E-books

ABC News Digital is undergoing the final alterations to its wardrobe of Royal Wedding coverage, which will include an exclusive digital-only show with Yahoo!, a Twitter feed, coverage on Facebook, and an enhanced video eBook.

Read more

Barnes and Noble has released the Nook Kids app for the iPad, which is designed specifically for reading children’s books. Included with the free app are two free books and the app includes a link to the children’s section of Nook eBookstore that displays in Safari.

Nook Kids beautifully displays children’s books on the iPad’s display. You can use the pinch and expand gestures to zoom the display and enlarge the text. Perhaps the best feature is that Nook Kids provides the options of letting a child read a book on their own, or have the book read to them.

Not all of children’s eBooks that Barnes and Noble sells has audio. Books that can be read have a “read to me” indicator in the bookstore, and these versions of the books cost about twice as much as the books that do not have audio. The audio is a recording of someone reading the book, just like audio books.

Both of the free books that are bundled with Nook Kids include audio, so you can get a feel for how the audio books work. The audio plays once a page is opened and stops at the last word on the page, then your child will need to swipe on the screen, or tap on the left or right side of the screen, to turn the page. After the page is turned the audio continues.

Nook Kids is a wonderful way to use an iPad to entertain a child. You will find this free app in the iTunes App Store.

As Todd wrote about earlier today, the Amazon Kindle is very successful and may well have been the hottest gadget this holiday shopping season. I sense that more than a few people are surprised by this, given that they believed the iPad was going to relegate the Kindle, and all other eBook readers, as irrelevant. So far I have not seen much reporting on what the market appears to be saying loudly, that is that the iPad is too expensive.

True, Apple has sold a lot of iPads since it has been announced, but I wonder to whom? Gadget hounds such as myself are going to find a way to buy the device, but what about the average consumer?

I have a friend who is not a gadget fanatic like myself, but I think the iPad would be perfect for him. He reads a lot, so eBooks make sense, but he is a pastor and could benefit from having electronic versions of the Bible, for which the Kindle is not the best device. I think the combination of the Kindle app, plus OliveTree’s Bible Reader, and Evernote would be ideal for my friend, but there is one problem, the $499 price tag for the iPad.

Amazon clearly found the sweet spot price for the Kindle. At $139 people appear to have no problem buying a single purpose device, even if they already own an iPad. While I personally think the iPad is too heavy for an eBook reader, I wonder how many people who bought the Kindle would have done so if the iPad cost $250?

Even if Apple were to significantly drop the price of the iPad, Amazon could still easily combat that by lowering the price of the Kindle. It is not a stretch for Amazon to give Kindles away for free to people who committed to buying a certain number of books per year. Yet, even after the iPad 2 launches I don’t expect Apple will sell the current iPad for less than $300 as they have never been willing to pursue the low end computing market.

The bottom line is that there is a market for one or two low priced, eBook readers. I expect Kindle will continue to sell well and the question isn’t how the iPad will affect the Kindle, but how the Kindle and Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor will affect each other.

Amazon has released an update to their Android app. The Android app now can access periodicals and newspapers, and it includes the ability for in-app purchases from the Kindle store. I had recently uninstalled the Kindle app from my Nexus One because it could not be moved to the SD card, but that is no longer a problem as the new version is capable of running from SD cards.

With the new version of Kindle for Android you can share your reading progress on social networking sites. You can also configure the volume control buttons to page forward and back in the Kindle app.

When I re-installed the Kindle app on my Nexus One, it recognized books that I had already downloaded to the phone, but when I tried to open them I received an error. You have to remove the books from your library and then retrieve them again from the archive. If you have the Kindle app on your Android phone, you should have received an update notification, otherwise you can manually install the app from the Android Market.

I wrote off Barnes and Nobles’ Nook ebook reader as an also-ran after seeing the first generation device last year. So, I noticed but did not pay follow-up attention to the announcement of the Android-powered Nook Color device with a touch screen for $249 a few weeks ago.

A friend of mine, however, not only paid attention but actually bought a Nook Color, rooted it, and showed me apps like Angry Birds and Amazon’s Kindle app running on the Nook Color. Angry Birds looked good on the large display (relative to Android smarpthones). Game play was smooth and the touch screen seemed as responsive as was required to play the game. The Nook Color’s web browser also looked and felt good (much much better than the awful web browser on Amazon’s Kindle).

Barnes and Noble announced that they will provide an official Froyo (Android OS 2.2) update for the Nook Color which will include an app store of some kind (but not the Android Market).

Nook Color getting Android 2.2 and Market in January, current hacks could make it blow up? (update) (Engadget via Smartphone Mag)

If don’t feel like rooting your phone, you may want to wait a few weeks until the official Froyo update appears. It may not let you get access to Angry Birds, however. And, as you might imagine, the odds of the Kindle app being made available is zero.

Amazon has sold more Kindle’s in the last quarter, than they had sold during the previous time since it was announced. eBook readers are the hot items this holiday shopping season, so with readers being sold by a number of different companies, which one should you get? In this post I will share some information that might help you decide which eBook device to buy.

Wired has an article that provides an overview of the four top devices on the market for reading eBooks, the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, and the Apple iPad. The iPad is not only an eBook reader, and apps are available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to read their eBooks on it. If you want to do a lot more with a device than read eBooks, then I recommend the iPad.

Sony has actually been selling eBook readers longer than Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and they currently have several different models at different price points. Perhaps the main reason to not get a Sony Reader is that it does not work with either Amazon’s or Barnes and Noble’s eBook stores.

The choice between Amazon and Barnes and Noble is difficult in my opinion because both have large eBook stores, and the readers the two companies sell are attractive. You can buy an Amazon Kindle for $139, which is the lowest price of the devices I have mentioned, and it has a very good eInk display. The negative with Kindle is that the books you buy from Amazon can only be read on Kindles or with Kindle apps. The fact that you can obtain free Kindle apps for several smartphones and the iPad somewhat mitigates the risk of of buying Amazon eBooks.

Amazon does not yet sell a color version of the Kindle, while Barnes and Noble does with the NOOKcolor. Color is most useful with magazines and children’s books, but if you want a color display and don’t want to pay $500 for an iPad, the NOOKcolor is an attractive device. Barnes and Noble uses the ePub format, which means that you can buy eBooks from stores other than their’s and read them on the Nook.

Wired’s article discusses the trade-offs between the color display on the Nook and the eInk display on the Kindle. Some people prefer the backlit LCD display and do not have problem eye strain, while others prefer the paper-like appearance that eInk provides, though it requires lighting like paper books. The choice between the two will come down to personal preference.

After years and years of fits and starts, the ebook industry has really taken off. The problem now is that we have too many e-reading platforms and mostly incompatible e-bookstores.

1. Amazon Kindle
2. Apple iBooks
3. Barnes & Mobile Nook
4. Borders (and others) Kobo
5. Google Books
6. Sony eReader

So, how can a ebook platform distinguish itself? Kobo which has free ebook reading apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, and even the Palm Pre is trying to set itself apart by having readers look at as a kind of social sport, a kind of literary long distance running with a social aspect. The update to their free iPad app includes new features that Kobo calls Reading Life.

Kobo 4.0 for iPad (iTunes App Store)

This grouping of features includes:

- Sharing Books and Passages
- Statistics: How many books they’ve read, pages turned, how fast they read, and times of day they read
- Awards and Rewards: Earned by reading progress
- Activity: Timeline of reading life
- Check-ins: This literary Foursquare-like concept is about checking in with characters and locations in the book
- Personal Book Cover

My guess is that these features many help retain existing customers and may attract a few new ones. However, people already comfortable with a particular ereading platform will probably not switch. That said, I would like to see the Statistics feature appear for the Kindle.

An already crowded eBook market became more crowded today when Google launched the Google eBookstore. Google has agreements with several publishers to sell their books and is also working with smaller book sellers like Powell’s Books to provide those sellers the ability to enter the eBook market.

The store’s launch is not a surprise as they have been working on eBook-related initiatives for some time. You might recall Google Print that Google started several years ago to work with large libraries to scan out of print books, which lead to to a class-action lawsuit from the Authors Guild. The lawsuit settled earlier this year, clearing the way for Google to provide the the books it scans in their store. If the Google eBookstore can sell books that cannot be found at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, it could have a competitive advantage.

Google is using the ePub format for their books, with paid-for books encrypted using Adobe’s DRM. The use of Adobe DRM means that you cannot read Google’s eBooks in Apple’s iBooks app, but Google is providing a Google Books app for the iPhone and iPad. Of course, Google is also providing an Android version of the app as well as a web version, and provides synchronization between the apps on the different devices. All Google eBooks can also be manually copied to the Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony Reader devices.

The Google Books apps have the basic functions like changing the font size and type face, but it doesn’t have the ability to highlight text, copy text, or add notes. The iPad version has a 3D page turn effect like other eBook apps for the iPad that can be turned off, however page turns on Android are only swipes. You can swipe or tap to turn pages on Android.

A simple scan through the Google eBookstore shows book prices that are comparable to the prices at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so out of print books, support for multiple devices, and the partnership with independent book sellers are the key differentiators for Google. I don’t think the market will support so many eBook platforms and bookstores, so I expect to see some consolidation in the near future, and I am curious whether competition will lead to lower eBook prices.

After months of believing that the iPad was a superior ebook reader compared to the Kindle, I finally bought a WiFi-only Kindle and saw the light. More accurately, I saw the reflected light from my Kindle’s e-ink screen that was nicely readable in sunlight and other conditions where the iPad was not. I also learned to appreciate the Kindle’s lighter weight and the more affordable $139 price. Ah-ha! I thought. The Kindle does have life to it! It will continue to thrive. But, that’s not what ChangeWave found in survey results reported in All Things Digital.

Kindle Feels iPad’s Heat, Sees E-Reader Lead Going Up in Smoke

ChangeWave’s survey indicates that the iPad rapidly closed the e-book reader gap between August and November. The percentage of people reporting using the iPad as their primary reader doubled from 16% to 32% while the Kindle saw a dramatic drop from 62% to 47%.

While this may look bad, it is probably not as bad as it looks for Amazon’s Kindle. Here’s why:

1. The overall number of iPad and Kindle devices purchased are going up. The general purpose iPad appeals to more people than simply frequent book readers and is outselling the Kindle by a huge margin. The Kindle is probably experiencing overall device growth. It is simply not as explosive as the iPad.

2. My guess is that a significant percentage of the people reading ebooks on the iPad are using the Kindle app and buying ebooks from Amazon’s Kindle store. The net result is that Amazon owns a large percentage of the iPad book buying market. In other words, they make money no matter which hardware platform is purchased and used for ebook reading.

With the success of Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader, it is probably forgotten that Sony was actually the first company to sell an eBook reader, of which they now sell a number of different models. The Sony Reader devices work with Sony’s eBook store, and use an eBook format that is not portable to other devices. jkOnTheRun reports that Sony will be releasing Sony Reader apps for iPhone and Android in December, which will allow people who own the Sony Reader to access their book collection from smartphones. By releasing a Reader app, Sony is following Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who have eBook reader apps the two smartphone platforms as well as the iPad. The Reader apps will also provide an opportunity to sell more eBooks to people who do not want to buy Sony’s devices.