The B&N e-book reader versus the eReader reader

[Bert Latamore]

I have a problem with my e-books. I can't keep up with my reading. I am now more than half way through "Anathem" and am enjoying it overall. But in the time I have been reading it I have learned about several new books, all available, in electronic format, that I really want to read. Among those are the latest Ian Rankin mysteries (I am several books behind there). plus these three that I heard about from Fresh Air interviews:

-- "The Dead Hand" by David Hoffman, which looks at the last years of the Cold War and particularly the nuclear standoff from the Russian viewpoint.

-- "The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the U.S. Army" by David Cloud

-- "Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan" by Jake Adelstein

I could get all three from eReader.com, but I have a $25 gift card for Barns & Noble that I was given for my birthday back in April, and actually B&N is selling two of those books at a much lower price than eReader (ironic certainly since they are parts of the same company). So I thought this was a good opportunity to try out the free e-book reader for Windows from B&N. So I downloaded it this afternoon when I should have been doing something else, and opened one of the free books that comes with it.

The best way I can describe it is to compare it with the eReader reader for Windows which many of us use. They are the same. That is it. The only difference I can find is that they keep their books in different folders (but both insist on keeping all books on the C drive which for me is a negative. I want to keep them on my D drive, which is a memory card.) And the B&N reader will work with books in the eReader format (I tried it. I haven't tried one of its books in the eReader version of the software yet, but I presume that it would work.

Then I tried to make my purchase. But as far as I can tell, I cannot use my gift card to buy e-books from B&N. It demands a credit card. Not good. Well, I'm not going to read any of these books until I finish Anathem, so I will see where I am then. 

Next I am going to download the Amazon e-book reader, which I presume will be different, and try that out. But that is a project for another day.

All the best,

--
Bert Latamore
Editor, The Seybold Report on Office Technology,
Freelance Writer and Book Doctor

[Kerry Lannert]

Bert Latamore wrote:

> Then I tried to make my purchase. But as far as I can tell, I cannot use
> my gift card to buy e-books from B&N. It demands a credit card. Not
> good. Well, I'm not going to read any of these books until I finish
> Anathem, so I will see where I am then.

You're not the first to discover this. B&N just announced yesterday that
they'll be accepting gift cards for ebooks sometime in mid-December.

You're also not the first to discover that the B&N software is just the
eReader software rebranded. B&N right now is saying that your eReader
(and compatible Fictionwise) purchases will be readable on the nook but
not 100% compatible. They're even stating that you can't hilight or take
notes on any document that wasn't purchased from B&N, something about
syncing the notes to the cloud means you can't even generate the file
for a document that doesn't already exist in your library on B&N's
servers. Hopefully they'll get all that BS sorted out, and start playing
nice with eReader and Fictionwise bookshelves.

- Kerry

[Donald Stidwell]

All this foolishness is just plain stupid. And now new readers are coming out it seems like every week and how great is the compatibility between them?

Why do they have to use proprietary formats anyway for each reader? I'm sure they could use something universal like RTF and stick some kind of DRM layer on it and still make it compatible across devices.

Personally, I refuse to buy any books from anyone other than eReader and that's only because I've been using them for so long and have bought so many books from them. And their DRM is the least onerous.

Sometimes I'm not sure who's worse - the publishing industry or the recording/movie industry.

--
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

[Bert Latamore]

Don,

I think the answer to your question about compatibility depends on whether the company behind the reader is making its money primarily from the sale of readers (hardware) or books. Sony is basically a hardware company, but B&N and Amazon are book sellers. The logic of having a piece of hardware for them is to get a captive market to buy books from that store rather than another -- sort of like giving away the razor to sell razorblades (although at $350 each they are hardly giving away those devices). 

As for buying from B&N, I mostly want to sue this nice gift card that I got for my birthday back in April. And the books I want are much less expensive on the B&N site than on eReader. And since the readers are the same anyway, at least I won't get confused by different readers.

Bert

[Jesper Anderson]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 23:56, Donald Stidwell <donald....@mac.com> wrote:
>
> Why do they have to use proprietary formats anyway for each reader? I'm sure they could use something universal like RTF and stick some kind of DRM layer on it and still make it compatible across devices.

I got an email from Sony that I can send my Reader in for a firmware
upgrade, to make it read epub books. Since that is what I use in
Stanza on the iPod Touch, and I can convert pretty much anything
freely available I can access into epub, that would seem to become my
new standard. I seem to recall I read Google will get behind epub as
well, which would be a big push towards making it a standard.

> Sometimes I'm not sure who's worse - the publishing industry or the recording/movie industry.

I know for certain which is worse. The publishing industry at least
tries to build an electronic marketplace and create new, modern
distribution channels on their own, without kicking, screaming and
dragging their customers to court for trying to watch noisy copies of
The Little Mermaid.

Jesper

[Jesper Anderson]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 02:35, Bert Latamore <bert.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sony is basically a hardware company, but B&N and Amazon are book sellers.

Not so sure it's that simple. Sony have all manner of content
distribution as well, and would love to sell books - that's why they
used to push for their lrf format, making it the fastest and best
supported format on their readers. Seems they actually learned a thing
or two from refusing to support mp3's a few years back though.

I expect it's a lot like with the other digital formats around, as
simple as a lack of a mature market. In the music market mp3 has
emerged as the choice as the market has matured more. In distributed
video ... well, they're still suing people and trying to switch off
their Internet access for wanting to watch movies instead of providing
a nice purchasing experience, so the jury is out, but some form of
x264 might very well emerge on top. In books, anyone who wants to sell
them has no standard to look to, and will thus get sold on whatever
the best seller approaching them peddles. This will change as the
market matures.

Jesper

[Bert Latamore]

Jesper,

Oh, definitely it is notsimple. And Sony has strange ideas often about marketing. But the point I was trying to make is that the marketing logic of selling expensive book readers is lock-in. If you buy the Kindle or the Nook or the Sony Reader then you have made a large investment that you really only recoup if you buy and read a lot of electronic books that work on that reader. That means that you buy all of them from the book company behind the particular reader you bought. So if you own a Kindle you buy only from Amazon, etc. 

     I think Sony's problem is that they are unsure of what they are -- are they a hardware company or are they a content company? Sometimes they act like the one and sometimes the other. And they don't seem to have a large enough market with their e-reader to convince the other publishers to provide a software reader for their hardware.

     BTW, this morning eReader announced a reader for Android. They already have one for the iPhone and Blackberry. I presume that the B&N reader for the iPhone is really the eReader software, and I am waiting for B&N to announce readers for the Blackberry and Android along the same route.

Bert

[Stewart]

On Nov 18, 4:39 am, Bert Latamore <bert.latam...@gmail.com> wrote:

>      BTW, this morning eReader announced a reader for Android. They already
> have one for the iPhone and Blackberry. I presume that the B&N reader for
> the iPhone is really the eReader software, and I am waiting for B&N to
> announce readers for the Blackberry and Android along the same route.

Hey, thanks for that, Bert! I just visited http://ereader.com with my
HTC Magic, got directed to their mobile site and then offered their
Android reader, which I've now installed (it's about 750 kb in size).
One less reason to use my iPod Touch!

cheers
Stewart in Calgary

[Stewart]

hi Bert, here are my *initial* thoughts on the eReader ebook reader
software for Android - I just installed this app yesterday, and have
only downloaded one book so far.

- app hasn't crashed on me yet, and I've tried most of the features.
- at first I couldn't figure out how to change pages successfully, but
then found the well-written Help document, and now have it figured
out.
- text reflows if you change the default font size: that's good.
There are only a few fonts available (serif, sans-serif, monospace,
etc.) but that's enough.
- on-line bookshelf contains my purchased books, and I can download
them to the device. If I delete them off the phone, they're still
online if I need them.
- I can save books on my SD Card. I suppose I could have more than
one SD card with different books on each, but I don't know what would
happen if I tried to load a book that's on a different card than the
one presently in my phone. I've got several GB free on my 8GB card
though, so I won't be having to buy a larger card any time soon.

The only issue I think with the reader is the device it's on... an HTC
Magic. The screen is just a little bit smaller than an iPod Touch /
iPhone. I like a little larger screen, so I will be looking for the
next set of Android devices to appear... like the Motorola Milestone
(the HSPA version of the Droid).

cheers
S