In the video, CNET’s Donald Bell refers to the Kindle Fire as a “good enough product”—essentially a device that will work well as an e-reader and media viewer for people who can’t afford an iPad, though not something you would want to “take to work and use as a laptop replacement.” The video points to CNET’s holiday gift guide for a more in-depth look at the various contenders.

The video is a bit shallow, but it’s interesting to see all the tablets held and used in the hands of the reviewers. It gives more of a feel for their size than just seeing them in pictures alone. It’s pretty obvious that e-readers and tablets will be an even hotter item this Christmas than last Christmas, and it will be interesting to see what the e-publishing landscape looks like next year after everyone who got them for Christmas starts using them.

And this bright bundle of glittering generalities does not seem to have helped in the end. Barnes & Noble’s stock was down by as much as 13% after Amazon’s Kindle announcement today, before recovering and finishing at only about 7% down for the day. I imagine any really smart day-traders would have started shorting it last night and stopped a couple hours after the announcement. (Wish I were a smart day-trader.)

The already-embattled bookstore chain really didn’t need this kind of stock hit, but on the other hand it will probably get back some of its own whenever it is ready to announce the new Nooks and Nook Colors it is rumored to have waiting in the wings. But the critical question that B&N, and for that matter Kobo, should be asking themselves is whether they can compete with Amazon on price anymore.

Already I’ve spotted an otherwise-savvy commentator—eBookNewser’s Donna Dilworth—innocently making the apples-to-oranges comparison and wondering whether B&N and Kobo would now have to lower their prices to compete. And that will only be the first of many such comparisons, driven no doubt by Amazon’s own marketing and advertising machine that will be happy to compare Amazon’s “$99 Kindle Touch” to Kobo’s $129 Kobo Touch or B&N’s $139 Nook—when in fact the price of an ad-free Kindle will still be that same $139.

Until and unless they can implement their own “special offers” programs to make up the difference, B&N, Kobo, and for that matter all of the other third-party also-rans like Sony, Astak, etc. are going to be unable to reach the new price goalposts now that Amazon has moved them.

These competitors can certainly try to get the truth out in their own advertising that the Kindle’s price is being subsidized by ads, and that when you compare the ad-free prices they’re the same—but the more complicated the message, the more likely it will go right over the average person’s head. And you just can’t get much simpler than “$79, $99, $149 Kindle,” especially when people who’ve tried them don’t seem to find the ads all that intrusive.

So what will happen? Will competitors find ways to make e-readers cheaper without the ads? Will advertising programs that you pay extra not to have become the default state for all (successful) e-readers? Overall, this simple price emphasis change could have a greater effect on the e-reader market than all the new features and models Amazon introduced combined.

I have my doubts that Sony is going to have staying power in the e-reader biz for much longer, but perhaps it will surprise me. At any rate, if you have a thing for the Sony Reader, have a blast.

Available in red, white, and black colors, the black version (but not the other two) will include a coupon for a free download of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone “while supplies last”. (Because, after all, e-books are known for finite supply and manufacturing costs!)

Harry Potter or no, I have a hard time imagining too many people going for this when competing readers cost $20-$30 less. Sony might be trying to compete on quality, but I suspect the e-reader marketplace is currently focusing squarely on price.

The device costs €165 (equivalent to $240 US) on that website, and will probably be a bit cheaper when and if it’s introduced here—but can it be cheap enough to compete with all the e-readers that are now clustering around the $100 mark and preparing to plunge even lower?

Via The Digital Reader

The piece has some interesting information from anonymous inside sources about what features the tablet will offer:

Amazon’s tablet will have a roughly nine-inch screen and will run on Google’s Android platform, said people familiar with the device. Unlike the iPad, it won’t have a camera, one of these people said. While the pricing and distribution of the device is unclear, the online retailer won’t design the initial tablet itself. It also is outsourcing production to an Asian manufacturer, the people said.

Nowhere is there any mention of the two-faced combo tablet rumor started last week by some guy on an airplane; I would be rather inclined to doubt it at this point. However, it does mention Sony has been showing off a tablet and a dual-screened, wallet-shaped device which will offer access to Sony games, e-books, apps, and multimedia content. Sony hasn’t done very well with its e-book readers so far, and its portable multimedia players have fizzled, but it has had reasonable success in the portable gaming field. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the tablet and e-reader marketplaces.

(Found via Publishing Perspectives.)

VentureBeat’s article, published yesterday, looked at Sony’s poor performance in the ereader wars compared to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, despite having a head start. There’s not a lot of new information for the Teleread audience. However, Sony took issue with the article and responded with this:

It is true that Sony is committed to the Reader category and believes there is a market for both tablets and dedicated e-readers. And, since we have historically released new Readers every year since our initial launch, it is reasonable to assume we will do so again this year. However, the details about a new Sony Reader included in this article are inaccurate. We have not released any pricing, timing or features of a new Sony Reader. When we do have Sony Reader news, we will share all the details with you.

VentureBeat updated their article with the information, but added, “We’re keeping the original report because Sony may just be covering for an unannounced leak.” Either way, I bet Lubell has had an interesting past few days.

The article doesn’t provide much info in the way of hardware specs, but it looks like prices will remain somewhere in the $180-300 range.

As for the tablets—which will incorporate Sony’s ebook platform—you can expect to pay a Sony premium:

Sony may price its two tablets — one clamshell-style with dual 5.5-inch screens and the other with a 9.4-inch touchscreen — higher than some rival products, [Lubell] said, without elaborating.

Read the full article at Bloomberg.com

[Original post follows.]

Despite all the threats, blog outrage, and speculation around Apple’s new rules for content apps over the past several months, as of this morning the three major ebooksellers’ apps already available on Apple’s App Store—Kindle, Nook, and Kobo—remain unchanged and available for download. (Sony never got a chance to play.)

Kindle and Nook both offer a link to their respective websites, while Kobo actually lets you shop their store from within the app itself. Both features are forbidden by Apple’s new guidelines, but perhaps the companies have worked out special agreements with Apple—or Apple is simply backlogged on its app approval process.

The rub here is, of course, that Apple takes a 30% cut of any purchases made within the app itself. And since agency pricing (which Apple had a hand in implementing) means prices must remain constant for e-books no matter where they’re sold…well. This could be problematic for e-books’ future on Apple devices.

Hopefully the same backlash that led to Apple eventually allowing Flash applications and reverting the iPad’s "mute" switch will bring about some chances here. But who can say?

Unfortunately, with little notice, Apple changed the way it enforces its rules and this will prevent the current version of the Reader™ for iPhone® from being available in the app store. We opened a dialog with Apple to see if we can come up with an equitable resolution but reached an impasse at this time. We’re exploring other avenues to bring the Reader experience to Apple mobile devices. We know that many of you are eagerly awaiting the application and we appreciate your continued patience.

The New York Times and 9 to 5 Mac are taking much the same tack as I did in my earlier post: might this spell trouble for Kindle, Nook, etc.? But at Technologizer, Harry McCracken suggests that this may be much ado about nothing. He points out those other news sources have it that the rejection seems to revolve around the idea of “in-app purchases”—that is, that the Sony Reader app was trying to offer an in-app purchase ability, rather than redirecting customers to an external web store where they could buy content. As we noted last year, the Amazon Kindle app was also rejected until it removed its own in-app purchase ability.

The e-reading apps that are already in the App Store don’t permit in-app purchases of books, either. If Sony submitted a Reader app with in-app book buying and was refused admittance to the App Store, it’s only being required to play by the same rules as other e-book merchants. (Apple itself offers iBooks, which offers in-app book-buying.)

He does admit that it’s still possible Apple could be changing the rules to define linking to an external website from within the app as an “in-app purchase” ability, and if that’s the case he would be very upset and end up having to switch to a different phone. But Apple has declined to comment on the reasoning behind the rejection, so it could be a while before we understand exactly what is going on.

Update: Ars Technica’s coverage suggests that Apple has indeed said e-book apps can’t download content purchased elsewhere, in addition to not allowing in-app purchases. If true, this would definitely imperil every other e-book app on the iPhone. However, in the follow-up discussion thread, someone posts information suggesting that the problem is in the methods Sony is using, not the actual practice.

Sony simply needs to make simple changes: use the file system, allow book migration between devices, and stop using a directly connected 3rd party payment system. If they do as Amazon and BnK [sic] anlready [sic] do, it will get approved, and apple still gets $0 from each book sale.

As an aside, isn’t it a bit ironic that Sony’s being locked out of someone else’s platform when another division of the company is trying to do the same to Playstation users? And meanwhile, Sony continues to insist people use its own proprietary memory card standard, at least for some devices (the Sony Reader accepts SD cards), instead of joining the SD card party of the rest of the industry.

(Found via Engadget.)

Computers that ran their program, plus this new bit of code, would stop working after a year, though they cheerfully provided three telephone numbers, against the day. If you were a legitimate user, and could prove it, they’d unlock you.

Computer vandals of the day began copying this bit of code, distributing it, and infecting other peoples’ computers with it. And this led to an entire culture of virus writers that persists to this day 25 years later. Gibson seems surprised that these vandals did it not for money, but just for what 4chan would call “the lulz”.

I’m a little surprised Gibson doesn’t mention the viruses that are largely written for money these days, that I have had to deal with on a daily basis in my tech support job. There are now highly-lucrative affiliate networks that exist for the purpose of getting rogue security software installed on as many people’s computers as possible—programs that try to con ignorant computer users out of their money (and often succeed).

At any rate, there are plenty of objectors to DRM who will be happy to characterize it as malware that takes over your computer (especially the ones who got a Sony “rootkit” CD). But it’s funny to see that a form of DRM actually led to the computer virus scene.

Formerly, songs could get as much as six weeks of radio play, called “setting up” a record, before being released for sale to consumers. This would let songs debut on sales charts in high positions, by building demand. However, times have changed considerably since the days when the only way to hear music you didn’t own was over the radio.

Record label execs report finding that interest in the songs, as shown by Google and iTunes search frequency, actually peaked two weeks before the song became available for sale—meaning by the time it was on sale, potential customers were already bored with it (or had already pirated it).

Sony, which will start the "on air, on sale" policy simultaneously with Universal next month, agreed that the old approach was no longer relevant in an age where, according to a spokesman for the music major, "people want instant gratification".

Now if only the publishing industry would pay attention to this, instead of “windowing” the release of e-books for weeks or months after the print version comes out.

(Found via Ars Technica.)

Ironically, thanks to the presence of long-established paper book sales-tracking survey BookScan, it is currently significantly harder to quantify sales of electronic books (which should create a digital record with each single sale) than it is to track paper ones.

As e-book sales grow, so the market has become increasingly opaque. Amazon’s figures are a master-piece in self-interested obfuscation, and I’ve seen nothing from Apple, or Sony that suggests they are likely to have a damascene conversion to openness anytime soon.

This necessitated some of the same sorts of guesswork that preceded BookScan for the paper book selling world for FutureBook to come up with an e-book bestseller list of its own for the launch of a weekly email newsletter.

I wonder how the New York Times and Nielsen are going to gather accurate sales figures if the e-book stores are so reticent to give them out. Will they come from the publishers themselves?