New "Book Club" for Kobo E-Reader Users

Tablet producer Kobo just announced on Thursday, December 1 that it will be offering a “book club” for consumers that buy and activate its e-reader for a limited time.

The service will be called the 2012 Kobo Book Club, and it will be available to all consumers that purchase the Kobo eReader Touch or Kobo Touch with Offers. Kobo explained that at the end of each month through the end of 2012, it will offer all U.S. and Canadian users a free e-book that they can keep.

Kobo also announced on Thursday that it had a new firmware upgrade for its Vox eReader Tablet. The upgrade will be automatically downloaded and installed when users connect to the Internet with their device. However, unfortunately for Vox users, they will not have access to the Book Club.

Although Kobo is supposed to be the top-selling e-reader in Canada, it has plenty of competitors in the United States. The tablet has to go against Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook. Kobo, however, has one up on these other e-readers with the new Book Club. Amazon offered an e-book lending program recently, but it really isn’t much of anything in comparison to the Book Club.

"Kobo has an amazing family of eReaders and with the launch of the 2012 Book Club there's never been a better time to buy a Kobo Touch eReader," said Michael Tamblyn, executive vice president of content, sales and merchandising for Kobo. "Our Kobo Touch eReaders bring the ultimate in eReading value to readers around the world, and this new book club is another example of how we can take that great experience and make it even better for Kobo Touch eReader owners."

Kobo released the list of publishers that will be supplying the books for the Book Club, and I have to say that they are a little obscure. The list includes e-Reads, F+W Publications, Gooseberry Patch, Kensington Publishing, New Word City, and the Harvard Business Review, and Kobo said that the writers whose work will be featured in the club include Blake Crouch, J.A. Konrath, Shayna Krishnasamy, and Phyllis Smallman.

On Thursday Kobo also went on to apologize to its customers. It said that it has made some recent changes to the infrastructures of its customer service, and the transition hasn’t really been as smooth as they had hoped.

“The transition to our new platform has caused challenges for some of our customers resulting in longer phone wait times and delayed email responses," said Mark Stevens, vice president of customer care, wrote in a letter to customers. "We have been working diligently to identify the problems and resolve them to reach the level of service our customers expect. As a result, we expect to see significant improvement in response times within the next week."

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Black Friday Sales Are the "Best Ever" for Kindle Tablets

On Monday, November 28 Amazon reported that Black Friday sales of its Kindle tablets were the highest that Kindle has ever seen.

"Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family—customers purchased 4X as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday— and last year was a great year," Vice President of Amazon Kindle Dave Limp said in a statement. "In addition, we're seeing a lot of customers buying multiple Kindles—one for themselves and others as gifts—we expect this trend to continue on Cyber Monday and through the holiday shopping season."

So far, Amazon has not released the exact sales figures from Black Friday, but clearly they are going to be impressive. Of course, it was the Kindle Fire that was at the top of all the Kindle sales charts. Consumers have been pumped about the Kindle Fire since it was first announced by Amazon. In late October the Amazon chief Jeff Bezos said that the day that the Kindle Fire was announced was the “biggest order day ever for Kindle.” He went on to say that the Kindle Fire had doubled the amount of pre-orders from the previous Kindle launch.

Target offered plenty of tablet options on Black Friday including the Kindle Fire, Motorola Xoom, Asus Eee Pad and Acer Iconia, but the company reported that the Kindle Fire was the store’s best-selling tablet this past Friday.

Best Buy also reported impressive sales of the device. Wendy Fritz, senior vice president of computing, tablets, and e-readers at Best Buy, commented on Kindle Fire sales saying, "If this Black Friday was any indication, they are only getting hotter as we get into the shopping season."

In general Black Friday shopping online and in-store went up from last year. "Despite some analysts' predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for e-commerce with more than $800 million in spending," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. "With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels."

Data has just been released from a survey that was conducted by the National Retail Federation showing that there was an estimated total of 226 million shoppers this year compared to 212 million in 2010. According to the NRF, the brick-and-mortar and online shopping totals are the highest that they have been in the past five years.

"Each of the top online retailers generated significantly greater Black Friday activity compared to last year," said Fulgoni, in a statement. "Amazon.com once again led the pack, with 50 percent more visitors than any other retailer, while also showing the highest growth rate versus last year. However, it is telling that the top multi-channel retailers also showed strong growth in visitors, demonstrating the importance of the online channel to the retail industry as a whole."

"Consumers are clearly demonstrating their desire to spend this holiday season, but are far from throwing caution to the wind when it comes to how much they will spend on gifts," said Phil Rist, executive vice president at BIGresearch, in a statement. "Retailers will have to stick to an aggressive holiday promotion schedule to keep consumers interested."

Sources: PCMag - Amazon Reports 'Best Ever' Black Friday Kindle Sales, PCMag - Black Friday Spending Up 16.4% From 2010 and PCMag - Nov. Online Spending up 15%; Black Friday, 26%

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Could the Kindle Fire Outsell Apple's iPad?

Consumers can’t seem to wait to get their hands on the Kindle Fire, and according to Cult of Android, there are numbers that have been compiled showing that the newly released tablet has the potential to outsell Apple’s iPad.

About a week ago, there were leaked screen shots of Amazon’s internal inventory management system that allegedly revealed that consumers had already preordered more than 250,000 Kindle Fires. Amazon announced the tablet less than a week prior to the leaked screen shots. Cult of Android claims that the tablet is already selling around 50,000 devices a day, more than 2,000 tablets per hour.

Two thousand devices per hour?!? That’s absolutely insane! If these numbers are correct, this would mean that Amazon is set to have the biggest tablet launch to-date. It would be even bigger than the launch of the iPad or the iPad 2.

On April 3, 2010 Apple sold 300,000 of the original iPads at the devices launch. As of right now, Apple still has not released any of the details concerning the launch of the iPad 2, but Cult of Android claims that somewhere close to 2.5 million devices were sold in the first month that the device was available.

So far, Amazon has not released any numbers concerning the Kindle Fire, but it has been estimated that Amazon presold 95,000 units the very first day that it was announced.

According to Cult of Android, none of the other devices have had presale numbers like the Kindle Fire. BlackBerry sold 250,000 PlayBooks in the first month, while Motorola only sold 100,000 Xooms.

The Kindle Fire does not ship until November 15, so Amazon has plenty of time to overtake the iPad, even if presale numbers begin to slow. Another tablet could definitely help to boost the sales numbers, and reportedly Amazon is working on a 10-inch version of the Kindle Fire.

The media is saying that the Kindle Fire is the tablet that could actually present some decent competition to Apple’s iPad. It also helps that the Kindle Fire will only cost you $199 and that Amazon is offering free two-day shipping. Who knows how it will all turn out, but if Cult of Android is even close to being on track with their estimates, the Kindle Fire really could become the tablet to beat.

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Amazon's New Way of Supplying Textbooks

It’s the time of year that college students start to think about laptops and school supplies and textbooks, whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, text books are something that most students cannot avoid. They are something that students need to be thinking about because they can cost you an arm and a leg, and once you shell out all the money for them, the bookstore doesn’t want to give you two cents for them when you try to sell them back after you are done with the classes. Well, this year, Amazon is offering you a new way to deal with the text book dilemma. On Monday, Amazon unveiled its new Kindle Textbook Rental service. It allows students to rent textbooks via their Kindle or Kindle apps for up to a year.

One of the great things about the new service is that Amazon promises that they can save students up to 80 percent. "Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks. Now we're excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need—with savings up to 80 percent off the print list price on a 30-day rental," Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement.

Customers will be able to rent textbooks for as little as 30 days or as many as 360. It all depends on how long the student needs the textbook. They will be able to increase their rental period in one-day increments or have the option to even buy the book if they wish. Amazon made sure to mention that they will make sure to save all of the notes that individual users make in the margins, even after the rental has expired.

"Normally, when you sell your print textbook at the end of the semester, you lose all the margin notes and highlights you made as you were studying," Limp said. "We're extending our Whispersync technology so that you get to keep and access all of your notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, available anytime, anywhere—even after a rental expires. If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced."

Amazon also mentioned that users will be able to access all of their rented textbooks across devices. Say you start reading a book on your Kindle, you will be able to pick up wherever you leave off via your Kindle smartphone app whenever you want.

According to Amazon, tens of thousands of textbooks will be ready and available for the 2011 school year. A few publishers that will be included are John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Students will really be able to enjoy great savings with this new service. For example, to buy an intermediate level accounting book on the Kindle, it will cost you about $110, but to rent it, you will put out less than $40. An organic chemistry book goes for about $100 when you buy it, but when you rent it, it is closer to around $40. That is some serious savings!

In July, 2010 Borders unveiled an online textbook market similar to Amazon’s service, and in August, Barnes and Noble also announced a Web-based textbook rental service. It’s good that Amazon is now up to speed. I think that the new service is bound to be a success.

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Amazon's Kindle E-book Sales Surpass Sales of Paperbacks

Amazon has just announced that their digital book sales on Amazon.com have overtaken the sales of their paperback books. The company also reported that for the fourth quarter of 2010 it had a 36 percent increase in its net sales. This is definitely some interesting and exciting news for Amazon.

However, despite the fantastic sales numbers reported by Amazon, their stock went down about 9 percent. According to Wall Street, the issue was that Amazon’s growth was completely expected.

Amazon’s chief financial officer Tom Szkutak said during a conference call that the revenues that Amazon reported for the fourth quarter were the strongest numbers in the company’s history since 2000. The company reported a net income of $416 million for the fourth quarter and a net sale of $12.95 billion. On a year-to-year basis, Amazon’s net income has increased 8 percent, while its revenues went up a whole 36 percent.

As I said, the sales of digital books at Amazon.com have passed the sales of paperback books, but it’s not by a whole lot. Since the start of the new year, Amazon has sold 115 Kindle books for every 100 paperback books. The company also reported that since January 1, it has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. Amazon made sure to mention that this information was coming from “across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition." The company also said that Kindle books that were free were excluded from the numbers.

So far, the company has not revealed the number of Kindles that have been sold. Some predict that Amazon probably sold more than 8 million Kindles in 2010, but who really knows? The company did say though that during the fourth quarter, it sold “millions” of its Amazon Kindles with the new Pearl screen.

"Thanks to our customers, we achieved two big milestones," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, in a statement. "We had our first $10 billion quarter, and after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com. Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected - and it's on top of continued growth in paperback sales."

Amazon doesn’t really seem too eager to report their numbers concerning the Kindle all of the time, but the company did report that there are currently 810,000 books in the Kindle Store. That number doesn’t even include the millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books that are also available e-books for the Kindle.

Things seem to be going pretty well for Amazon. They have some up and coming projects that they are currently working on that should boost their numbers even higher. Szkutak declined to comment on Amazon's plans for Lovefilm. Lovefilm is being kind of described as Europe's version of Netflix. "Stay tuned on that one," Szutak said.

Szutak also declined to say anything about whether or not Amazon was planning on expanding its local grocery delivery system that they are doing a trial run of in Seattle called Amazon Fresh.

Amazon says that it really expects to grow somewhere between 28 and 39 percent in the first quarter.

All of these latest developments for Amazon are definitely exciting. It’s still pretty incredible that Kindle e-books outsold paperback books, but I guess this is beginning to look like a very bright future for Amazon, as well as other e-book providers.

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Nook is Best-Selling Item at Barnes & Noble

On Thursday, December 30, Barnes & Noble announced that the Nook, the company’s popular line of e-book readers, is now their best-selling item.

They went on to say that they sell more e-books than any other physical book on their website at BN.com. The company, which has been around for 40 years now, has sold “millions” of devices. They now offer a variety of different devices in the Nook line including versions of the devices that are available with 3G, Wi-Fi, and color. Barnes & Noble said that the Nook Color, which was introduced in October just eight weeks before Christmas, was the company’s top selling gift for the 2010 holiday season.

A press release stated that the device “has received high praise and critical acclaim from leading technology and consumer media outlets including being named ‘Editors' Choice’ and the ‘Best Android Tablet of The Year.’”

The company did not volunteer any numbers concerning the top selling device, but they did say that the sales numbers for the Nook Color have “continued to exceed the company’s highest expectations.” Barnes & Noble did, however, release some numbers concerning sales on Christmas Day. The company said that 1 million Nook e-books were purchased and downloaded on Christmas Day alone. The top downloaded titles included James Patterson's "Cross Fire," Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," John Grisham's "The Confession," and former President George W. Bush's memoir "Decision Points."

"Nook Color became the gift of choice over the holidays for people who love to read everything – books, magazines, newspapers, children's books and more – in rich, beautiful color," said William Lynch, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, in a statement. "The success of Nook Color, along with our unique ability to market Nook devices to readers in our stores and through our strong channel partnerships with Best Buy, Walmart and Books-a-Million, resulted in the continued explosive growth of our digital content business and our Nook line, our most successful products ever."

This announcement from Barnes & Noble came just a few days after the announcement from Amazon that the Kindle 3 is the best-selling product in the company’s history. Like Barnes & Noble, Amazon has not released any specific numbers, but they did say that they have sold “millions” of devices as well.

In July, Amazon announced that they were at the “tipping point” at which they were beginning to sell more digital books than actual physical hardcover books. Analysts now believe that Amazon.com is the current leader in the e-reader market.

Unfortunately, since neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble have released any specific, concrete numbers, there is no way to compare the sales numbers of the two companies to determine who the true leader is.

For those curious about the Nook Color, the press release describes it as “the first full-color touch Reader's Tablet that integrates books, magazines, newspapers and children's books – all in amazing, rich color in a device that weighs less than a pound. It features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen and is the most social reading device ever built.”

The device is available at Barnes & Noble, www.NOOKcolor.com, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Books-A-Million stores. The Nook Wi-Fi is available for $149, the Nook 3G is available for $199, and the Nook Color is available for $249.

I really hope that Barnes & Noble and Amazon release their sales numbers for their e-readers sometime in the near future. It would be really interesting to compare them side by side. It’s incredible how well e-readers are doing. This holiday season has definitely proved that the public is very excited about the possibilities included with e-readers. At first I didn’t exactly understand how an e-reader could replace a physical book. I’m a pretty avid reader and I like the feeling of a hardback book, but the convenience of an e-reader has won me over. To have an entire library in your hands at all times is incredible. I can definitely say that they have made a e-book fan out of me. I’m glad that the companies are both doing well, and I can’t wait to soon see who the true leader in the e-reader market is.

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E-reader Sales Greatly Increase in 2010

According to Gartner, a technology research and business leader, e-reader sales are set to reach a total of 6.6 million units in 2010. This is up 79.8 percent from the sales in 2009, and in 2011 it is predicted that global e-reader sales will surpass 11 million units, a 68.3 percent increase from this year.

"The connected e-reader market has grown dramatically during the past two years, driven by sales of Amazon's e-readers, primarily in North America,” said said Hugues De La Vergne, the principal research analyst at Gartner. This is the dominant region for e-reader sales, and we predict that it will account for sales of just over 4 million units in 2010."

“North America will remain a key market through 2014, although its dominance will decline significantly as regions such as Western Europe and Asia/Pacific become the leading locations for growth,” he continued. “Growth in North American and other markets will remain constrained by the success of media tablets, such as the Apple iPad."

As of right now, there are three dominant e-reader producers in the market: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony. Most likely, there will be new competitors that appear in the very near future that will offer low cost devices. These could definitely cause there to be a little more competition in the e-reader market. PC firms and large consumer electronic producers such as HP and Dell are trying to leave their own footprints and make an impact on the market.

Media tablets are the biggest threat to e-readers. They can offer users better experiences for reading electronic magazines and newspapers due to the fact that most of them have color and full video support. Media tablets are able to support e-reader applications as well as many functions that only media tablets can support.

"With media tablets offering more functionality, e-reader vendors need to target avid readers who may see the value of a stand-alone device that performs particularly well," said Allen Weiner, research vice president at Gartner. "E-reader vendors will also need to offer lower prices than for more fully featured media tablets,” Weiner continued. “This will entail smaller profit margins and potential hardware subsidies at retail, and/or the ability to obtain lower-priced components. We think few end users will buy both an e-reader and a media tablet, so it is important that e-readers retain a price advantage."

This holiday season Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio said that his company has barely been able to meet the demand for its Nook Color, and Amazon has said that they have been selling millions of Kindles. Sony, the other dominant e-reader producer, hadn’t really been saying a lot about their holiday sales, but just recently, Sony said that it’s “expecting both the Reader Touch and Daily Editions will sell out around the world before the holidays.”

A Sony rep said that they have sold millions of Readers around the world. The rep continued by saying that cost was not the factor that “it was predicted to be.” Despite the difference in price, the sales of the Reader Touch Edition PRS-650 have overcome those of the Pocket Edition PRS-350.

Both of the models have improved touch screens. The PRS-650 does have a larger 6-inch screen and some added features that are not found on the PRS-350 with its 5-inch screen. The Daily Edition PRS-950 is the only model that features a 7-inch screen and wireless connectivity with both Wi-Fi and 3G. (It is selling right now at Best Buy for $250.)

The important statement that Sony has been making often is “around the world.” Sony is marketing their e-readers inside and outside of the U.S., and they probably sell more Readers outside of the country. On the other hand, the Nook is sold exclusively in the United States, and the Kindle is available in the U.S. and the U.K. This will most likely change sometime soon, as Amazon and Barnes & Noble will probably make a global push in the very near future.

E-readers are very popular devices. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the devices are spreading not only throughout the U.S. but also around the entire globe. It will be interesting to see if some other manufacturers are more prevalent by next year and how much the devices will increase in popularity.

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Facetime-Compatible iPad from Apple?

According to sources, Apple is already hard at work updating the iPad. There are a variety of new features that the iPad will include, but one of the most exciting features is Apple’s Facetime video chat capabilities.

Apple will have to build a user-facing camera into the iPad. It will most likely be very similar to the built-in camera on the iPhone 4 or the newest version of the iPod Touch. Apple Insider sources are saying that this revamped version of the iPad is already in the testing phase and should be released no later than the first quarter of 2011. Apple really hopes to be able to release their new iPad before the 2010 holiday season.

The iPad has taken the world by storm. I think that these new upgrades will only cause sales to go up even more. In July Apple had sold over 3.27 million iPads. The demand for iPads was incredible when they were first released. Apple’s shipping process was disrupted for months. They were forced to delay the shipping of U.S. and international orders of the device due to the unbelievable popularity and sales of the iPad. Starting in late August, Apple finally has been able to get a handle on their iPad sales. Orders that are placed now are shipped within 24 hours.

Facetime has become one of Apple’s newest technological advances that they are incorporating in their devices. It only makes sense to include it with the iPad. Facetime is something that people want in their devices. It’s a novelty that deserves to be a part of an elegant device like the iPad. If Apple can have the newest version of the iPad with Facetime available before the holiday season, I have a feeling that lots of lucky people will be finding iPads in their stockings. I guess we’ll just have to see if Apple can get it all together by then.

Not sure if you're convinced the iPad is the tablet for you? Check out Samsung's Galaxy Tab or the Kindle 3G.

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Google to Sell eBooks This Summer

Google is going to be throwing its hat into yet another race this summer: the eBook market. Google's new eBook store, called "Editions," is expected to be open in June or July and the company hopes it will become a big competitor for Apple and Amazon.

Apple, of course, sells digital books for its new iPad device and Amazon for the device synonymous with eBooks, the Kindle. Amazon has sold over three million Kindles while the iPad, which has only been on the market for a month, has sold over a million.

Editions will sell over 12 million books, which will be available to read from any computer or mobile gadget, or anywhere you can access a full web browser. Publishers will be allowed to set the prices for their books and the eBooks will also be available for bookstores to sell. The stores will keep a majority of the revenue.

Google is also working on Google Book Search, which allows authors and publishers to sell "orphan books," which would allow people to search for those books and pay to use them. Authors and publishers who scan and sell the books would make 63% of the profit, while Google makes the remaining 37%. That effort is currently in limbo, due to legal opposition encouraged by the United States Department of Justice.

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Kindle for Mac

Ever wanted to read your Kindle books on your Mac? There is now an app for that! And it's available now - free - in over 100 countries. Amazon announced the new application last week.

Currently, the Kindle Store (which can be found at Amazon.com/KindleStore) has over 450,000 books, which includes many new releases, most of the New York Times Bestsellers, and other popular books you can't find in digital form anywhere else. Kindle books can already be read on Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, Blackberry, PC, and now Mac. Kindle for iPad is coming soon.

In a statement, Jay Marine, the director of Amazon Kindle said of the new app, "Kindle for Mac is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX. For those customers around the world who don’t yet have a Kindle, Kindle for Mac is a great way to instantly access and read the most popular new releases as well as their old favorites."

The new app utilizes Amazon's Whipersync technology that allows you to save and synchronize your bookmarks, no matter what device you're using to access your book. You can switch from Kindle to your Mac to your iPhone and never lose your place!

So what all can you do with your Kindle for Mac app? For starters, you can purchase, download, and read the books available in the Kindle store, and access any books you've purchased previously and stored on Amazon's servers. You can read in ten different font sizes and adjust the words on each line. View any notes or highlights you made in the book on any other gadgets and read books in full color, which is great if you read children's books, travel books, and textbooks.

According to the press release, Kindle for Mac will have more features added to it in the future, such as full text search, and the ability to create or edit notes and highlights. To download the free app, visit amazon.com/kindleformac.

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Barnes & Noble Introduces Nook

Yesterday, book-selling giant Barnes & Noble introduced "Nook," a new e-reader that experts say will give Amazon's Kindle a run for its money this holiday season. The e-reader market is expected to see a lot of business with a projected three million devices being sold by the end of 2009 and six million are expected to sell by the end of 2010. This particular device will be available in Barnes and Noble's 800 American stores by late November, however the store is already taking pre-orders.

Barnes and Noble says Nook will allow users to share most books, a function that puts it a step ahead of Kindle. For wireless, Nook will use AT&T and Google's Android Mobile platform. It also features a unique dual use of display and color. A small color display, located below the main display, allows users to browse titles at the bookstore. It also uses e-Ink technology for easier reading. It can hold up to 1,500 books (the same as Kindle) but it does lack a web browser.

Nook books can also be viewed on Blackberries, iPhones, PC, Macs and other personal electronic devices. This publishing standard is called the ePub format. It also acts as antipiracy protection from Adobe. Barnes and Noble is well prepared for the release, with a newly opened bookstore of over 700,000 titles, over twice of what the Amazon store has to offer. Another advantage is that users can connect the device to free Wi-Fi when shopping inside an actual Barnes & Noble store, something Amazon/Kindle users can't do.

Several other e-readers are expected to hit the market soon, but none with the relationship Barnes and Noble has with publishers, which offers another advantage. Upon announcing the Nook, yesterday, Barnes and Noble stock shares rose 10 cents on New York Stock Exchange.