Unbound: The eReading Blog

As we near the official kick-off of the holiday shopping season, we wanted to provide an update on nook, one of this year’s most popular holiday gifts. nook continues to be the fastest-selling product at Barnes & Noble, and pre-orders have continued to exceed our expectations. 

While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we’ve sold out of our initial nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays.

All customers ordering a nook beginning today, November 20 should expect their devices to ship beginning the week of January 4, 2010.  To assist those customers who are purchasing nooks as holiday gifts, we have created a special holiday certificate, noting an expected January ship date.  Beginning today, any customer pre-ordering nook as a gift will have the option to receive a special certificate at no cost -- either in-store or via mail, for those pre-ordering online.

We continue to ramp up nook supply to meet the demand in the New Year.  We’re committed to providing timely updates to our customers on expected nook availability and will do so through in-store, online and our direct-to-customer communications throughout the holiday season.

More good news on the eBook front: We'll soon accept Barnes & Noble gift cards as payment in our eBook store.

This change — effective in mid-December — will allow customers to use physical gift cards and online gift certificates to purchase eBooks through our site, through nook, and through other devices using the B&N eReader software.

We'll have full details (including the specific launch date) in mid-December.

In the meantime, we want to say thanks for your suggestions and enthusiasm. We were able to accelerate this change due in part to the customer feedback.

Thanks again for your support. And happy reading.

Yesterday, we held a live event on Facebook with Anne Rice, whose new novel, Angel Time (Songs of the Seraphim Series #1), was released a few weeks ago. For four and a half hours, Anne took questions from hundreds of her most devoted fans in a discussion thread set up on Barnes & Noble's official Facebook page. For those who missed it, click here to view the entire discussion.

Anne Rice is one of many authors who have embraced digital culture. Many of her famous novels—Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (Sleeping Beauty Series #1), and even Angel Time—are available as eBooks. In fact, in yesterday's Facebook chat, one fan asked Anne for her opinion on the subject of digital literature. Anne had this to say:

"I am intrigued by eBooks...The amazing thing is, of course, that eBooks can reach thousands without much production cost involved. Kind of incredible when you think about it. I think we'll see great improvements in eBooks, expansion of fonts or letter styles, and perhaps virtual pictures of the actual books including page numbers. It's an amazing field."  

But it's not just eBooks that Anne embraces. She's also very involved in social media. We love following her candid, personal musings on Twitter (she's @AnneRiceAuthor; we're @eBooksBN) and on her official Facebook page. And yes, it's really Anne herself behind those messages. She's all about interacting with her fans, and digital media makes it so easy to reach so many people, instantly.

Which other authors can you think of who are embracing the digital revolution? And which authors do you wish would?

Some good news for readers north of the border: We'll soon start selling Barnes & Noble eBooks to customers in Canada.

The update, which will take place around Dec. 1, will allow people living in or visiting Canada to shop our eBook store and download eBooks to their B&N eReader-supported devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Mac, and PC.

That includes nook, too, though we are not selling nook in Canada (or anywhere outside of the United States) at this time. If you're using a nook in Canada, you will be able to sync to your B&N eBooks library and access our eBook store via Wi-Fi.

We know there's an incredible interest from readers who want to buy from our eBook store outside the United States, and we are looking at our options for international sales. For now, though, we remind international travelers that they can access their online eBooks library and download already-purchased content while they're outside the United States. nook owners can access their online Library over Wi-Fi while outside the country as well.

Happy eReading.

Our colleagues over in marketing for nook have joined forces with Imus in the Morning to sponsor the new Imus Book of the Week program.

Imus will kick off the program during tomorrow morning's broadcast with Million-Dollar Throw, a young adult novel by sports columnist and author Mike Lupica.

Million-Dollar Throw (also available, of course, in hardcover) is the inspirational story of Nate "Brady" Brodie, an 8th-grade football quarterback who gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance to throw a pass through a target at a New England Patriots game -- and win one million dollars.

The segment airs Wednesdays about 7:10 a.m. As always, we can't wait to hear what the I-man has to say (about the book -- and nook).

As an editor working in digital publishing, I’ve seen a lot of words cross my computer screen. I read eBooks all day for work, but I’m also an avid digital reader in my personal life; my virtual library consists of thousands of titles. But there are two types of books that I still don’t buy digitally: cookbooks and children’s books.

I’m an enthusiastic collector of cookbooks; half of a bookcase in my kitchen is dedicated to various titles I’ve acquired over the years—like one of my old favorites, Betty Crocker Cookbook, and one of my new favorites, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl. I also have a five-year-old daughter who has inherited her mother’s passion for books of all shapes and sizes. Being a kid in the digital age, she’s also got an insatiable curiosity about my iPhone. But neither my love of cookbooks nor my daughter’s love of kids’ books has translated fully to digital yet.

I think one obvious reasons for this is pictures. My daughter loves lots of pictures in her books, and I love them in my cookbooks. Nothing makes me choose a recipe faster than a scrumptious-looking photo. So—although I'm already hopelessly devoted to eBooks—today I’m dreaming of what the future might hold for eCookbooks and kids' eBooks. What changes and features are possible for eBooks that would make them even more appealing to the average child or the at-home chef?

Some cookbooks are already making digital headway. Major titles like Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express and Cook Yourself Thin are already available as eBooks (see bn.com's entire spread of eCookbooks here). It's wonderfully convenient to be able to follow recipes on my laptop instead of peeling sticky pages apart. But I’d love to see the digital cookbooks and children’s books of tomorrow offer the same detailed, beautiful, intricate pictures as their print counterparts do today. Who knows: someday, digital books might offer the ability to include even more pictures than print ever could. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a cookbook that has pictures of every step of the process, from start to finish? What if your eCookbook even included a video on how to  carry out a complicated technique? Maybe it could recommend wines to pair with your meal, suggest meal plans, or link to online stores that sell unique and hard-to-find ingredients.

And what if my daughter’s eBook had embedded audio, so she could hear clips of the characters’ dialogue, the song the character is singing, or the rhythm of a rhyme? How about a video that demonstrates how to play the same game the characters are playing?

The possibilities seem endless; that's the magic of eBooks. I admit there are times when I just want my book to be a book, with no extra features. But I do hope that someday, eBooks will offer more than I can even imagine. Who knows, maybe they’ll even figure out a way to include the delicious aromas of the recipes in my digital cookbooks. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

How about you? Dream big with me and tell me what outrageous (or not so outrageous) features you’d love to see in your eBook of the future.

Angela James is a freelance editor who has worked in digital publishing for six years.

My home is filled with books. In every room, bookshelves of various shapes and sizes are filled to capacity. Check that: They're over capacity. Additional books lie on tables and couches, as well as under tables and couches. You get the picture. I've been writing about business and technology (among other things) for over 40 years and teaching journalism at several universities for 20 years; naturally, wherever I go I'm surrounded by books. Many of these volumes have followed me from Michigan to Florida to Washington, D.C. to California and beyond.
 

To date, I’ve only read a portion of my total collection; many I have intended to read for a long time, but (to be realistic) probably never will. These are my aspirational books, you might say. Of those I've read, perhaps 10 percent -- or a couple hundred -- have influenced me beyond measure. These are the books I’ve purchased multiple times throughout my journeys; I often give away copies to students, friends, and even casual acquaintances when the impulse strikes. So I reside inside a self-curated library of sorts, an environment that I've more or less replicated whenever and wherever I've relocated, which has been roughly a dozen times over the past four decades.
 

But lately, something about this very intimate part of my life has started to change. As I was sitting in my living room with a friend recently, contemplating all of my books, my friend suggested that these books actually are relics of a bygone era. 
Technology has rendered my propensity to collect print volumes a rather quaint trait. Global climate change has rendered it ecologically unsound. And the cost of space in San Francisco has rendered it ultimately unsustainable.
 

eBook reading devices like nook are capable of holding all of the books I own -- and desire to own -- in a unit about the size of a paperback. Thus, I could (and probably should) downsize this library of mine and make it mobile. In the process, I could reduce my personal carbon footprint, as well as free up lots of space at home and on the road.

Plus, my friend suggested that day, I could sell some of these books, and make enough to cover the cost of a new eReader (and then some). Her logic was flawless, of course, and it set me down a path that would have been unimaginable even a year or two ago: selling or giving away most of my collection.

I'm almost resolved to making this bold move, but it's hard. Many of these volumes evoke moments and feelings that are still vivid, though long past; some from tropical days reading in India and Malaysia, others from chilly nights in Russia and Japan. How can I just let go of these memories?

I guess a digital library is something I'll have to build gradually over time, like I did with print books. When I think of it that way, it's doesn't seem like such a radical step. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'll keep my memories forever.

I wonder if you're feeling the same way. Where are you on the path from print to digital?

We promised you the other day that we’d return with some highlights of the big nook launch event at NYC’s Chelsea Piers.

Turns out, our videographers came up with the perfect tool for this: A cool little highlight reel that shows nook, its many features, and (for the first time) how it'll be displayed in Barnes & Noble stores.

Enjoy! (And remember, the best place for your nook-related questions is our eBooks Help Board.)