Barnes & Noble has been on the iPhone forever, as has Amazon and other ebook readers, retailers, publishers, etc.  I’m an avid reader of electronic books and have been since around 2001, when it became practical to be one.  In that time, I’ve read a considerable number of titles, most of them purchased from FictionWise, which is “A Barnes & Noble” company.

A good portion of these titles I read on an old Pocket PC and when I ditched that in favor of an iPod Touch, FictionWise automatically and instantly transferred the titles from the more enlightened publishers into it.  I guess you could say that it really was like magic, borrowing on Steve Jobs’ description for the iPad.  I just downloaded this free piece of software on my brand new iPod and presto!  Tens of books I had purchased previously came pouring into it. (Considering that they take up almost no space you can truly carry a library in your pocket.)

There are several book readers available for the iPhone and that includes at least one from Barnes & Noble (and there might actually be two of them) two from Amazon.  There is Amazon Kindle for iPhone and there is Stanza.  Stanza is developed by Lexcycle, a company that was acquired by Amazon in April 2009 and that is arguably the best eReader application available for the iPhone and iPod.

So, it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that Barnes & Noble will support the iPad with a specific application.  They are in the business of selling books.  If they can sell more books, to more people, so much the better.  The fact that they provide their clients with options for reading on their brand device (the Nook), on the iPhone, the iPad, on a PC or a Mac just makes them stand out against other retailers which impose more strict limits on where you can read your books.  The name Apple might come to mind here, but Apple has shown itself to be way smarter than that in the music business and it might yet surprise many in the book business too.

It’s great to know that B&N is moving to be an early player in the iPad space and I hope that Amazon, Lexcycle, Kobo and all the others are right on their heels…

*Published originally at iPad Watcher

Bookmark It

I strongly recommend this interview to everyone interested on ebooks.

Bookmark It

I hope you like the new look and continue to come back for more comments on books and ebooks.

Bookmark It

In a live TV interview MCGRAW-HILL’s CEO confirmed that Apple will introduce an iPhoneOS based tablet device. He also mentioned that MCGRAW-HILL has been working with Apple for quite some time.

UPDATE: I first saw this on Wired and noticed that it was also on MacRumors. In a couple of hours it was all over the net. I guess some people at Apple must be pretty upset by now.

Bookmark It

Today I got an email notification of the release of a Zinio application for the iPhone.  For those of you that haven’t run across Zinio, it is a visually oriented digital reader software.  It was primarily focused on magazines but has been diversifying into books and textbooks.


Zinio offers a very compelling reading experience with full colored digital magazines that look pretty much the same as they do on paper, including some nice age turning visual effects. While they do seem to offer more than one viewing mode, with a text only mode which seems designed to make it easy to read on a small screen, the whole thing begs for a larger screen.


With the release of this application coming just one week before Apple’s media event it might just be that this application is an early release for the iPhone of an application that was already developed for Apple’s supposed new Tablet like device.  It would make sense for Apple to seek out a content provider such as Zinio which can bring into the iPhone/iPod platform hundreds of highly regarded titles such as BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Popular Science, MacWorld, PCWorld, PC Magazine, etc.


A quick look at Zinio’s website will get you a view of the new Zinio Library software which looks very much like iTunes, though it is probably just a convenient way of having millions of iPhone users familiar with how your software works. 


What do you think?

Bookmark It

Amazon took the Kindle to the world, with international shipping.  Sony introduced new models of its Sony Reader with more size, feature and pricing options. The new Pocket and Touch editions are speacially interesting as they add both a lower price and touch-enabled options.

This year should be much, much better.  With a wider range of readers and hopefully a wider range of prices from which to choose from, we should see a lot more people starting to get their toes wet with eBooks.

While I don’t use a dedicated reader, but my iPod, I find that a lot of people reject this idea out hand because of the size of the screen.  Just recently as I started to explain to a friend that just because the screen was small it didn’t mean the type had to be small, he cut me off dismissively as if to say “Hey, you are a fanatic, its obvious that the text is too small, so stop bothering me with it”.    I never cease to amaze my self how people manage to delude themselves that whatever they haven’t tried or don’t feel like experimenting must be bad, regardless of what they hear. For some of these people, even a 15 inch screen will still not be good enough because they will tell you that it doesn’t feel like a book.

The Net is simply buzzing with the rumors that Apple will introduce a new device this month which might have the reading of electronic publications as one of its features.  To tell the truth, while I think that Apple might just  want to add this business to their iTunes offerings, they don’t even have to do that in order to shake the eBook world.  If the rumored Apple Tablet device is capable of running iPhoneOS applications or if it is a simple process to update the iPhone applications to run on it, the applications for eBook reading on iPhone will be more than enough to make this device almost irresistible to eBook lovers.

Imagine a reader with a full color screen capable of displaying anything you’ve purchased over the past years plus full color PDF documents.  Just that is more than enough to make most users of ebook readers salivate. If you add in the ability to listen to audiobooks, browse the Web, do email, use Twitter, access Facebook, LinkedIn, listen to your music and watch movies…  Depending on how much such a device costs, things could get ugly for reader manufacturers.

While all this is still speculation, it seems pretty clear to me that interest in ebooks will continue to grow.  If we will see a regular organic growth pattern or an explosive one is still to be seen.  If Apple joins the game, I’ll put my money on explosive.  What do you think?

Bookmark It

By using this separate screen Barnes & Noble elegantly worked around the most inconvenient aspect of the currently available crop of eBook readers: navigating through your content.

The eInk screen used in just about every eBook reader out there is great for displaying black on white content as it does not require energy to maintain the image being displayed.  This allows for incredibly long lasting battery charges which is a great aspect for a device you would want to carry on a long trip.

On the other hand eInk displays have notorious slow refresh times making them a pain for quickly displaying options and menus for navigating the devices actual content.  By using a separate, touch enabled, display for the navigation, the Nook allows for much simpler and faster navigation with a richer end-user experience as it can display book covers in full color.

The Nook’s appearance is very similar to that of the Kindle 2, with the color screen taking the space used by a keyboard in Amazon’s product.

In addition to the second screen, the Nook also goes beyond the Kindle in communication options as it allows the usage of WiFi for downloading content, allowing users to take advantage of any hotspot to get new books.  With an introductory price of $259, the Nook could be an interesting alternative for those considering getting an eBook reader.

Bookmark It

But… Let’s get real about it… We’re in a changing world.  There are too many of us, placing too much strain on our environment.  Our climate is changing and it doesn’t seem to be for the better.  Can we really justify the continued use of paper books when they are not necessary?

Over the past four years I must have purchased somewhere around twenty paperback or hardcover books.  During the same period, I have certainly aquired more than one hundred and fifty eBooks and some ten audiobooks.  While the overall phisical experiece might be different, my enjoyment of the works themselves was not diminshed at all.  In this last month alone I read over ten eBooks and listned to six audiobooks.  

If you haven’t yet started to make the move to electronic, you should try it.   Do your little bit to help reduce climate change by reading in electronic books, using a low power device such as a Kindle, a Sony Reader or on your iPod or iPhone. 

Bookmark It