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Borders eBook Store Goes Live – BlackBerry and Android Reading Apps Released

Richard — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:21:14 +0000

Borders announced today the launch of its ebook store. Two new Borders reading applications also are now available for BlackBerry and Android. Apps for iPhone and iPad have already been released.

The Borders ebook store is powered by Kobo, and the reading apps are rebranded Kobo apps. At launch the store is said to have more than 1.5 million titles, but this includes public domain books. I tried several search parameters, but could not get more than about 156,000 ebooks to come up in the results.

Borders is pinning a lot of hope for its survival on going digital. Next month new sections dubbed “Area-e” dedicated to digital reading will start to appear in bricks and mortar Borders stores. In addition to the Kobo eReader, Borders also carries the Aluratek ereader, Sony Touch Edition and Sony Pocket Edition. The company has said that it will be offering other ebook readers as well in the future.

"The race to emerge as a retail leader within the digital category is just starting," said Mike Edwards, Chief Executive Officer for Borders, Inc. "During the past several months, we’ve been carefully crafting a digital strategy, one that has great content and a device-neutral philosophy backed by the Borders brand as its cornerstones. We believe we are very well positioned to come out strong and to ultimately claim about a 17 percent eBook market share by this time next year."

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Borders Joins eReader Price Slashing Frenzy

Richard — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:29:47 +0000

Borders, which no doubt was less than thrilled to hear that Barnes & Noble and Amazon had slashed the prices of their Kindle and nook ereaders, today offered a discount of its own on the Kobo eReader – in the form of a $20 Borders gift card and double Borders Bucks that can be used towards future purchases from Borders.

The Kobo eReader, which is a good but basic device, has lost some of its shine in view of the fact that for the same price you can now purchase a Wi-Fi only version of B&N’s nook, which has been much improved by software updates since the release of the original nook ereader. Or for that matter, for $40 more you can now get the 6-inch Kindle with its 3G connection and which is backed by the Kindle Store, which still has the best catalogue of ebooks.

Borders is also, for a limited time, offering a free coffee at its Seattle’s Best Coffee cafes to patrons who show their iPads or iPhones with the Borders eBook app installed.

Today Borders launched said iPad and iPhone reader app, which is essentially a rebranded version of Kobo’s iPad application. This should not come as a surprise as the Borders ebook store is powered by Kobo.

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Borders to Carry Aluratek eReader

Richard — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:53:14 +0000

Borders has been hinting that its ereader lineup will include more devices than the Kobo ereader and the Sony devices it has been offering. Today it was announced that the Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro will also be sold through Borders.

The Libre is based on the same hardware as the Ectaco jetBook and features a non-backlit 5-inch LCD screen. The Borders desktop app is bundled with the ereader, which also comes with 100 free classic ebooks.

The Libre will be sold for $119.99 and pre-orders are being accepted now. Shipping is expected to begin in early July. Dedicated ereading sections called “Area-e” will be rolled out in Borders stores in August and the Libre ereader will be available in these as well.

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Ereader and iPad News – 5/27/2010

Richard — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:04:13 +0000

Kindle coming in black? CrunchGear has a rather poor quality photo that alleges to be a black Kindle spotted at a photo shoot. It makes sense that Amazon would offer color choices at some point.

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Borders announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2010 today. While the second largest bookstore chain saw its loss narrow in the first quarter, traffic and sales in its stores fell. Revenue in the US fell 16 percent. Border’s share price fell 7 percent today in an up market.

Borders is placing a lot of hope in its digital initiatives. Borders.com was in fact a bright spot in the first quarter with sales increasing by 34.7 percent. The Kobo-powered Borders ebook store will be launching next month, and pre-orders are already being taken for the Kobo eReader. Next week pre-orders for a second ereader will begin and more devices will be added in the near future. An Apple reading app will also be introduced by the end of June.

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Penguin and Amazon have finally reached some sort of agreement and Penguin’s new ebooks will once again be available in the Kindle Store. Since the Agency Model went into effect on April 1, 2010 none of the 150 or so new Penguin ebooks published since then have been available for the Kindle.

Ipad News

Kobo announced today that its iPad reading app is now available in all iPad markets with regionalized versions available for Canada, UK, Australia and a version for New Zealand coming soon. From the press release:

Kobo, a global eReading service, today announced availability of its popular iPad application in all markets where iPad is available. Additionally, Kobo today released regional versions for Canada, UK and Australia and announced a New Zealand application is coming soon. The regionalized applications, built specifically for the iPad, feature local content, merchandising, and currency. All Kobo iPad applications come pre-loaded with five eBooks and connect to the Kobo eBook store, which features more than two million titles including current best sellers, classics, and thousands of free titles.

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Wired Magazine finally released its app for the iPad, and reportedly sold 24,000 copies in the first 24 hours. The Wired app looks pretty amazing, but it is a big file (about half a gig) and costs $5 per issue – a print subscription in the US is $10 per year. The reviews at the iTunes store do contain some grousing about the price, but obviously a lot of work went into this. This is the way magazines should be done. So far I like it.

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MacLife is reporting that Apple is making it possible for authors to self-publish in the iBooks app for the iPad. There are some requirements: books have to have a 13 digit ISBN, must be in ePub format, must validate against epubcheck 1.0.5 and cannot contain any unmanifested files. Authors can choose which countries qualifying books are sold in and set the prices.

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A Few More Things Considered

Richard — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:26:45 +0000

A roundup of several ereader related news stories from the last few days.

Borders Not Making Their Own eReader

Reuters reports that Borders Group, Inc. CEO Ron Marshall denies that Borders will make its own ereader. He cites reasons such as the expense and time required. Marshall also makes the point that while it may still be possible to launch a successful ereader product, the window of opportunity is closing fast, with the field due to become even more crowded in the near future.

Borders announced a partnership a few days ago with Kobo to sell ebooks on the Borders website. Marshall says that Border’s ebook strategy will be “device agnostic.”

Sounds like a good idea – we really don’t need any more me-too ereader clones.

Sony Gets Exclusive Content from WSJ and MarketWatch

A few days ago Sony announced a new relationship with Dow Jones & Co. for exclusive content from the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch to be delivered wirelessly to the Sony Reader Daily Edition. Sony will also be offering the only version of the New York Post available on ereaders.

The monthly subscription for the WSJ will run $14.99 or $19.99 for WSJ Plus. The New York Post will be $9.99 per month, and Marketwatch Today will be $10.99 per month.

Sony’s Reader Store only seems to have three other newspapers at the moment besides the Wall Street Journal, though other newspapers should be available soon.

nook gets Rooted & Hacked

Last weekend nookDevs reported that they had successfully rooted the nook ereader, and in the last couple of days they have been apparently getting apps such as a browser to work on hacked nooks.

Rooting an Android-based device gives you administrative rights and the ability to alter system files, and therefore the ability to totally control the device.

This is nothing that the average nook ereader owner will want to do; rooting a nook involves invasive surgery that voids the warranty and could very well brick your ereader. However, in very short order we should begin to see some software hacks for the nook that will be more accessible.

Third party apps for the nook’s Android operating system have been something that some fans of the nook ereader have been hoping and waiting for. Barnes & Noble has so far not commented about nookDevs’ activities. When the nook was officially announced B&N kind of sort of left the door ajar to apps, but I doubt that they would be happy with a browser that would eat up bandwidth that B&N would be paying for. But wait, the nook has WiFi as well as an AT&T connection. Perhaps a browser that would work when the nook has a WiFi connection could fly.

The latest Kindle Chronicles podcast has an interview with the 18 year old high school student behind the nookDevs website.

Kindle DX Sold Out

Estimated shipping time on the Kindle DX is now four to six weeks.

Notion Ink Pixel Qi Tablet

Slashgear has a report about the first confirmed device to use the Pixel Qi display. The tablet should be unveiled at CES in January.

The device will reportedly be based on the Nvidia Tegra T20 chipset which supports 1080p HD video. There are lots of additional bells and whistles including WiFi and Bluetooth, GPS, digital compass and camera.

Pixel Qi could well prove to be the dark horse of 2010’s several new display technologies. With the ability to switch between a transmissive display mode like a regular LCD and a reflective epaper-like mode, Pixel Qi could be used to make multifunction devices and notebooks/netbooks into very viable reading platforms.