There is also a nice video.  They do also comment that the LCD touchscreen is a bit sluggish and laggy.

Cnet also confirms that the in-store Wi-Fi browsing of books will be limited to one hour per title per 24 hour period .

Engadget also has a nook review up.  Their review also mentions the lag, and is in fact overall  less favorable.  It does sound as though there is a bit of a learning curve to navigating on the nook.   Engadget’s review indicates that the nook is probably going to need a few quick software updates/fixes and debugging.

Gizmodo’s nook review is also just up.  Gizmodo is also reporting experiencing buggy software.

Some things that the early nook reviews seem be in agreement on:

• The current version of the software is buggy. This is pretty common with new gadgets, especially when they are rushed out for the holidays.
• B&N is telling the reviewers that they are working on updates and these should be forthcoming beginning very soon, possibly even before Christmas.
• The LCD Touchscreen is pretty laggy. Hopefully the software updates will fix this.
• For the most part, the reviewers are pretty positive about the nook’s potential if the bugs can be fixed.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Nook Gets Update V 1.2
• No More nook eReaders for Christmas; Kindles to Get Folders
• Barnes and Noble Gift Cards Will be Usable for eBook Purchases
• Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG
• Comparing the eBook Stores

The nook is now officially sold out for Christmas.  Barnes and Noble is telling purchasers of its new ereader that as of today pre-ordered nook ereaders will not be shipped until after New Year’s.

All customers ordering a nook beginning today, November 20 should expect their devices to ship beginning the week of January 4, 2010.  To assist those customers who are purchasing nooks as holiday gifts, we have created a special holiday certificate, noting an expected January ship date.  Beginning today, any customer pre-ordering nook as a gift will have the option to receive a special certificate at no cost — either in-store or via mail, for those pre-ordering online.

No doubt all of this competition to the Kindle ereader’s current supremacy has encouraged Amazon to fill some of the little chinks in the Kindle’s armor of late. Little chinks such as Kindle for PC and Mac and Blackberry (coming soon). And other little missing bits and pieces such as folders to better organize one’s library on the Kindle.  The latter is something users of the Kindle ereader have been asking for for a long time.

Amazon announced on its Kindle Facebook page that folders will be added via an over-the-air update during the first half of next year.  It seems a bit odd that Amazon released the news first on Facebook and only belatedly on its Kindle forums, but it is welcome news for Kindlers never the less.

It seems that Amazon is seeking to counter competition by adding some of the missing features to the current Kindle model, and this may be an indication that we shouldn’t expect a new iteration of the Kindle ereader in the very near future.  On the other hand, possibly this strategy will give Amazon a bit of extra time to develop some really killer features for the next Kindle edition.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Comparing the eBook Stores
• Nook Gets Update V 1.2
• Barnes & Noble nook Review at Cnet
• Barnes and Noble Gift Cards Will be Usable for eBook Purchases
• Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG

I have speculated before that after the holidays there may well be a number of nook ereader owners that are disgruntled with the Barnes and Noble ebook store, leading to some backlash if B&N doesn’t fix some of the problems.  There is already some evidence of this in the B & N forums, and the nook is not even out yet. 

Barnes and Noble apparently found yet another way to antagonize their customers – gift cards are not usable for purchasing ebooks at this time.  This means that if you gift a nook ereader and wish to add a gift card for the purpose of stocking it with reading material it won’t work for that.  There are some reports that B&N salesclerks are not aware of this and are cheerily suggesting gift cards to go along with your nook ereader gift.

Barnes and Noble has heard the complaints, and has announced that beginning in mid-December gift cards and online gift certificates will be allowed for the purchase of ebooks either online or through the nook ereader and on other devices using B&N’s eReader software.

That’s one problem solved; now if they can do something about their ebook pricing and the inferior selection of non-public domain titles offered in their ebook store.

Barnes and Noble also announced that their ebook store will  be available in Canada around the first of December.  At the present time the nook ereader is not available in Canada,  but if you do have a nook in Canada you will be able to sync it with your B&N eBook library on your computer or access their ebook store via Wi-Fi.  Canada is still a glaring omission in the Kindle ereader’s international coverage, though Amazon is working on this.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Nook Gets Update V 1.2
• Barnes & Noble nook Review at Cnet
• No More nook eReaders for Christmas; Kindles to Get Folders
• Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG
• Comparing the eBook Stores

While previously placed preorders for the nook ereader should still ship at the end of November,  purchasers who have preordered Barnes and Noble’s new ebook reader over the past few days are being advised by the company that their expected shipping date will be December 11.

This may be bad news for potential purchasers who planned on looking at and playing with a nook demo at the end of the month at a Barnes and Noble store before placing their orders.   If the shipping date slips again, the end of November may be too late to place an order and have your ereader arrive in time for Christmas.  This perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem if B & N had a friendlier return policy; if you preorder a nook and then don’t like it and return it within 14 days you will be charged a 10% restocking fee.

While it is always possible that this is a tactic Barnes and Noble is using in an attempt to create a rush to buy, it seems unlikely.  The delayed nook shipping date is not mentioned on the site,  rather you seem to find out about it after you place your order.  More likely they didn’t anticipate the demand for the nook ereader.

Barnes and Noble also seems to have at least partially heard the many complaints about their pricing.  They are advertising reduced prices on books for the holidays (for orders placed through Nov. 30) and free 3 day shipping for orders over $25, or over $10 if you are a member.  However, the reduced prices don’t seem to apply to ebooks, which are still higher priced than elsewhere in many cases.  Members do not receive any discounts on ebooks either.

Besides the nook ereader, Barnes and Noble will also support Plastic Logic’s Que ebook reader, which is due out early next year and which they have said will be available for purchase in all of their stores.  They are also the ebook store of choice for Irex’s DR800SG ereader, which was supposed to be out by now, but has been delayed.  When in place these three ebook readers will give B & N a very strong hardware presence; with a pretty wide range of feature sets, screen sizes and price points.  Unless they fix their ebook store (it presently has fewer titles at higher prices) however, their challenge to Amazon for dominance of the ereader market is somewhat crippled.  By the way, speaking of things nook vs Kindle; the nook is not the same price as the Kindle if you consider sales tax.  Where I live that is about enough to pay for a Kindle cover.

And Speaking of the Irex DR800SG eReader

Meanwhile, back at the Irex camp, there is still nothing official on the missing DR800SG ereader.  There are a couple of comments on the Irex blog by an Irex rep to the effect that Irex’s new ebook reader has suffered delays due to circumstances beyond Irex’s control, but may be on the shelves by the middle of this month; and she notes that all of this is is not official.  She also says that the initial version of the DR800SG will be a special edition that includes “a ton of free content to get your reading started” and will be priced at $449.  This probably explains (or is an attempt to explain) why the ebook reader was priced higher than MSRP when listed on Best Buy’s  site.

Perhaps the DR800SG ereader is the victim of production delays, distribution problems (perhaps the container fell off the back of a ship?) or even a last minute bug reared its ugly head and had to be squashed by a firmware update.  New gadgets are often plagued by delays and shortages, especially around the holidays.  However, the way in which Best Buy displayed the DR800SG ereader very briefly on their website before disappearing it seems a bit suspect.  If the ereader was just delayed why didn’t they just leave it up and list it as backordered?  Perhaps the bug is in the Irex – Best Buy relationship?  If the companies are still negotiating this might explain all of the silence.

At any rate, the silent treatment seems a path not very well chosen for instilling confidence in the minds of potential purchasers of Irex’s new ereader.

Photo courtesy Barnes and Noble
Clichés courtesy Clichés-R-Us     

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I’ve done a few price and availability comparisons of  ebooks at the various ebook stores before with a handful of titles, but thought it would be useful to do a comparison with a larger sample.   After all, the content provider for a particular ereader is a feature that definitely needs to be considered when choosing which ebook reader you will buy, especially if the ebook reader  in question is primarily confined to one provider for DRM’ed ebooks.

Choosing the Books

First of all I went to Borders and made a list of 110 books.  I chose Borders as they do not apparently sell ebooks (not in the U.S.  anyway) and I didn’t want to know in advance if a paper book was also available as an ebook when I compiled my list.  I tried to stay away from very new books, as most ebook stores make a point of selling current bestsellers for $9.99.  Therefore, you will not find The  Lost Symbol on my list, but Angels and Demons is there.  I chose paperback versions in all but a very few cases where they were not available.

My list totals 110 books, of which 34 are non-fiction and 76 are fiction.  The non-fiction selection contains no textbooks, but rather is made up mostly of history and science titles that might appeal to the general reader.

The eBook Stores

The ebook stores that I used for the comparison were the Sony eBook Store, the Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble and Shortcovers.  The big three because they each support their own ereaders; Shortcovers I added because I have noticed a few titles had very good prices in past searches.

So how many of the 110 paper books on my list were available as ebooks?

I already knew that Shortcovers offers fewer titles; I included them because I wanted to see how well they hold up on price across a basket of books.  I was somewhat surprised that Barnes and Noble had just over 20% less ebooks available than Kindle.  After all, it’s not as if  a lot of the books on my list are obscure titles; many are by popular authors.  If Barnes and Noble’s new nook ebook reader is going to “kill” the Kindle I think they are going to want to stock up with some more ammunition.

Comparing Prices

The chart below shows how much it would cost in total to purchase all of the 66 ebooks available in common at the Kindle, Sony and Barnes and Noble ebook stores.  I have also included the paper book cost from Borders.

Since Shortcovers has a smaller basket of ebooks than the other 3 stores, I  do a separate comparison with the 51 ebooks that they have in common with the rest.

Conclusions

The Kindle Store is obviously the winner, both in number of titles and prices.  In the first group of 66 books you would have saved enough buying Kindle vs. paper books to almost pay for your Kindle.

Sony and Barnes and Noble come in 2nd and 3rd place respectively, until you throw Shortcovers into the mix that is.  Actually the prices on Shortcovers were all over the place – from slightly cheaper than Kindle to more expensive than any of the other stores.  Also, one of the books on my list The Angel Experiment by James Patterson was free everywhere except Shortcovers where it was $8.79.

If your ereader supports Adobe Digital Editions it would probably be a good idea to check Shortcovers’ price on any title you plan to buy as you will probably find some bargains.

Update: For brevity’s sake I didn’t want to include the list of books I used for my sample here.  Instead I tried to put it elsewhere and link to it.  When I tested the link it seemed to be working, but I found out later that it in fact wasn’t – sorry about that.  So I am adding it below.

A couple of notes: Putting together this list was quite tedious and most of it was done late at night.  I tried to put myself in the place of a new ereader owner and not be influenced by what I already knew about which titles were or were not available as ebooks.  Perhaps I got a bit too much in character and included a couple of books by John Grisham who doesn’t release his books as ebooks yet.  After I realized my mistake I decided to leave these in the list as a new ereader owner may very well not realize this either.  Also I threw one title out of the list: The Stand by Stephen King.  This ebook sells for $15.00 (I think it was cheaper when I made my list) in the Kindle Store, $17.50 at the Sony Store and $40.00 at Barnes and Noble.  Sony and B&N label this clearly as the “Complete and Uncut” version, while there are indications that the Kindle version is as well, but I couldn’t be 100% sure.  Also I wasn’t looking for one title with such a huge price difference to skew the results.

My book list follows:

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• Barnes and Noble nook eReader Shipping Date Slips; Still No News of IRex’s DR800SG

Barnes and Noble’s nook ereader is arguably the most formidable challenger yet to Amazon’s Kindle.  The nook looks good and is slickly designed to be aimed directly at the Kindle’s weaknesses.  Amazon needs to respond with some new features if they wish to maintain their current leading position in the increasingly crowded ereader market.

For me, the Kindle’s two strongest features remain:

1. Kindle Store: If you discount all of the public domain ebooks at ebook stores such as Barnes and Noble or Sony’s ebook store, the Kindle store has more current and recent titles available. The Kindle store’s prices are almost always lower as well.  If you are mainly interested in reading classics found in the public domain or books on the current best seller lists, then these are available at most ebook stores. But if your reading preferences are a bit more esoteric, then your are more likely to find your desired titles in the Kindle store. And yes, you can of course still read the public domain ebooks on the Kindle but you may need to convert them first with a program such as Calibre or email them to Amazon for conversion.
2. Wireless browsing: The nook and other new ereaders coming to market have a wireless connection, but so far this is only for purchase and delivery of ebooks. With the Kindle’s imperfect but usable browser you can also research what you are reading about on the internet or even check your email if you need to.

For many ereader shoppers, especially those who walk into a Barnes and Noble store and get to touch and play with a nook, this may well not be enough.  To maintain its edge, Amazon needs to upgrade the Kindle’s feature set so that it can again clearly stand out as the best ereader with the most features for the money.  Some new features that would help put the shine back on the Kindle:

• EPUB: If EPUB were a supported Kindle format you could access the Google public domain books without conversion. Also the Kindle could claim more openness without forfeiting their proprietary format in the Kindle store. There is a lot of pressure to make the EPUB format a standard across all ereader devices and adding EPUB to the Kindle’s supported formats would surely win Amazon some applause and good will.
• Built-in PDF support: We want PDF document handling that works. This includes things like schematics and equations, etc. that display properly as well as zoom and pan functions. This is especially important for technicians, academics, scientists, etc. who work with a lot of PDF documents. This is more than a  niche market.   Anyone who has a Kindle ereader even if it is primarily for work will buy ebooks for it.  Technically this is not going to be easy to get right and I would imagine that we will see gradual improvements when it comes to handling PDF’s.
• Touchscreen: The nook has a small LCD touchscreen below the e-ink screen for navigation and ebook selection.   While it looks really cool, we won’t know until we get to use it how well it actually does the job. The virtual keyboard on the nook’s LCD may well not be as easy to use as the chicklet keyboard on the Kindle. I’m not sure if the Kindle 2 really needs a touchscreen, but the Kindle DX definitely does. I’m not talking about the type of touchscreen the Sony Touch ereader uses with its glare issues. We want Wacom Tablet technology that uses a stylus and doesn’t sacrifice readability. This would make for better study tools which are needed if the Kindle DX is going to go to school. It would also be much more convenient  for business use where users need to make annotations, drawings, etc. on their documents.
• Sharing: The nook has a strong new feature that allows you to lend an ebook to a friend for 14 days (if the publisher allows).  Each book may only be loaned once.  This feature by itself may well swing many purchasers to the nook, even though it is not yet known how many publishers will agree to it.  The Kindle allows sharing between Kindles in a family account (usually up to 6 Kindles), but if Amazon can get publishers to agree to a similar plan to the nook’s it would be  appealing for many people.
• Public Library Access: The new Sony ereaders come with the ability to check out ebooks from public libraries that are part of the Overdrive system. At the moment this is mainly a feel good feature as most libraries have few titles available. This should change however as demand increases.
• Kindle store support for other devices: Currently you can buy and read ebooks from the Kindle store on iPhone and iPod Touch. Barnes and Noble’s nook adds to this support for Blackberry, PC and Mac computers. Your ebooks and bookmarks are synced across any of these devices and the nook ereader.   Amazon is already working on this; a free Kindle ebook reader for PC should be available in November, and Kindle apps for Mac and Blackberry should follow soon thereafter.
• Folders: The Kindle needs a better library management system. We need to be able to arrange our ebooks and documents in folders as we wish, and have the ability to move them easily back and forth between folders as needed.  Kindlers have been asking for this one for a long time.

The nook is an attractive and sophisticated looking ereader.  Many purchasers will probably be drawn to it just by its good looks.  Perhaps it is also time for an appearance upgrade for the Kindle,  as long as it doesn’t detract from the primary purpose of the Kindle, which is reading.

With the increasing competition, I think this is more of a must do list than a wish list if Amazon wants to stay on top. What other features do you think are most important?  Leave a comment.

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