Barnes & Noble, with more than 700 physical locations in the U.S. and an online store, is making a serious attempt to dethrone the Kindle as the early e-reader market leader. Starting at the end of November, the Nook will sell for US$259 -- same price as the domestic-only Kindle. Like Amazon's device, the Nook features instant wireless downloads of books, newspapers and magazines. The Nook will use AT&T's 3G network for its over-the-air downloads. Both devices store about 1,500 books and are about eight inches long and five inches wide. Both take advantage of a wide selection of books available for download -- Amazon touts 350,000 books, while B&N says it will have "1 million" choices, but appears to be including newspapers and magazines in that number.

The similarities end there. Barnes & Noble has added a color touchscreen section to the bottom portion of the device's face. Most of the upper portion supports 16-level grayscale e-ink, but the 3.5 inch touchscreen section enables navigation, browsing and flipping through book cover art. Another key difference: the LendMe technology that allows users to lend the books they've downloaded to anyone else who is using another Nook, or is using Barnes and Noble's e-reader software on a smartphone, PC or Mac. The "borrowed" books disappear after 14 days. The Nook can also access Barnes & Noble WiFi hotspots in stores for downloads and browsing.

We all love to flip through a glossy, interesting magazine on the plane, in the dentist's waiting room, or stretched out on the sofa in the evening. However magazines have not been isolated from the troubles that print media are having due to the online world. Many magazines are struggling to survive and some of them are moving completely online in order to stick around. In November we reported that leading tech magazine PC Magazine would go 100% online from February 2009, after 27 years of existing in print form. Let's look at how PC World is doing, along with another digital magazine that we like called Avantoure.

Our writer Frederic Lardinois raised a very good question when PC World went digital: why is PC Magazine putting time and effort into producing a digital edition of its magazine, instead of just focusing on improving its website? The answer probably comes down to one word: design. The best thing about magazines, to many of us, is their design. Probably the most successful tech magazine of this era is Wired, which is renowned for its design.

More...

The problem is that the costs aren't nearly as much lower as you might believe. Here's one breakdown from Money magazine for a hardcover bestseller by way of Scott Laming of BookFinder.com Journal:

Based on a list price of $27.95

$3.55 - Pre-production - This amount covers editors, graphic designers, and the like
$2.83 - Printing - Ink, glue, paper, etc
$2.00 - Marketing - Book tour, NYT Book Review ad, printing and shipping galleys to journalists
$2.80 - Wholesaler - The take of the middlemen who handle distribution for publishers
$4.19 - Author Royalties - A bestseller like (John) Grisham will net about 15% in royalties, lesser known authors get less. Also the author will be paying a slice of this pie piece to his agent, publicist, etc.

This leaves $12.58, Money magazine calls this the profit margin for the retailer, however, when was the last time you saw a bestselling novel sold at its cover price.

One way to look at this is to look at the percentage of the list price that printing represents. That's 10 percent--plus at least a chunk of the wholesaler line item. So let's call it 20 percent in all.

More...

A few telling nuggets from this year's event:

- Major publishing houses, such as Random House and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, cut so far back on floor space that they held meetings in windowless basement rooms.

- The Associated Press described this year's Expo as "a low-budget, low-celebrity convention, with fewer parties and fewer advanced copies of books than in the past, and a sense that the best way to meet expectations was to lower them."

- Instead of continuing as a three-day weekend show, next year's Expo is likely to be scaled down, maybe held midweek over two days, and maybe open to the public.

More...

Publishing Technology is creating a new service which will allow publishers to sell their 'e-books' directly though their own websites. Publishing Technology is hoping to launch the service later in the year.

The company has already been running trials with Random House, Harper Collins and Penguin in a move which could cut out the need for the big internet intermediaries.

George Lossius, chief executive said: "Our real market is the laptop and the mobile, whether iPhone, PDA or BlackBerry. In our opinion it's where the big market is going to be in the future."

That "WhisperNet" wireless service Amazon has developed with (silent partner) Sprint/Nextel for the Kindle e-book has rivals panting.
WhisperNet enables "anytime, anywhere" ordering and instant downloads of books, magazines, newspapers and blogs from the Kindle store onto the sharp-screened portable, with purchases charged to an Amazon account. (Wireless network access fees are worked into device and download costs.)

"At least four or five" potential e-book makers and marketers are testing the delivery of content via Verizon and AT&T wireless networks, said execs at the CTIA gathering.

We're certain of at least two:
- Sony has said it will add wireless connectivity to next-generation versions of its Reader Digital Books.
- And News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch says his company is investing in a mobile screen tablet designed for reading newspapers with a subscription or per-copy-fee structure.

"People are used to reading everything on the 'Net for free, and that's going to have to change," vowed the publisher.

More...

There has been a flurry of optimism and activity around the once-derided idea that people might read books on a digital screen. Just this year, new electronic reading devices have emerged from Amazon, Samsung and Fujitsu, while mobile phones like iPhone from Apple have flowered seemingly overnight into acceptable reading devices for many bookworms.

And just as digital media have begun to change the nature of news, music and video, the emergence of e-books is causing various entrepreneurs and technologists to reconsider the kind of experience that books might one day deliver.

More...

“In the digital space, books represent one of the top three fastest growing applications,” said Joyce, Worldwide Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Digital Printing Solutions, Kodak. “Book publishing accounts for 25 percent of all printed pages, but only a small number of books are printed digitally, so there is tremendous potential for growth in this area.”

For print service providers, digital printing provides tremendous gains in productivity. “It’s a leaner process that also helps minimize the need for floor space, as complete book blocks are produced instead of signatures that need collating,” added Joyce.

For publishers, the process of digitally printing short runs on demand helps reduce print overruns, which cuts down on having obsolete products and the need for costly warehousing. Digital production also enables a high degree of customization, opening up many new creative opportunities for authors and publishers, and making it easier than ever to customize book content or covers for current marketing activities.

More...

DM NEWS, 9 March 2009: As part of last year's class-action settle­ment with groups of authors and publishers, Google has launched a worldwide print legal notice campaign targeting owners of book copyrights. Per the settlement, Google had to inform copyright holders in a way that was considered by the courts to be “reason­able and practicable,” which basically means buying a print ad in every country.

The settlement followed a lawsuit, which alleged that Google's plan to digitize books violated the rights of copyright holders.

More...

GUARDIAN, 8 March 2009: When it comes to technology futures, we're all drunks, always looking in the wrong place. Take mobile web browsing. Once we were all agreed that accessing the web via the tiny screen of a mobile phone was a non-starter, no matter what the networks said. The screens were simply too small to read a web page with any comfort. Mobile web browsing would not take off until larger-sized portable displays appeared on the market. QED.

More...