Thursday, October 22, 2009

E-book Madness

Hello, readers.

As has been pointed out, the future is here. It may already be the past.

Barnes and Noble unveiled today their e-reader the Nook. It retails for $259, the same price as Amazon's Kindle. The Wall Street Journal has a write-up about it. Among it's nifty features include, unlike the Kindle, the ability "lend" your e-books to other Nookers. This lending is limited to 14 days, and only one person may read the e-book at a time, but still, fairly nifty and similar to how inkies are lent. No word on whether after fourteen days the lent book reverts to the owner or remains the property of your friend.

Also, Barnes and Noble plans to have specialness happen on your Nook when you wander into their store. Presumably, things like coupons, recommendations, and hopefully a scan-in app so that you can scan the bar code of books you'd like to buy or sample chapters.

In other e-book news, many things.

Thing 1) An e-book price war between Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target.

Thing 2) The Times wonders whether people are reading more because of e-books.

Thing 3) Stephen Marche coins the term "transbook" as a more poetic term for e-readers. He gets a little Borgesian in his dreams of "a book that contains all books."

Thing 4) At the Rumpus, a small publisher writes about their reluctance to embrace digitial literature. He's not sure the future is all that now-ish just yet.


ttfn.

No comments:

Post a Comment