The Ebook price war has gone nuclear. The $259 Kindle (from Amazon), and the $259 Nook (from Barnes and Noble) have been battling it out for months.
Now Barnes and Noble has announced it has lowered the price on the 3G/WiFi Nook to $199, and introduced a new WiFi-only model for $149. It’s now available at Best Buy and B&N. A new firmware version 1.4, will allow the free use of AT&T wireless hotspots everywhere.
UPDATE: The Kindle has now been reduced to $189 in response.
The Nook has a microSD expansion slot and runs Android.
The latest NOOK software, with access to AT&T’s free WiFi network, also offers a Go To Page feature, which allows customers to jump to a specific page number in an open eBook, an extra extra large font and performance enhancements to open eBooks even faster. The software update is via manual download, available here or, for NOOKs connected to Wi-Fi, via automatic download over the next week.
In other news, Apple today rolled out version 1.1 of its iBooks app, which is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch in addition to the iPad. It supports PDF viewing, and boasts a range of other more minor improvements, including new ways to bookmark, your choice of white or sepia colored pages, more font options and bug fixes.
Google last week said it plans to begin selling e-books by this summer. They can be read on any Internet-connected device including Apple’s iPad. Google’s new e-book store will launch sometime during the first half of 2010, and will have about 500,000 titles at launch. Under Google’s payment scheme, publishers will receive about 63 percent of the gross sales, and Google will keep the remaining 37 percent.
Google also hopes to offer Editions titles through other online book retailers. In this scenario, online retailers would get 55 percent of revenues minus a small fee paid to Google, and publishers would get 45 percent, according to Read Write Web.
- Apple’s iPad is selling briskly, moving 2 million units in its first two months.
- Amazon launched its Kindle e-reader in late 2007. Although Amazon has never released sales data, some estimate 2-3 million units have been sold.
- The Barnes & Noble Nook was the first electronic book reader based on the Android platform, and features WiFi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity with a MicroSD expansion slot for extra storage. Barnes & Noble Pubit gives authors the ability to upload and sell content through B&N’s website and eBookstore.
- Borders ebooks feature the Sony reader but their new 6-inch Kobo eReader is $150 (but no WiFi).
Mark Coker, chief executive of self-publishing service Smashwords, a site where writers can publish their own e-books, said recently that it has signed a distribution deal with Apple to put its books into the iPad iBookstore.
The ePub format has become a defacto standard for ebooks — but different e-book stores use different DRM standards on top of it. To allow cross platform compatibility, Amazon sells Kindle readers on the iTunes store, enabling iPad and iPhone users to tap into Amazon’s ebooks on their iPad. You’d think publishers would get together and agree on ONE DRM standard. But noooo.
Wikipedia has a comparison of ebook readers and ebook formats. In 2009, the global publishing business, including print and digital, was worth $71 billion, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Related e-book articles on Dailywireless include; Battle of the eBooks, Tablets, Tablets, Tablets, E-Magazines: Pay Once, Play Anywhere, The $99 Android Tablet, Barnes & Noble: Self Publishing this Summer, Apple Sells 1M iPads, Google Editions: World’s Largest Virtual Bookstore?, Google Tablet for Verizon?, Android Outsells Apple, Flash Support in Android 2.2, Battle of the eBooks, Dell Android Tablet for AT&T/T-Mobile?, Google Tablet: Android or What?, and Tablet Revolution!
