Information Week reports that non-copyrighted documents can now be sent from a PC to smartphones, Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and the Sony Reader using Scribd’s new document sharing app. “Scribd is in a perfect position to become the hub for mobile reading, the place where content creators come to easily publish their works and build a readership and where consumers come to find what they want to read on whatever device they want,” Trip Adler, co-founder and chief executive of Scribd, said in a statement.

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Column/Guest-Column/Ebook-Survival-of-the-Fittest-61128.htm

With the announcement of iPad with eBook capabilities, Amazon and Apple will be in direct competition.

The main reason e-book readers choose their digital versions over paper copies is because they are cheaper, and sometimes even free.

E-books haven’t always been free. In fact, as of just 10 years ago, e-books were more expensive than their paper counterparts. But lately Amazon has been offering e-books for free or at a discounted rate, some say as loss leaders in order to help push early adoption of their Kindle e-book reader platform. The proof is in the list of top 100 downloads of which 64 are listed for $0.00.

Amazon is able to distribute public domain works like “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and “Pride and Prejudice” for free, but e-books like Noel Hynd’s “Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker: Recipes for Entertaining” (#9) has to cost Amazon something. In the same way a grocery store offers a steal-of-a-deal on the front page of their ads, Amazon is luring in customers with these free e-books.

Would customers have purchased these free e-books if Amazon had not of offered them? Are people downloading them simply because they are free? Most are probably downloaded by readers in the first few weeks that they own a Kindle, when they’re looking to download something simply for the sake of downloading something and Amazon is in a way rewarding them for their recent purchase.

Kindle’s charts may also be skewed by hardcore early adopters’ reading habits, but these patterns may change now that more casual users are picking up the Kindle for the first time. And we know consumer buying habits are changing because more customers purchased Kindle titles than physical books on Christmas Day this year for the first time ever.

With Sony’s e-book Reader and Barnes and Noble’s nook e-book reader, the demand for e-books is only going to go up. If Amazon opens it’s e-book sales for distribution on these other devices, it can only be a win-win for hardware and book sales alike all around. Both the nook and the Kindle are solid platforms. Learn more about each of them here.

Nook takes everything good from Amazon’s Kindle and leaves all the bad behind, but is this really a game changing event?

Amazon shot for simplicity and what they created was a simple product. Yes, it was improved with the Kindle 2, but Barnes and Noble raised the bar considerably with the release of the nook.

While Amazon’s Kindle is still the market leader, it’s grayscale-only screen makes Barnes and Noble’s nook’s color screen look fantastic. I also features iPhone-like touch screen and finger manipulation. Just flick your finger and the screen scrolls just as it does on Apple’s iPhone.

Both ebook readers are similarly priced at $259 so removing price from the comparison, you are truly choosing between hardware and software options at this point along with the back-end service and ebook availability. Both are strong companies who share roots in selling books, but Barnes and Nobles is exclusively a book store and that may be why they are able to offer up to three times as many ebooks than Amazon.

And while we are comparing nook’s color screen to Apple’s iPhone, let us remember that Apple has yet to release an ebook reader or even a touch screen tablet. iPhone users can download and use both Kindle and Barnes and Noble apps to read ebooks on the iPhone, but Apple has yet to release a standalone ebook hardware platform. While the nook has made improvements to the ebook reader, it is not necessarily a game changer like the way the iPod changed MP3 players and the iPhone changed cell phones forever. Can Apple do it again and if so, will that be the game changer?

You might want to ask why you would want the game changed at all.

Barnes and Noble and Amazon are both releasing solid products that do one thing well: read ebooks. No, they can’t surf the web well, but they can download ebooks from the web just fine, which is exactly what they are for. If you want to search the web, there is already hardware for that. Most people can even surf the web on their cell phones, for example. So this push for a game changing device may only be a play on our human nature to always want the grass on the other side of the fence, never being satisfied. This fuels our economic engine and spurs innovation, but sometimes we need to stop and appreciate what we have now and that it is pretty cool and not always dismiss the present while we are waiting for the future to arrive.

Barnes and Noble will pay for missing Christmas this year.

For each Nook e-book reader not received by Christmas, Barnes and Noble will hand out a $100 gift certificate to the store, which is more than a third of the $259 cost of the device. Those that are set to arrive after Christmas will already contain a gift certificate so there is no rebate system, which would only cause further frustration. Barnes and Noble says that most Nooks will arrive on or before December 24th, but some will not and those that do not make it will contain the gift certificate.

The Nook was revealed in October 2009 and originally was to go on sale at the end of November, but was pushed back to the beginning of December. Since then orders have been slow to be fulfilled and the software has been slow at times. The Nook is getting mixed reviews and is running primarily head to head with Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, which is not having shipping delays. Barnes and Nobles blames higher than expected demand for the device, which caused fulfillment problems.

The software on the Nook is currently running slow and a fix was expected to be released in January, but may be released the last week of December. Software updates are handled wirelessly over the Internet using either the Nook’s Wi-Fi or 3G connections.

Barnes and Noble is not the only company to have manufacturing and delivery issues. Amazon had the same problem with the Kindle in 2007, but this year Amazon is boasting record sales for the month of December. And If you order a Kindle by Dec. 22, you get free two-day shipping, with a guaranteed arrival by Christmas Eve.

While Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Amazon.com’s Kindle are very similar, there are ten main differences:

1. The Nook has a color navigation screen, whereas the Kindle does not.
2. The Nook has Wi-Fi, but again, the Kindle does not.
3. The Kindle has a web browser, but the Nook does not.
4. The Nook has an expansion slot, but the Kindle does not.
5. They both have 3G, but the Nook uses AT&T and the Kindle uses Sprint.
6. While they both run Linux, the Nook specifically runs Google Android, a flavor of Linux.
7. Kindle can read books to you (when allowed by the publisher), but the Nook cannot.
8. Barnes and Noble is offering over 1 million eBooks versus Amazon.com’s 360,000.
9. The Nook can share annotations and notes with others between devices like smart phones & PCs.
10. The Nook can get books from the Google Book Project.

First eBook reader to work with Apple’s iTunes Store wins!

*Not all ebooks will allow these features.

Barnes and Noble’s biggest competitor may just be itself.

With the announcement that the 774 U.S. book store behemoth will mostly be selling it’s newest product, the Nook eBook reader, online, Barnes and Noble is creating the largest Internet kiosk on the planet.

Barnes and Noble was already cannibalizing its retail outlets with bn.com, but like Steve Riggio said about Amazon.com, “It’s better to cannibalize yourself than to be cannibalized.” Now it is more than just BN.com VS. Amazon.com, it’s Nook VS. Kindle in Round 2.

While Amazon.com was all about having a large selection, it was by it’s very name, a website. The only way Barnes and Nobles was able to differentiate was by moving more towards Starbucks, further utilizing the retail space they had available to sell coffee and cappuccino. They added wi-fi and encouraged patrons to hang out and drink a cup of coffee. And while the Nook will only be available online, once you get it, what is going to make you want to come into the store?

A Forced Hand

Being that Barnes and Noble was late to the party for both their online website and their eBook reader, my guess is that their hand was forced each time by you guessed it, Amazon.com. The amazing success of both Amazon.com and the Kindle eBook reader made it impossible for Barnes and Noble to stay out of the ring. So who will win round 2 of the book wars?

The Associated Press predicts that, “The shift to digital from physical books will ultimately hurt traditional brick-and-mortar book sellers.” If the shift continues to it’s ultimate conclusion, Barnes and Noble will end up looking a lot like Amazon.com did ten years ago, but Amazon.com has an obvious advantage because they lack any retail stores.

Barnes and Noble needs to double-down and make the Nook eBook reader be as successful as Apple’s iPhone and BN.com as successful as iTunes. Only time and eBook sales will tell.