Gadgets

And Speaking of E-books

By Lev Grossman | @leverus | July 21, 2009 | +

Barnes & Noble is partnering with Plastic Logic to do one.

This strikes me as not a foolish idea. There’s room for more players in that market, and B&N’s general failure to challenge Amazon convincingly online has been a huge fail. This gives them another shot at becoming meaningful in that market. Plus, Plastic Logic’s e-reader is funky and has nice tech in it.

My first reaction was, oh, B&N is going to distance themselves from Amazon by playing the good guy: use an open format, and cut a sweet deal with publishers that will woo them away from Amazon. But I haven’t heard anything about what kinds of files this thing will display. And apparently B&N will be selling books for $9.99, just like Amazon. But Amazon hasn’t managed to come to an agreement with publishers on a way to make that work as a model. So I wonder why B&N think they can.

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  • dennitzio

    The kindle reminds me of the Mac Portable. Black & white, no backlight, heavy, and a battery that lasts forever. I got 10 hours out of one charge on that monster. Prince of Persia during class at school. Ah, good times.

  • Kemper

    Bah. All this foolishness about e-books. We need to stick with plain old paper books. With the corners cut off the pages.

  • http://youtube.com/churchhatestucker Church

    Unless B&N is going to go DRM-free, what’s the point? It’s just another rectangular e-book reader, and late to the game at that. Sort of the Beast to Kindle’s Bucket, if you follow me.

    @dennitzio You could get backlit ones, but they were costly(er.)

  • dennitzio

    @Church, they didn’t come out with the backlit ones until a few months later. It was purely reflective at first…

  • http://youtube.com/churchhatestucker Church

    @ dennitzio

    Yeah, mine was (IS! Still have it! Somewhere…) purely reflective. IIRC, there were backlight refit options later on. Also pricey.

    Loved that sonofabitch. Learned Hypercard in coffee shops on the damned thing. *sigh*

    Also, Lev should watch some show from within the past decade. *waves hand dejectedly*

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