Comments on: Barnes and Noble eReader coming soon? Could it be called the BNindle?

By: Tom T

Tom T — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:35:38 +0000

I’m a very long time Kindle owner. B & N may come out with a pretty good product but they haven’t shown much of an ability to be light on their feet yet.
It’s interesting that Amazon has reversed the King Gillette idea…the cheap razor and expensive blades. Amazon has an expensive reader and cheap books.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:11:01 +0000

I’m late to this party, but this guy is a trend follower and technologically challenged. I personally wouldn’t own an iPod. A standard MP3 player is even more simple the proprietary Apple Apps. You don’t download bogus music any more from questionable sites. That is so 2001. In fact, your beloved Amazon will allow you to download exactly the music you want from their site, and you don’t need any special software to do it. Which makes it superior to the Apple product. Here’s how the process is supposed to go.
1. Download your music from Amazon.
2. Connect your MP3 player (any brand) via standard USB cable.
3. Drag and drop.

Done.

I’ll tell you another secret. You can get your music from http://www.walmart.com too. How ’bout that? It’s legitimate also.

Don’t bother commenting on future technologies. You have no credibility in this area.

By: Stumbling Over Chaos :: “Are you going to read just paranormals until your brain falls out?”

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:04:38 +0000

[...] that Barnes & Noble has acquired Fictionwise, there are rumors about a B&N ebook reader. Whatever happens with that, I’ll remain a proponent of ebook readers (like the EZ Reader) [...]

By: Weekly Tech Roundup | Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:00:50 +0000

[...] and Noble is rumored to have an ebook reader coming out “soon.” Given that it acquired Fictionwise and Fictionwise was in talks with [...]

By: mark sandy hutchens

mark sandy hutchens — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:32:41 +0000

This device is perfect for the era we are heading into. We are only getting knowledge from / spending all of our time with electronic devices, why not make a cool one that gets people reading. Great product.

By: monitor

monitor — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:37:51 +0000

Wayyyyyy too early to call the kindle the winner long term. We’re still in the first inning of this ball game. Don’t count out BN or any others yet.

By: Biblioteca Electrónica « IT Weblog de Marcos Obed

Biblioteca Electrónica « IT Weblog de Marcos Obed — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:27:30 +0000

[...] madurar mucho creo que tiene mucho potencial, el lector de Amazon así lo demuestra así como el posible lector de otras de las grandes editoriales americanas (Barnes and Noble). Tarde o temprano pasará como [...]

By: irv

irv — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:25:02 +0000

You have it completely backwards. BN has a huge library of books. It may even have some of them in an electronic form, which would clearly be a plus. So it has an easy way to beat out the ridiculously over priced Kindle: offer an adequate reader at a good price. Half or less of what the Kindle costs and they win. Period. Sell it for $20 and they’ll conquer the world.

I don’t actually believe they’ll take that easy route. That would be too smart and too likely to work. But the path exists. Someone just has to take it.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:19:58 +0000

I think this is an important move for Barnes and Noble. Competition with Amazon.com was one thing, but now there is technology that threatens to make their stores obsolete.

Certainly the market for physical books won’t disappear, but I can guarantee you that it will shrink to the point where it won’t support brick and mortar stores of the size and prevelancy that currently exists.

They are smart and prescient for adapting to market trends as the curve is still gently sloping. If they wait until the curve starts nosediving, they’re going to go bankrupt.

There are other companies that specialize in other products that need to pay attention to future trends and start the process now to adapt their business models.

Good job, Barnes and Noble.

By: Tomas

Tomas — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:17:29 +0000

The Barnes & Noble reader will deal a hard blow to the people that walk up to their nearest B&N and pretend it’s a public library that happens to stock brand-new books.

By: Tom1

Tom1 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:47:32 +0000

If the price comes in at half what the Kindle costs (rely on volume sales), they will kill the Kindle.

By: Wayne Martin

Wayne Martin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:39:04 +0000

I find this “review” very one-sided, and probably written by someone who actually is NOT using e-books for research, or other work-related projects.

The point about how difficult it is to obtain ebooks on-line for non-Kindle readers was true in the past, but is becoming less true day-by-day.

Google has about 2M books on-line, and the internet Archive has about 1.3M available. Both .pdf and text formats can be downloaded from each site.

Within the past two weeks, Sony and Google have announced the availability of over 500,000 Sony-formatted books (free and legal) available via the Sony e-Book Store, available from the Google inventory. The idea that you have to “pirate” books for non-Kindle readers is bogus!

All-in-all, maybe 2.5M books available in one format or another, on-line, at prices ranging from free to 20+ dollars.

The fact that Barnes and Noble is getting into the business is great–a further endorsement of arrival of the e-Ink and e-books in general. The author of this article misses this point, big time!

Here is a video of my thoughts on my Sony reader:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e-2kvSzA8&feature=channel_page

There are a number of other videos about e-books and the paradigm shift from paper to e-books on this Youtube channel, should you be interested in the opinion of someone who is actively researching, using Google and the Sony e-book Reader as primary tools.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:19:25 +0000

I am not sure how being an also ran is a bad thing. You list also rans as winners in markets. ipod beating out Creative and Rio. Amazon beating the Sony reader.

It just takes a good design to win. I hate itunes, is a horrible piece of software because of how slow it is and the limitation of how to load an ipod.

B&N needs to prove they can do better, better design, size, software, selection and price. Plus having outlets for people to use them could be quite a boon. Having someone in person telling me they like something and express enthusiasm about a product is much different than reading one.

By: Screen Sleuth

Screen Sleuth — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:10:28 +0000

Barnes and Noble? Aren’t they struggling badly financially? Where did they come from?

By: R. Brennan Knotts

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:58:58 +0000

This would have been a better article if they’d spent some time talking about the validity of the rumor rather than giving a weak lesson on new product strategy.

But maybe I don’t understand the different purposes of CrunchGear vs. TechCrunch? CrunchGear’s articles always seem more opinion-based rather than journalistic.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:58:29 +0000

Lost 300 when?

By: jonesy

jonesy — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:30:24 +0000

Saying a RUMOR of an effort is going to fail is a waste of breath. Duh.

Should we stop time now, people? Everything’s perfect.

By: jonesy

jonesy — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:19:43 +0000

re: twitter… thought this was funny:

http://theharperstudio.com/2009/04/twouble-with-twitter/

By: igniman

igniman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:55:23 +0000

Fully agree with Jim. I’m not for the US, so the only option was sony eReader. It’s a great device and lack of connectivity was never a problem [if anything, the problem is finding the time to read the books]; The reader is good for books; reading blogs + newspapers on it is slow and painful

By: igniman

igniman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:51:29 +0000

I don’t know about google.

About twitter, time will tell; let’s wait for the TV+media dust to settle and then we’ll see who uses twitter (my bet is only journalists use it to share stories among themselves)