If you needed proof that the tablet market is hedging much of it’s bets on the publishing industry you really need look no further than the Barnes & Noble Nook which is now offering customers $50 off the devices purchase price if they agree to sign up for an online subscription to People magazine.

While the regular price for the Nook is $250 buyers who commit to a $10 per month annual subscription to PEOPLE receive the device for $200.

Obviously when you work out the $120 you’ll spend on the PEOPLE subscription your bill is higher then the original pricing structure for the device however for subscribers or potential subscribers it’s a steal.

Along with your subscription to the celebrity magazine you’ll also receive a seven-inch LD VividView display with 1080p video playback and support for Hulu Plus and other popular Google Android based applications. The Nook also features a dual-core processor with Android 2.3.

With more than 1.1 million Nook units sold in the last two months the device has been a success for the retail chain and if deals like this PEOPLE offering keep popping up the company will likely reach the 4.1 million tablets sold goal set for 2012.

Buyers can receive the Nook pricing discount through March 9 when they sign up for a PEOPLE subscription at the time of purchase.

The Nook/PEOPLE deal is available online through B&N and at brick-and-mortar store locations found throughout the United States.

Just one thing to keep in mind, cancelling your PEOPLE subscription before the one year mark will mean an early termination fee and your account if not cancelled will auto renew at the same $10 per month subscriber fee.

Barnes & Noble Nook Receives $50 Discount For People Magazine Subscribers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Barnes & Noble is now rumored to have produced their one millionth Nook Tablet.

While the company has not yet confirmed that production number unnamed sources for Nook manufacturer Inventec and several upstream parts providers tell DigiTimes that the components were purchased and the devices were built.

B&N recently announced that they planned to ship 800,000 Nook Tablet devices by the end of the year. If the new number is correct it could mean that the company has surpassed expectations by 20% thanks to stronger than expected holiday sales, it could also reveal that the company under promised in order to over deliver.

While executives have been slow to reveal numbers they have said that the device is by far its fastest selling E-reader to date while the devices content and accessories increased by 85 percent since the device launched for a total of $220 million.

An increase in sales couldn’t come at a better time for the company after they posted a $6.6 million loss during the Q2 2011. Better than expected sales also helps Inventec after being dealt a blow when Hewlett-Packard (HP) decided to discontinue the production of their WebOS-based TouchPad tablets.

Are you surprised by the sudden surge in Nook Tablet sales despite increased competition from the Amazon Kindle Fire and other Google Android based tablets?

Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet Reaches One Million Production Units is a post from: The Inquisitr

When Amazon announced the impending release of the Kindle Fire in September, it seemed that notorious unafraid-of-competitive-pricing retailer’s entry into the iPad dominated tablet market was going to be a massive game changer.

As we wait for the November 15th ship date of the Kindle Fire, it seems the tablet’s release already has changed the game a bit. Apple’s lock on the market was set at a relatively low $500-ish dollars, but Amazon smashed that to bits with their $199 tablet entry. (Albeit, the Kindle Fire is significantly smaller than the iPad and lacks a camera, if that’s your thing.) And still before the product is in the grubby little hands of tablet users everywhere, Barnes & Noble took up a dog in the fight yesterday with their announcement of an impending tablet for the masses.

It seems that all tablets will first and foremost be classed by price. The American economy is still baby-stepping out of a massive downturn, and consumers are savvy but scared of spending their hard-earned cheddar on auxiliary devices that may or may not be obsolete in a year’s time. The buy in for Apple is $499, the previously-stated $199 for Kindle Fire and the newly announced Nook tablet will be $249.

However, features between the three devices seem to be as defining as price, perhaps more so even given relatively large disparities. ComputerWorld highlights the differences between the devices via culled tech blog comments, and Information Week does a straight-up comparison, two men enter one man leaves sort of thing for the tablets. (Also, it’s been posited that the Nook may be serviceable in Genius Bar-like areas of bricks & mortar Barnes & Noble locations, which could be a big influencing factor for those new to the market.)

Do you have plans to buy a Nook Tablet or one of its competitors this Christmas or holiday season? Where are you leaning?

Nook Tablet: Begun, the Tablet Wars Have is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Nook Tablet has arrived just in time for the holiday shopping season and it comes with a price tag of just $249.

Unveiled on Monday in New York City the device is $50 more expensive then Amazon’s Kindle Fire but also features more memory, a far better display and a larger selection of in-store services and content.

The Nook table comes standard with a 16GB hard drive (double the Amazon Kindle Fire)  with an option for 32GB while also offering a 7-inch display that runs Google Android via a 1Ghz processor with 1GB RAM and free cloud service along with access to the Nook newsstand and comics.

The Nook tablet also offers 11.5 hours reading time on a single charge with nine hours video playback.

Along with their new tablet Barnes & Noble also dropped the price of the original Nook Color to just $199 while the Nook SimpleTouch is just $99.

Will you be running out to pick up the Google Android powered gadget? At $250 dollars it’s a steal just in time for the holiday’s.

$249 Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet Debuts, Hopes To Dominate Holiday Sales is a post from: The Inquisitr

Barnes & Noble sent out a notice earlier in the week to press that the company would be making a “very special announcement” this coming Monday, but it looks like that “special announcement” got outed a few days too early.

Slashgear reports that Barnes & Noble is gearing up to announce the follow-up to the Nook Color, apparently dubbed “Nook Tablet”. Based on the leaked images and accompanying document, it looks like the Nook Tablet will share some similarities with the Nook Color, particularly in design, but it has quite a new features and improvements.

For starters, the Nook Tablet has a beefier dual-core 1.2 ghz OMAP4 processor by Texas Instruments, 16GB worth of internal storage, 1GB of RAM and a microSD slot for up to 32GB more data storage space.

It has the same 7-inch display seen in the Nook Color, as well as more or less the same design, but the Nook Tablet is very slightly thinner and more lightweight than its predecessor – to be more specific, the Nook Tablet is said to be 0.2 inches thinner, and .9 ounces lighter.

The Nook Tablet will also be getting access to both Netflix and Hulu Plus, and the Nook Color will apparently be getting Hulu Plus as well, but not Netflix. The leaked material shows that the Nook Tablet will retail for $249 and the Nook Color will be brought down to $199.

Barnes & Noble has yet to comment on the leak, and it’s not likely they will until Monday, so take this with a grain of salt for now.

Source: Slashgear

[Image: Slashgear]

Nook Tablet details leak ahead of announcement on Monday is a post from: The Inquisitr

Barnes & Noble have released a massive firmware update to their Nook Color, edging the device closer to tablet status and gaining some distinct edges over Amazon’s Kindle.

It’s a bit interesting that while Amazon seems to be focusing on price-centric updates- last week, the online retail megalith announced the ability to borrow library books and previous released a dead-cheap ad-supported Kindle- Barnes & Noble has kept the price static at $250 while making the device more feature-rich. Today’s update- which will be available for download directly on Nook devices next week- adds an app store, built-in email and support for Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Flash.

Nook Color users can now play Angry Birds, stream music using Pandora and browse recipes on Epicurious with the new app store updates. The company says that at $250, Nook Color is the best value tablet available when compared with devices like Motorola’s Xoom and Apple’s ubiquitous iPad 2. While Nook currently lags behind Amazon with a 25% market share, the new functionality could drastically change that fact.

Does the new update make you more keen on using a Nook over a Kindle, even at the higher price point? Do you think with Flash capabilities and apps, it might grab market share from Apple, too? Have you given the update a spin on your Nook? What do you think?

Nook now supports Flash, Android 2.2, built-in email is a post from: The Inquisitr

Barnes and Noble’s Nook looks set to lose one of its major competitive edges in the booming e-reader market, with news Amazon’s Kindle will now also allow users to borrow library books on the popular devices.

Amazon recently added an aggressive price drop for users willing to be exposed to advertising on their Kindle devices, and library lending is one of most cited reasons many users say they’ve opted for the Nook over the Kindle. Lending privately owned e-tomes appears to be a mixed bag at the moment, with few titles available on Kindle for loaning to friends once they’ve been purchased. In a statement on Wednesday, Amazon announced in their standard self-aggrandizing way that the feature would finally become available to Kindle owners later in 2011:

“We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “Customers tell us they love Kindle for its Pearl e-ink display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight, up to a month of battery life, and Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights and last page read between their Kindle and free Kindle apps.”

Marine glowingly continued about note-taking and highlighting features that copy over from borrowed copies to purchased copies:

“We’re doing a little something extra here,” Marine continued. “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”

Amazon is partnering with OverDrive, a “leading provider of digital content solutions,” to bring the service to more than 11,000 public libraries later this year. If you haven’t yet bought a Kindle, will this feature finally sway you?

Sweet! Kindles to finally get library lending is a post from: The Inquisitr

Barnes & Noble Claims Huge Nook Holiday Sales Win is a post from: The Inquisitr

Amazon bridged one of the biggest gaps between its Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook by adding the capability for users to lend e-books beetween accounts for up to 14 days.

Arguably (or, in my opinion) the biggest drawback of e-books is the inability to borrow or lend titles you really enjoy. The unconverted will smugly point out that feature often after a lengthy soliloquy about the “feel” and “smell of books.” The new feature, of course, comes with the expected caveats that have been limiting digital data since its inception- artificial limits on use. You won’t be able to read your own books while they’re lent out, which isn’t too big of a drawback if you have more than a handful of titles. The less amenable non-value-add is that lending capability will be entirely up to publishers, who haven’t historically been very progressive when it comes to content sharing. (Or indeed, content access, as any fan of vampire books will tell you.)

Still, the move towards sharing adds a great, intuitive and long-needed feature to e-books and e-readers in general. Does the addition of book-sharing make you more likely to make the jump to e-readers or will you continue to cling to analog tomes?

[VB]

Finally! Amazon to add Kindle e-book lending! is a post from: The Inquisitr

After an initial announcement that the Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader was unlikely to arrive in time to fulfill gift orders for Christmas, it appears that B&N got their act together and Santa’s coming with Nooks after all.

After announcing earlier in the week that empty-handed gift-givers would be placated with $100 Barnes and Noble gift cards, something changed and the company announced that only a “small number” of those waiting for Christmas shipments would be receiving the gift cards in lieu of their Nook:

Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, said the New York-based chain last week expected to issue “a very small number” of online certificates. However, the retailer has now concluded that it will fulfill its obligations for Christmas.

“We’re pleased to tell our customers today that we’re shipping out all our orders in time,” she said.

Barnes and Noble refused to say how many Nooks were shipped for Christmas. New orders are suspended for now, and more Nooks aren’t expected to ship until February 1st, 2010. As James pointed out, Amazon has a whole bunch of Kindles you can just order, and they send them out to you.

B&N Nook arriving in time for Christmas after all is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve been waiting in eager anticipation for that Barnes And Noble Nook to arrive that you ordered as a Christmas present you may be more out of luck than you already were.  While originally slated for a December release and then pushed back to January 11th, the B&N website is now showing a January 15th arrival date, pretty much ensuring very few holiday miracles for eagerly awaiting customers.

Adding to that news is a circulating rumor that Barnes and Noble stores will also be skipped over for the Christmas buying season,  so basically, no one will be getting their devices in time for Christmas.

If B&N were attempting a Nintendo “shortage” type stunt they’ve succeeded, unfortunately for them the technology in the Nook isn’t as “must have” as the Wii when it debuted. In the meantime Amazon has a whole bunch of Kindles they’ll get out to buyers immediately.   [Engadget]

Barnes And Noble Pushes Back Nook Delivery Until January 15th is a post from: The Inquisitr

Looking to buy a Barnes and Noble Nook eReader for yourself or possibly for a loved one at Christmas? You might want to hurry up as supplies are dwindling, so much so that pre-orders are now being taken for the first week of December when the company is expecting their second shipment of the units.

SlipperyBrick is also reporting that many Barnes and Noble customers are waiting to see the units in person at Barnes & Noble locations before deciding whether or not to buy a unit of their own, which means orders will only continue to spike as the readers reach store shelves which should be sometime before the end of November.

Order today and your $260 eReader is still scheduled to arrive by November 30th.

Barnes And Noble Nook eReader Kicks Off With High Demand is a post from: The Inquisitr

Over the last several years Spring Design claims their executives and various teams of management had met with the team at Barnes and Noble to discuss the creation of an ereader for the company. Now that the Nook is releasing in November Spring Design has filed a lawsuit that claims information used from their meetings in which an NDA was signed were implemented in the Barnes and Noble Nook.

The design in question involves the Spring Design “Alex” the companies own ereader, which, like the Nook, features two electronic ink displays with capacitive LCD touchscreen capabilities and Google Android operating systems. On the other hand the Nook won’t offer internet browsing and the screen is only used for device navigation, while the Spring Design unit is meant to act more like a “tablet PC” with various forms of content.

More info will follow as soon as the court case gets under way, although given the number of devices moving towards these exact types of technologies I don’t expect this one to get very far, even the designs look far from the same.

Spring Design Sues Barnes And Noble Over Nook Design is a post from: The Inquisitr

The folks at Amazon could be getting a little nervous with the new found realization that Barnes and Noble will release their “Nook” E-reader in November. Currently the company is featuring the Kindle with International Wireless smack dab in the middle of their homepage.

The International version of the Kindle was released in the past week and features access to downloadable 3G speeds in over 100 countries including the U.S. with no additional fees or contracts to worry about.  The International unit also comes in at a respectable 1/3 inches in thickness (approx.) and holds up to 1,500 books at one time.

Users can pick up the readers in two sizes, 6″ diagonal E Ink® display which offers International Wireless capabilities for $259.00 and a 9″ diagonal E Ink® screens with the later increasing book storage size to 3,500 books but only currently offered for U.S. downloads and priced significantly higher at $489.00

While both options are featured on the product page, it’s the international wireless option that’s prominently mentioned on the home page.

Barnes and Noble in the meantime will release the “Nook” E-reader in November while offering large discounts on Barnes and Noble published books that are downloaded directly to their device. Much like the Kindle the Nook will also feature” e-ink” type technology and will come equipped with a secondary screen in color which is housed on what I personally consider a much better looking overall design than the Kindle. The Nook also runs Google Android OS which has been largely hyped up over the last year.

This should be an interesting battle to witness…stay tuned.

Amazon Begins “International Kindle” Hype Machine, Ready To Square Off Against Barnes And Noble “Nook” Ereader is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

The E-Reader’s Future is a post from: The Inquisitr

A leaked WSJ ad, scheduled for Oct. 25th, has gadget bloggers buzzing about Barnes & Noble’s new e-reader, the Nook.

Running on Android, the Nook is said to be priced at Kindle’s $259 pricepoint. Many people have likened the device to a Kindle/iPhone hybrid, as unlike Kindle with a physical keyboard, the Nook has a touchscreen interface like the iPhone and iPod touch for navigating and browsing. The Nook also is rumored to support color, another advantage over Kindle. Coupled with a rumored deal for the device with Best Buy, Amazon might see their market share seriously sliding in the coming months. But the most intriguing of the rumors, in this era of gadget porn, is not even hardware related.

The first big tidbit is that books will be “heavily discounted”- without a qualifier, it’s difficult to say how impactful this aspect is. I’ve been very pleased with my iPhone Kindle app- the 6.39 pricepoint of most of the trashy vampire romances I favor is decent, but feels a bit like a jack at about a buck fifty less than the ink and paper counterparts Amazon would have to find, handle, wrap, pack, ship and of course, print on dead trees. But the even more intriguing aspect is that the Nook may allow for lending of titles between friends. One of the biggest hurdles the eBook format has in catching on is the inability to share books- the crunchy granola intellectual types that read books tend to like to pass them around between friends so they have something to discuss over soy lattes and cruelty-free hemp granola bars.

While Kindle’s got a tight grip on the e-reader market right now, the Nook sounds like it will be a powerful adversary as consumers make the leap away from analog books. Being perfectly honest, I’ve read more books in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years since downloading the Kindle app. And by December, the number of consumers using an e-reader is expected to double to 3.8 million from 1.6 million in August. Confirmation and more details are expected from B&N at 4pm EST during an event at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.

Update: B&N.com now lists the Nook, and does a specs rundown vs. Kindle.

[Image: Gizmodo]

Barnes & Noble’s Nook to incinerate Kindle? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s been under development for years, has featured several devices of different sizes and capabilities and is about a year late to market, but at least it’s finally arriving and the Barnes and Nobles e-reader looks like a development project years in the making, evoking what compares to a combination of an iPhone mashed into an Amazon Kindle.

The unit features a black and white e-ink screen and offers the type of multi-touch gesturing found on the iPhone, while also running the Google Android OS.

Barnes and Noble have also announced that the books they sell through their own publishing company will be sold at hefty discounts in electrical form when compared to those same books in print. The reader is also slated to have access to at least some of the books scanned by the Google Books project.

The name is supposedly horrid for the device, but has yet to be revealed to the public. [More Photos: Gizmodo]

Barnes And Noble Book Reader Finally Revealed After Years Of Development is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Barnes and Noble Obama Display

The photo (above), which has circulated widely over the Internet, shows the animal book in the middle of a Barnes and Noble window display focused on books related to Barack Obama. The misplaced book is entitled Monkeys: A Captivating Look at These Fascinating Animals.

Barnes and Noble says a customer placed the book in the display at its Coral Gables, Florida location, then snapped the photo. The company says its associates removed the book as soon as it was noticed, insisting claims that Barnes and Noble had intentionally positioned the book within the display are completely false.

“This malicious and despicable act is nothing short of a hate crime, which should be punishable under federal statutes,” Leonard Riggio, founder and chairman of Barnes and Noble, said in a statement.

Barnes and Noble E-Book Acquisition

The news comes right as Barnes and Noble is announcing new steps in its move into the e-book market. The company acquired Fictionwise for $15.7 million late last week. It intends to launch a Barnes and Noble e-bookstore later in 2009 but has indicated it will keep Fictionwise as a separate business unit, with its current team remaining in charge.

Barnes and Noble: Obama-Monkey Display Was a ‘Hate Crime’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

Amazon has worked out a deal to acquire Shelfari, a social network built for book sharing. Shelfari doesn’t actually sell books, but rather allows users to create “virtual bookshelves” to share titles and reviews with others.

The move comes just a few weeks after Amazon announced the acquisition of AbeBooks, an independent used and out-of-print bookseller. Things get a little dicey there, as AbeBooks owned a stake in LibraryThing — a competitor to Shelfari. Amazon appears poised to pour its resources into Shelfari, so yet to be seen is what will happen to LibraryThing as a result.

So why call it the “Barnes and Noble effect”? It’s simple: Cities used to be full of small, locally-owned bookstores. Then came the big Barnes and Noble stores, filled with every book imaginable and so much more. Now, you’re hard-pressed to find one independent mom-and-pop bookstore in most communities — at least, that’s been my experience in the couple of cities I’ve lived in since that era. Not to say it’s all bad — Barnes and Noble and the comparable competitors are great stores and I certainly frequent and enjoy them — but it’s still sad to see so many of the smaller, locally-owned stores disappear, unable to keep up with the corporate competition.

At least in this case, Amazon seems to be keeping the smaller entities running as their own standalone operations…so even if they’re losing the independent spirit, they’re not vanishing altogether. Maybe in these instances, they’ll even get stronger as a result.

Amazon Adds Another Piece to the Puzzle is a post from: The Inquisitr

The change, of course, positions the site right in line with straight-forward Web retailers ranging from Amazon to Barnes and Noble or Borders. And it’s no surprise: eBay’s auction sales have been underperforming compared to the fixed-price alternative, The Times reports, meaning the auction boom of eBay’s early days may be reaching its end.

The specific changes will include lower upfront fees to encourage sellers to put their stuff online for a fixed price. Such a sale will only cost $0.35 for a month-long listing as of next month — a huge drop, almost 70 percent, from the current fee.

eBay Moving Away From Auctions is a post from: The Inquisitr