Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves
That makes the cheap-as-chips e-reader cool now, right?
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In a perhaps desperate bid to drum up sales, Barnes & Noble is selling its Nook E Ink-based e-book reader for a pound less than 30 quid - a discount of £50.
If you want the version with an illuminated screen, it’ll be £69 - £40 less than it usually is. Oh, and the firm’s 9-inch Nook HD+ tablet has also had its price slashed, from £229 to £179.
The E Ink tablets in particular aren’t half bad and, unlike Amazon’s Kindle equivalents, use the closest thing we have to a universal DRM system: Adobe’s copy-protection software. As such, the Nooks can take books bought not only through B&N but also from most rival online bookshops that support the ePub format. Apple’s iTunes is the notable exception.
B&N says the price cut to Raspberry Pi levels is for a “limited time only” in the UK, which might suggest the impending arrival of newer models if it hadn’t been claimed earlier this year that the company was thinking about quitting the e-book reader market altogether.
The New York Times reported such a shift was in the pipeline just before B&N posted full-year financial results for 2012 that showed its Nook division making a loss of $261.7 million on sales of $933 million, e-books and other digital content as well as hardware. Content sales were up, device sales were down year on year, so it’s not surprising B&N might want to think about paring back the range of readers it offers.
Read El Reg’s Nook with Glowlight review. ®
COMMENTS
Highly Rated
Re: Knowing little about these things
I've heard that if you use Calibre and some DRM-removing software, you can very easily convert Kindle books to work on other e-readers.
Not that I'd know anything about such a thing, of course...
Re: alternatively...
"Lifetime ban" from Amazon "If" they find out then you "think" that they "could" ban you. - lots of ifs and maybes in there.
I didn't realise Amazon had teams going around checking Nooks for copies or books they think may have come from Amazon - or even searching peoples computers for installs of DRM removal software. Is there actually a way Amazon would know what is on your Nook? And even if they did know this, why would they care, it's not as if you hadn't paid for it - and given Amazon the dosh.
Worst case - on the assumption that Amazon can find this out - you set up another Amazon account (or does the ban apply to everyone in your house).
Perhaps the threat of the BAN is a good reason for people not to get their books from Amazon in the first place - let's face it, if the threat is "we will ban you if we find you are removing DRM" then the most obvious option for users who have multiple devices is to acquire e-books where somebody else has already removed the DRM - and then Amazon will lose.
Too bad they're not offering this in the States, too.
I just checked, and there's no equivalent stateside promotion, and the .uk store will only let you specify a delivery address in the Ukogbani.
I'd be "all over this" if I could order one or two, myself.
