e-Book Echo: Nook Sells Out; Kindle Update Coming
Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. The Barnes & Noble Nook is not due to be shipping for a few days yet, but it seems they have already run out of the initial production run. It is being reported that they have already allocated all units produced, and that holiday shoppers will have a difficult time getting their hands on the Nook. They are due to appear in retail stores on Nov. 30, so we’ll have to see if the stores have any stock on hand based on these reports.
Kindle owners are familiar with the difficulty they face managing large book libraries on the device. It can be a frustrating experience paging through a long list of books on the Kindle, and that is not a good thing for such good customers to deal with. Amazon feels your pain, and are promising an OTA update early next year to make large libraries easier to deal with. It is interesting that in this social networking age, Amazon chose to inform customers via its Kindle Facebook page.
E-book readers with color screens are getting closer to reality, with efforts by Qualcomm leading the way. Its Mirasol technology uses ambient light to power the display, and like e-Ink screens power is only needed when the page is refreshed. Qualcomm expects to see readers using the color screens start appearing in the market next year.
This past Friday I was able to confirm with BN that my pre-order is indeed still in the system and scheduled to ship on Nov 30. I asked if I managed to snag a unit in a store if I’d be able to cancel the online order and the lady got all flustered and told me nook’s were non-returnable. I asked her if she was sure and she consulted someone. Upon her return that not only could I return the unit I had until Jan 30, 2010 to do so.
I’ve got 96 titles at BN awaiting my nook’s arrival. Which also flustered the lady when she went looking for my nook order, lots of scrolling when the system shows 5 orders per screen. Apparently people don’t buy many ebooks.
I have 695 titles on the Kindle DX so I’m keenly awaiting the arrival of UI enhancements.
Scotty – I’m intrigued at the volume of ebooks you’ve got going on. Why switch over to the Nook with such a huge investment in the Kindle?
I was at a B&N store this past weekend, getting some info on the Nook. The saleslady told me that B&N won’t be allowing the brick and mortar stores to be selling the Nooks for a while after the “launch”, though they’ll be having a Nook preview on Nov. 30. I guess that means we can play with the Nooks in the store, but we’ll have to buy online if we want one (or ask the store to order it for us).