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Barnes & Noble launches the $179 Galaxy Tab 4 Nook
Barnes & Noble has officially kicked off a new era -- one in which it doesn't manufacture its own tablets. The struggling book outlet announced last summer that it would work with other manufacturers going forward and Samsung is first in line. The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is the fruit of this partnership. It's a tablet built for reading first, as opposed to gaming or web browsing. While the device is undeniably Samsung, the software still retains some of that Barnes & Noble flair. Anyone who's used the previous Nook tablets will immediately recognize some of the features baked in here. The default homescreen has a widget showing recommended and recently read titles. Naturally, too, Barnes & Noble's Nook store is the primary content source, rather than the Play Store or Samsung Hub. But it's obvious that Sammy is in the driver's seat. Key features like multi-window mode are even included for some multi-tasking (say, if you want to tweet a quote from your favorite novel). B&N is pitching it as "the first full-featured Android tablet designed for reading." Then again, the company has said the same about every other Nook tablet.
Amazon wants you to ask Hachette's CEO for lower e-book prices
Amazon's fight with Hachette over e-book pricing just got extra-personal. Hot on the heels of writers attacking Jeff Bezos' "retaliation," the Amazon Books Team has posted a Readers United site that calls on you to email Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch and ask him to lower the costs of e-books. The online retailer doesn't want you to mince words, either -- it wants you to bring up his "illegal collusion" and claim that he's using authors as "leverage." Some writers aren't on his side, Amazon says.
Authors take out full-page NYT ad to criticize Amazon
There's no sign that Amazon and Hachette are close to burying their e-book hatchet, which has prompted the authors caught in the middle to speak up. One of those affected, Douglas Preston, penned an open letter to Jeff Bezos, requesting that he stopped singling out individual Hachette authors for "selective retaliation." After it was published, however, nearly a thousand other writers, including Stephen King, Malcolm Gladwell and Jeffrey Deaver co-signed the letter -- which has prompted the group Authors United to pay for the letter to be printed as a full-page advert in Sunday's New York Times. Apparently the Kindle Team's most recent letter fell upon deaf ears.
Barnes & Noble launches its Nook GlowLight e-reader in the UK for £89
Barnes & Noble isn't exactly a household name in the UK, but in the States it's a book-selling behemoth, with hundreds of stores complimenting a vast library of e-books, as well as a line of readers to consume them on. In autumn 2012, B&N expanded its reach to the UK (if only in website form), challenging the likes of Amazon and Kobo with its Nook range of tablets and e-readers, including the first with a front-lit display. We've seen minimal activity from the company since, but after almost two years without fresh hardware, the new Nook GlowLight launches in the UK today. The second-generation GlowLight e-reader, with significantly improved 6-inch display, is now available for £89 at various retailers including Argos, Currys/PC World, John Lewis, Sainsburys, ASDA and bookshop chain Foyles.
Sony is getting out of the e-reader business
Sony announced the closure of its own Reader store in favor of Kobo's platform earlier this year, and now it seems the company is nixing e-readers entirely. BBC reports that the Japanese outfit doesn't plan to release another device with last year's PRS-T3 serving as the most recent option. Thanks to Amazon's Kindle lineup and a growing number of tablet options, dedicated reading slates have seen declining sales since 2011. [Photo credit: Akio Kon/ Bloomberg]
Amazon runs the numbers to convince you that e-books should be cheaper
After unsuccessfully trying to charm authors, Amazon is now appealing to its customers during the ongoing war with Hachette. The retailer has revealed the reasons behind the spat, i.e. cheaper e-book prices, and the noble intentions behind it. Using its vast archive of data, the company believes that titles that, surprise, surprise, are priced at $15 won't sell as well as those that are priced at $10. As obvious as it sounds, the company's data says that for every 100,000 copies of the book that are bought for the higher price, 74,000 more copies would be bought at the lower figure, making a total profit of $1,738,000. Given that e-books incur no printing, warehousing or transportation costs, Amazon feels that it's a fair trade off.
Amazon's Kindle Unlimited offers all-you-can-eat e-books for $10 a month
After teasing us with a possible launch, Amazon has confirmed Kindle Unlimited, its all-you-can-read e-book subscription service. For $9.99 per month, Kindle Unlimited offers 600,000 books and "thousands" of audiobooks across a range of devices. As expected, many of the major publishers aren't fully represented, but there are number of popular titles listed, including Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Hunger Games, as well as a whole catalog of Kindle exclusives. Like Prime, Amazon initially offers a free 30-day trial to draw you in, but it's also throwing in a three month subscription to Audible and access to 2,000 audiobooks via its Whispersync service (which lets you seamlessly switch between reading and listening whenever the mood takes you). For a service that bills itself as "unlimited," there's a few constraints on Amazon's Netflix-for-books service. In addition to the fact that it doesn't have the support from all of the major publishers, of course, there's also the small matter that it's only available in America. At least, for now.
Amazon testing Netflix-style subscription service for e-books
Ever heard of Kindle Unlimited? Us either, at least not until now. Originally spotted by kboards, a forum site that welcomes Kindle chatter, this previously unknown service appears to be an upcoming all-you-can-read subscription service from Amazon. For $9.99 monthly, as described by the image above, Kindle Unlimited is said to offer access to more than 600,000 books and "thousands" of audiobooks. Not surprisingly, that healthy digital library doesn't appear to include any of the major US publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Shuster) -- something e-book subscription service Scribd is very familiar with, since it only carries titles from two of the "Big 5." Amazon has yet to announce Kindle Unlimited, but after seeing these ads slip through the cracks, we can safely say it's only a matter of time before it becomes official.
Amazon appeals directly to authors in ongoing e-book dispute
Despite sounding like a rogue militant organization from G.I. Joe, Hachette is actually a book publishing group. Tame as that may sound, Hachette is currently engaged in a high-stakes game of Chicken with a juggernaut in the book sales world: Amazon. It's all part of a long-running dispute between book publishers and "the everything store"; even the book titled after Amazon's moniker was involved in the dispute. It goes like this: Amazon wants to price its e-books one way, and publishers want things another way. While the negotiations occur, Amazon pushes back by slowing delivery of physical books by publishers involved in negotiations or, sometimes, carrying limited stocks intentionally so the books are unable to be ordered. Another tactic Amazon's now employing in the dispute? Appealing directly to authors. With cash.
US book publishers now make more money from online sales than physical stores
Brick-and-mortar book stores have clearly been on the decline for a while -- just look at Barnes & Noble's rocky finances. However, there's now some tangible evidence that the pendulum has swung in favor of internet-based sales. BookStats estimates that US publishers made more money from online orders and e-books in 2013 ($7.54 billion) than they did from old-fashioned physical retail ($7.12 billion). While the difference isn't huge, it suggests that a large chunk of the American population is content with buying books that it hasn't seen in person.
Navy develops dubiously named secure e-reader
Somewhere in between developing seafaring lasers and electromagnetic railgun, the Navy found time to design an e-reader especially for deployed sailors. As you'd expect, it was designed with security in mind, so it runs custom firmware, has no WiFi connection, SD reader or any other means to connect to an external storage or computer. Its creators, the Navy General Library Program (NGLP) and ebook company Findaway World, even made its hardware tough to tamper with. Since users won't be able to download anything new, it already comes preloaded with a catalog of reading materials from classics to contemporary best-sellers. It might sound extremely limited, but this device gives personnel the means to carry around the Navy's library, whereas they only used to have limited access to those digital tomes. Sound great? Sure does, but its designers probably ran out of creative juices when it was time to name the device. Because that's the only reason anyone would name it NeRD, right? ...Right?
McDonald's partners with Kobo to give UK kids free e-books
Forget race cars and Disney princesses. Kids in the UK are getting something a little more digital with their McDonald's Happy Meal: an e-book. The golden arches is partnering with Kobo to include a download code for one of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven children's mystery books with every meal purchased between now and June 3rd as part of its annual "Happy Readers" program. Over the past two years, the annual initiative has passed out millions of books, and is touted as quite a success (although we're not quite sure how "happy" we'd be about getting an e-book rather than a toy). However, this is the first time Ronald has gotten a digital retailer like Kobo in on the action. Enthusiastic kids who still want to fill the bookshelf in their room can also snag a £1 coupon with their meal to pick up a traditional copy of the books. If only the child detectives could forever solve the mystery of what's actually in McDonald's chicken nuggets. Image credit: Steve Daniels
Harper Lee okays 'To Kill a Mockingbird' e-book on her 88th birthday
An important piece of American literary history, and one of the few missing selections in digital libraries, is finally becoming an e-book. On her 88th birthday, Harper Lee agreed to let her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird be released in electronic form. Lee notes that this is "'Mockingbird' for a new generation," and the title still sells a million copies a year thanks in large part to its popularity in classrooms across the US of A. Here's to hoping we'll get the e-book version of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye soon too.
Scribd brings Lonely Planet guides to its book subscription service
Scribd's e-book subscription service is only six months old, and already it's working hard to hook some big names to convince you that it's worth $9 a month. The company has now snagged a deal with publisher Lonely Planet that'll see hundreds of the latter's travel guides appear on the former's platform. At the same time, the company has added in bookmarking across all devices, so you'll always be able to find that list of restaurants when you're roaming without WiFi. Great, now we've got the theme to the Lonely Planet TV series stuck in our head. Update: The folks from Scribd offered up this link, which'll give Engadget readers an extended free trial of the service.
Amazon makes Kindle documents available via Cloud Drive
If you have any documents (or e-books acquired in a "non-standard" way) stored on your Kindle, now you can access them anywhere via Amazon Cloud Drive. Starting today, documents uploaded to your e-reader via your browser, mobile device or email will automatically be stored in a new "My Send-to-Kindle Docs" folder within Cloud Drive. Unlike previous document uploads that were automatically converted to Kindle format, new additions will be saved in the cloud in their original format. That means you'll be able to edit the Word doc for your book on show ponies (might we suggest a working title of Pageant Ponies: America's Real Beauty Queens?) from your desktop seconds after catching a typo. With the move, Kindle owners can combine their existing 5GB of free cloud storage with the 5GB offered to Cloud Drive users for a total of 10GB of space. You know what that means: plenty of room to store sequels to your equine masterpiece once you hit it big. Image source: Flickr/Zhao!
Amazon buys popular comic book app platform Comixology (update)
There's nothing quite like taking a massive, heavy library of beloved books and shrinking it into an e-reader. Amazon, having already accomplished that with its tremendously popular digital book service, is now targeting the comic book market. The company is purchasing Comixology, a digital comic book service with hundreds of millions of users and apps for all of your devices. Comixogy CEO David Steinberger is quite fond of the agreement, the terms of which were not disclosed (we're assuming it's at least $3.50 -- comics these days are awfully expensive). "There is no better home for comixology than Amazon to see this vision through," Steinberger says in the announcement. "Working together, we look to accelerate a new age for comic books and graphic novels." It's just a wild guess, but we're expecting the first such "acceleration" will involve integrating Amazon payments and the Comixology userbase over to Amazon. It's not yet clear if Comixology brand will stand on its own (Amazon already sells single issues and graphic novels on Kindle), but we're asking the company for more, but don't expect to hear much -- the deal hasn't closed just yet, but it's expected to in the next few months. Update: We heard back from Amazon -- join us below for more.
Gadget Rewind 2006: Sony Reader PRS-500
Sony may not have been at the forefront of the digital music revolution, but when it came to e-books and e-readers, the company was certainly a pioneer. It all started in the '90s with Sony's first chunky, flip-topped Data Discman. This two-pound, paperback-sized player came bundled with a selection of reference books on disc, each capable of storing up to 100,000 pages of digital text. When that cumbersome early e-book solution failed to gain traction, Sony went right back to the drawing board and returned in 2004 with the Japan-only LIBRIé e-reader. This particular device used an innovative E Ink display and relied on an e-book loan program -- a distribution model that proved unpopular with consumers at the time.
Barnes & Noble brings Nook Press self-publishing to parts of Europe
Does your agent constantly reject your manuscript about a teen wizard who falls in love with a vampire and has to fight for their life in a televised death zone? Barnes & Noble feels your pain, and is opening up the Nook Press self-publishing platform to parts of Europe to get your story told. From today, the web-based service launches in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium. But how much do you stand to make? If your title is priced between £1.50 (€2.50) and £7.99 (€9.49) you'll receive 65 percent of the fee, and if it's under £1.50 (€2.49), you'll get 40 percent land in your bank account. Just remember that Amazon is the only e-reader company that'll let you write your GI Joe opus.
Barnes & Noble to drop its Nook app for Windows in revised Microsoft deal
We hope you weren't too attached to the Nook app for Windows, because it's going away -- well, sort of. Barnes & Noble's Nook Media subsidiary and Microsoft have amended their partnership with terms that let Nook Media stop distributing its Windows e-book software. The company won't leave bookworms completely stranded, though. Instead, it will steer them toward "Microsoft Consumer Reader;" ZDNet believes this is a previously rumored e-reading app that will support both Nook content as well as generic text. The updated pact also lets Nook Media scrap progress on a Windows Phone app, although that's not as big a loss when the client hasn't reached the public. We don't yet know how the revised deal will affect Windows-bound Nook fans, but let's hope that Microsoft does a good job of picking up any slack.
First-gen Kindle Paperwhite gets second-gen features, at last
First-gen Kindle Paperwhite owners are woefully missing a bunch of features, including Goodreads integration, available on the device's successor. Thankfully, this latest software refresh brings their e-readers up to par -- and, yes, that means early Paperwhite adopters can now place The Winds of Winter on their to-read roster from within the device. Just like on the second-gen Paperwhite, Goodreads' familiar "g" icon should appear on the menu bar after installing the software. Clicking it will launch the app where users can segregate books into lists, share digital bookshelves, look for weekend reads or post excerpts.
