Are Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Indigo making a wise move by not carrying the books from Amazon’s publishing arm, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces? This is the question that Mike Shatzkin addresses in his latest column. He notes that a reporter contacted him, undoubtedly expecting the same sort of attacks on the move posted by some major media outlets, and was rather surprised when Shatzkin said that, from a self-interested point of view, the decision made perfect sense. Shatzkin recapitulates the recent history between Amazon, the Big Six publishers, and...

How can publishers create graphical e-books without a lot of duplicated effort? That’s the question posed by Richard Stephenson on FutureBook in a post about the different approaches taken by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple for displaying fixed-layout graphical content on their e-readers: Amazon's Kindle format 8 (KF8) relies on a completely separate process to create a fixed layout e-book than Apple's version of fixed layout for titles that are design-led e-books. Both are based on XHTML, but there are important differences in how pages are laid out. With KF8, each page has to be...

PaidContent reports that the US’s second-largest bookstore chain, Books a Million, is following in the footsteps of Barnes & Noble and proclaiming it will not stock Amazon-published titles in its brick-and-mortar stores. It’s not clear whether, like Barnes & Noble, they will sell the titles online. Books a Million sells a version of the Nook as its own e-reader. There’s a Books a Million store in Joplin, Missouri, and I stopped by it a few months ago. I wasn’t particularly impressed. Unlike Barnes & Noble, the store does not offer free wifi for its customers—you have to pay for...

The Authors Guild blog has an interesting piece looking at Amazon’s growth in light of a decline in antitrust enforcement. For background, it brings up the Bloomberg Businessweek story I covered the other day, it moves on to excerpt a piece in Harpers by Barry Lynn that compares Amazon to the current state of other monopolized markets, such as the chicken-raising industry: Mr. Lynn makes the case that Amazon’s dominance isn’t just a story of an industry disrupted by online commerce and digital upheaval, it’s about the abandoning of New Deal era protections of retailers in...

Barnes & Noble has announced it will not be carrying Amazon-published titles in its stores. B&N chief merchandising officer Jaime Carey issued a statement saying that the company was taking a stand against “Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity”, and that B&N didn’t get many requests for Amazon titles anyway. So, Carey said, if B&N customers want Amazon titles, they’ll just have to order them online at bn.com. Um, what? Look, guys, if you’re going to take a principled stand, go all the way. Decline to carry the titles on your web store too. I’m sure there are plenty...

EBookNewser and GalleyCat have posted an infographic from e-book sales tracking company Booklr which compares the average e-book price of the Top 100 e-books for the Kindle and Nook platforms. Based on information collected over the week of January 12th through 19th, the chart shows that the average price of an Amazon Kindle e-book is $6.48, whereas the average price of a B&N e-book is $8.94. The difference seems to be caused by fully 35% of Amazon’s titles being $1.99 or less, whereas none of B&N’s were. I wonder, though, whether this might be caused by Amazon counting...

There are other 7” Android tablets out there than the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. And as if to prove it, Geeks.com has put three of them on sale for under $100 today. The RPAD is $88.99 new, the Pandigital Novel is $98.99 refurbished (available in dark purple and red colors), and the Coby Kyros is $99.99 refurbished (“almost gone”). After that, the price jumps up to $249.99 for a couple of refurbished flavors of Galaxy Tab. Further research indicates that the RPAD is only $10 off what you could get it for on Amazon and has gotten two one-star...

I previously mentioned Barnes & Noble selling refurbished Nook Colors on eBay for $130, but it turns out that’s not the only great e-reader deal the site is offering. CNet notes that, today and tomorrow only, B&N is listing the new, not refurbished, Nook Simple Touch e-reader on eBay for $74.99 ($25 off the current sale price elsewhere) with delivery by December 22. It notes that only a limited quantity of the readers are available, and it seems to sell out and get resupplied throughout the day. That’s $25 less than Amazon’s touchscreen Kindle With Special Offers. Might be...

The Bookseller reports that Theresa Horner, vice-president for digital content at Barnes & Noble, has announced that the Nook will be coming to the United Kingdom in the “not too distant future.” Though B&N hasn’t determined whether it will be partnering with a UK company or creating its own UK presence, it is seriously considering expanding now that it has created “a successful platform in the US to work from.” There has been speculation B&N might partner with the Waterstone’s chain, since having a print bookstore to work from would be beneficial to an e-reader. However, the company has...

Barnes & Noble is listing a refurbished Nook Color (its first-generation Android tablet/e-reader, which is more hackable than the new Nook Tablet) for $119.99 on eBay, knocking $30 off the normal refurb price. Although it is refurbished, it does come with a one-year warranty, which is better than most non-Apple refurb sales get. A couple of my friends picked up this tablet back in the day when it was more expensive and were very happy with it (once they’d jailbroken it). I don’t have the disposable income to snag one myself right now, alas, but don’t let that stop...

Black Friday is almost upon us, and it bids fair to be an e-reader kind of holiday season. There’s no word yet from Amazon on any discounts on its Kindle products (though it seems to be discounting just about everything else), but Barnes & Noble has announced a special deal on a “Limited Edition” of its Nook Simple Touch e-reader—in stores only, it’s knocking $20 off the price. This brings it down to $79—on par with Amazon’s lowest-tier ad-supported Kindle price. Amusingly, one of its listed benefits is No Annoying Ads Reading...

If you’re getting a Nook Tablet, don’t expect to have access to much of its 16 gigabytes of onboard memory. Maximum PC reports (based on an Engadget review) that only 1 gigabyte of onboard storage is accessible to users. The other 13 or so gigs (that aren’t taken up by the operating system) can only be used for content downloaded from Barnes & Noble (though users can plug an SD card into the tablet and get access to more storage that way). Gizmodo checked with B&N and was told that the measure was intended to prevent customers from...