Maybe it's just me, but doesn't the word "nook" sound, well, a little obscene?

m_t, I think you can loan eBooks out unofficially. The eReader software is free, and so you can just copy your book to someone else's system and they can download it and, so long as you unlock it, they can read it. (The unlock key is just the credit card number you used for purchase.) A workaround, I grant you, but not that difficult.

As a big believer in eBooks--I read them on my iPhone quite literally all the time (current book: Glen David Gold's Sunnyside), I'm interested very much in the reading experience of this device. Like:

How big is the durn thing?
Is it backlit?
Can the software display books purchased for other eReaders, such as (well) eReader and Kindle? I sure wouldn't want to have to re-purchase a whole bunch of books again.
Is there still that annoying "blackout" display when you turn pages, like both the Kindle and Sony Reader have?
How is it with photos and graphics? Can it play movies?

Yeah, yeah; I'm picky. I know.

I wonder, too, what the price-point will be for Apple's rumored tablet notebook, which could definitely steal customers from the eBook reading category.

Douglas - I should have been more specific. I should have said, "The #1 thing preventing me from buying a Kindle is that you can't lend out Kindle-formatted books". Yes, many eBooks can be purchased without DRM, but on the other hand... the Kindle device is what allows Amazon to maintain a stranglehold up till now on the ebook market. If you have a Kindle, you're probably buying those e-books from Amazon, in which case.... you get the horrible DRM along with it (I could be mistaken - someone correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm not as concerned about backlighting or ability to play movies - I'm not looking for a PMP, just a good ebook reader. However I share your interest in learning which formats this device will support. I'm not sure Amazon will license a competitor's device to read Kindle books.

Also, I assume Apple's new tablet will be more along the lines of a fully functional computing/internet device. I'd like a dedicated ebook reader, to be honest, because battery life is one of my top concerns. I just want the damn thing to last through a flight from DC to Hawaii without needing a new battery.

Color, at last. Nooks and Kindles sound like part of a fairytale cottage. I'm awaiting the iTablet, to see what's coming, not yet persuaded to buy an e-reader. Fascinating article, thanks.

While part of me understands and appreciates the eBook revolution, in all its forms, a bigger part of me just wishes paper was the only way to buy books still.

Having said that, when I moved out to Saudi Arabia, I could only manage about 5 books in my suitcase before the weight issue crept up. An eBook would solve that problem hands down.

My understanding is the the iTablet will have a price-point between an iPhone ($300 or so) and a MacBook ($1500). I also worry about the battery life, as I fly between Austin and SF all the friggin' time, but I would rather have one device to rely on, instead of two or three. If the iTablet supports external keyboard, mousing, and monitors, it might be a better solution than Yet Another Electronic Gadget (YAEG, pronounced "yaaarrgghh!"). I am reluctant--to put it mildy--to shell out $250 bucks for YAEG when I can read eBooks on my iPhone.

As for backlighting, that's one of my bugaboos with e-Ink technology. I read in bed all the time, and don't want to force poor Sami to try to fall asleep with the lights on simply because I have insomnia and want to re-read Anathem, ya know?

At the risk of being a pedantic pain in the ass, here are some thoughts:

o) yes, it has that irritating e-ink page-turn-blackout-redraw delay; yuck
o) they were smart enough to make the left-hand/right-hand paging buttons in the same location (not true on the kindle, I believe)
o) no teeny-weeny keyboard at the bottom-yay!
o) the color/touchscreen portion look to be limited to the bottom; interesting tradeoff--you lose screen real estate that way, and why just have color at the bottom? seems like an odd choice

I'd like to get one in my hot little hands and test it, though.

Interesting. But the Sony still seems like the best.

I haven't seen the new Sony, Steven, but I tested the first two, and they had some problems. Navigation was a pain--you had to go to a navigation screen, scroll through lists, and select items. If you held your Sony with your left hand, it was very awkward to page back and forth--the buttons were in a different location for lefties vs. righties. Sony's library was in a proprietary format, so you couldn't load already purchased eBooks onto the Sony--and their library was much smaller than Amazon's or B&Ns.

The new Reader--version 3--may be better, but I don't know; I haven't gotten it in hand yet. But the Nook looks better to me, and lordy am I picky.

I don't say anything about backlighting which is my biggest beef with Kindle. Color is nice, but does not seem to be a major improvement over Kindle.

Thank God they made the display take up most of the space. That's a major advance.

(But how do you type? Do you turn part of the display into a keyboard when you're ready like the iphone?)

I'm also happy B&N will presumably have physical versions in their physical stores. It's really hard to evaluate something like this by looking at a picture.

I'm surprised by the LendMe feautre. I wonder how they got publishers to sign off on that--or how many new books will be available because of it. Fourteen days sounds like it might be a reasonable compromise, but it seems too long too me: longer than to sample.

If this makes books go the way of music downloads, it could eventually destroy the ability of writers to scrape out a living, and publishers to stay in business. This is risky stuff.

Just when I think there can't be any more electronic inventions! I just wish I could come up with an idea and sell it.

Good information. Thanks for sharing. I'll continue to wait for the iTablet. As a long time satisfied Mac user, I'm perfectly willing to be late to the party, then walk through the door with the best hardware and software package ever imagined.

Mac's are just great!

Everything about it sounds good but I wonder how much that 3G connectivity will cost. Are we talking $40 per month? If so I'll find a hotspot to do my downloading. Still, it sounds a lot better than the Kindle (primitive graphics) and the Sony (about as Sexy as my old Palm Pilot).

It doesn't have a slick name like Kindle or Nook, but I'm sticking with my TFRMAD (Totally Free Reading Material Acquisition Device) - aka a library card. It, and the books are free, Free, FREE!

Color!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The color's just the display along the bottom, right? I don't think e-ink has color capability.

@Del Stone - The 3G is included with the price. There won't be any monthly charge for it.

@Dave Cullen - I think you are over reacting at the LendMe feature. Music and books are completely different. I've never lent someone a CD, much less given one away. On the other hand I often lend out books for months at a time. What LendMe would allow me to do is what I currently do today - buy a book, enjoy it, and then share it with my boyfriend or with my other friends. And while the book is "loaned out", I assume it would be unavailable on my device.

@Jamie Beckett - Your enthusiasm for all things Apple is... [fill in the blank here]

@Douglas - you're right - the color seems to only be on the bottom. That's interesting.

Re: backlights - ebooks are made so they don't require backlights. Backlighting drains battery life like a mofo (the reason an iTablet will NEVER have the battery life of an ebook), and it also causes eye strain. I'd imagine the solution for this is the same as paper books - get a cheap 5 dollar book light and you're ready to read at night without disturbing your partner.

@Dave: I watched a video on Gizmodo, and it appears that the answer to your keyboard question is "yes;" it does indeed look like the keyboard pops up in the "browser/touch screen" area at the bottom when you need it.

thanks, douglas.

mad-t, understood. i think you're under-reacting. each new development starts a precedent (eg, the $9.99 price, which will likely cut authors' royalties in half.) later, once the full impact of each change is clear, it will be too late to undo them.

i think you made the opposite point you intended. you never lent your CDs, which was cumbersome. once we could all download effortlessly, millions of people did, and sales plummeted.

this device allows you to do what you do now, but so much more easily--and with the recipient getting a perpetual "new" copy, not beat up with each reader and possibly written in.

it's not really that hard to see the dangers to writers and publishers here. i understand that you want to get things for free, and share them with friends for free, but it may cost us a great number of great writers.

I don't know why I went as far afield as music though, with the dangers to artists of giving the art away for free. Half my journalist friends are either unemployed or assuming they will be within the next year or two--with bleak prospects for getting hired elsewhere, with nearly every magazine and newspaper shrinking and teetering.

The prospect of writers in trouble is not some distant science fiction story, it's well underway. I have watched the train bare down on my friends for years and it's pulverizing their careers, and now it's on its way for books.

So when I read cheerleading like this for the LendMe feature--great, yet another way to start giving away written work for free--it feels incredibly short-sighted to me.

Call me a dinosaur, but I prefer real sodding books! Ones you can weigh in your hands, run your fingers over the spine and then open them up and smell the pages...
Hang on am I getting confused with something as I'm feeling a bit hot under the collar? I'll shut up now.

I'm pissed. I bought a Sony e-reader which needs a hardwire to a computer, no lending, no touch screen, no color, and pretty expensive. Sigh. When will I wait for new technology instead of buying the first thing on the market? Doh.

I've had major problems downloading books at Barnes & Noble. They ping my credit card and throw it into the fraud department and their software refuses to let me download. I am hoping they will come up with a solution. I love reading books on my IPhone.

I think that publishers do not expect to make any money because they do not count people like me. I would read more books if they were easy to purchase, download and read on a portable device. There are SO many books that I want to read but I do not have the space to store them nor the time to sell them. I feel guilty about the use of paper and delivery costs are almost the same as the price of the book. All of this inhibits me from buying as many books as I would like.

There must be an alternate way of being paid for one's work. One example is freeware, i.e. computer applications which are free but one may pay a small amount (sometimes just the price of a coffee is asked). If I use an application often, I always pay a few dollars. It is not much, but imagine a million people using this software. What if writers were paid (like Open Salon's tip jar) by people who actually read their work? It might put some publishers out of business but we still need someone to sort through and recommend books.

I agree with IzzieDee - the new technology makes it likely I'll end up buying MORE books, not less, so there's that to factor in, in terms of looking at potential sales models. While I know authors/publishers are uneasy about the pricing models of e-books, that's not the technology's fault - that's something publishing houses need to fight the distributors over.

I never lent CDs out not because it was cumbersome (after all, I see my friends every day, so giving a CD away wasn't hard). I didn't lend them out because music is a thing that I want to experience every day repeatedly. I don't listen to a Coldplay CD once and then never listen to it again. Hence, giving away my copy would be stupid, as the nature of music demands multiple listening sessions. Books, on the other hand, are largely a one-and-done experience. I rarely re-read works, and even when I do, it's often years between reading sessions. So, the idea of being able to give away that particular media isn't a big deal.

I also disagree that mp3s are what are hurting sales of albums. First of all, mp3s simply made it easier for consumers to choose only the songs they want - hence, I spend 5 dollars on 5 tracks I really want to hear, versus being forced to buy an entire album of dreck just to get one song. Second, the death of MTV and the rise of indie bands simply made it harder for a single album to sell well. Consumers now have more choice, and while huge bands may be suffering, I feel like smaller bands have the ability to succeed in the market now, because the barriers to entry are lessened. I still buy as much music as I ever did - I just have better taste and more choices now, thanks to technology.

I'm amazed by the number of people who don't even know that this technology exists ... at all. I have a Kindle and was reading Born To Run before my daughter's chamber choir concert on Sunday and at least 6 people stopped and said, "What's that?" I vaguely remember the same response when I posted on facebook that I had gotten the Kindle as a birthday present.


I love my Kindle and even though I hate touch screen, a backlight option could be a deal breaker for me & Amazon. This looks pretty snazzy and with the wifi and 3G (like Kindle), I think it's worth a good, hard look ... glad I'll be in KC this weekend!

Great post ~ rated!

Izzie, good example on the OS tip jar. You might want to check with OSers to see how many people have earned enough to buy a meal--or a latte. Not a way to make a living. Most good writers spend 3-5 years on a nonfiction book, and 1-5 on a novel. Writers have rent, food, insurance, etc. You can't live off an empty tip jar.

Mad-t, no, the web/eworld has not hurt the music industry, or newspapers or mags and tv isn't threatening to make tv much worse . . . It's all just imaginary.

We have a tip jar?

good gadget....i going to buy it now...