Hasta La Gadget!

A year ago today, Barnes & Noble presented its Nook e-reader. Yesterday, the book retailer sent media invitations for an October 26 event at their Union Square store in New York. Next week, we might see the next generation of the Nook.

Here’s what we know: A Nook 1.5 firmware update is coming out late next month for current-generation Nooks. It promises faster page turns, better search, custom library organization, password protection and the ability to sync last page read between the Nook and all Nook mobile and desktop apps.

This gets the Nook close to feature parity with Amazon’s Kindle. It also means Barnes & Noble has done some investment, both in developing new software and on its backend services. And that suggests that it might be ready to announce a new device.

This summer, Amazon rolled out a 2.5 firmware update for Kindle 2 users. Then a month later, it unveiled the new Kindle 3.

Last October, Barnes & Noble announced the dual-screen, Android-powered Nook, promising preorder delivery and in-store sales before Christmas. The company wasn’t able to ramp up production to meet demand and had to fix immediate firmware bugs, delaying some preorders and pushing back in-store availability to February.

I doubt Barnes & Noble wants that scenario to play out again. There’s a chance that a next-generation Nook will be available right away, but I would expect that new devices would ship around the same time as the 1.5 firmware, either in late November or early December — or Barnes & Noble will give a more conservative delivery date of early next year.

Although the Kindle has captivated mindshare, the Nook and its bookstore has been tremendous hits for Barnes & Noble, boosting revenues through strong e-book sales, particularly among Barnes & Noble members, both for the Nook and for its mobile and desktop apps. It has a 20% share of e-book sales — higher than its share in sales of printed books.

The bookseller spent the last year reoutfitting its retail stores to show off the Nook. It dropped prices and offered a Wi-Fi only model before Amazon matched them with Kindle 3. Now it’s B&N’s move again. No company is more ready to deliver a next-generation e-reader than Barnes & Noble.

See Also:

• Despite Reports, B&N Nook Competes Just Fine, Thank You
• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen 'Nook' E-Reader …
• Nook Software Update Adds Web Browser, Chess
• Wi-Fi Only Nook for $150 in Best Buy
• How to Root Your Nook and Run Android Apps
• Barnes & Noble's Nook E-Reader To Hit Stores

Haven’t seen enough of KDDI’s fall 2010 product line? Good. The company has just outed a new e-reader, and shockingly enough, it actually manages to differentiate itself quite well in the sea of me-too alternatives. The biblio Leaf SP02 (a followup to last year’s model) is right around the size of Amazon’s newest Kindle, packing a 6-inch E Ink display (800 x 600 resolution), 2GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, included stylus, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, inbuilt 3G and a battery good for around 7,500 page turns. Curiously, there’s also a small solar panel adorning the bottom right, and we’re guessing that you can (slowly) rejuvenate the internal cell while reading under the sun — just make sure you keep your right palm out of the way. Unfortunately, there’s no direct mention of an expected price, but those stationed in Japan should see it on sale this December for somewhere between free and Yenfinity.

KDDI tacks solar panel onto biblio Leaf SP02 e-reader originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Pandigital takes a second shot at digital reading with the Novel Personal eReader

Pandigital takes a second shot at digital reading with the Novel Personal eReader originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon is announcing that a new kind of content will soon join books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs in the Kindle store. Called Kindle Singles, the 30-to-90 page e-chapbooks aim to split the difference between feature-length magazine articles and shorter books.

“Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format,” said Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti. The costs of print production, marketing and distribution have historically driven the page-counts of book monographs up and the word-counts of magazine and newspaper articles down.

Amazon said that Kindle Singles will have its own section in the Kindle store and will be priced “much less than a typical book.” Amazon will also grant authors and publishers the same royalty split for singles as on the Kindle Digital Text platform: 70% on books costing between $2.99 and $9.99.

There are print precedents for 10,000-to-30,000-word works — novellas, chapbooks, long pamphlets, extended journal articles, among others — but they’ve usually been either tied to specific genres or downright exceptions to the form. They’ve never been a central part of the publishing model in either fiction or nonfiction.

Translation Jackets for On Bullshit; Image by Princeton University Press

Kindle Singles is also unusual in calling on publishers to produce stand-alone “born-digital” works that may not ever be traditionally printed. Some publishers may use the form to sell individual sample or advance chapters of longer print books. Individual writers may benefit the most from the program, as it makes it easier for them to self-publish works that precisely for reasons of length can’t find support from traditional publishers.

Two further possibilities, particularly if other e-book retailers follow suit with similar chapbook-length offerings: digital-only publishers (or offshoot imprints) could emerge to produce works specifically for this format, or the additional revenue and marketing stream of electronic publishing could lead print publishers to produce more short-form books in print.

I wouldn’t discount this last possibility. In 2005, philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit became a surprise hardcover bestseller. Frankfurt’s “book” was a reprint of a journal article that had already been collected and published in a longer anthology. It sold over half a million copies and spawned a sequel, despite being just 67 pages long and printed in an unusually small 4″ by 6″ format.

See Also:

• Amazon: Kindle Books Outsold Real Books This Christmas
• E-Books Are Still Waiting for Their Avant-Garde
• How to Do (Almost) Everything With a Kindle 3
• The Hidden Link Between E-Readers and Sheep (It's Not What You …
• Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books
• What if E-Books Cost Less?
• E-Books King: Stephen the First
• From Rejection to E-Lation
• The E-Book as Print-Edition Ad

There’s no question about it: Sony had its work cut out when it came time to improve the next generation of its e-readers. Amazon’s Kindle isn’t only the best selling electronic reading device out there, but its new $139 WiFi version is the fastest-selling yet. And then there’s the Barnes & Noble’s Nook, which is an equally capable competitor, especially with recent firmware updates. Oh, and don’t forget about the $140 Kobo. Yep, Sony had some serious work to do and its cheapest option – the $179.99 Pocket Edition — does differentiate in some striking ways. The aluminum reader has been upgraded with a new 5-inch E Ink Pearl display and now has an extremely responsive touchscreen for navigating through books / menus. The updates certainly have put Sony back into the final four, but there’s a few lacking features that just keep it from going all the way. You’ll want to hit the break to find out just what we’re talking about in our full review of this little guy.

Continue reading Sony Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-350SC) review

Sony Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-350SC) review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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