Motoko Rich Lives Blogs Barnes & Noble E-Reader Launch of the Nookie

October 20, 2009 , 4:15 pm
Live Blog: Barnes & Noble Unveils E-Reader
By Motoko Rich


JB Reed/Bloomberg

William Lynch, chief executive of bn.com, unveils the company’s new e-reader, the Nook, on Tuesday.

The Announcement is Over | 4:51 p.m. “Ladies and gentlemen, the bar is now open.” The media is asked to remain for a Q and A session. We’ll have more for you later.

Larry Kirshbaum, literary agent, says of the Nook, “I think it’s a home run.”




Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesUpdate | 4:45 p.m. Cases are being made by Kate Spade, Jack Spade, Jonathan Adler and Tahari. A screen at the back of the stage opens to reveal a huge kiosk display that will appear in Barnes & Noble stores to sell the Nook. The Nook will be sold by 40,000 booksellers across 1,300 stores. Customers will also be shown how to read Barnes & Noble’s e-books on iPhone and Blackberry devices.

Update | 4:40 p.m. Malcolm Gladwell just showed up and started reading from a chapter from his book, “The Tipping Point” on the Nook and walked off the stage to cheers.

“Just to be clear, Malcolm Gladwell does not come with the Nook,” said Tony Astarita, the vice president of device development at bn.com. The first 10,000 customers to order the Nook get a complementary e-copy of “The Tipping Point.”

Update | 4:38 p.m. The control panel features a virtual keyboard, and no physical buttons. When you don’t need it the control panel goes dark so you are not distracted while reading. You can customize your reading experience by using up to five fonts you can add pictures, music, audiobooks, Adobe pdf documents to your collection on the nook.

Update | 4:34 p.m. Applause and cheers after the video. Larry Kirschbaum, an agent and former C.E.O. of Warner books quips “people are happy to have a competitor” to the Kindle.

Update | 4:33 p.m. Any book, any time, anywhere. Sounds like the Kindle - that was the intro line of their video to show the nook

Update | 4:32 p.m. Users can buy subscriptions to magazines and newspapers on Nook, says William Lynch, C.E.O. of bn.com.

Running Behind Schedule | 4:17 p.m. The press conference that was supposed to start at 4:15 p.m. sharp, is running late. About 300 people are gathered. Steve Riggio, C.E.O. of Barnes & Noble, is waiting at the front of the room, as is William Lynch, C.E.O. of bn.com.

The Announcement | 4:15 p.m. Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader, expected to be unveiled on Tuesday at a news conference in Manhattan, features Wi-Fi connectivity and the ability for customers to lend out e-books for 14 days at a time.

With the market for electronic readers and digital books heating up by the day, Barnes & Noble sought to differentiate itself with the wireless feature that consumers can access in any of the chain’s 1,300 stores. Outside of the stores, customers can download books on AT&T’s 3G cellular phone network.

The Nook features a six inch grey and white reading display and color touch-screen controls at the bottom of the device. The price is $259, matching the latest price set by Amazon for a new edition of its Kindle reader.

Customers can begin pre-ordering the Nook at nook.com starting at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and the devices will ship in late November.

In an interview, William Lynch, chief executive of BN.com, said that the Nook’s color touch screen navigation panel could be used to find books, search through a user’s personal library, annotate text and change font size. Readers will be able to scroll through icons of the covers of their books rather than just a text list, as on Kindle.

Mr. Lynch said the company would also leverage its chain of bricks and mortar stores by setting up front-of-store displays to sell and demonstrate the Nook. The Nook also has software that will detect when a consumer walks into a store so that it can push out coupons or other promotions such as excerpts or suggestions to customers.

Because of this connection with stores and the brand name, analysts said that Barnes & Noble could fare better than other newcomers to the e-reader market like iRex or Plastic Logic, because of its name recognition. “Barnes & Noble has more of a chance than any of the new entrants to the market,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Our data shows that the prospects for e-reader devices are book-buying consumers, and many consumers still have a relationship with Barnes & Noble. They need to leverage those relationships before it’s too late to seize their part of the e-book market.”

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the Nook is that it allows consumers to share their e-books with friends. Mr. Lynch said that customers will be allowed to share an individual e-book with one person at a time for up to 14 days. After that, they will not be allowed to share that book again, though, so it is not an exact mirror of the physical book world.

Amazon allows consumers to connect up to six devices to a single Kindle account. Kindle books can be read either on the Kindle device or on Apple’s iPhone.

For publishers, “it’s in their interest to let Barnes & Noble do things that Amazon doesn’t or can’t do,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consultant to publishers and technology vendors. “And lending is one of those things.”

Ms. Epps added that lending is what consumers already do with physical books. “It’s bringing the intimacy and sociability of reading into the digital realm,” she said.

The Nook is being made by an undisclosed manufacturer in Asia, Mr. Lynch said. He declined to say how many devices the company had manufactured for the upcoming holiday season.

The digital books in Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore are available in either epub or Adobe Pdf format. Customers who want to buy books in those formats from other digital bookstores may do so and transfer them onto the Nook, but those who want to buy e-books directly from the device will be connected to Barnes & Noble’s own bookstore.

Barnes & Noble will continue to supply the e-bookstores of the forthcoming iRex and Plastic Logic devices.

Mr. Lynch said that he was not concerned that the Nook would eventually cannibalize print book sales in the chain’s stores.

“We think it presents a huge opportunity for Barnes and Noble to grow our business as some of the business shifts,” Mr. Lynch said. He noted that the overall book business was worth about $30 billion a year. “Even the most bullish prognostications on digital have it getting to $5 billion within four to five years,” he said. “So it’s still a very small part of the overall market.”

The Pre-Announcement Hoopla | 4:05 p.m. We’re waiting for Barnes & Noble to unveil its new Nook e-reader. Press, publishers, tech heads are arriving at Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. Despite the beautiful fall day outside, we are stuck in a windowless room with loud music playing over the loudspeakers. The news conference is expected to start at 4:15 p.m.
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15 Comments
1. October 20, 2009
4:38 pm

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I think the Nook e-reader (aka nookie reader) is a fantastic idea! it will lead to more of a paper-free green society and who doesn’t like a little nookie reading?

— Nytco

2. October 20, 2009
4:50 pm

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“a complementary e-copy”

You’ve probably been told a gazillion times already, but that should be “a complimentary e-copy … “

— Albert Lewis

3. October 20, 2009
4:53 pm

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Are they out of their minds with such a name. In the UK and Australia the word “nookie” is a slang term for intercourse. So what would my folks think if instead of saying that I was going to read a book I said that I was going to have a nookie.

They need to change the name - and fast - if it is to get international appeal.

— John Dulley

4. October 20, 2009
4:55 pm

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Dang! You beat me to it!

— Patricia

5. October 20, 2009
4:56 pm

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As long as these tools continue to use DRM so that we can’t give the virtual book away or sell it just like a paperback I shall never buy one. Publishers since the 1800s if not longer have wanted a way to sell books that can’t be resold, if they shift entirely paperless they will have finally got their way. What is even more ridiculous is that if the books are like audio ones they’ll charge MORE for it despite the inability to sell it/give away than real books go for despite the fact that they like ZERO overhead on digital things. Don’t be suckered people.

— Robocoastie

6. October 20, 2009
5:05 pm

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This is an overpriced non-starter for me until I can borrow the ebooks from the library.

— Another Dad

7. October 20, 2009
5:08 pm

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How does an author submit a book? It was very easy with the Kindle.

Davis Straub
http://ozreport.com
http://ozreport.com/worldrecordholder.php
http://ozreport.com/location.php
Cathedral City, CA, USA

— Davis Straub

8. October 20, 2009
5:08 pm

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I agree Nook is cool, but your assumption that ereaders–with all of their manufacturing and their eternal electricity draw–are greener than books may be flawed. Once a book is made, it never taps the grid again!

— JBK

9. October 20, 2009
5:30 pm

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Barnes & Noble’s iPhone app is decidedly crippled in its capabilities compared to Amazon’s Kindle software. Has anyone yet compared the reading experiences? Does the software save your place in each book for instance? Looking forward to learning more about how the Nook operates.

— Ann Hyatt Logan

10. October 20, 2009
6:05 pm

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#6 Dad: You can check out ebooks from libraries. Check your local branch to see if they’ve jumped aboard the ebook train. I have a Sony 505, which I was surprised by how much more I enjoy reading on than paper books, and I can check out ebooks from my local library, both at the branch and at home using the Sony Reader software (kind of like iTunes for ebooks).

— BackToWork

11. October 20, 2009
6:09 pm

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#9 Ann, All ereaders on the market save your place and even allow you to set multiple bookmarks within a book. Most ereaders on the market are essentially the same rebranded hardware, so the features aren’t very different from model to model.

The Kindle doesn’t allow sharing and is limited in the formats it supports, while the Nook does allow sharing and supports more formats. So how is the Nook crippled in comparison to the Kindle?

— BackToWork

12. October 20, 2009
6:17 pm

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I am vitally interested in whether or not B&N’s reader will allow B&N or any other entity to examine the contents of my bookshelf, or alter it, once I have “purchased” a book. This will determine whether or not I will consider using it.

The incident in which Amazon removed copies of George Orwell’s “1984″ from Kindles made a deep impact on me as a potential customer.

To me, a book is more than just words on a page or a screen. In theory, I can live with a DRM scheme that exists solely to insure that authors are paid for their work. But if the same scheme requires me to give up my ownership of a book, or the privacy of my bookshelf, then I will not be a customer.

What’s been reported in this posting doesn’t answer those questions, so I will hold off on forming an opinion until I get the answers.

— CWP

13. October 20, 2009
6:50 pm

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I hadn’t thought about the inability to sell or give away ebooks. Not too sure it is relevent since you can get older books for almost nothing online. I think the thing that people are overlooking is that you can read books on your laptop. I have a tablet laptop and I get Adobe digital pdf ebooks for their reader which is in book form and also lets you have a library of book covers to choose from. I like the idea of using your computer because you are not limited to a sellers ideas of what to read. Until you can download any format any book I will not buy a seperate reader.

— Peggy

14. October 20, 2009
6:54 pm

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I can hear the emotion in some peoples comments already. they choose one bookreader and are loyal to death. If a book reader is to be competitive it has to save your place. The readers on computer do so. MSreader and Adobe have all the bells and whistles and they are free on your laptop or desktop. I think those people who don’t have computers are the ones getting the shaft they pay almost as much for a book reader as a computer these days.

— Peggy

15. October 20, 2009
7:10 pm

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Actually, after a paper book is published it still taps the grid, for example, when a reading light is needed. the green question is not as simple a comparison as you’d think.

— APR

16. October 21, 2009
12:52 am

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Your comment is awaiting moderation. DANNY BLOOM

Can I chime in here with “The Hogwash Statement” — It’s about the future of reading:

The point of all this is not so much to coin a new word — God knows
there are enough neologisms already, the reading field surely doesn’t
need a new word for “reading” if “reading” is fine for “reading on a
computer screen” — and for all that I care, the new word could be
“hogwash”, as in “I’m hogwashing ‘Moby Dick’ on my Kindle tonight” –
so the real point of my public crusade/campaign to search for a new
word (if needed, and if useful!) is to point out the need for scholars
and scientists to study the very real differences between reading on
paper and reading on screens, and not just with learned opinions and
surveys, but with hard science — that is to
say, MRI brain scan studies in laboratory settings and hospital rooms
to study — firsthand! up close and personal! — white matter and grey
matter neural pathways and try to ascertain if reading on paper
surfaces lights up different parts of the brain compared to reading on
a screen.

That is all this campaign is about. I don’t care to coin a
new name for reading on screens. I am not a name coiner. I have no
interest in coining a new word for screen-reading. If a new word or term
does come to us, great. If not, that’s okay, too. All I want to do
is to egg scientists and
neuro-scientists on to study these issues with MRI scan tissues. Then we will
really know what the differences between paper reading and screen
reading really mean.

Question: Why am I so concerned and seemingly obsessed about this? I
worry about the future of human civilization! If screen-reading turns
out to be a bit inferior to paper reading — in terms of which parts
of the brain light up for things like processing info, retention,
analysis, critical thinking, empathy, digesting, internalizing,
understanding, etc — then we need to know this.

That’s my hunch. That’s all I want to know. Let the brain scans begin!