SubscribeBarnes & Noble said Monday that its popular nook e-book reader is back in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of the bookseller’s U.S. stores this week. Customers also will be able to enjoy exclusive Valentine’s Day-themed online content this month, the company said.
The nook differs in several ways from many of the e-readers announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, which suffer from either high prices or little access to consumer channels, said Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey.
“The nook, despite its slow start, is priced right, targeted to book readers rather than skipping off to focus on magazine or newspaper readers, and, most importantly, the nook will be featured in front of millions of book buyers every month as they walk through the store,” McQuivey said. “You can’t underestimate the power of that.”
A Real Shot at No. 3
The nook is the first e-reader to offer digital lending for a wide selection of e-books, and the company’s latest software update now places a LendMe flag next to the eligible e-books in the user’s My Library folder. Though the machine’s LendMe technology only applies to select books and only lasts 14 days, McQuivey considers this to be a huge step forward, given that people often share books and then spend a considerable amount of time talking about them with friends and family members.
“This fact is so critical to the way people read books that it is amazing that none of the e-readers yet offered to the market have any meaningful book sharing built into them,” McQuivey wrote in a blog.
Among all the e-reader launches beyond Sony and Amazon, McQuivey thinks the nook has a real shot at becoming the third key player — but not because of its social features.
“The social features…
Via NewsFactor
Yacine.org: Nook E-Reader Heads to Barnes & Noble Stores http://yacine.org/2010/02/08/nook-e-reader-heads-to-barnes-noble-stores/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter