Yesterday, Barnes and Noble released their first ereader, called the Nook.

Name games

Where they get these names is beyond me. The Kindle has always made me think of kindling, which makes me think of fire, which makes me think that you’re throwing the Kindle into the fireplace / bonfire; or, throwing all your books away into said fire instead so that you can read on your Kindle. Then there’s the more realistic, secondary illustrations drawn by the name, such as the sense of warmth you get from the device, or that it will re-kindle your desire to read a book.

The Nook; well, you have “book” and then you cleverly replace the “b” with an “n” and then it becomes another word also associated with “cranny,” “nookie,” (most people do like sex), etc. This substitution also slightly suggests Barnes and Noble, also abbreviated B&N; i.e., B->N. All good ideas, though I imagine most people finding it sort of dumb as a name, overall. It currently evokes the idea that if you want to read on a Nook, you’re hiding yourself in a remote corner of some abandoned warehouse, since if you were to read in a more public, open space you’d be ridiculed: doubly so because you have an ereader and not an “actual” book.

Hardware

Names aside, the Nook is splitting, in some regards, between the current functionality of the Kindle, and the functionality of current touch-enabled ereaders, such as the Sony Reader Touch.

I recently bought the Sony Reader Touch, and I find the touch screen to be a really great tool for interaction. The Nook enters this touch-space by adding in a color screen below the e-ink display which you can manipulate with your fingers. This certainly is a novel approach, though I cannot help but think that the two screens isn’t quite the best solution.

With my Reader Touch, I can double tap on a word, where the word is on the page, and up pops a dictionary, the ability to highlight, and the ability to draw right on the screen. It is a direct interaction. I can also swipe anywhere on the screen of the Reader Touch to advance pages back and forth, which makes it rather easy in any orientation to, well, read the book. I don’t see those kinds of interactions as being quite as intuitive with two displays.

With that said, the second display is certainly looks great, and also will obviously refresh much faster than the e-ink displays. Navigating menus in the Sony Reader Touch, and any other e-ink only reader, can be a bit slow at times compared with refresh times on a computer or any other LCD-like display. I’ve never actually had a particular problem with my Sony Reader in this regard, though I also am not trying to navigate store content or potentially do the other sort of tasks that the wirelessly-connected Nook can do.

Finally, in terms of hardware, I do have to admit that the Nook does look rather wonderful from an industrial design aspect. This doesn’t change any of its function, though thumbs up to having a good team working on a look that works.

DRM

DRM is just one letter off from being a four letter word, despite being just a lowly acronym, and despite it deserving about the same negative reaction. My hope is that in the future DRM gets a better name: whereby it does not connote closed, unportable systems which are, eventually, unusable in a variety of different ways.

The general trouble with DRM at this point is that every company / brand / sub-company or brand has their own version, and it is a way to essentially lock the consumer into their solution. Buying an entire library of books that can only be read on one type of device, or, in some cases, one device at all, is still a bit absurd to me. The fact that all these ereaders can do about the same thing, yet content is inherently restricted to the one on which you bought the content.. I just don’t get it. It makes perfect sense for the company who sells the content, and about zero sense for the people who actually pay for it.

Barnes and Noble does not appear to be raising the bar all that much in terms of DRM with the Nook, but the reality is that no one else has done so, either. What the Nook does, however, is attempting to add a bit of flexibility to their systems which are allowing some new paradigms to the way content is managed.

First, it seems as though the files you buy from B&N can actually be downloaded. Once downloaded, you can then presumably back up those files, and, more importantly, use them using other devices or software. Currently, they have support for Windows and Mac, as well as some mobile devices. It’s still rather closed, since they’re all within the B&N ecosystem, and they are apps most likely built from B&N alone; though it seems to be a step up from the Kindle, whereby you are limited by the number of times you can download the material from their servers; or from the Sony content, where there aren’t mobile solutions for the downloaded content.

Second, and more importantly, is the LendMe capabilities of the Nook, whereby content you purchased can be shared to a friend for a certain period of time with no additional money changing hands. Both people have to be within the B&N system in order for it to work. There also was a clause in there which seemed to indicate that this particular functionality may be disabled for some content, depending on the publisher’s wishes. Even so, this is a step in the right direction, and is in a better way of thinking than I’ve seen from other vendors. It much more directly ties into the use case of a typical paper book, and, ultimately, DRM should be able to effectively emulate at least this level of functionality.

Finally, the last interesting step I found from the description of the Nook services is that buying the device is also a hook to try and get people to come to the brick and mortar B&N stores. Supposedly, in buying the Nook you can then go to a Barnes and Noble store and read books from their collection, unrestricted, without having to pay. Again, in the vein of emulating what can happen with paper books, this is a very sensible move. Being able to properly look over a book before buying is a rather important part of the book ecosystem, and currently the digital systems are greatly lacking. This move is also interesting in that it is actually attempting to move customers into the stores rather than out of them. In theory, Best Buy and other similar stores have the devices and gadgets that you want to see in person before you buy; in reality, most of the floor models are broken, not on, etc., and it’s rather easier to just buy online than deal with this kind of letdown. I’m not sure what this will do to a typical B&N store, though if successful then it’s a very interesting business model that hopefully will repeat in other variations.

Conclusion

What’s most interesting to me about the ebook and ereader space as of late is that there’s been a hell of a lot of development in the past year or so, and it looks to me that this will only get more intense over the next couple years. The Nook is not a device that particularly appeals to me. I’m very happy with my Sony Reader, and there’s not any reason for me to want to switch. I don’t particularly know that DRM is ever going to go away, or that any decent interoperability standards are going to evolve. I do, however, hope that the Nook succeeds, and there’s a number of legitimate advancements that B&N is contributing towards this space which ought to be followed by its competitors. Eventually, of course, only time will tell.