NBC News to start publishing interactive e-books

Interactive e-books are a hot business. NBC News is the latest major player to dip its toes into the e-book publishing business, the company announced on Monday.

The new unit, called called NBC Publishing, will exploit NBC’s extensive library of archival video, audio, and text to create interactive e-books, Publishers Weekly reports. The new group will be able to take content from all NBC News properties as well as NBC Sports, NBCUniversal, Universal Pictures, and … Continue Reading

Barnes & Noble explores spinning off Nook business

Amid record digital sales and floundering physical sales, Barnes & Noble announced today that it plans to explore spinning off its Nook and e-book business.

Barnes & Noble is in the precarious position of having its losing physical bookstore business dragging down its growing e-reader/tablet and e-book business. Because of that setup, the company’s financial picture is ugly. The company just cut its sales forecast for fiscal 2012, which ends April 30, to between $7 … Continue Reading

Amazon attracts last-min shoppers with free 2-day shipping on all Kindles

In a push for last-minute and impulse buys, Amazon is offering its customers free two-day shipping on the four most-recent Kindle models before the end of the day on Dec. 21.

Amazon has been making an aggressive push for its new Kindle line up, especially with the Fire, which it hopes will be a vehicle for media content sales. Last week, the company said it had already sold “millions” of the Fire, and it was … Continue Reading

Amazon starts $6M fund to boost Kindle’s indie authors and publishers

Amazon has started a $6 million annual fund that seeks to encourage more independent authors to publish their works on Kindle first, the company announced today.

Amazon’s Kindle family is on a roll with strong sales over Black Friday, and the $199 Kindle Fire tablet may already be the number two tablet after the iPad in sales. The next piece of the puzzle Amazon needs to figure out is how to get more authors to … Continue Reading

Amazon: Black Friday Kindle sales up 4X, Kindle Fire tops charts for 8 weeks

We might as well call it Kindle Fire Friday. Amazon revealed today that its Black Friday sales were through the roof for its Kindle lineup, though, as usual, the company didn’t offer any specific numbers.

Amazon said that sales for its entire Kindle lineup were up four times over last year’s Black Friday amount, with the Kindle Fire tablet leading the way. Additionally, the company announced that the Kindle Fire has been its top-selling product … Continue Reading

Nook Simple Touch to match Kindle’s $79 price tag on Black Friday

Barnes & Noble will release a limited edition Nook Simple Touch e-reader with a white border for a bargain-bin price of $79 on Black Friday, the company announced today.

The most basic Amazon Kindle now retails for $79, no matter what day of the week is. However, the Nook Simple Touch has several clear advantages, as the basic Kindle does not have a touch screen and features some advertising.

For Black Friday, Barnes & Noble … Continue Reading

Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet follows Kindle Fire with early release today

Barnes & Noble has released its new $249 Nook Tablet today, following Amazon’s lead by unleashing its e-reader/tablet hybrid on the market a day early.

“Nook Tablet is the best wireless reading and entertainment tablet in the 7-inch class, and the customer response has been even greater than anticipated,” said Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch, in a statement. “At these super-low prices, Nook Tablet, Nook Color and the $99 Nook Simple Touch represent the … Continue Reading

U.S. authors: Kindle Lending Library is breach of contract

U.S. authors are not pleased with Amazon’s recently announced Kindle Lending Library and are claiming the powerful online retailer is “boldly breaching its contracts” with numerous publishers.

Amazon’s new Kindle Lending Library allows Kindle owners who subscribe to the premium Amazon Prime service to borrow one e-book a month for free. With more than 5,000 books to choose from, including big-name titles like Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” trilogy, Amazon is giving potential e-book buyers … Continue Reading

Kobo announces $99 e-reader with ads, taking on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

There’s yet another $99 touch e-reader joining the fray this holiday shopping season. Kobo has announced its $99 Kobo Touch with Offers, which is the same device as a regular $130 Kobo Touch, but the screen will display ads when it is in sleep mode or turned off, as well as in what the company mysteriously refers to as “discreet places.”

The 6-inch e-reader will be a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Touch with Special … Continue Reading

Print is dying: E-readers start slaughtering print book sales (infographic)

If you believe in karma, it should come as no surprise that e-readers are slowly killing off print books — perhaps in retaliation for all those trees murdered over the years.

With the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet just days away, it’s cleear that e-readers are becoming must-have devices. E-reader and tablets have seen massive growth in adoption in the past year. A recent Pew Internet … Continue Reading

Kobo acquired: Japanese web retailer Rakuten paid $315M cash

Rakuten, the largest online shopping mall operator in Japan, has acquired e-reader manufacturer Kobo for $315 million in cash.

In the deal, Rakuten has bought 100 percent of all issued and outstanding shares of Kobo, which makes products that compete with Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle product lines.

Around fifty-eight percent of Kobo was owned by Indigo Books & Music, a Canadian retail bookstore chain. Indigo chief executive Heather Reisman said today that … Continue Reading

E-reader wars: How the Nook Tablet compares to the Kindle Fire

In a remarkably speedy attempt at one-upmanship, Barnes & Noble announced its new Nook Tablet today, a direct competitor to Amazon’s similar Kindle Fire.

They have a lot in common. Both are 7-inch, sub-$300 Android tablets, and both are shipping in time for the holiday shopping season — the Kindle Fire on Nov 18 and the Nook Tablet on Nov 15. And both could face a bit of competition from the Kobo Vox e-reader, the … Continue Reading

Hands-on with the Nook Tablet, and a chat with B&N’s Nook CTO (video)

Let me make it clear up front: The Nook Tablet looks and feels exactly like last year’s Nook Color. But Barnes & Noble is hoping that its beefed up hardware will make it a worthy contender against Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire tablet.

At Barnes & Noble’s launch event for the tablet in New York City today, I was able to get a bit of hands-on time with the Nook Tablet. I also chatted with the … Continue Reading

B&N revamps $99 Nook Simple Touch with better E-Ink screen, drops Nook Color to $199

Alongside Barnes & Noble’s announcement today of its new $249 Nook Tablet, it has also revealed that it’s upgraded its Nook Simple Touch e-reader with faster rendering software and a new E-Ink screen while also dropping the price to an eye-catching $99. It has also lowered the price of its popular Nook Color to $199.

All of Barnes & Noble’s e-reader announcements today are direct responses to Amazon’s latest refreshes of the Kindle line, including … Continue Reading

The $249 Nook Tablet : Like the Nook Color, but built for HD media

‘Tis the season of cheap tablets. Today Barnes & Noble announced its Kindle Fire competitor, simply called the Nook Tablet.

The company announced the $249 tablet today at a press event at its Union Square store in New York City, but as is often the case these days, details of the Nook Tablet were leaked last week, leaving little excitement for today’s reveal.

The Nook Tablet looks exactly like the Nook Color — but that’s … Continue Reading

Got Amazon Prime and a Kindle? Now you can borrow one book a month for free

Making its ecosystem just that much sweeter, Amazon today announced that Kindle owners subscribed to its premium Amazon Prime service will be able to borrow one e-book a month for free.

Dubbed the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, it will give Prime members access to a library of thousands of titles, including over 100 former New York Times Bestsellers.

The service, first rumored back in September, is yet another perk for Amazon Prime members, who for … Continue Reading

Kindle users get first dibs on Steve Jobs biography

Not only do Kindle users get to avoid fighting through book store crowds to get their hands on Walter Isaacson’s new Steve Jobs biography, but they also got the chance to start reading it long before everyone else.

Amazon delivered electronic copies of the book earlier this evening to Kindle users who preordered it, several hours before the book was supposed to go on sale. At the time of this post, the Jobs bio still … Continue Reading

Kindle third-gen update brings your personal files to the cloud

Owners of last year’s third-generation Kindle don’t need to buy a new model to take advantage of some nifty new cloud features.

Amazon has just released the latest update for the third-gen Kindle which will let you keep your personal documents in the cloud and easily access them from any Kindle app or newer devices. For many Kindle users, it’s a fairly major update that takes advantage of Amazon’s cloud prowess and provides yet another … Continue Reading

Nearly 75 percent of Nook Color owners are women

Thanks to its prominent position as a combination e-reader and tablet device that has books, full-color magazines and casual games, the Nook Color’s ownership is now almost 75 percent women, according to a Barnes & Noble executive.

While it was known generally that women buy more Nook Colors, we had no idea it was so one-sided. The surprising number came from Claudia Romanini Backus, Barnes & Noble’s director of developer relations, when I spoke with … Continue Reading

Why was the first Kindle so ugly? Because Jeff Bezos loved his BlackBerry

The first-generation Kindle e-reader was a revolutionary device, but it was far from pretty.

Now the reasoning behind that ugly design has become a bit clearer: Jeff Bezos pushed his designers to replicate elements of his beloved BlackBerry, the New York Times reports.

“Jeff Bezos would come into our design meetings and say he loved his BlackBerry and the ease with which he could find e-mails and respond to people,” a former Amazon designer told … Continue Reading