Nook, Barnes & Noble eBook Reader Announced | Hacker News Reader

Nook, Barnes & Noble eBook Reader Announced

barnesandnoble.com

42 pointsphsr36 comments

The real killer feature is this: "Share favorite eBooks with your friends, family, or book club. Most eBooks can be lent for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the book you want to share, then send it to your friend's reader, cell phone, or computer."

Agreed, this is an aspect that would have always prevented me from ever paying for an ebook. As an avid reader I frequently give books to someone else to read, and handing over a $100+ eBook reader is an absurd prospect for loaning a book to someone.

Apparently you can only do this ONCE per book. Once a book has been shared, you cannot share it again.

Oof. I haven't seen any definitive confirmation on one-lend-ever-per-title (they seem cagey about it), but looking at this purely economically:

This is by some measure a winning strategy, since if I only have one "lend", I will very likely want to share it to the person most likely to buy it and create an additional "lend" to propagate the book.

It does seem like they are missing out on the power of inter-consumer advocacy, i.e. "Everybody read this now!" They should at least re-credit you (if not several times over) if you share with someone who later buys the book.

It may give the illusion of a good strategy, but limitless invites will spread the book faster leading to more buys overall (in my opinion). Since many people like to own books they've enjoyed and the freedom this model gives also pleases consumers I'd prefer it.

Happily, this report appears unfounded. There are no per-title limits on Nook lending. Yay!

Link? Arstechnica didn't mention this: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/10/barnes-noble-put...

Someone needs to give them a lesson on exponents!

"Free wireless from Barnes & Noble via AT&T, the nation's fastest 3G network."

I absolutely love this trend in eBook readers.

I absolutely hate that I have to pay $60 a month to get 5 gigs of 3G on other devices.

I absolutely love my 10e a month uncapped ubiquitous 3G internet.

Looks like they took the overview page down... you can still see features here:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/techspecs/

Unless you can hide the full screen book cover display at the bottom I think that'll be very distracting.

I wonder how that screen works... surely it's off most of the time... otherwise you'd need a honking huge battery to keep it alive for 10 days.

eInk keeps state without power. The Kindle displays famous authors and book covers when it's off. The side-effect of this, you can measure battery life in mostly 'page-turns' as it uses power to update the display, but not while you're reading.

the bottom display is a color lcd touchscreen, it's not e-ink.

Ah, next time I'll make sure to read everything before chiming in.

Where is the keyboard, I don't see how you would search for a book by title. The videos only showed browsing pictures of books.

I really can't wait to see what the new generation of large-screen eInk readers will look like. I bought the Kindle DX specifically to be able to read PDFs, books, and papers I already had. The smaller format readers (nook, kindle 2, etc) are fine for reading fiction and non-formatted documents, but a lot less useful to me personally.

I am fully convinced that eInk is a viable surface to read on and I can't wait to see what the displays will look like when they mature.

Yeah I'm still holding out for something that simulates 8.5x11 paper. The upcoming QUE from Plastic Logic looks promising... 8.5x11, wifi, pdf and annotation (capacitive touchscreen) support. Supposedly in January. Coincidentally, it will also use the B&N ebookstore.

How is reading say, a research paper, on your DX? I have been tempted by it, but the screen still seems too small.

To be honest, it is pretty small but it's very usable. In well-let areas that aren't moving, the scaled-down PDFs look readable and 'good enough'. If you want, you can send me a PDF and I'll take a picture of what it looks like on the DX.

I also thought about waiting for the Plastic Logic device, but decided on getting the DX for a few reasons. First, I had about $300 of Amazon gift cards from my credit card, and the Kindle became a great target to spend it on. Secondly, considering QUE's target market, I assumed it would be prohibitively expensive for a personal reading device. Also, the DX is available now and has a cell connection, which is nice.

research papers look great, I read lots of two-column ACM style papers which are just fine. Here's a picture that someone else took for me before I decided to buy it: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/52575/photo.jpg

From this HN comment. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=655733

This is nice. I wonder if it'll be available outside the US. It would be cool to have even without the 3G.

This reminds me a lot of the video game console market, where newcomers compete with: the existing consoles with the established customer base, library of games and even second or third generation consoles that have the initial quirks ruled out.

B&N will have to compete with the Kindle and even Sony's readers to an extent. The biggest question is always what will B&N bring to the table that is different enough or better than its competitors to woo customers over? It seems a lot like just another iPod and iTunes clone.

I think one notable difference is the ability to go to a local store and see the device in person - this is a huge advantage and one that may help them cover a lot of ground quickly.

The biggest dealbreaker for the Nook will be its eBook store. Will it be comparable to the Amazon eBook store? If not, I doubt the Nook will take off.

In what regard? Depth? Breadth? Looking at their site I think they have enough of the popular stuff covered to give them time to work their way into the long tail before their ebook reader is in enough hands to matter.

Plus they have PDF for a much more affordable price than the Kindle (the Kindle 2's PDF support is mediocre at best, stupidly terrible at worst). That's a killer feature for people who may already own a significant library of PDF content.

And how long until the B&N bookstore will be able to match the number of ebooks offered at Amazon? Until then B&N will lose customers to the company with an already established library.

They already had eBooks store for some time http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/index.asp

Looking at the comparison chart with the line "More than a million titles available" and thinking about the leverage they have with publishers, I think B&N has already passed Amazon.

Most of those titles are public domain books scanned as part of Google Books and complete with OCR typos. Right now, Amazon's selection is better.

Confusing chart then because they list the free books as a separate line item.

Hmm, AT&T's 3G pales in comparison with Verizon Wireless, but it could possibly be better than Sprint.

And Richard Dawkins is speaking at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble tomorrow night. Can't wait.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com