Everybody’s coming out with tablet gift buyers’ guides this time of year (including us in not too long). I thought it might be a good idea to come out with more of a thinking guide, something to suggest ideas for you to consider while you read those guides—a “buyers’ guide guide” if you will. These are the primary considerations I think a tablet buyer should be keeping in mind. 1) Walled garden or the open road? Many of the most popular tablets this year are locked up in someone’s walled garden. The iPad and iPad Mini are no-brainers...

Found via an email from Ed Howdershelt to the Ebook Community Mailing List: the swan song for e-book stores Fictionwise, eReader, and eBookwise. Barnes & Noble has emailed Fictionwise publishers and authors that it is shuttering the long-running e-book stores and will be offering US and UK customers the opportunity to migrate their e-book purchases from said sites to a Barnes & Noble Nook library. (Complete letter pasted below the jump.) It’s really kind of sad: eReader (nee Palm Digital Media, nee Peanut Press) and Fictionwise were two of the first really big e-book stores, feeding the e-book habits...

Seems like only yesterday that DC Comics was adding the Nook tablets to its formerly exclusive deal with the Kindle Fire platform, and releasing graphic novels via e-book stores. But the thing about DC on those color tablets was that the comics were actually sold through third-party stores like comiXology, or DC’s own app Vertigo. However, today DC announced it will be selling digital comics in single-issue (DRM-protected) format directly through the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks e-book stores. DC will start with current-release issues, then move into backlist titles. 70 titles were available as of today. At the moment...

An item posted on ZDNet earlier today alerted us to the fact that come tomorrow, November 4, Barnes & Noble will be slashing USD$20 off the cost of both its Nook Color and Nook Tablet devices. "The tablet PC price wars continue to heat up," according to ZDNet, "as Barnes & Noble lowers the cost on its older slates in preparation for the release of its new Nook HD models." From the article, here are the pricing details: "Each of the 7-inch tablets will get $20 shaved off their former price tag. The Nook Color will now cost $139, while the 8GB Nook Tablet will now...

Yesterday, shoppers discovered that Barnes & Noble is carrying books from Amazon Publishing’s New York imprint in stores around the country, despite the company’s insistence that it wouldn’t do so. Following our story’s publication yesterday, I learned that Barnes & Noble headquarters sent an email to its branches around the country telling them to pull the Amazon titles (which are being published and distributed in print by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt under an imprint called New Harvest). This morning, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman told me, “Our policy has not changed. We are not carrying Amazon titles.”... Read Full Article ... Source: Paid Content...

A couple of weeks ago Barnes & Noble introduced a new feature called Nook for Web. If I had to compare it to an Amazon property, I'd call it a cross between the Look Inside feature and the Kindle Cloud Reader. First, Nook for Web lets you instantly preview free samples of Nook books before you buy them. You don't have to be logged in, and you don't even have to be a registered user. Just browse for books in the Nook Store, and you'll have instant access to the content of the book you're interested in. In fact, not only is it similar...

Kindle Daily Deal: The Soldier's Wife [and] A Certain Slant of Light States Reach $69 Million Ebook Pricing Settlement with Publishers (Paid Content) B&N Names Argos, Blackwell's & Foyles as UK Retail Partner (The Digital Reader) Microsoft's Office Team Pushes Ahead With Active Reading Products (ZDnet) Amazon Starts Marketing eBooks via Ingram to Other Ebook Stores (Good E-Reader)...

Poor Barnes & Noble has been taking a real beating in the e-reader blog space lately, so I thought I'd share a link to a recent Mashable story that actually offers a bit of positive B&N and Nook news. The lede graph of reporter Lauren Indvik's piece tells the rather unfortunate financial B&N story we've been reading about everywhere over the past few days: "Sales of Barnes & Noble’s line of tablets and e-readers declined in the company’s fiscal 2013 first quarter ending July 28, the bookseller reported Tuesday."  But then, there's this: "[Barnes & Noble's] digital content sales increased 46%. That was...

Well, that didn’t take long. In the wake of the Department of Justice’s response to the hundreds of comments it received regarding its proposed anti-trust settlement with three alleged agency pricing conspirator publishers, PaidContent reports that the American Booksellers Association and Barnes & Noble have sought permission from Judge Denise Cote to file an amicus curae (“friend of the court”) brief in the case. Judge Cote has granted permission to file such a brief by August 15th. The ABA and B&N discuss the sorts of things they’re likely to say in the 10-page filing (PDF) in which they...

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color and Nook Tablet are about to get on the map, PaidContent reports. Or at least the map’s going to get on them. B&N has partnered with geolocation service skobbler to add wi-fi-based map positioning to its tablet devices via free and premium map apps—beating Amazon to the punch. Of course, since the Nooks don’t have built-in GPS, their positioning will probably be about as accurate as my wifi iPod Touch or iPad’s built-in maps—but that’s often close enough for general purposes. Amazon’s Kindle Fire doesn’t have a map app of its own yet, though...

FutureBook has a brief report on the Dutch e-book industry, which appears to have started taking off since Kobo and Apple entered the market in the last year. E-book market revenue makes up about 3% of the market now, and is expected to account for 5-7% by the end of the year. Barnes & Noble, Google, and possibly Amazon are expected to enter the Dutch market this year, and Dutch e-book distributor Central Bookhouse expects to make 1.5 million sales by the end of 2012. ...

paidContent reports that self-publishing firm FastPencil is going to offer a new service to its higher-end customers. The company is now promising that those customers who publish through the company’s Wavecrest (packages ranging from $4,499 to $7,499) or Premiere (no prices listed, so presumably if you have to ask it’s too expensive) programs will have “full access to online and in-store placement through Barnes & Noble as well as NOOK bookshelf merchandising.” Except this doesn’t mean quite what you think it does—it just means that FastPencil will pitch Barnes & Noble at quarterly meetings on “all Premiere and...