The Barnes and Noble Simple Touch with Glowlight has been quite the popular e-reader since it came out earlier this month. The first e-reader you can read in the dark proved to be so desirable that their was a Nationwide shortage during the last four weeks. This resulted in many peoples per-orders before they even released the device to not even be shipped yet. Most retail locations only get allocated five per week on average and most are reserved for people who bought them online. We have confirmed reports that the Nook Glowlight shipments should stabilize by the end of next week.We have talked to various Barnes and Noble store managers in Washington State, Oregon, California, Atlanta, Florida and New York about the lack of e-readers in the store. Most confirmed that B&N was not prepared by the demand for these new gadgets and most stores did not get allocated many units per week. The units they got were normally held behind the counter for people who per-ordered them before they were even officially released. These same managers have told us today that a massive amount of e-readers have been shipped and that the average store amount should quadruple by next week.Many customers were expressing concern that they ordered the Nook Glow about five weeks ago and still have not had them shipped out yet. Peter Carotenuto of Shop e-Readers claimed that they have had over 500 ore-orders for the device and just managed to ship out half of them, due to the availability.[ad#After Post 3]
Browsing Posts tagged e-reader
The Sony Reader WIFI or PRS-T1 originally went on sale in Europe back in October 2011. Since that time they have sold close to 500,000 units in the UK, France, Spain, Germany and other major markets. It is said that Sony now controls around 35% of the entire eReader market in Europe.Sony has been making great inroads in Europe to stimulate sales of its sagging e-reader lineup. Although their e-reader has been on sale for six months they only launched their UK bookstore in April. The company recognizes that Europe is a focal point for expansion and is one of the key aspects of their business going forward. “There is still much to do in these territories and in the UK market competing with Amazon, is working out pretty well, “confirms the company. Sony has formed partnerships with Libri.de NSAIDs in Holland, with Bol.com. “This is very strong local partners, while the competition is also directly with Amazon, but that bring us great satisfaction,” says Sony.One of the allures about Sony right now is the compatibility of their eReader with the new Harry Potter eBooks. The Pottermore store actually is powered by Sony and has their logos all over their website. Each Sony PRS-T1 sold actually comes with a free Harry Potter eBook now but the offer is only good in the USA and Europeans are out of luck.via Actualitte[ad#After Post 3]
The Overdrive Media Console has just received a major update to its line of iOS and Android apps. If you love getting ebooks from your local library, this is an app you would want to install on your tablet or smartphone.The Android version of the updated app features dynamic home-screen widgets that let users play audiobooks right from the home screen or resume reading ebooks with a single tap. It finally gives you the ability to read books in landscape mode with multiple columns of text, offers bold font choices, and debuts an in-book image viewer. You can download it from our Good e-Reader Android APP Store or get the Playbook version.The iOS version of the app incorporates several new e-reader features that give the user more control over text justification, line spacing, page margins, and font selection. Optimized graphics support the iPad Retina display. You can find OMC 2.4.2 for iOS in Apple’s App Store.[ad#After Post 3]
The Kobo Touch e-Reader is the latest generation device that has a full touchscreen display and is one of the better ones on the market. It currently supports many foreign languages such as German, French, English and many more. Shop e-Readers is now selling the Kobo Touch at a rock bottom rate of $89.99 this is $10 less then what you would pay at Chapters/Indigo.You can purchase this device and have it shipped to any country in the world at this price! Click HERE for more information on it and if you are feeling flush, make a purchase![ad#After Post 3]
A few days ago we announced that Aluratek was going to be releasing two new tablets that gives you Android 4.0 and some decent specs. Today the company announced its content distribution platform to get new apps on your device. It seems Getjar will be the platform of choice and will be bundled all on tablets that are shipping now.[ad#After Post 3]
Every month we giveaway for a free e-reader and often they are used directly by the winner. A few months ago we awarded an iRiver Story HD Reader and it was given away to the winner of the Shidler Elementary in Oklahoma City Science Fair. Ryno Bones one of the teachers at the school filed this report.”Some very interesting projects happened at the science fair this year. Our top winner experimented with layering different types of liquids. Second and third place prizes included gift certificates to the school book fair and we had four other students recieve gift certificates in a drawing.Some of the coolest projects included a lava lamp made from oil, water, and alka-seltzer, dissolving candies in various substances, and the favorite of all the teachers, cakes cooked using eggs vs. egg substitute. In many instances the cleanup took longer than the demonstration, but everyone had a fantastic time.Our school is an urban Title I school with 99% of students on Free and Reduced lunch program. We host a parent outreach reading night once a month, and this has been our highest turnout EVER! We are proud of all our fourth and fifth grade students and we had almost all of them in attendance. We hope this will be the first of many such events.”[ad#After Post 3]
Cambridge UK based Plastic Logic has just confirmed it is getting out of the e-reader business. It intends on immediately closing down the USA development offices and continue to operate out of their Cambridge headquarters. The company has shifted its business model away from marketing e-readers that use their flexible display technology and instead will license it to other companies.Plastic Logic CEO Indro Mukerjee says: “Plastic Logic has always been at its core a dynamic technology company. Having recently achieved significant milestones, including being the first in the world to fully industrialize the mass-production of flexible plastic displays, we are now well positioned to address a broader set of applications and markets throughout the world.”The UK based company found it hard to compete in North America and scrapped plans to launch its eagerly anticipated QUE e-reader a few years ago. It recently launched the PL 100 e-reader last year to make a play for lucrative government contracts in the Russian educational system. The Plastic Logic 100 used a new technology that is neither LCD nor eInk, but instead is patented PlasticPaper. Because the base is not glass, the Plastic Logic 100 display is large, thin, lightweight, and uniquely shatterproof and rugged, which is especially important given constant use by students. The resolution is 1280×960 and has 150 PPI! It has a capacitive IR touchscreen interface that makes interacting with it easier than most touchscreen e-ink devices.Plastic Logic plans on licensing various facets of their technology to vendors who want to use it in their products. Plastic Logic’s pride and joy is the flexible screen technology called “PlasticPaper.” There are no specific announcements in terms of who is signing on to license the technology, but you would figure some companies are lined up.Is there a market for this type of screen technology? e-Ink Holdings currently has a dominant stranglehold on the market. Other companies are finding it very hard to compete in the e-paper segment. Mirasol only recently released its new screen displays, but only Eastern companies have signed on and the displays remain irrelevant in North America. Pixel QI also has superb e-paper that mimics e-ink but has higher resolution, and only a spartan amount of companies have ever signed on. Other companies completely go under without ever releasing a single product. Only yesterday Bridgestone scrapped its QR-LDD technology because it could not release products by itself and found no investment to release commercially viable products. The one thing Plastic Logic has going for it is that it owns its own means of production. It is quite easy to pump out a copious amount of screens for new clients, but will anyone take the risk and sign on?[ad#After Post 3]
Welcome to another Good e-Reader Exclusive Video Review! Today we check out the brand new Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader with Glowlight and conduct a battery of nighttime reading tests!The Nook Glowlight is the first e-ink reader in the world to utilize LED lights built into the bezel to give you the ability to read in the dark. How does this compare to book lights which have been on the market for a number of years? We compare the Nook Glowlight with the standard LED Book Light. We also compare it to the brand new Solar Focus Kindle case with built in Book Light. Finally, we check out how it rates against the Nook Tablet and iPad 3 for reading at night!We really put this device through all the paces comparing it to most 3rd party accessories that would give your normal e-reader the ability to read at night. Many people buy tablets because they also allow you to read without depending on having a lamp on or external lights. If you are thinking of buying an e-reader or tablet to read at night, this is the best test to help you make the decision.[ad#After Post Add]
Can Publishing Companies Adopt the Pottermore Model?
The Pottermore website has done something in the digital publishing industry that no one has managed to do. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony and other major websites direct customers from their websites directly to Pottermore to purchase the Harry Potter line of eBooks. The best part is the books you purchase are DRM-Free! This basically means you can freely transfer them to your other devices without having to rely on using Adobe Digital Editions. Can other publishers adopt this model and is it economically feasible to make serious money in today’s digital world?J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise topples billions of dollars in revenue from the books, movies and licensing agreements. They have an amusement park and cups at seven eleven, it has permeated into most facets of our lives. Rowling was famous for being anti-eBook for the longest time and remained a staunch holdout in digitizing her content in the current Wild West of eBook distribution. For the longest time Amazon was throwing huge amounts of money to gain the digital rights and were summarily shut down.Instead of selling the eBook rights to a major company and letting them solely distribute it for a number of months before other companies entered the fray, she decided to do it herself. Pottermore was initially launched as a virtual world where people can play supplementary characters and run parallel adventures beside Harry Potter. A few months ago they launched their eBook section that sells the entire series of books and gives you a deal if you buy the complete set. Pottermore has made close to five million dollars in sales in its first month and shows no sign of slowing down. One of the best advantages of buying content from this website is the books themselves are not digitally encrypted. This is a stark contrast to how most other booksellers operate and is a departure from the norm. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Sony sell all of their books in proprietary encryption formats. This prevents people from distributing the book to others on the internet or to resell it. Pottermore does a digital watermark symbol on the books that have some of your private info. This means if you upload it to a file-sharing website, all roads lead to you. For the first time ever, a major franchise decided to distribute eBooks on their own and bypass the entire online bookseller scene. The funny thing is, its working and many companies are taking notice.Earlier in the month Macmillan removed DRM altogether from its TOR imprint of books. This was a huge positive step forward in making eBooks easily transferable to your myriad of devices. This is setting the stage for other companies to experiment with this business model and see if its viable. There are obviously piracy concerns about it and companies have relied on DRM for too long to just scrap it. People are mostly complacent and resistant to change, which is why the encryption technology has not really changed.Can publishing companies adopt the Pottermore model of distributing their ebooks and make big booksellers make customers point to a third party website? I think the Pottermore phenomenon really caught lots of people off guard and is the exception and not the rule. A mega-franchise like Harry Potter comes along once in a generation and there was a predatory desire by the public at large to have these books in digital format. Rowling resisted so long at making the eBooks a reality that the demand for them was feverish. Before her books came out, you only had to look at popular File Sharing sites to see millions of people were actively offering all of her books. Can any established franchises possibly have the clout to adopt the Pottermore model and can they make money from it?Major publishers have hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to protect and are accountable to authors, agents and the rail sphere. Pottermore when it launched had no accountability to anyone and hardly any overhead with the website in comparison to the infrastructure of major publishers. It only takes one big six publisher to sell the eBooks through their own website that would change the landscape of the industry.Microsoft recently invested $300 million into Barnes and Noble and their online eBook collection. Redmond is betting on Windows 8 on tablets and PC’s to give customers the ability to buy tons of books through their own ecosystem. The essence of this deal was to give B&N access to international markets that have eluded them thus far. Kobo is in the midst of a campaign of world domination with their new relationship with Rakuten. They are leading the charge with expanding into tons of different markets and developing localized versions of their bookstore to accommodate people who speak different languages. There is a huge amount of growing investment into content distribution systems that these companies make the bulk of their revenue from. Amazon and all the rest could not afford to lose a big six publishing partner if they delivered an ultimatum to redirect customers to our own website or we’ll pull our books from your store. No major online company could afford to lose a big client and thousands of popular bestsellers and let their competition agree to the publishers terms.The current eBook scene is really in its infancy and will undergo a paradigm shift during the next five years. The current business model of books being locked into encryption and making their customers jump through a ton of hoops will be at an end. The average person has a computer, tablet and smartphone and want to easily transfer books to their devices without relying on third party programs. The elimination of DRM will continue to gain traction in the next few years with most major companies adopting alternative forms. Digital Watermarks and behind the scenes metadata is the obvious solutions and makes people accountable for their online actions. Without being obtrusive it allows people more freedom but penalizes the people who just love to pirate books.In all honestly I don’t think any major publishers will decide to sell books through their own website and make online booksellers redirect their customers to it. It requires too much infrastructure and a new forward way of thinking that does not have a proven track record. No Big Six publisher will be the first one to pave the way and take all the risks. It would allow their competition to learn from it or overtake them in market share. The best thing we can expect is experiments with smaller imprints to test the waters and move very slowly.[ad#After Post 3]