Barnes & Noble yesterday announced that it just released a new Nook for Windows 8 app, which “enables customers to sign in and shop using their Microsoft account, dramatically simplifying the reading and shopping experience,” according to a release.
Jamie Iannone, president of digital products at Nook Media LLC, says that “Nook is already the highest rated reading and digital bookstore app on Windows 8,” although somewhat confusingly, in the same release, he also says this:
“As part of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we are thrilled that Nook is the first digital bookstore to support Microsoft account for sign in Windows 8.”
(Huh? Come again? I’m either reading that quote completely wrong, or there’s a whopper of a typo somewhere within. Seriously: B&N wouldn’t actually send out a press release to literally thousands of journalists without double- and even triple-checking for illegible sentences, right? Someone please tell me I’m wrong… )
* * *
In other B&N news, the company also announced yesterday the finalists for its 22nd Annual Discover Great New Writers Awards, but get this: In the press release announcing the finalists, the headline actually refers to the contest as the 22nd Annual Discover Great News Writers Awards. (Emphasis mine.) Seriously, was it nickel beer night over at B&N headquarters when these releases were cranked out? What the hell’s going on with this company?
Anyway, for those of you who might be interested, the list of finalists is below; the winners will be announced at a private awards ceremony on March 6. The winners in each category (fiction and nonfiction) will be awarded with a $10,000 cash prize and a full year of freebie promotion from B&N. Second-place finalists receive $5,000, and even third-place finalists clean up with a cool $2,500 each. The finalists are:
Fiction:
– Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist (HarperCollins)
– Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown)
– Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (Random House)
Nonfiction:
– Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Random House)
– Kristen Iversen, Full Body Burden (Crown Publishers/Random House)
– Cheryl Strayed, Wild (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo, by the way, is my pick for the nonfiction category. As for the fiction group, that’s not a race I’m prepared to call.
Any other thoughts?
Dan, it doesn’t look like a typo to me. As far as I know, there’s no other e-reader app using the Microsoft sign in. Did I miss something?
I don’t know … maybe it’s actually a sentence fragment, and not an actual sentence, and that’s what threw me? The sentence just doesn’t make any sense to me.
It’s not the best written sentence ever. That’s true. Yet another reason to predict doom and gloom for B&N? They’ve certainly given us enough other reasons. 😉