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Re: Barnes & Noble Aims to Take Down Kindle, by Hook or by Nook
Posted by: Renay San Miguel 2009-10-21 05:45:00
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It doesn't matter whether Amazon's Kindle has 60 percent market share, or that Sony has its powerful brand backing its Reader. Barnes & Noble wants in on the nascent e-reader market. For reasons not apparent at press time, Barnes & Noble is calling its new electronic reading device the Nook, officially launching it during a late-afternoon Eastern time press event Tuesday in New York City. A Wednesday conference call was scheduled for media, but plenty of Nook information had already leaked out before the Tuesday afternoon event.
Thirdparasite - I have a Sony Reader Touch edition, and it does exactly what you want - you can highlight text and export to PC or Mac up to 100 characters per highlight (fair use). You can also underline and circle things, write notes on the "page", and bookmark / dog ear pages. Add the ability to check out library e-books + expandable memory + reads any format -- I don't understand how the Sony Reader doesn't blow the others out of the water.
Quick aside to previous post - a friend tells me you can scan a Kindle much like a hardcopy. I haven't seen it done, but have no reason to doubt him.
As for eBooks and readers, my feelings are mixed but negative at the moment.
- Nook's ability to 'lend' out books increases my interest considerably.
- I like the idea of being able to carry many books in a small package for trips, etc. At the moment I have to carry (or buy along the way) one book per 3 days of travel and that takes up quite a bit of room, especially on the way home. (I never throw away and rarely give away books I like. The others go to the library. My wife hates bookshelves, but I love books.)
- I have read on a Kindle and it seems good enough to enjoy. Reading on my pc screen is not fun for anything longer than news and I can't imagine trying to read on a smartphone. I use reading glasses and detest the small screens.
- Prices are WAY too high for books I can't lend, pass on, or give to the library. Nook partially addresses this with the 14 day loan feature.
I have cut back on buying new books starting when the paperback prices went above $5, further when they went above $7 and have virtually stopped since they are now $9 or more. For someone who used to purchase an average of 10-12 books per month this is painful.
I would get interested in Nook at $3 per book and Kindle at $1 per book (the 14 day loan bit accounts for the difference). Don't care if I can't get them for a few months after release.
- Color would be nice, but not critical except for some textbooks and references.
- Finally, B&N has a lot of work to do on their website to encourage me that they have anything on eBook that I care to read.
* no way to sort by format (a book on 5 CDs doesn't seem accessible to an eBook reader)
* titles appear to be very limited compared to Amazon (and Amazon has some under my price point)
* titles that interest me seem virtually non-existent (Hard SF, Mystery, Thrillers (techy spy stuff), computer and internet, some textbooks, science, some non-fiction)
B&N needs a much better search experience. (See Amazon or Apple iPhone App store)
So, perhaps someday I will find the case for eReaders compelling, but definitely not today.
I will just have to stick with used book stores and the library.
Besides I have never 'broken' a book by falling asleep and dropping it or rolling over on it. Doubt if any eBook reader is anywhere near as indestructible.
As for eBooks and readers, my feelings are mixed but negative at the moment.
- Nook's ability to 'lend' out books increases my interest considerably.
- I like the idea of being able to carry many books in a small package for trips, etc. At the moment I have to carry (or buy along the way) one book per 3 days of travel and that takes up quite a bit of room, especially on the way home. (I never throw away and rarely give away books I like. The others go to the library. My wife hates bookshelves, but I love books.)
- I have read on a Kindle and it seems good enough to enjoy. Reading on my pc screen is not fun for anything longer than news and I can't imagine trying to read on a smartphone. I use reading glasses and detest the small screens.
- Prices are WAY too high for books I can't lend, pass on, or give to the library. Nook partially addresses this with the 14 day loan feature.
I have cut back on buying new books starting when the paperback prices went above $5, further when they went above $7 and have virtually stopped since they are now $9 or more. For someone who used to purchase an average of 10-12 books per month this is painful.
I would get interested in Nook at $3 per book and Kindle at $1 per book (the 14 day loan bit accounts for the difference). Don't care if I can't get them for a few months after release.
- Color would be nice, but not critical except for some textbooks and references.
- Finally, B&N has a lot of work to do on their website to encourage me that they have anything on eBook that I care to read.
* no way to sort by format (a book on 5 CDs doesn't seem accessible to an eBook reader)
* titles appear to be very limited compared to Amazon (and Amazon has some under my price point)
* titles that interest me seem virtually non-existent (Hard SF, Mystery, Thrillers (techy spy stuff), computer and internet, some textbooks, science, some non-fiction)
B&N needs a much better search experience. (See Amazon or Apple iPhone App store)
So, perhaps someday I will find the case for eReaders compelling, but definitely not today.
I will just have to stick with used book stores and the library.
Besides I have never 'broken' a book by falling asleep and dropping it or rolling over on it. Doubt if any eBook reader is anywhere near as indestructible.
As a Kindle owner and early adopter with over 90 paid books, I will be eagerly watching to see who adds the functionality to allow me to efficiently extract portions of text for use on my computer via Word documents, presentations, etc..
As a debate coach and professional in a field that requires extensive consultation and reading of texts, the Kindle has been a source of enjoyment an endless frustration given that all citations have to be copied by hand. When cutting debate cards, for instance, this can result in hours of rekeying. A paper book can easily be thrown atop the scanner and OCR'ed, with about 5% the manual effort (mostly associated with formatting the text). I'd suggest a function like bookmarking in the Kindle, except one that allows me to start and finish the "extract text" functionality and move it to my PC via USB (e.g. extract text saves to a folder on the device called Extracts/ with files consisting of dumps of all extracted sections from a specific text). Permit up to the maximum allowable under Fair Use provisions (e.g. 10%) per document.
Whoever provides this capacity under Fair Use provisions of copyright law will likely see a significant surge. Remember who your heavy use market is and understand how they use your product in carrying out their occupation. As much as I've committed to Kindle, I will switch to whoever has this function first given its savings of my time. Remember, a digital product needs to give the consumer more time and cost benefit, not less. Paper books are much easier to integrate for fair use purposes today.
As a debate coach and professional in a field that requires extensive consultation and reading of texts, the Kindle has been a source of enjoyment an endless frustration given that all citations have to be copied by hand. When cutting debate cards, for instance, this can result in hours of rekeying. A paper book can easily be thrown atop the scanner and OCR'ed, with about 5% the manual effort (mostly associated with formatting the text). I'd suggest a function like bookmarking in the Kindle, except one that allows me to start and finish the "extract text" functionality and move it to my PC via USB (e.g. extract text saves to a folder on the device called Extracts/ with files consisting of dumps of all extracted sections from a specific text). Permit up to the maximum allowable under Fair Use provisions (e.g. 10%) per document.
Whoever provides this capacity under Fair Use provisions of copyright law will likely see a significant surge. Remember who your heavy use market is and understand how they use your product in carrying out their occupation. As much as I've committed to Kindle, I will switch to whoever has this function first given its savings of my time. Remember, a digital product needs to give the consumer more time and cost benefit, not less. Paper books are much easier to integrate for fair use purposes today.
