My e-reader sits on the bookshelf, dust growing on it every day. My Nook Simple Touch used to be one of my favorite gadgets—I carried it everywhere, even just to sneak a couple of pages here and there. I’ve replaced my e-reader with a tablet. I ordered a Nexus 7 last July (a birthday present) when the first batch was ready to hit the market. I use it to surf the 'net, check Facebook and Twitter, play games and, of course, read. I’m definitely not the only one. The Book Industry Study Group recently released information from the Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey...

  If you had a pile of 300 books in your house waiting to be read, what would you do? Would you go out and buy any more books? I doubt it, even if you could battle your way to the front door. Yet if you’d got 300 books on your Kindle/iPad/other e-reader, would you stay in and click on any more ‘Buy It Now’ logos? More than possible. Because you probably wouldn’t even have noticed how many books were on there. Never mind 300, you can put 3,000 books on an e-reader and it’ll look and weigh just the same as if...

By Christina Jones Barnes & Noble just launched a Nook Free Fridays program for its customers. If you own a Nook tablet, you can download an otherwise paid app for free every Friday. The first free app B&N offered, for instance, was OfficeSuite Professional 7, a $15 value. If you’re a Nook user, this is a really cool opportunity. “We are thrilled to offer NOOK customers a variety of exciting apps from top developers for free every week,” said Claudia Romanini, VP of Nook Apps, in a release. “NOOK Free Fridays is the perfect way to highlight our vast offering of exciting content,...

*This article originally appeared on the website of Book Business, a TeleRead sister publication. While predicting doom for Nook, as Book Business columnist Michael Weinstein put it, has become the favored pastime of the book and tech press of late, it’s hard not to read the news of B&N Chairman Leonard S. Riggio’s bid to purchase the chain’s retail stores and take them private—leaving the company’s foundering Nook Media division to fend for itself—as the beginning of the end for the little e-reader that could. (Or maybe it’s the end of the end for the little e-reader that couldn’t quite.) It’s not without a little sadness...

Will eBook adoption Flatten out at 30%  of the Market? (Dear Author) Ann Patchett on books' future: "I think we'll be just fine." (Palm Beach Post) Three e-reading tools I wish existed (Paid Content) German Book Retailers Team Up Against Amazon with New eReader (Reuters) The Three Most Important Lessons We Can Learn From B&N's Nook Setback (Eoin Purcell) Kindle Daily Deals: The Fifth Knight by E.M. Powell...

Engadget recently reported on a Nook Bluetooth speaker making its way through the FCC. Considering all the rumors and other news about Barnes & Noble lately, it’s nice to see that the Nook line isn’t being ignored. However, we’ll have to see about pricing. Bluetooth speakers are common. For B&N to sell these in any quantity, there’d better be either an awesome feature or a super price. There is a blank listing on the B&N site, with no pricing or availability information yet.  ...

Nook: Cost Cutting Coming (Digital Book World) New Service Offers Watermark DRM to Indie eBookstores (The Digital Reader) The Publishing Industry Has a Problem; ePub is not the Solution (TOC) 'Trusted Friend' is Top Book Discovery Tool (Galley Cat) Kindle Daily Deals: The Collected by Brett Battles (and 3 others)  ...

We've known the numbers were coming, and Barnes & Noble released its third quarter earnings today. A few items of interest: Third quarter consolidated revenues were $2.2 billion, a decrease of 8.8% as compared to the prior year. Third quarter consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were $55 million, as compared to $150 million a year ago. Third quarter consolidated net losses were $6.1 million, as compared to net earnings of $52 million a year ago. Those are some pretty impressive numbers. Losses of $6.1 million compared to net earnings of $52 million a year earlier. B&N did attribute much of...

Ten Proofreading Tips for Self-Publishers (Media Shift) McGraw-Hill Digital Learning Tools Released for Canadian Students (Good e-Reader) Buy a Nook HD+, Get a $50 Gift Card (The Digital Reader) How Some Authors Buy Spots on Bestseller Lists (Media Bistro) Kindle Daily Deals: Dead Asleep by Jaime Freveletti (and 3 others)  ...

Lots of rumors were flying last night about a split of Barnes & Noble. It's now been confirmed through an SEC filing that Len Riggio, current CEO of B&N, wants to buy the retail stores and BN.com. Nook Media and the college bookstores will remain a separate entity under current corporate leadership; Riggio doesn't want 'em. I can't imagine that this will end well. Many of the college bookstores are also retail stores (like the one at my son's college, Virginia Commonwealth University). Will there be separate retail terms for each entity? If so, that would be horribly inefficient. And how will...

Increasing Cyberattacks Threaten Free Press in Burma (Media Shift) Is Barnes & Noble Leaving the eReader Business? (Good e-Reader) One Idea to Save Illustrated Books: Gamification (Digital Book World) News and the New Amplification Reality (GigaOM) Kindle Daily Deals: The Perfect Assassin (and 3 others)...

Love or hate e-books, so many people at least have an opinion on the topic. Rich Adin at the blog An American Editor writes, "Are eBooks the Death Knell of Authorial Greatness?" Adin is an e-book reader, but he seems worried that authors may never be considered great again because of the physical absence of books. "Part of the problem, I think, is that recalling my library books involves a visual scan of its shelves, something that is easy to do with shelves of hardcover books staring at me and difficult to do with e-books because that casual eyescan is not as readily accomplished. This...