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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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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New Nook Color at Barnes & Noble

On Tuesday, October 26th, Barnes & Noble released their first major brand color e-book reader. In the past few months, other companies like Literati and Pandigital have released their own color e-book reader devices, but Barnes & Noble is the company that really got things right.

The device has been dubbed the Nook Color. The classy e-book reader features a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 LCD screen from LG surrounded by a black bevel that offers customers over 16 million different colors. The device weighs under a pound, runs Android 2.1, features built-in Wi-Fi, 8GB of memory, and a microSD card slot that allows users to add even more memory to the device. The battery life of the device comes in at about eight hours, which is a lot less than many of the other e-book readers available as of now.

At the time of the launching of the device, Barnes & Noble’s bookstore will have more than two million books available and over a hundred periodicals. These periodicals can either be subscribed to or purchased as single issues, which is a nice touch.

There are several new things featured in the Nook Color that have not been included with the previous devices in the Nook line. One of these fantastic features is the “Nook Kids” section that offers a variety of different children’s books. Children are given the option to either read the book to themselves or have the book read to them out loud by the e-book itself.

Other great features include the social integration option. It allows users to easily send a quote or status to Facebook or Twitter while reading a book. Also included with the Nook Color is the LendMe feature. This allows users to lend a book to a friend and see the books that your friends have that you might like to borrow. Obviously there are restrictions put into place by the publishers, but no matter what, this is still a really cool feature.

You can expect to have a wonderful reading experience with the Nook Color. The screen is bright and extremely responsive, and navigation is incredibly simple with the device. There is one single button at the bottom of the device that works as the home button. It allows you to go to the home screen or to help navigate books and apps.

The bugs are still being worked out of the Nook Color, but it really does give you a pretty darn good experience. The software found on the Nook Color is definitely much better than the software found on the original Nook. Right now, loading books and apps is rather slow, but flipping through the pages of the books or swiping across the screen is very quick and responsive.

Barnes & Noble says that they will continue to sell the original Nook, which has had a large firmware update that worked out many of the kinks that had been the complaints of many customers. The Nook Color will be available on Friday, November 19th. It will be sold at Best Buy, Walmart, Books a Million, and online for $249. If you’re looking for an e-book reader, the Nook Color is definitely one to keep on your list of possibilities.

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