Tags : amazon, barnes and noble, ebook readers, ebooks, kindle, nook
The E-Reader’s Future
The latest Internet tech pundits’ obsession has not been related to the ADD-laced “real time web” proclamations that some are so annoyingly fond of, but of a much older format…
Books.
News has been slowly leaking out regarding Barnes & Noble’s “Nook” e-reader device, and the more that surfaces, the more it sounds like a surprising and wonderful device that could prove to be the harbinger of the e-reader’s/e-book’s watershed moment. It’s based on the Android platform, has a substantially better feature set than any of its predecessors, holds comparatively extreme battery life, and implements what appears to be a slick user interface.
And it’s being produced and sold by a book retailer chain.
Until now, e-readers have been something of a pipedream, since Sony’s Reader has been a nonstarter and the Amazon Kindle is inherently flawed – but all of this may quickly change. It’s intriguing that Barnes & Noble managed to understand the market’s needs so well, such as supporting a litany of formats and replicating real world book features like “sharing”, when this is something that Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) loves to claim as his own. Amazon may have cornered the market in numerous areas by using their leverage to lower prices and make deals, but they failed in the areas of digital reader rights and the all-important digital discount.
If the statistics on wholesale book sales from the International Digital Publishing Forum, which are typically half those of retail, are to be believed, e-book sales have approximately tripled within the last twelve months – the data coincides with Amazon’s entrance into the market, as expected. But with the debut of Barnes & Noble, one of two monolithic North American book retailers, as both a hardware and e-book retailer, these numbers will likely grow at an even faster rate.
Borders, Barnes & Noble’s only true competitor, has been weakly promoting the Sony Reader for years to very little effect – so what happens when one of the book giants has a product that it has invested substantial R&D in, and wants desperately to succeed? It’s highly probable that the Nook will be prominently featured in all of B&N’s locations, with slick salesmen/promoters attached, and will remain a central focus of their website for all of the foreseeable future.
When a brick-and-mortar company puts their substantial sales/promotion weight behind a product, including their $4.5 billion from in-store sales (2008), they almost always have a noticeable effect on the targeted market. Amazon is the king of product sales, but the sad fact is that a modern online powerhouse doesn’t have the marketing clout needed to push an unfamiliar item into the mainstream. However, if B&N’s power is combined with the apparent greatness of the device, a breakthrough to the masses becomes possible.
If they play their cards right, Barnes & Noble may be remembered as the company that produced the first “next generation” e-reader that was close enough to perfect for it to be popular with mainstream consumers – Amazon, Sony, and a few others will have their place as innovators, but there will be a distinction between the two. This innovation/breakthrough dichotomy is not uncommon, and can be easily found in the history of the Internet itself: the companies that were innovators (and faded/failed/went bankrupt) versus those who were able to make mainstream breakthroughs.
All of this, of course, depends on the device being more-or-less as described, not to mention functional and without any major hardware or software bugs – their success is contingent upon getting this right the first time. If they fail, they probably won’t have time for a second chance.
But I have my fingers crossed… And I already want one.
Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.
Related posts:
- Barnes And Noble Book Reader Finally Revealed After Years Of Development
- Barnes & Noble Nook E-Reader On Sale Tuesday For $259
- Amazon Begins “International Kindle” Hype Machine, Ready To Square Off Against Barnes And Noble “Nook” Ereader
- Barnes and Noble: Obama-Monkey Display Was a ‘Hate Crime’
- Time Inc. Developing An E-Book Reader. Documents Point To Interface Focus
