|
I certainly hope they'll be permafreebies.
B&N would be smart to lure people in to using their Reader/NookStudy app (supposed to be a bunch free included in their College Kick-Start Kit) and possibly get an actual nook by promising umpteen free classics, Kobo-style. Cost them practically nothing, as it's all public domain in the US, and they probably pay a relative pittance to the people who did the essays and stuff.
I think it'll appeal a lot to people who don't know enough about ebooks to go to Project Gutenberg, much less Feedbooks/Manybooks/here, and balk at paying the $XX that some of the public domain re-packagers charge, or just don't want the hassle of tracking down well-formatted free versions in the first place.
As for what's different about the B&N Classics, they're nice versions with bonus material: introductions, foot/endnotes, and essays generally written by scholarly people. Well worth the download.
|