Might be a good deal for anyone in the market for (or wanting to gift) an e-ink touchscreen reader, if you can get one before they sell out.

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 also been getting involved with the publishing process with UK publishers.

[Horner] said: "There are a lot of conversations with publishers, a lot of partnerships going forward. ‘What are you capable of doing digitally?’ That’s not a conversation that would have happened two years ago." She added that the current challenge in terms of content was in finding the right non-fiction content to sell digitally, and that self-published content was a "monster conversation going on in the digital space" in the US at the moment. Ten per cent of titles on B&N’s digital bestselling lists are produced by its self-publishing programme, Pub-it.

However B&N does it, it seems that the Kindle will soon have a run for its money on the other side of the Big Pond.

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 you if you do.

(Found via The Digital Reader.)

Amusingly, one of its listed benefits is

No Annoying Ads

Reading time is your time and you don’t want to be interrupted. NOOK lets you immerse yourself in your books, magazines, and newspapers without being distracted by annoying ads that appear in other Readers.

On TVTropes, that’s what we call a “Take That”.

Meanwhile, Apple’s Black Friday circular has leaked a couple of days early, giving a glimpse at what Apple will have on offer. The deals are about the same as last year, though a little better on higher-end devices.

The deals on the Mac end cover the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, while the iPod nano and iPod touch are the discounted iPod offerings. The Macs will be $101 less, the iPads will go from $41-$61 discounts depending on capacity (16GB, 32GB, 64GB), the iPod nano will shave off $11 for both 8GB and 16GB storage sizes, the iPod touch will follow the iPad’s lead of bigger discounts for bigger capacities, ranging from $21-$41 discounts.

I’d be vaguely tempted if I had any money.

I’ll mention other e-reader deals if I see them.

Gizmodo checked with B&N and was told that the measure was intended to prevent customers from loading up their devices with lots of movies and music and then discovering that apps and magazines they wanted to buy wouldn’t fit. I guess it emphasizes the fact that, as far as B&N is concerned, they’re not selling you a tablet—they’re selling you a way to consume the media they also sell. (So is Amazon, of course, though it goes about it in a different way.)

It’s not exactly a new development, though—back in May, B&N revised its Nook Colors to feature the same 1-gig storage restriction. The Kindle Fire doesn’t have that restriction on its own 8 GB of storage, of course—but it doesn’t have an SD card slot, either, so 8 is all you get.

It’s just necessary to enable installation of apps from unknown sources on the Fire, then sideload the non-corporate app store GetJar (choosing another Android 2.3 device from its install options since the Kindle Fire isn’t listed). Then GetJar can install the Nook app. (Not all third-party GetJar apps will install successfully, but Nook is one that will.)

There’s not really anything new in this; one favorite activity of Nook Color jailbreakers has been to install the Kindle Android app onto their tablets. On the other hand, the Kindle Fire does have going for it the fact that you don’t have to jailbreak to do it. Of course, those who own third-party Android devices (or for that matter iOS devices) can put both Kindle and Nook apps on their devices without having to do anything out of the ordinary.

Regardless, this added e-book store flexibility may give the Kindle Fire that much more appeal to potential shoppers. It certainly would be a selling point for me.

(Found via Gizmodo.)

Although tools exist that make it relatively quick and easy for a designer to see the page on the right screen size and move things around a bit, that doesn’t really solve the problem. An illustrated book publisher would really have to design and lay out each book at least twice (for the 10-inch and 7-inch screens) and possibly three times (to get the iPhone screen too.) Then those would be three different files, so you couldn’t actually move across your devices and have them auto-synch the way Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Apple enable you to do now for straight text.

Would you get the files for all three sizes when you made the purchase?

That reminds me of the Nobilis 3rd edition e-book, which was heavily illustrated and did bundle several versions together in the same package, for use on iPads, e-ink readers, Kindles, and so on. But that probably wouldn’t be a solution for most illustrated books—particularly the ones that are delivered direct-to-e-reader, such as Kindle or Nook downloads.

There haven’t been very many illustrated e-books (as opposed to multimedia “enhanced” e-books) so far. It makes sense; many illustrated books would benefit considerably from multimedia enhancement to expand their presentation of their subject matter, so they go that route instead. However, reportedly conversion houses in India have been working overtime to get more illustrated books ready for the coming crop of color tablets, so we may soon see an expansion in the number of illustrated books to be read.

I do have to nitpick one point in Shatzkin’s post, though. He seems to be assuming that “illustrated” books will necessarily have to be presented in color. However, I’ve seen plenty of fiction books that were illustrated with black and white line drawings, and those would work perfectly well on the screen of the Kindle or any other e-ink reader. Assuming the formatting issues could be solved, of course.

And speaking of Newsstand apps, ReadWriteWeb looks at the Kindle Fire Newsstand’s app as one of Amazon’s secret weapons in the war against the iPad. Offering over 400 full-color publications,  and including a free three-month trial of various Condé Nast magazines for those who subscribe before March 1, 2012, the app will compete with Apple’s own Newsstand. The Apple app reportedly accounted for a 268% jump in iPad sales for Condé Nast magazines after its launch.

Stand-alone magazine apps have had a notably spotty track record on the iPad, though judging from the Condé Nast sales jump it would seem Newspad may have fixed the worst issues. Those problems aside, it seems fairly obvious that color tablets will provide a better reading experience for glossy, full-color magazine pages than a black-and-white e-ink reader would. And people who already buy a lot of magazine subscriptions would likely have the sort of disposable income someone considering spending $200 on a tablet would need. (Barnes & Noble seems to be banking on this, too, as with the addition of Nook Newsstand to smartphone apps.)

Of course, it remains to be seen just how effective this secret weapon will be.

The site that presented the slides, GeekWire, is down right now (presumably due to the heavy bandwidth demand from all 29 of those pictures being downloaded by everybody who saw the article linked on Techmeme), but the Google Cache of all 29 slides is available. In the presentation, Barnes & Noble complains that Microsoft is demanding licensing fees commensurate with owning Android for the sake of just a few patents. The presentation was originally given in July to officials from the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Barnes & Noble requested an anti-trust investigation of Microsoft on patent grounds. A letter from the company’s general counsel complains that MIcrosoft is attempting to kill off small players in the handheld device industry by license fees that only larger companies can afford. (It also noted that Microsoft’s desired license fees for the Nook Color were higher than B&N could afford.)

Meanwhile, Microsoft has extended licenses to a number of Android-using companies including Samsung, HTC, and Acer. A spokesman for the company pointed out that Microsoft had to take licenses for others’ patents used in Windows, and makes its own licenses available “on reasonable terms” for others.

This is not the only ongoing patent skirmish in the handheld device industry right now, of course. The epic battle between Samsung and Apple over the Galaxy Tab’s resemblance to the iPad threatens to make devices from one company or the other unavailable in parts of Europe or Australia. The Justice Department is looking into the matter of technology patent fights and purchases.

It will be interesting to see whether this pans out. As Hoffelder points out, given that the Kindle Fire will be shipping soon, this is about B&N’s last chance to come out with new devices if it wants to be able to compete for sales the moment the Fire becomes available.

(We previously covered Hoffelder’s September scoop of a B&N leak suggesting code names and pricing for new Nook models.)

This seems to be an example of playing to one’s strengths—thanks to Nook e-book sales, the bn.com website seems to be one of few bright spots in Barnes & Noble’s portfolios. Sales at its brick and mortar stores have been declining over the last few years.

Time points out the irony that, at the time chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders were founded, they were expected to drive smaller independent stores out of business—but in an era of big box bookstores’ decline and failure, the independent stores that have survived are mostly doing well, because they know and can cater to their marketing niches.

As for Barnes & Noble’s website expansion:

[Bill Kavaler, senior analyst at Oscar Gruss & Son] says that the move is necessary. ”Just books ain’t enough,” he says. And he’s mildly optimistic it can work: “[Barnes & Noble] isn’t doing anything particularly stupid,” Kavaler says. “And that’s all you can ask.”

That’s certainly damning with faint praise if I ever heard it. Isn’t it a heck of a thing when “all you can ask” of a company is that it not do something stupid?

An excited author of mine downloaded the Nook PC app and bought a copy of his e-enhanced book this weekend and was hugely impressed (The London of Sherlock Holmes hyperlinking to Google Maps). I tried to do the same, and indeed also tried to download the exciting new Nook iPad app too so I could see how the new book works on the iPad. Apparently the world according to B&N doesn’t stretch too far.

Barnes & Noble’s North America-centrism has also caused problems for self-publishing authors who live outside the US. Diane Duane would have published some works through B&N except that “I can’t publish directly into the Nook store because I don’t have a US bank account, so the heck with you until you sort yourself out, B&N.”

One would think that, as much as bookstores have been financially struggling lately (including B&N itself, which tried putting itself up for sale but couldn’t find a buyer), Barnes & Noble would be trying to expand into international markets before its competitors could completely own them. But I suppose the company must know its own business best.

This action has started getting more media coverage lately, with a report in the New York Times yesterday on the incident, and an update—bookselling chain Books a Million (which sells a version of the Nook as its own e-reader) has also pulled DC’s graphic novels, for the same reason.

As the Times article notes, the stores don’t want to become “showrooms for Amazon’s digital warehouse”—places where people can come and leaf through books, then buy them more cheaply or digitally via Amazon. And if they can’t carry the digital version of popular print titles, that means print-browsing buyers who prefer digital will have no choice but to do exactly that.

A lot of people are unhappy about the situation:

In online comics forums and other places where the issue is being debated, everyone is unhappy with someone. Amazon is being accused by some of throwing its considerable weight around to the detriment of readers and the larger culture. DC Comics is being criticized by others of placing greed over its fans. Barnes & Noble is alternatively being accused of throwing its own weight around and of cutting off its nose to spite its face. Even the comics’ writers are getting some heat.

The article quotes Neil Gaiman, whose Sandman graphic novels are affected, as being “heartbroken” that his works won’t be available for his and his kids’ readers, but annoyed with Barnes & Noble for giving Amazon and other stores a physical exclusive as well as the electronic one.

DC Comics seems to be surprised by the backlash, and claims it is being “misunderstood”. Jim Lee, co-publisher of DC Entertainment, says other platforms that can run the Kindle app will have access to the comics, and Amazon is “not the be-all and end-all of our digital strategy and distribution.” He counsels fans to “have a little patience.” Of course, in a world where people in the know can immediately download any comic they want to for free, without the publishers or creators seeing a dime, “patience” can be hard to come by.

On Gizmodo, Kyle Wagner worries that the disappearance of comics from bookstores in a notably small-margin industry could lead to books being cancelled, and also points out that this means fans without Kindles are out of luck for both electronic and physical versions…unless they order the physical versions from Amazon.

Are printed books disappearing because of e-books? Well, printed DC comic books are disappearing from the big chain bookstores because of e-books. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on the industry’s sales—or on its digital exclusive decisions.

Many people, especially publishers, are quick to accuse ebooks of being harmful to the book industry when in reality they are breathing new life into it. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they started reading MORE when they got their e-readers. Both new and established authors are embracing the new technology with many well known authors getting the rights to their back catalogs and releasing them on ebooks themselves. If you love books, ebooks are a good thing.

Wash points to poor management as the primary culprit. And certainly that’s what the post-mortems we’ve covered from people who were actually associated with the chain said.

I would suggest e-books could have been a contributing factor, but only insofar as Borders’s poor management meant the store couldn’t figure out how to profit from them in time—something that fellow bookstores Amazon and Barnes & Noble have both managed pretty well.

Of course, Barnes & Noble has itself been struggling lately—it managed to hold this off for a bit by hopping on the e-book bandwagon with the Nook, and the excellent sales performance of the Nook Color has helped a lot, but let’s not forget that the company tried to put itself up for sale this past year but couldn’t find an interested buyer.

E-books may not be a direct cause of bookstore death, but I think they’re a sort of test for bookstores that it is possible to get wrong. Getting the answer wrong, or at least not right enough, may not be enough to doom the store by itself, but if it’s part of an overall pattern of poor decision-making, it’s definitely going to help that process along. And conversely, getting the answer right or mostly right may not be enough to save Barnes & Noble in the end.

The publishing market is in the throes of change, and only the fittest entities, be it publishers or stores, are going to survive. Borders just wasn’t fit enough.

It’s a little hard to believe that, just over a year later, the vast majority of them have vanished with little trace of their passage. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that there could ever have been 32 potential “iPad killers” at all. I know I’d be hard-pressed to name more than 3 or 4 of them without cheating and reading the article.

Partly that’s because a lot of these tablets simply never really were true iPad competitors—and a lot of those tablets, such as the models from Archos, do still seem to be around. We don’t hear much about them because they aren’t really trying for the same market niche as the iPad, or even as the Nook Color or Kindle Fire. Archos’s devices always seemed more like dedicated media players with a tablet form factor than true “tablet” tablets, for instance.

Some of them simply never showed up—either never condensing from vaporware (such as the alleged Rocketfish tablet) or simply just not having been released yet (like Dell’s Windows slate). Some of them did show up but only in parts of Europe or Asia, not the USA, or at such outlandishly high prices nobody ever bothered with them. And others, such as the TouchPad, showed up and flamed out.

It’s interesting to note that the only really successful non-iPad tablets, either currently on the market or soon to launch, are a couple that didn’t even make that list of 32: the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire. Sometimes you find competition where you least expect it.

Of course, it still remains to be seen whether any tablet has the ability to knock the iPad off its lofty throne. But it certainly will be fun finding out.