Barnes and Noble Nook press conference in NYC (report)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jdh2550

Other than greed I don't understand why they won't accept the paperback model and allow lending.

Were you under the impression that "greed" was a minor side-issue in the decision-making process?

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Smaller screens are used by quite a few people to read on, let alone being used for navigation and interface for a bigger screen.

sure...ok...if that works as a vaild reason for you...why not!! I read an article today about all the folks who try and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Francisco, annually as well as historically, so in theory using your logic, that should work to solve a problem for everyone else as well, yes?

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by numtini

I was very excited and on the edge of preordering one, but I'm starting to get some negative vibes. The confusion about whether or not their flavor of epub is going to be portable. And the loan only working once per book really feels more like a bait and switch and makes me concerned about how overhyped some of the other aspects are. I think the loan is so limited that it's actually emotionally a negative as it feels like you're getting ripped off even though logically, once is more than any of the others will do. I also think it's really premature to release the reader before their conversion to epub because their ebook store isn't really what their final ebook store is going to be.

What I really want is something that is as comfortable to me as my kindle and reads books from multiple stores, but has a large store as its base which can be ported to other devices. By using epub, this seemed like it. But with their proprietary encryption and the loan once thing, I'm afraid of a bait and switch until I see the thing out there in the marketplace.

Here is the device I had hoped we would see from B&N:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...e493618f46bd5&

You can see a much larger LCD panel which offers far more functionality than a tiny 1" strip that is all of 3.5" (not sure if that is the diagonal measurement or the actual width...but that is all B&N has on their site about the Nook.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Here is the device I had hoped we would see from B&N:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...e493618f46bd5&

You can see a much larger LCD panel which offers far more functionality than a tiny 1" strip that is all of 3.5" (not sure if that is the diagonal measurement or the actual width...but that is all B&N has on their site about the Nook.

Oh,my goodness! Absolutely not!!
That device is ugly as hell!

But take that device, and instead of the large LCD on the bottom, use a small one like todays, and with the remaining screen space, use that to extend the E-ink!
I think we all will benefit from larger screen size.
In fact,
I wonder why noone thought of making a small white frame around the e-ink displays, so that you won't need to waste precious e-ink screen size to a border; so you could display text from the left to the right of the screen while still having a white border.

But apart from that I think people want to see more of actual page of a book on their screens, rather than enlarge a part of a screen that's for navigation only!
The bottom screen for navigation only replaces the buttons on other devices.
I don't think there's a need for enlarging that, or we'll end up with a kindle, where half the device is screen, and half the device is keyboard!

The idea here is kind of similar to the EEE Keyboard (like here: http://gizmodo.com/5124985/eee-keybo...ome-theater-pc ),where the screen is not used as an actual screen but rather a help for navigation.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Here is the device I had hoped we would see from B&N:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...e493618f46bd5&

You can see a much larger LCD panel which offers far more functionality than a tiny 1" strip that is all of 3.5" (not sure if that is the diagonal measurement or the actual width...but that is all B&N has on their site about the Nook.

If you watch the video, operating it is like using an android phone taped to an e-ink 'printer'.

[sassanik]

I have to say I don't mind that the case is larger in this case because it allows for very decently sized page turning buttons, which I see as a benefit. I love the side page turning buttons on my EB1150.

Amy

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by NormHart

...most exciting thing in my mind is the Android/Windows OS. With the possibility of a more flexible UI and the possibility of apps the ...

Just to nitpick a little, there is absolutely no "Windows" involved with Android. Android is a Linux based OS, and it's confirmed that the Nook uses Android. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Android's doing just fine.

[gigercounter]

I like the instore browsing feature. You can read any book in BN stock whether the book is in house or not. Makes for one of those boring days where your sick of sitting around the house all day. A neat way to meet other users also.

[fugazied]

Honestly I think Amazon should be very worried by this device. It looks like great hardware and B&N are everywhere.

If Apple does ever release that tablet the level of competition will be far better than other tech sectors (computer OS, telecommunications, phones which all have a small number of major players).

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Were you under the impression that "greed" was a minor side-issue in the decision-making process?

I don't think it's "greed." I think it's "fear." The fear is that a book that is lent is a sale that is lost. And there might be some truth to that, particularly - and paradoxically perhaps - at the paperback level, where books are cheap.

So here's a solution or three.

(1) Allow a person who buys a book to "resell" the same book to X number of people for Y % of the original cost. The way it would work is that you would go to the web site, select your book, and obtain some kind of electronic resell credit for that particular book.

This would allow the bookseller to get some portion of the "second hand" ebook market. A buys an ebook for 10 bucks. He then "sells" a copy of the book to B for 6 bucks. He takes 4 of those bucks to pay the bookseller for the "resale" copy, which can then be downloaded by B.

The bookseller has now (1) turned his customer into someone who boosts sales of the particular book and (2) captured some of the latent resale market that is out there not being tapped by anyone.

(2) Another thing that could be done is for the bookseller to establish rebate accounts, to be used to buy more books, for people who buy a book, then recommend the book to someone else who winds up buying it. This would have to be done via some kind of "invitation" system, where the buyer uses the bookseller's site to send an invitation saying "I bought this book & recommend it to you. I paid 10 dollars, but <bookseller> will sell you a copy for 8 dollars if you click on this link." If the second customer clicks & buys, 1 buck goes into the original buyer's rebate account.

(3) Still another thing that could be done is for booksellers to offer Book Clubs where, if you join the club, you have the opportunity to buy a copy of a book if X number of members buy a copy within a set period of time. Kind of like Groupon in Chicago http://www.groupon.com/chicago/

The point of all of these suggestions is that the key to making more money on ebook sales is not to limit sales by controlling price, but to multiply sales using a kind of peer to peer system that takes advantage of the communications among customers and the distribution system available for ebooks and not available for print books.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by jdh2550

Darn! I'll either be canceling my order or selling it on eBay.

Or maybe I'll keep it for a while and see if they bow to pressure and allow books to be lent as many times as the paper equivalent can be...

Here's a novel idea - if they had Bluetooth they could insist that you only lend it to someone you were geographically next to. That way they avoid the "risk" of people lending stuff around the world (of course paperbacks get lent around the world already and I don't think Stephen King or JK Rowling are too worried about that form of viral marketing).

Other than greed I don't understand why they won't accept the paperback model and allow lending.

Sigh.

I have to admit, I can understand limiting either the number of people you can lend to. If you don't limit the number of people you can lend to, then you could have a book go "viral", with a bunch of people reading it without paying. That might be more than publishers want to deal with, even on a Bluetooth level.

Limiting the amount of time you can lend a book for makes less sense to me, though. And certainly two weeks seems like an odd place to draw the line. If the idea is to limit how much of a book a person could read, shouldn't the limit be a day, at the most? And if it's not to limit how much of a book a person can read, what is the point of a time limit? Once I've read it, who cares if it disappears from my device, unless it's a reference work?

[jdh2550]

Well, my prior last line was meant to carry a certain amount of irony - and really just highlights that greed is the ONLY "valid" reason I can see. Fear is a poor cousin to greed - after all these titans of industry should be able to educate themselves sufficiently to overcome misplaced fear.

I'll happily pay $30 to $50 for a reference work that I'll use on a regular basis (and heck, I regularly buy such books that I don't use on regular basis).

However, I have a hard time spending $10 on a fiction title that I'll read in a couple of days and then never look at again. Especially when I can get that material for "free" from the public library. I know libraries aren't free - but we've all already paid for them. I'd pay a subscription fee (say $10 to $15 per month?) for access to "privately run" library of ebooks.

I'm not trying to rip-off the authors. However, I've no interest in feeding the greed of a parasitic industry which tries to justify making more profit as a way of protecting artists (music first and now publishing).

I canceled my order. I'm sure B&N won't notice. However, when someone brings an e-reader to market with a reasonable price structure I'll jump in the pool again. Unfortunately it's a paradoxical problem - without decent adoption the technology won't thrive. However, with decent adoption the publishers will use that as a signal that it's OK to charge $10 for product (more than the paperback version) that costs far less than the paper equivalent and has far more restrictive usage patterns.

Greedy b*st*rds.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by gigercounter

I like the instore browsing feature. You can read any book in BN stock whether the book is in house or not. Makes for one of those boring days where your sick of sitting around the house all day. A neat way to meet other users also.

Imagine someone living on the same block as a BN store... free wifi and books for life!

[Harmon]

The strange thing about the 14 day/1 time lending policy is that it negates whatever good will it purports to generate. It creates an expectation in a potential buyer which is thwarted when the details are revealed, which can only lose at least some of those potential buyers.

Very bad marketing, or so it seems to me.