The Consumerist reports that administrators on the Barnes & Noble message board have confirmed the Nook’s much-publicized LendMe feature, which allows loaning of eBooks, is allowed only once per title. Once that book is returned, loaning it again will be unavailable. The Nook’s LendMe feature has been seen as its killer feature over the Amazon Kindle, making the $259 reader a strong competitor.
Amazon has lowered the price of the just-released international Kindle and dropped the US-only version. Apparently in reaction to Barnes & Noble's Nook $259 launch price, the online retailer has also begun issuing automatic $20 refunds to customers that paid $279 for the global edition of the Kindle.
Adobe and Barnes & Noble today announced a partnership that will allow the latter to support open ePUB and PDF e-book formats using a standardized content protection scheme developed jointly by the two companies. This comes on the heels of the unveiling of Barnes & Noble's Android-based Nook e-book reader.
Plastic Logic will unveil the Que proReader at CES next year. The device will have an 8.5 x 11-inch screen, WiFi and will support PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents. Also, as we reported in May, the reader will have 3G capabilities through AT&T's network to download content from the Que store, powered by Barnes & Noble.
Google has announced Google Editions, a browser-based e-book distributor not locked down to any one e-reader. Set to launch in 2010, Editions will be reachable by any device with access to the Web but will also allow offline reading. Google has indicated that book pricing will be established by the publishers, and that around 500,000 titles will be available at launch.
Barnes & Noble will offer a color e-book reader next Spring, according to a company representative at the ongoing CTIA show. Few details were discussed, and the news isn't necessarily "official," but the rep did indicate that B&N fully intends to compete with the Kindle and will focus on the obvious hue-oriented difference.
