The eBook market is heating up. Barnes and Noble opened its own eBook store today. You can download the eBook reader app for free to your Windows or Mac desktop, your iPhone or Blackberry. And as an introduction, they are offering two free B&N Classics with the eReader app. They claim to have 700,000 eBooks, but the majority of those are public domain offered in partnership with Google Books.
Ars Technica offers a review of the B&N reader and thoughts on where the company will be going and should be going with the whole eBook venture in the not so distant future. Apparently B&N will be offering a dedicated eBook reader of their own sometime next year.
I think it is great that B&N has jumped into the fray even though I can’t read any of their books on my Kindle. Technically I could read B&N eBooks on my Mac but I already do so much reading for school on my computer I have no desire to add to it. On the whole, B&N has some catching up to do, but competition in the eBook market is a good thing for everyone.
this is the kind of news I like to hear. I love reading, I’m crazy about books, and I enjoy having my own little library at home, my own bookshelves, full of my favorite books.
The list of free ebooks with the app is none too impressive. You could download any one of them from gutenberg.org and convert the file to read on your kindle with mobipocket if you were so inclined.
The B&N eReader comes with two free Classics:
* The Last of the Mohicans
* Sense and Sensibility
Sign in or create a B&N.com account and you’ll also get these FREE titles waiting for you in your Online Library:
* Dracula
* Pride and Prejudice
* Little Women
* Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary
I downloaded the B&N e-reder last night, thinking I could use my small (and very light) netbook as an e-book reader. It works okay, but I do think I will need to spend a little more time to get it to work properly — the screen is a bit too small, or maybe it’s just me. I’m not giving up though! Also, I love having classics at my fingertips, and so was happy to get these already formatted and ready to go.
But when I tried to find a free version of All’s Well That Ends Well I ended up with something that was poorly scanned and improperly formatted. SO — free has its limits.
Kurt, oh yes, Gutenberg is my friend when it comes to books for my Kindle
There tend to be a number of typos but you don’t run into scanning issues that frequently come across with Google.
Bloglily, I love having the classics at my fingertips too! I hope you get the e-reader to work on your netbook. You’ll have to be sure and report on how you like the experience. You are right about free having limits. I’ve read a few Google books that had thumbs in the scan and one that was missing every other page for about 30 pages or so.
So interesting to see where everyone is going with the eBook. I’m still hanging around, watching from the fringes, waiting to see if we ever settle on something that is more to my liking.
Yes, competition is definitely good here. I saw a Kindle for the first time the other day, and it looked really cool — I’m not going to get one, but I could see how having something like it would work well.
As far as kindle goes, and maybe I’ve been off in la la land on this one for awhile, but I just discovered yesterday that the Amazon store is offering a lot of classic texts for free now! No more converting if you’re willing to use a gutenberg style document. Yay!