Taking an electronic leaf from rival Barnes & Noble’s playbook, Amazon has announced a lending feature for its customers.

‘The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family,” says a recent Amazon.con release. “Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period.”  As loans are not sales, authors will receive no additional royalties, but it is hoped that loaned e-books will attract new reading audiences.

For would be lenders and borrowers, details may be read here.

Richard Curtis

From time to time we bring back some of the more popular articles and blogs posted on E-Reads. This one is from November 2009.

****************

A while back we wrote up a book lover who said she was reluctant to buy a Kindle “unless Amazon comes out with a special ‘book scented’ Kindle.” (See If They Can Make the Kindle Smell Like a Book, Maybe She’ll Buy One). It was all kind of a joke, but an enterprising manufacturer took it seriously enough to produce a line of aromatics simulating book scents. The aromas include New Book Smell and Classic Musty. The product is trademarked as Smell of Books™ and here’s how their website describes it:

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?
Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?
If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.
But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.
Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.
Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much.

Among the five smells offered is “Crunchy Bacon”. This is a welcome novelty for noses jaded by such natural book fragrances as grass, leather, printer’s ink, and decaying paper. Hopefully, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France will invest heavily in shpritzing their collections with Crunchy Bacon. Some other but lesser known aromas associated with books are baked lamb shank, General Cho’s Chicken, and asparagus vinaigrette.

On a more scientific note, Henry Fountain of the New York Times reports on research to quantify old-book odors to help librarians preserve books more effectively. Fountain describes how conservators “analyzed the volatiles produced by 72 samples of old paper of different types and in varying condition from the 19th and 20th centuries, using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. They found that some compounds were reliable markers for paper with certain characteristics — high concentrations of lignin or rosin, for example, which make paper degrade relatively quickly.”

There was apparently no manifestation of crunchy bacon in the spectrum analyzed by the scientists, but it is well known that subatomic bacon particles are even more elusive to detect spectrometrically than the Higgs boson, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may be required to capture one.

Read Digging Into the Science of That Old-Book Smell.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

No Contest.

That’s the judgment rendered by technology maven David Pogue in his New York Times column evaluating the latest version of Kindle and comparing it to rivals iPad, Nook and Sony. Here’s his pronunciamento: “Certain facts are unassailable: that the new Kindle offers the best E Ink screen, the fastest page turns, the smallest, lightest, thinnest body and the lowest price tag of any e-reader. It’s also the most refined and comfortable.”

Following is a thumbnail sketch of Pogue’s take on Kindle 3 (in his own words):

• The smallness comes in the form of a 21 percent reduction in the dimensions from the previous Kindle…Yet the screen has the same six-inch diagonal measurements as always because they shaved away a lot of that empty beige (or now dark gray) plastic margin…The background gray is a few shades lighter than on any other reader, producing much better contrast behind the black text.
• The Kindle is almost ridiculously lightweight; at 8.5 ounces, it’s a third the weight of the iPad. That’s a big deal for a machine that you want to hold in your hands for hours.
• Then there is the $140 price. That’s for the model with Wi-Fi — a feature new to the Kindle that plays catch-up to the Barnes & Noble Nook…Quite a tumble from the Kindle’s original $400 price, and a tiny sliver of what you would pay for an iPad ($500 and way, way up).
• The Kindle’s catalog of 630,000 current books is 10 times the size of Apple’s.
• E Ink is great for battery life. (Amazon says that on the new Kindle, if you turn off the wireless features, you can read for a month on a single charge.)
• The new Kindle reduces the page-turn wait to well under a second. It’s the fastest page-turner among e-readers.
• The new Kindle’s nonremovable storage now holds twice as many books: 3,500 of them.
• The tiny joystick has been replaced by cellphone-like four-way control buttons, and the page-turn Forward and Back buttons, which flank both edges, are silent now, for the benefit of sleeping spouses. And the new Kindle handles PDF documents much better now; you can even add notes to them and magnify them.

Are there flaws in Kindle 3? Yes. Problems? Some. Invidious comparisons to competitive devices? Sure.  Learn what they are in New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Back

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

The Digital Revolution has claimed many brick and mortar victims but none so formidable as Barnes & Noble.  The world’s largest bookstore has put itself up for sale.

To understand why you only have to weigh B&N’s capitalization of $950 million against the capital value of Amazon.com: $55 billion, according to Wall Street Journal‘s Jeffrey Trachtenberg and Dennis K. Berman.

“The sales process won’t mean much for consumers right away,” the WSJ journalists write, “but a new owner may have a different strategy, potentially trimming the number of outlets as profits slide. Over the past three years, Barnes & Noble’s annual profits have slid from $135.8 million to $75.9 million to $36.7 million.”

Though authors and consumers may feel warmly towards the book chain, whose stores often serve as community centers, not everyone will shed a tear.  Barnes & Noble’s superstore-building rampage in the 1990s drove innumerable local independent bookshops out of business.  Its predatory business practices, such as extracting big fees from publishers for stocking books in favorable positions in the front of the store, drove cash-poor small publishers into the arms of a handful of major houses.

So, if there are fewer independent bookstores, fewer independent publishers, and fewer midlist authors in 21st century publishing, we can look to Barnes & Noble as a major contributor. The Riggio brothers will walk away wealthy beyond our dreams of avarice, but they will step over many ruins on the way to the bank.

Read details in Barnes & Noble on Block

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal .

iPad is good for a lot of things but it could really screw up your sleep. The head of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center says that the luminescence inhibits the production of melatonin in the brain.  Melatonin is a key chemical in sending you drifting off to beddy-bye.

Bill Ray, reporting on the effects of e-reading on vision (Don’t try to sleep with your iPad, doctor warns), says that e-ink screens like Kindle, Sony and Nook do not have that melatonin-inhibiting glare, but users may develop another problem. “Apparently the limited contrast of e-ink screens can cause eye-strain, but at least those with strained eyes are well rested.”

Ray also reminds us that if you do doze off while reading, it’s cheaper to drop a printed book on the floor than a device you paid hundreds of dollars for.

Richard Curtis

Cover design by Nathan Fernald

As books pass from the Tangible to the Digital Age the value of cover design is being called into question.  At least by Ben East, blogging on TheNational.ae in an article called Cover story.

Riffing on the cliche “You can’t tell a book by its cover,” East wonders whether cover design means anything any more. His conclusion? “The future of good book design looks decidedly bleak.”

East likens the state of book jackets to record albums. “Not long ago, a good looking album cover was a vital part of the image of a band and its fans; unsubtly leaving beautiful, sought-after records around your living room was like a window into your cooler-than-thou world. Now, such designs are hidden away in hard drives.”

Cover design by Nathan Fernald

If you no longer display your books in your library or living room, or even on a bus or park bench (see Can You Tell a Book Reader From its Cover?), is there any point for publishers to labor over designing striking covers? It’s tempting to say no, especially because all e-book covers show in black, white and grayscale on the E Ink screens of Kindle, Sony, Nook and their lesser kin.

But remember that that was the first generation of e-book reading devices. The next one, led by Apple’s iPad, sports full color screens.  Your e-book’s text will still be black and white but the cover will be fully saturated color, and it will definitely make a difference when you’re deciding whether to buy that e-book. Obviously e-book covers won’t employ foil and embossing but any publisher that believe consumers don’t choose e-books by what’s displayed on the screen is probably losing business.

Cover design by Andy Ross

E-Reads’ designers put a lot of creative thought into producing selling covers.  Embedded in this posting are a few recent ones. We’re revisiting our early covers and plan to replace them in due time.

So – who cares if you can’t tell a book by its cover?

We do.

By the way, did you figure out where .ae is?  Uh-uh – no fair googling!*

Richard Curtis

* .ae is The Arab Emirates

Okay, e-reader mavens, it’s time to play Name That Device. Here’s a description of a popular one:

A handheld electronic device comprising: a housing; an electronic paper display disposed in the housing and having a first surface area; and a liquid crystal display (LCD) disposed in the housing proximate the electronic paper display, the LCD having a second surface area that is smaller than the first surface area of the electronic paper display.

Sounds like Barnes & Noble’s Nook, right?

Wrong. It’s a description of a patent applied for by Amazon in 2006, a patent that Amazon never published – until now. And the United States Patent and Trademark Office has just granted the patent to Amazon!

Nilay Patel writing in Engadget calls the revelation “Juicy.”  It could be a lot more than that if Amazon decides to file an infringement claim against B&N.

Patel reminds us that “Barnes & Noble is already involved in a trade secret dispute over the Nook with Spring Design, which claims that B&N saw its Alex reader under NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement] and then copied it for the Nook.” That case is still pending. (See Who is Alex and Why Is He Suing the Nook People?)

B&N’s patent attorneys are going to have their hands full in the coming months.

Richard Curtis

Technologist Jason Perlow has done an analysis of e-book reading apps available on your iPad, and it would be a good idea for you to see what he has to say before downloading any of them.

“The average iPad user may not be aware of features or limitations in the various e-Reader apps available on the App Store,” he says, “so I’m going to try to boil this down so that you can make the appropriate choices which best fit your reading lifestyle.”

You may be surprised, maybe even shocked, by his conclusions. Here in condensed form are his takes on some of the more prominent apps.

iBooks

“While there is no doubting iBooks’ success in terms of its widespread use, of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release….”

“iBooks supports syncing of DRM-free EPUB and PDF content directly to the iPad thru iTunes. This is an excellent feature, but essentially locks the user down to using iTunes as the primary data transfer mechanism and thus requires a host PC or Macintosh in order to maintain the library…”

“Unfortunately, iBooks doesn’t scale very well as the size of your EPUB library increases. While iBooks is perfectly fine for a few dozen or perhaps a hundred or so books purchased from the iBooks Store or synced into iTunes, it is extremely unwieldy once you approach 300+ titles loaded into the database.”

[One issue Perlow doesn't mention is cited by blogger Thomas Baekdal, who writes: "You've already purchased this book but it isn't available for redownload. To purchase it again at full price, tap OK" and his comment is, "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?"]

Kindle for iPad

“Amazon still has the widest array of paid ebook content in existence, with well over 600,000 titles in inventory. However, from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart — you can’t import other file formats into it (such as PDFs or .MOBI files) and it only works with titles you’ve purchased in the Kindle store.”

Barnes & Noble eReader

“Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application. About the only negative thing I can say about it is that like Kindle for iPad, the application is limited to content purchased on the B&N website, and uses the same Safari web interface for purchasing.”

“Other than that flaw, I love this app — the reading experience is far superior to that of the Kindle application, as it has five customizable themes for different colors of text and background and has the best reading fonts I’ve seen in any of the apps I looked at, especially when viewed in the ‘Earl Grey’ theme that almost has me convinced I’m looking at e-Ink and not an LCD.”

“Margins can be adjusted directly from page view to make maximum use of the screen if you’d like. The content browsing interface is also much more elegant than that of iBooks or Kindle for iPad.”

Kobo Reader / Borders eBooks

“Kobo Reader for iPad is…extremely polished and very well-designed.
Kobo’s main benefit is that it supports many different computing and smartphone platforms, so you can have all of your content available with you wherever you go. Like Kindle and B&N, your content is stored in Kobobooks.com’s cloud, so it doesn’t matter if you are using Kobo for iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, PC or Mac…”

“The Kobo reader application is one of the nicest looking on the iPad platform, although it isn’t nearly as feature rich as B&N’s or Stanza from a pure reading perspective. However, the text display is very nice, and you have four scalable fonts to choose from plus a White-on-Black “Night Reading” mode.”

Stanza

“Of all the applications listed here, Stanza is actually a very mature e-reader app, this despite only very recently being made iPad-native with version 3, in early June…
Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF). This built-in compatibility eliminates the need for book conversion to EPUB with applications such as Calibre…”

“In addition to its connectivity features, Stanza has access to a wide variety of free book feeds… It has a wide array of font styles and color themes, and many options for text layout…”

“If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.”

For the complete article, check out Apple iPad Showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps

Richard Curtis

The back page of today’s (June 22 2010) New York Times news section carries a full page ad for Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader. The price is $149.00 for a Wi-Fi only version.  But the price of the original model introduced a year ago also dropped from $259.00 to $199.00 according to the Times‘s Brad Stone. In response Amazon cut its undercut its rival, dropping the Kindle price to $189.00.

Is this the start of a price war or an adjustment that has bottomed out?  And why are prices dropping in response to the success of Apple’s iPad selling at almost three times the cost of its Amazon and B&N rivals?  Read In Price War, E-Readers Go Below $200 for some insights.

Stone quotes B&N’s CEO William J. Lynch as predicting that within a year the cost of a device will drop below $100.00, the fabled threshold below which appliances become as commonplace as pencils.  But why would prices stop there?  We have long urged the industry to consider adopting the so-called Gillette Razor model: give the device away and charge for the content. (See King Gillette and the Kindle)

A free e-reader?  As of today, we’re only $149.00 away.

Richard Curtis

No writer should ever have to complain that there’s nowhere to go to get published. There are a million places, and Barnes & Noble just made it a million and one with announcement of a platform called PubIt!™ “PubIt! Enables Independent Publishers and Self-Published Authors Access to Sell eBooks and Content to Millions of Readers on Barnes & Noble’s Online and Digital Platforms,” says the announcement.

Here’s the press release…

*********************************

New York, New York – May 19, 2010 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, is extending its deep and longstanding tradition of supporting authors and publishers with PubIt! by Barnes & Noble, an easy and lucrative way for independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform offers qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility and protection that only Barnes & Noble can offer.

The announcement marks Barnes & Noble’s latest move to continue to build one of the world’s largest digital catalogs, spanning eBooks, journals, periodicals and other types of reading material. PubIt! titles will be distributed through BN.COM and Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore, which currently offers more than one million digital titles to millions of dedicated customers in-store and online.

Independent publishers and writers will appreciate PubIt!’s simple and competitive royalty model and compensation process, the details of which will be available in the coming weeks. Content owners’ intellectual property will be well-protected with Barnes & Noble’s best-in-class digital rights management technology and offered in the industry standard ePub format that allows publishers’ works to be enjoyed by millions of Barnes & Noble customers on hundreds of the most popular computing, mobile and eBook reading devices.

“As a company that has achieved much of its success by building mutually beneficial relationships with publishers and authors, Barnes & Noble’s new PubIt! service represents an exciting evolution and significant opportunity in the digital content arena,” said Theresa Horner, director, digital products, Barnes & Noble. “Barnes & Noble is uniquely positioned to support writers and publishers and bring their exciting digital works to the broadest audience of readers anywhere.”

Whether online or on-the-go, Barnes & Noble customers will have access to PubIt! titles with the opportunity to browse, sample, buy and download the digital content in seconds to their devices with free BN reader software. Using Barnes & Noble’s breakthrough Read In Store™ technology, NOOK™ customers can also browse the complete contents of PubIt! titles while in Barnes & Noble stores.

PubIt! is a convenient one-stop-shop, allowing publishers to get their content in front of consumers for purchase and reading on the most widely adopted mobile devices and software platforms. By following simple steps to upload their content in an industry standard format for electronic titles, content creators can reach consumers on hundreds of devices including: NOOK by Barnes & Noble, PC, Mac, iPad™, iPhone, BlackBerry and others. For more information on free BN eReader software and apps, please visit www.bn.com/ebooks/download-reader.asp.

More information on PubIt!, which will be available this summer, and the benefits of joining Barnes & Noble’s expansive and trusted digital content catalog can be found at www.bn.com/pubit.