All of your Nook content is stored in the Nook Library. In the Library, you will find:

• Books, magazines, and newspapers you have purchased or downloaded from the NOOK Bookstore
• Books that are on loan to you from a NOOK Friend.
• Your personal files you have transferred onto your Nook using a USB connection from your computer or have loaded on a microSD card installed in your Nook. Personal files can include EPUB files and PDF files.

Any books you’ve purchased from Barnes and Noble can be managed online in your BN Account’s eBook Library in the Digital Management section. Once logged in to BN.com, you can get to My eBook Library by clicking the link in the Digital Management section. In My eBook Library eBooks are either active or archived. Archived eBooks will generally not be visible on your Nook, but active ones will be. You can manage your eBook content from this page or directly on your Nook.

Please Note: If you delete an eBook from your My eBooks Library it is gone forever.

A great tool for managing your Nook Library is Calibre ebook management. Calibre is a desktop application that you install on your desktop PC and use to manage your e-book collection. Calibre is great for any e-book reader with a large collection. You can also convert any e-book that does not include DRM (digital rights management), store and backup your e-books, manage what books are on your nook and which stay on your PC, and even automatically download hundreds of websites to read on your Nook.

Can I organize the books in my library into groups? Can I edit the names of the groups?

Yes, in addition to being able to view all of your Books, Magazines, and Newspapers, the Nook Library also includes a feature called “My Shelves” where you create named collections of books and periodicals. The Library lets you organize books on Shelves. On your Nook, a Shelf is a row of books that you have grouped together, usually with some sort of characteristic in common like mysteries, cookbooks, or fiction, for example.

How many times can I share Nook books?

There is no limit on how many times an ebook can be lent, only that you can lend an ebook to one person at a time, and just for up to 14 days. According to our earlier post on the Nook sharing program, LendMe, “An eBook can be lent to one user for two weeks. While the eBook is lent, the lender, who purchased an eBook can not access the lent eBook. Only the friend who the eBook was lent to can read the book for 2 weeks, after which the eBook comes back to the lender and becomes unavailable to the lendee.”

What is the Nook operating system (OS)?

The Nook uses the Android operating system, but the version of Android changes over time based on updates by Android and releases by Barnes and Noble. As of September, 2911, the Nook is running a customized 2.2 version of Android.

What is the Nook warranty?

The Nook has a one-year limited warranty that allows for replacement if your Nook has any defects in materials or workmanship during normal usage. However, when you buy your Nook, Barnes & Noble offers the Barnes & Noble Protection Plan, which provides two years of accidental damage and rapid replacement warranty coverage. You can return nook within 14 days of receipt. For an return authorization (RMA), call 1-800-THE-BOOK (843-2665) or return it to any Barnes & Noble store. A 10% restocking fee will be charged to customers returning a non-defective device that has had its shrink wrap removed and/or seal broken. In the event you lose your Nook or someone steals it, go to your B&N.com account and de-register your nook or call Customer Service toll-free at 1-800-THE-BOOK (843-2665) to de-register the device from your account to prevent digital or monetary loss to your accounts.

World’s Largest eBookstore Barnes and Noble carries over 2 million titles including books, textbooks, children’s books, magazines, and newspapers—just a touch away! Thousands are free, most others $9.99 or less.	Nook Color’s Run Android Apps Shop an amazing array of popular apps including Angry Birds, Epicurious, and Pulse News, plus enjoy free pre-loaded Crossword puzzles, Chess and Sudoku. NOOK Color™, the award-winning Reader’s Tablet, is the best for reading now and for so much more for years to come.
Expert Recommendations Ever wonder what to read next? Recommendations are available from expert Barnes & Noble booksellers. From top picks to personalized suggestions based on the authors you love, they provide inspiration to make your next read great.	NOOK Friends™ Connect with NOOK Friends™ to share and find new titles. See your friends’ favorites and what they’re recommending. You can even swap books right from your NOOK with exclusive LendMe® technology.
Magazines and Kids’ Books Your favorite magazines and newspapers delivered the moment they’re released. Thousands of kids’ chapter books. And on NOOK Color, children’s classics come to life in ways your child will adore with new Read and Play™ interactive books.	In-Store Experience Free Wi-Fi® and free book browsing are just some of the benefits of visiting Barnes & Noble with your NOOK or NOOK Color. Plus you’ll also get exclusive content and discounts — delivered right to your screen.

These are just some of the reasons that answer the question, “Why buy a Nook Color?“

Hit the books with a Nook ereader or color tablet and get 12 free classic ebooks along with free study guides and apps.

Buy any NOOK and get over $100 in free classics and study guides. To take advantage of this offer, simply register your new NOOK by 10/31/2011, and look for an e-mail that lets you choose your FREE books.

Legal Stuff

This offer is valid on purchases made on BN.com and or in Barnes & Noble stores. For each customer, this offer can be redeemed once per billing address online at BN.com, and once per customer at the Barnes & Noble stores, while supplies last. When you purchase an All-New NOOK™, NOOK Color™ or 1st Edition NOOK™ from Barnes & Noble stores or BN.com between 8/8/2011 and 9/12/2011, you will receive an e-mail message to the Barnes & Noble account to which the device is registered. You must register your device by no later than 10/31/2011. The e-mail message will contain $107.28 worth of Barnes & Noble digital content, accessible via individual access codes. This offer is valid from 8/08/2011 and expires at BN.com on 9/12/2011 at 2:59 a.m. and at Barnes & Noble stores at close of business on 09/11/2011. This offer is limited to new NOOK devices and not Certified Pre-Owned NOOK™ devices. Device must be activated by 10/31/2011 to qualify for this offer. Limit one set of content per qualifying e-mail address. Additional Rules Governing this Offer: This offer is (i) not redeemable for cash or cash equivalents (including Gift Cards and eGift Cards); (ii) not valid on past purchases; (iii) not eligible for purchases of the following products and services: Barnes & Noble Memberships, Gift Cards, eGift Cards, gift-wrapping, textbooks, video games, digital content (including but not limited to digital books, magazines, and periodicals) other than those contained in this offer, NOOK™ and NOOK Color™ related accessories, other hardware and electronics, software, products available for pre-order, products from the Rosetta Stone Series, products available for in-store ship-to-home orders, products marked as not eligible for “coupons or promotional discounts”, or any other products other than the NOOK™ devices; (iv) not valid on shipping or handling expenses, or applicable sales tax; (v) not valid on purchases made from third parties accessible from the bn.com website (e.g., used books, PC and video games, etc.); and (vi) not valid at Barnes & Noble College bookstores or websites. This offer may not be combined with any other offer, coupon or promotional discount or with the Educator Discount. This offer is subject to change or discontinuation without notice; we will, however, honor properly placed orders with valid methods of payment with sufficient funds placed prior to such change or discontinuation. Barnes & Noble is not responsible for typographical or pictorial errors. Void where prohibited by law.

NOOK™ for iPhone from Barnes & Noble offers an incredible ebook reading experience on the iPhone without having to buy a nook. With more than two million NOOK Books from Barnes and Noble, including New York Times best sellers, new releases, and thousands of free ebooks. It is also easy to share (sharing is caring, NookSharers) eBooks with friends and family using NOOK’s exclusive LendMe™ technology. Download the app for your iPhone here or at the Apple App Store.

No In-App Purchases? Browse the Web Instead

Apple forced eBook reader apps to remove their in-app purchasing by June 30, 2011. In order to stay in compliance and in the market, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, and other apps updated and took out the link. You can still purchase books from NookBooks Under $5 – Shop Barnes &Noble.com NOOKBook collection today!, and it will instantly appear in your iPhone app as always.

Some people are asking, “What if you don’t like any of the e-books chosen for you?” You can find out first by browsing the full list of all 30 books here, which includes The Good Housekeeping Cookbook and Country Living’s The Mom’s Guide to Running a Business. Other people would rather pick one ebook of their choice instead of having 30 offered to them chosen by the company. Still others are complaining that the value proposition is just not there considering that some of the titles are in the public domain (Read: free).

• Library Management
• E-book Conversion
• Syncing to e-book reader devices

According to Calibre’s website, “Calibre started life on 31 October, 2006, soon after the release of the SONY PRS-500, the first e-ink based reader to be sold commercially in the US.” The developer wanted to get it to work with Linux so he worked with developers at mobileread.com to reverse engineer the USB protocols and thus calibre was born.  That is one smart dude in my opinion.

It’s a free download and it works on PCs, Macs, and Linux.  It converts ebooks and allows you to organize them much in the same way you organize music with iTunes.  It is device independent and works with the following ebook inputs and outputs:

Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT

Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TCR, TXT

“Kobo is a global eBook retailer backed by Indigo Books & Music, Borders, REDgroup Retail, Cheung Kong Holdings, and other leaders in technology and retail. We believe consumers should be able to read any book, anytime, anywhere, and on the device of their choice.”

Kobo is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. You can find their company profile on LinkedIn. Kobo is an ebook company that also sells an ereader. Kobo makes partnerships to help sell its ebooks in over 200 countries around the world from Canada to Australia. For a company founded in 2009, 2010 has seen a period of large growth for the company of 110 employees as Kobo began selling ebooks in the UK in February 2010 and then started selling ebooks in United States Borders book stores and in Wal-Marts in Canada in June 2010.  Also in June, Kobo released a Kobo iPhone App. They also have apps available for Blackberry, Android, and HP/Palm Pre’.  In July 2010 Kobo and Borders began selling ebooks online at Border’s ebook store. Borders owns 20% of Kobo, Inc. so it’s no wonder they have a partnership (it’s who you know, you know?).

Can Kobo ebooks be read on a nook?

Yes, because the nook supports ePub and Adobe Digital Editions, Kobo ebooks can be read on a nook.  Unsure if your ereader is supported by Kobo? Find the full list here along with instructions on how to read an ebook on an ereader other than a Kobo.

Reviewing Barnes and Noble’s Business Strategy through the Lens of the Nook

I wrote an article in October 2009 entitled Barnes and Noble VS. The Nook which predicted that Barnes and Noble would go the way of Amazon.com from a brick-and-mortar store to a company-as-a-website.  This was before the nook was officially released in early December 2010 and before it became available in Best Buy stores in April 2010.

On July 31, 2010 Barnes and Noble announced they were reducing CD-selling space in their book stores in order to create 1000 square foot “nook lounges” for their in-store ebook customers, but then on Wednesday, August 4, 2010 Barnes and Noble announced that it was looking for someone to buy their company.

Barnes and Noble shares have fallen by more than half since April 2010, and other companies like Circuit City facing significant structural changes have made similar announcements in the past.  Circuit City ended up declaring bankruptcy and eventually going bankrupt, but their sister-company CircuitCity.com remains alive.  Might the same fate come to Barnes and Noble as it transitions? How has the nook played into this strategy? Did Barnes and Noble have to create the nook to stay in the game or was this their game?  Answer in the comments below.

Barnes and Noble has officially introduced their iPad app called “Nook” that brings a ton of new functionality to using Apple’s iPad as an ereader. The app is available for free and offers lots of great reasons to choose it over other eReaders including ten free samples of current bestsellers, three free classics, and samples of any ebook.

One unique feature of Nook for iPad is the ability to share books with friends with the LendME feature with built in integration with your existing iPad contacts. Ebooks can only be lent once and for a period of no more than two weeks.

Nook for iPad also features adjustable font sizes (up to 10 different font sizes), multiple font types, swipe to turn pages (the nook ereader uses hardware buttons to turn the pages), background and text color options, and the ability to sync notes, bookmarks, and highlights.

A lot of the other features are similar to the features that exist on the actual nook ereader, which should make those who are used to using the nook comfortable with using the iPad, although I’m not sure there are many users who initially bought a nook only to purchase an iPad months later, but who knows.

As of date, users had multiple threads both offering e-books they have to lend as well as e-books they’d like to borrow. The most popular posts (by number of replies) were by the ones offering up books to share. Those who had the least replies (zero) were from users posting about a specific book.

According to Matthew Miller of ZDnet, the basics of the LendMe service is that you can lend supported books one time to one person for a period up to 14 days. You can loan multiple books to the same person, but each supported book is only able to be lent out by you once. This is a limitation placed on the books by publishers.

The books are available to the person who received the loaned book for free for up to 14 days and can be returned by the reader earlier if they finish in just a few days or something. To be clear, the owner cannot then lend that book out again to someone else, ever.

LendMe does not know or care whether or not the person you are lending to is a friend or someone you’ve met on a forum. The only requirements are the ones listed above, that it be a LendMe-capable book, and that the person be on your nook contact list. Simply add the person to your contact list and you will be able to loan the book to the other person, but as previously mentioned, you’ll only be able to lend it once. If anyone knows of any exceptions to this, please post them in the comments below.