In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
2. Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
3. That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
4. Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
5. Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
6. Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
7. Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
8. BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
9. Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
10. And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

That’s the gist of a new U.S. Department of Justice filing against Apple in the agency’s upcoming lawsuit against the company. According to the DOJ, Apple was the “ringmaster” of a plan that raised mainstream e-book pricing well above the $9.99 price point Amazon had established by shifting the industry from a wholesale model, where retailers set prices, to an agency model where publishers set prices. Among the agency’s evidence supporting that allegation:

• An e-mail from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corp. — parent company of HarperCollins — that reads in part, “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”
• A comment Jobs made to biographer Walter Isaacson, explaining that Apple “told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’”

According to the DOJ, those statements are clear evidence of collusion. “Apple knew that the plan it was proposing involved a ‘dramatic business change’ for publisher defendants,” the agency argued in its filing. “Accordingly, Apple kept each publisher defendant aware that it was orchestrating and coordinating a common approach for all of them.”

Apple is now the lone holdout in the DOJ’s lawsuit, originally brought against the company and five major publishing houses last April. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have all since settled. But Apple, the alleged “ringmaster,” continues to dig its heels in.

“Apple did not conspire to fix eBook pricing,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement. “We helped transform the eBook market with the introduction of the iBookstore in 2010 bringing consumers an expanded selection of eBooks and delivering innovative new features. The market has been thriving and innovating since Apple’s entry and we look forward to going to trial to defend ourselves.”

Below, the DOJ’s latest filing:

apple7 –

In a proposal to the European Commission, Pearson, Penguin’s British media group parent, said it will terminate its “most-favored nation” contract with Apple, scrapping a policy that barred rival retailers from selling e-books at prices lower than those of the iPhone maker.

Penguin’s proposed agreement is essentially identical to the one proffered by Apple, HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster last fall. If it’s accepted, it will effectively end the “agency” pricing model Apple used to launch iBooks, one that allowed the publisher, not the retailer, to set prices. It will also bring to an end the EU’s antitrust investigation into the matter. A similar investigation by the U.S. Justice Department continues, however, with Apple its sole remaining target. That case is expected to go to trial in June.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg might still be trying to figure out the social networking giant’s mobile monetization strategy, but there’s one thing she has locked: The top spot on two of the most important bestseller lists at the same time.

This week, for the first time, her “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” ranked No. 1 on the influential New York Times list for hardcover nonfiction, as well as for combined print and e-book nonfiction. The list, which appears in this coming Sunday’s issue of the New York Times Book Review, actually reflects sales for the week ending March 16, 2013.

“Lean In” has been on Amazon’s top 100 list of all books for much longer — in fact, for 32 days. The tome on the many difficulties faced by women in the workforce reached No. 1 status several weeks ago.

The official release date of the book was March 11, which was followed by a publicity blitz of massive proportions, including the cover of Time magazine, huge takeouts in innumerable newspapers, and laudatory television pieces on “60 Minutes” and with Oprah Winfrey.

“Lean In” has also attracted a huge dollop of controversy, with everyone and their mother (and my mother, Lucky, too) arguing over its merits, as well as its message — including whether Sandberg blamed women too much for the lack of advancement in the executive ranks.

She doesn’t, actually — if you read it, which many pundits appear to not have done. But that has not stopped the rigorous and welcome debate over the important issue, which seems to be exactly what Sandberg was aiming for.

Sales appear to have been widespread, but seem to also be helped by big purchases by companies such as Cisco, which are encouraging employees to read it.

But whatever those sales numbers were, they would have been higher last year if Amazon hadn’t sold out of its flagship e-reader, said Amazon’s CFO Tom Szkutak during the company’s earnings call today.

In response to an analyst’s question about why the company’s revenue was lighter than expected in Q4, Szkutak named a number of reasons.

For one, he said, sales of consumer electronics, including TVs, MP3s and digital cameras, fell short of expectations. But also, he said, it had to do with shortages of the Kindle Paperwhite.

“We are thrilled to have Paperwhite in our lineup — it’s the best e-reader out there, but we couldn’t keep up with demand,” he said. “We would have had more sales in Q4 if we could keep up with demand.”

“The team is working hard to have good stock going forward on that product,” he added.

Amazon is notorious for not commenting on the performance of its hardware business, and that policy didn’t change this quarter. But in Amazon’s earnings release, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos did open up a little bit about the company’s e-book business as a whole.

“We’re now seeing the transition we’ve been expecting,” he said. “After five years, eBooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast — up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5 percent. We’re excited and very grateful to our customers for their response to Kindle and our ever expanding ecosystem and selection.”

Some critics will not consider that enough information, given the size of the business.

After all, without knowing unit sales, it makes it extremely difficult for analysts to compare Amazon to other tablet makers, namely Apple. But in some respects, e-book sales is a better measurement to track Amazon’s performance. That’s because it makes little to no profit on the hardware, and instead emphasizes the lifetime value of the customer.

By emphasizing content sales — and not unit sales — Amazon is under less pressure to get customers to continually upgrade their devices to generate more revenue. Put another way, a three-year-old Kindle can generate as much revenue as a brand new one. If Amazon disclosed device sales, analysts and investors would be closely tracking that metric for signs of growth.

Amazon also deploys this loss-leader strategy for Amazon Prime, which gives members free two-day shipping as well as access to free streaming video and free e-books. On the call, Szkutak cautioned that it’s still early, but that those freebies are beginning to drive additional revenue.

“The percentage of Prime customers who are watching free content has gone up dramatically,” he said, “And, they are purchasing paid content. They are watching for free, but they are also paying for new content.”

Stephen Colbert stopped off at Google’s New York office recently to chat with Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and to promote his new book “America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t.”

The interview took place a while back, apparently, but the uncut version was just posted to YouTube on Friday. Schmidt, who was dressed in a shimmery baby-blue tie and gray suit jacket, lobbed some pretty easy ones at the fleece-wearing Colbert.

One highlight of the hour-long video came eight minutes in, when Schmidt told Colbert that his book was available on Google Play. “What does that mean?” Colbert asked. “It’s like the one [online store] that’s named after a rain forest?”

In reply, Schmidt said, “Yes, it’s the competitor to the rain forest,” adding that it’s where people will pay you lots of money for your book. In response, Colbert quipped: “Well, then it’s a wonderful service.”

During the Q&A, Schmidt seriously asked Colbert: “How do you think Google can become the greatness that we never weren’t?”

Colbert clearly likes Google, because he quoted Bruce Lee, from “Enter the Dragon,” in his answer: ”It kind of already is — I’m not trying to blow second-hand smoke up your butt. Google can be anything you want it to be, because it’s a reflection of your own desire. It’s a portal to want you want it to be. Unless you are putting restrictions on the information I think I’m getting, then it’s anything I want it to be. It’s an actuator or pathway to what we want. It’s the finger that allows us to look at the moon.”

Nice answer, Colbert. I’m sure Schmidt was hoping that the FTC was listening in on that one.

This week I tested LeapFrog’s $70 LeapsterGS, which arrives in stores this week for kids ages 4 through 9. With this device, the company known for its educational toys has finally upped the ante and included features that its last Leapster lacked. It now has a digital camera, video recorder, a microphone and an accelerometer, which lets kids move or shake the device to do things in games, like they would with an iPhone or iPad.

It’s also a bit sleeker and more in line with the likes of Sony’s PlayStation Portable, though it comes in green or pink, so it won’t get mistaken for a grown-up device anytime soon. And it has been drop-tested for durability.

The price is still nearly a third of what parents will pay for an iPod Touch. But games are more expensive at $25 for each cartridge or at least $5 for each downloadable game, only 47 of which are available in the LeapFrog App Center. That’s compared with the over 20,000 education and learning apps in Apple’s App Store, most of which cost significantly less than LeapFrog’s.

I played with the LeapsterGS for several days at a first- and fourth-grade level, and I admired the way its games and apps smoothly transitioned from fun to educational materials. Each time I powered up my water-balloon launcher in Disney’s “Phineas and Ferb” game, I had to complete math problems. In Disney-Pixar’s “Brave” game, I helped Merida escape from a castle by answering questions about animals and plants, like, “Which is the youngest of the three: a larva, pupa or ladybug?” (Answer: larva.)

‘T-Rex Rush’

LeapFrog says this device’s games teach kids about the STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. E-books on the device help kids read by doing things like showing one line at a time.

But this is what may clinch it for parents: Cartridges from previous LeapFrog devices will work with this new one, which will save them from buying all new games.

Though the 3.5-inch LeapsterGS screen is large and comfortable to look at for a long period of time, its resolution is just 320×240 compared with the iPod touch’s 960×640 pixels. This means characters and scenes sometimes appeared grainy.

‘Escape of the Sillies’

One giant omission in the LeapsterGS is its lack of Wi-Fi. A LeapFrog spokeswoman said this gives parents control over what kids buy because parents must plug the device into their computers for it to access LeapFrog Connect, where about 250 videos, games, music and e-books are available. Not having Wi-Fi also keeps the price of the device down.

As I played various games, a narrator’s voice prompted me to exchange badges I had earned in games for rewards in the LeapFrog Connect App Center. But kids can only get these by plugging the LeapsterGS into a computer. The same is true for a feature called the Skill Selector, which lets parents adjust the types of math problems a child will see in games. This is helpful when parents know the specific subject the child is working on, like double-digit subtraction.

But if most kids used their LeapsterGS the way I used mine, they’ll be playing with it on the go, in the car and on vacations—where the home computer isn’t handy.

Over time, the narrator’s continuous prompts to redeem badges start to feel like nagging and could result in kids nagging parents to plug into a PC (Windows or Mac).

Even if you aren’t able to plug the LeapsterGS into a computer, the games are smart enough to automatically adjust difficulty levels up or down if the child’s progress exceeds or doesn’t meet the norm for his or her grade level. (Parents enter the kid’s grade when setting up the device for the first time, choosing a level between prekindergarten and eighth grade.)

‘LeapSchool Reading’ game

I saw this feature at work while playing “Kat’s Math-errific Magic Show,” which involves gathering frogs and putting them in the magic hat labeled with the correct answer to a problem. After I answered about a dozen math problems correctly, they got harder.

The LeapsterGS comes with two apps, “Pet Pad” and “Escape of the Sillies,” plus a free app of your choice from the App Center. “Escape of the Sillies” makes use of the device’s camera, microphone and accelerometer. After I took a photo of myself and recorded myself saying, “Yeeehaww!” into the microphone, my photo and sound were used to create a character that I saw throughout the game.

The LeapsterGS runs on four double-A batteries, which last for about nine hours. It turns off after five minutes of not being used, which helps forgetful kids. If you don’t want to keep buying double-A batteries, LeapFrog sells a rechargeable battery pack for $40.

The LeapsterGS’s new features are good enough that kids may not mind how it compares with the iPod touch or a parent’s smartphone. And its games are a nice mix of fun and education, but its lack of Wi-Fi will definitely slow things as kids wait for access to Mom or Dad’s computer.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120814/leapfrog-device-moves-past-the-tadpole-stage/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/ http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:30:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=240975 With Amazon expected to refresh its Kindle Fire tablet some time in the third quarter, and Apple rumored to be prepping a diminutive iPad mini, and Google’s Nexus 7 winning accolades in the market, Barnes & Noble is taking some proactive measures to keep its own Nook tablets competitive. Its first move: Slashing the prices of its Nook Color and Nook Tablet.

Beginning this week, the price of the eight gigabyte Nook Tablet drops to $179 from $199; the price of the 16GB Nook Tablet slips to $199 from $249. B&N has taken a scalpel to the Nook Color’s price as well, lowering it to $149 from $169.

The reductions make the 16GB Nook Tablet price competitive with the 8GB Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. More to the point, they allow the Nook Color and 8GB Nook Tablet to undercut both on price. A decent enough competitive strategy. And certainly B&N needs to do something to maintain its e-book business in the face of these emerging new threats. By some estimates, B&N has managed to capture 27 percent of the e-book market, second only to Amazon, which holds about 60 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120814/nook-tablets-get-discount-as-mini-market-grows-more-crowded/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120806/in-major-expansion-kno-adds-k-12-to-digital-education-platform-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120806/in-major-expansion-kno-adds-k-12-to-digital-education-platform-video/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2012 04:00:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=238514

In a big leap into a new but adjacent market, Silicon Valley digital education start-up Kno said it is entering the K-12 space, expanding from its college-only focus.

Its first step will be a partnership with major textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which provides nearly half of such content aimed at children from kindergarten through high school.

Enhanced digital versions of those textbooks cost $9.99 or less — Kno gets a piece of each sale — and can be used via an Apple iPad app and also on the Web. Kno said its platform will also be available soon on Google Android and Microsoft Windows 7.

I did a video interview today with Kno co-founder and CEO Osman Rashid at the global HQ of All Things Digital about the effort, which is a big jump for the company that started off trying to make its own tablet device.

Armed with a pile of venture funding, it has pivoted drastically — Apple and then Google completely blew its stillborn hardware efforts up — into creating an educational software platform.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has raised about $70 million from a range of prominent backers such as Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

It’ll need more deals to make up that tall valuation, of course. Kno said hopes to strike similar deals with the two other big textbook publishers, McGraw-Hill and Pearson, so it can offer most of the books used by schoolchildren.

It’s definitely an interesting time for electronic books in general and the education market in particular, as many efforts are being made to provide all kinds of educational tools online.

The e-book arena here is increasingly competitive, with big companies such as Amazon and even Apple interested in the important space.

Here’s my chat with Rashid about it all, as well as some screenshots of the new offering:

And here’s the official press release:

KNO LAUNCHES K-12 DIGITAL TEXTBOOKS, EMPOWERING PARENTS

TO GO DIGITAL AT HOME

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Kno Partner to Introduce Enhanced K-12 Content at Introductory Rental Prices From $9.99 or Less

Santa Clara, CA — August 7, 2012 – Kno, a pioneer in education software, today announced that the company is entering the K-12 education market through a new partnership agreement with global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [HMH]. Previously only available to college students, Kno will offer interactive K-12 textbooks for the iPad, the Web, Android and Windows 7.

The agreement marks a turning point for elementary and secondary education by giving children and parents the resources and power to supplement classroom learning through enhanced digital content at home. Just in time for the back-to-school season, parents can now rent digital textbooks for their children, including subjects aligned with Common Core standards, for a one-year rental rate of $9.99 or less per book.

“Even if the schools have not adopted digital textbooks, we wanted to give parents the option to have their kids’ same textbooks available at home,” said Osman Rashid, CEO and Co-Founder of Kno, Inc. “With digital books priced at $9.99 or below, parents can now finally stop their kids from carrying their heavy backpacks to and from school for less than $60 for the school year by supplementing classroom materials with interactive textbooks that can be used at home and on the go.”

The Kno digital textbook app is available today for the iPad and Web and will be available for Android tablets and Windows 7 in time for back to school. With Kno’s app, parents can enhance their children’s learning experience with more than 70 interactive features that bring academic content to life, making learning more engaging and fun. All of the app’s features are engineered to help students retain information more easily and ultimately help improve their grades and comprehension of material.

“By offering digital access to enhanced K-12 content on the go and at home, this collaboration will empower parents to get more involved in their children’s education. We know parental involvement is an important factor in student achievement, and we’re proud to be the first content provider to bring Kno’s technology to the K-12 world,” said Tim Cannon, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Alliances for HMH. “HMH aims to make quality content available to the widest possible audience with the mission of changing people’s lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. This partnership with Kno supports that goal.”

The interactive features that allow students to engage with the content better and study more efficiently include:

* A digital Journal that automatically saves a student’s notes and highlights them in a study notebook.

* Automatic Flash Cards of key terms in a book to help students study more efficiently and better retain information.

* 3D models that bring difficult chemistry concepts to life to make them easier to understand.

* Quiz Me feature, which automatically turns any diagram in a book into a multiple choice quiz for easy self-quizzing before tests.

* SmartLinks that deliver instructional videos, images, and photos to formulas and concepts in a textbook in real-time for easy reference.

* Coming soon, an analytics feature that will enable active engagement between parents and students to better measure reading progress.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120806/in-major-expansion-kno-adds-k-12-to-digital-education-platform-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120606/wattpad-gets-quick-17-3m-for-thriving-story-community/ http://allthingsd.com/20120606/wattpad-gets-quick-17-3m-for-thriving-story-community/#comments Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:00:54 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=217318 Wattpad, a booming e-book community site, has raised $17.3 million led by Khosla Ventures, and including Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Union Square Ventures and Golden Venture Partners.

Check out that growth chart on the right. The site now hosts five million stories, with 500,000 added per month. It has eight million monthly unique users who spent 1.7 billion minutes on the site in May.

Some 70 percent of Wattpad users are women, and 70 percent of usage is on mobile devices, according to CEO Allen Lau.

Who wants to read e-books by unpublished authors? A whole lot of people. For instance, a book by teen author Jordan Lynde (a.k.a. XxSkater2Girl16xX on Wattpad) about a relationship between a teacher and a student, has been read nearly 20 million times. And some Wattpad writers are now signing big publishing deals.

Wattpad is based in Toronto and has 15 employees, about half of whom are on its community management team. It had just raised a previous round of funding in August, much of which it has yet to spend, but took more money now, because “our growth blew away our most optimistic projections,” Lau said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120606/wattpad-gets-quick-17-3m-for-thriving-story-community/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120509/finally-harry-potter-is-touching-down-on-amazons-kindle/ http://allthingsd.com/20120509/finally-harry-potter-is-touching-down-on-amazons-kindle/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 23:37:46 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=206364 J.K. Rowling has been one of the big holdouts, refusing to sell Harry Potter in electronic form through booksellers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

That is apparently about to change, according to Amazon.com, which has posted two different images hinting that “Wizardry is on the way.”

In one of the images, there is a picture of an owl, similar to Hedwig, Harry Potter’s loyal companion and courier. In another — found at the top of the Kindle eBook store — it restates that “Wizardry is on the way.”

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment, saying, “We’ll have to ask you to stay tuned for an upcoming announcement.”

Update: Amazon has officially announced that starting June 19, all seven Harry Potter books (in five languages) will be added to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Members of Amazon Prime will be able to borrow the books for free.

Presumably, there is still pent-up demand for the electronic copies since the bestsellers have not yet been for sale directly on Amazon or the Kindle.

In March, Amazon announced that all seven of the books would become available, but that consumers would have to buy them directly from J.K. Rowling’s online bookstore called Pottermore and then download them to their e-reader. Despite the inconvenience, Pottermore sold more than £1 million worth  (roughly $1.6 million) of e-books in three days.

Because they were being distributed directly from Pottermore to customers, the Harry Potter series has never appeared on the Muggle bestseller list — I mean, Kindle.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120509/finally-harry-potter-is-touching-down-on-amazons-kindle/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120412/apple-fires-back-at-the-feds-amazon/ http://allthingsd.com/20120412/apple-fires-back-at-the-feds-amazon/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:29:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=196195 Nearly two days after the Department of Justice filed antitrust charges against Apple and major book publishers, Apple is responding. Here’s a comment from Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr:

The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.

Apple’s response is similar to ones made by Penguin Group and MacMillan, two of the five publishers named in the suit. The three other publishers — HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — signed settlements with the DOJ immediately after the suit was filed Wednesday morning. (News Corp., which owns HarperCollins, also owns this Web site.)

It’s worth noting that Apple’s pricing policy with books and apps differs from the setup it has with the music industry. In that relationship, Apple pays the music labels a wholesale price for their digital assets, and then sets the retail price itself.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120412/apple-fires-back-at-the-feds-amazon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120412/barnes-noble-wants-to-be-amazing-in-bed-with-new-glowlight-nook/ http://allthingsd.com/20120412/barnes-noble-wants-to-be-amazing-in-bed-with-new-glowlight-nook/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:45:46 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=195976 There are E-Ink devices that are great for the beach but not great at night, and there are tablet screens that shine brightly in dark rooms but aren’t ideal in sunlight.

So Barnes & Noble is combining E-Ink with a backlit screen in its newest Nook, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

The 6.5-inch device comes with a glare-free e-reading screen, and text appears in E-Ink, but the Nook’s “N” button at the bottom of the device activates GlowLight and lights up the screen.

The new Nook, which costs $139, also claims faster page-turning and longer battery life than the original Nook Touch — up to 60 hours of continuous reading with the GlowLight turned on to around 18 percent, which sounds a lot dimmer than it is. At 6.95 ounces, it also weighs 5 percent less than its predecessor.

At a New York press event today, Barnes & Noble executives invited journalists to literally hop into bed with them in a dimly-lit room in a Manhattan hotel, where the new device was propped up against Amazon’s Kindle Touch and Apple’s new iPad. The company said internal research shows that two-thirds of U.S. adults say they read in bed, and that 42 percent get annoyed when a partner reads in bed with the light on.

The iPad and Kindle Fire tablet were also displayed alongside the hotel’s outdoor rooftop pool, in direct sunlight. (When asked what the contingency plan was if it rained today, a Barnes & Noble exec said, “Lots of lighting.”)

Barnes & Noble is clearly taking aim at its competitors and looking to stand out in the e-reader category, following disappointing sales of the first Nook Touch.

As AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported, in January the company said Nook sales overall were up 70 percent over the holidays, driven by the new Nook Tablet, which competes with the Kindle Fire and iPad. Barnes & Noble also said at the time it was exploring a spinoff of the Nook e-reader unit.

While this device might appeal to an audience serious about e-reading, it’s not for tablet-seekers. While it is Wi-Fi enabled, it doesn’t come with apps, aside from the option to purchase and download e-books from the Barnes & Noble online bookstore, and it doesn’t offer a Web browser. Consumers who buy Barnes & Noble e-books, however, can read that content on apps across other devices.

At $139, the Nook with GlowLight is more expensive than the $99 Kindle Touch Wi-Fi e-reader and costs slightly less than the Kindle Touch with 3G.

The device is available for preorder today, will ship in early May and is expected to hit Barnes & Noble stores in late April.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120412/barnes-noble-wants-to-be-amazing-in-bed-with-new-glowlight-nook/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120412/an-e-book-argument-are-fixed-prices-needed-to-preserve-publishing/ http://allthingsd.com/20120412/an-e-book-argument-are-fixed-prices-needed-to-preserve-publishing/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:55:17 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=196004 The U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to file antitrust charges against Apple and five of the nation’s largest publishers for conspiring to raise e-book prices may do more harm than good if it dissolves the new agency pricing model for books those companies created. At least that’s the case being made by Apple’s defenders.

Though it has its problems, they contend, the model adopted by Apple — which requires retailers to charge book prices set by the publisher, while allowing them to keep 30 percent of sales revenue — may actually protect the long-term interests of everyone in the e-book value chain: Author and publisher, retailer and consumer.

What Apple has been attempting to do with e-books is pretty much what it did with digital music: Standardize pricing*. And while that effort might still irk recording industry executives, it’s near impossible to imagine the industry today without iTunes. And Apple clearly has similar hopes for iBooks and the publishing industry.

“Apple [is] attempting to recreate an environment around books that exists around digital music: Establishing base-line pricing so that consumers understand the digital value of a ‘book’ in much the same way a single music track is worth 99 cents,” Auriga analyst Kevin Dede argues in a note to clients today. “And as we see Apple’s overarching philosophy, it appears to us that Apple is defending interests of all the members of its ‘book’ value chain, including authors, publisher, and customers, as it does with all its constituents that offer value to the end customer. There is no salvageable long-term business model in destroying any key participant’s position; all players need to see a reason to play the game.”

In other words, with its agency model, Apple has been working to set a basic market perception of book value. And one could argue this is a good thing. Setting an agreed-upon value, says Dede, brings stability to book pricing, which is typically pretty chaotic. “One day, a new best-seller may be on sale for $15.99 at a book store, but the next day, when some anxious customer is looking for it, the price may have returned to $29.99,” Dede explains. “This is the undesirable, unpredictable atmosphere we see Apple attempting to avoid.”

And, alleged collusion aside, setting baseline prices does do that. More, it preserves the value proposition of books themselves, regardless of the means by which they’re distributed — which is good for publishers and, more importantly, authors.

It’s also very good for Apple, and in the company’s best interests. This is not at all an altruistic effort by any means.

But it does raise e-book prices. And, of course, it prevents Amazon, which already controls about 60 percent of the e-book market, from taking a loss on every book it sells as it drives to dominate the market. Short-term, that’s great for consumers who can buy their e-books at a significant discount.

But long-term what does it mean for the value of a book, and the industry itself — authors in particular? If the value of a “book” continues to drop, what does that mean for them? What does it mean for the editors who work with them? The proof-readers that ensure their copy is clean? Right now, Amazon is the one taking the loss on books it sells at heavily discounted prices. Who takes the loss when a shift in public perception of book value makes those discounted prices the norm?

*Caveat: With iTunes Apple pays record labels a wholesale price for music and then sets retail prices itself. This is obviously not how the agency model works. The similarity that Dede is pointing out here is solely standardization of prices.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120412/an-e-book-argument-are-fixed-prices-needed-to-preserve-publishing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120411/u-s-sues-apple-publishers-over-e-book-pricing/ http://allthingsd.com/20120411/u-s-sues-apple-publishers-over-e-book-pricing/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:39:48 +0000 Chad Bray and Brent Kendall http://allthingsd.com/?p=195292 NEW YORK — The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Apple Inc. and five of the nation’s largest publishers, alleging they conspired to limit competition for the pricing of e-books.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, alleges Apple and the publishers reached an agreement where retail price competition would cease, retail e-books prices would increase significantly and Apple would be guarantee a 30% “commission” on each e-book sold.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120411/u-s-sues-apple-publishers-over-e-book-pricing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120411/apple-could-face-federal-book-suit-today-reports/ http://allthingsd.com/20120411/apple-could-face-federal-book-suit-today-reports/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:32:59 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=195227 The Department of Justice may file a suit against Apple today over e-book price-fixing complaints, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg. The DOJ has been probing antitrust complaints regarding Apple’s 2010 pacts with  book publishers; several of the biggest publishers are preparing to settle those charges by “tearing up” those deals, according to The Wall Street Journal.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120411/apple-could-face-federal-book-suit-today-reports/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120404/20-percent-of-americans-say-theyre-reading-ebooks/ http://allthingsd.com/20120404/20-percent-of-americans-say-theyre-reading-ebooks/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:00:53 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=193339 One in five Americans say they’ve read an e-book in the last year, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Those numbers come from a late-January survey, and they’re up sharply from a December 2011 survey. Pew says the jump coincides with a rise in e-reading hardware: Ownership of dedicated e-reader devices like the Kindle and the Nook went from 10 percent in December to 19 percent in January, and ownership of tablets like iPads and Kindle Fires made the same leap.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120404/20-percent-of-americans-say-theyre-reading-ebooks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120327/j-k-rowlings-website-starts-selling-harry-potter-e-books/ http://allthingsd.com/20120327/j-k-rowlings-website-starts-selling-harry-potter-e-books/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:03:01 +0000 Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=190346 It didn’t take a Hogwarts magician to know this day would eventually come.

The bookstore feature of J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website went live Tuesday, enabling English-language readers to buy the digital editions of all seven Harry Potter novels — and the audiobook editions — from anywhere in the world. Editions in French, Italian, German and Spanish will be the next wave.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120327/j-k-rowlings-website-starts-selling-harry-potter-e-books/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120301/fortune-gives-facebook-the-apple-treatment/ http://allthingsd.com/20120301/fortune-gives-facebook-the-apple-treatment/#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:40:21 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=179641 Last year, Fortune magazine was so proud of an Apple cover story that it made it hard for people to read: The magazine kept the piece off the Web and only made it available to subscribers, via the print edition and an iPad app, or to people who bought the story as an Amazon e-book.

Now it is trying the same gambit, but with Mark Zuckerberg instead of Steve Jobs. If you want to read “Inside Facebook,” Miguel Helft and Jessi Hempel’s pre-IPO profile, you’ll need to pay up.

I just plunked down $1.99 for the Amazon edition, and zipped through it this morning. Like the Apple story, this one is focused on the company’s structure and management philosophy more than anything, which is quite useful for outsiders. Alas, no org chart.

And if you’re into profiles of big Silicon Valley companies in big business magazines, this is your lucky week: Businessweek’s Brad Stone profiles Twitter in a story out now.

The cover art is very promising:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120301/fortune-gives-facebook-the-apple-treatment/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120214/inkling-rolls-out-new-ebook-publishing-platform/ http://allthingsd.com/20120214/inkling-rolls-out-new-ebook-publishing-platform/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174319 E-book maker Inkling is introducing new software it says will make it much easier to produce sophisticated textbooks and other digital tomes. Inkling is positioning its Habitat software as a more professional option for book publishers than Apple’s new iBook Author. Until now, the start-up’s books have been created with the iPad in mind, but Inkling says an HTML5 option will allow publishers to work on multiple devices.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/inkling-rolls-out-new-ebook-publishing-platform/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120205/coliloquy-steams-up-interactive-ebooks-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120205/coliloquy-steams-up-interactive-ebooks-video/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:34:40 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=171397 E-book publisher Coliloquy is doing a bunch of interesting things: The start-up is trying to overhaul the traditional book royalty system, for one thing. And it is built on an interactive platform that allows readers to influence the way their stories play out.

But what really grabbed the audience at D: Dive Into Media was a good old-fashioned helping of sex, delivered with verve from co-founder Lisa Rutherford. No need to say much more to tease this, though we should point out that Coliloquy doesn’t work exclusively with erotica. They’re also targeting teen girls with “Twilight”-like books, for instance.

Oh. And we should also note that readers who do want the steamy stuff can dial the dirty quotient up or down, depending on what floats their boat. But there’s at least one part of this clip that may not be safe for your work, so here it comes on a Sunday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120205/coliloquy-steams-up-interactive-ebooks-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120124/subtext-app-makes-readers-thoughts-an-open-book/ http://allthingsd.com/20120124/subtext-app-makes-readers-thoughts-an-open-book/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:26:09 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=167139 Even the shyest airplane passengers are hard-pressed to remain mum when a seatmate pulls out a book with a familiar cover. Now, thanks to the popularity of e-books, these once visible book covers are shrouded in the nondescript cases of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.

This week, I tried Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations based on e-books—not necessarily with fellow plane passengers, but among readers within digital books themselves. A revamped version of Subtext, originally released in October, is available in Apple’s App Store Tuesday.

On the Subtext iPad app, a reader’s profile page, with her shelf of books.

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Unfortunately, Subtext smacks of immaturity when compared with other reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app. While those work on several devices and operating systems, Subtext works only on Apple’s iPad. It only runs with books from Google Books or those in Adobe’s ePub format, and the process for getting the latter—emailing the book to oneself or downloading the file from a website to the iPad—is clumsy and not intuitive. Co-founder Rachel Thomas said Subtext is actively developing for other platforms.

Another issue is that Subtext is only as good as its users’ involvement. The more people comment and create discussions, the more interesting it will be for others. For this to happen, the app has to lure readers away from the devices and apps they’re already comfortable with, like the Kindle or Nook, or the Kindle, Nook and Apple iBooks apps on the iPad.

I got an early look at the new version of Subtext and found it more self-explanatory than its predecessor. I signed in using my Google account, though users can sign in using a Facebook account or explore the app as a guest. By signing into my Google Account, my shelves were populated with the Google e-books I already purchased. Previews of books give users a sense of what the app does.

A Discussions section neatly organizes all social interactions about books in one place.

Users can tap on any book cover to see all content and social information related to that book. Likewise, tapping on any user profile image lets you visit that person’s shelf. A Featured Shelves section suggests different categories of books like Critics Picks 2011 and 2011′s Most Social Books.

As I used Subtext for the first time, small hint windows floated onto the iPad screen at certain points to demonstrate how things worked. One encouraged me to tap and hold my finger on the screen at a favorite book passage to see options for adding notes to that passage. I tried this a few times, including while reading a line in Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” about working moms with kids. I highlighted this passage and posed a question to all Subtext users: How many kids does Tina Fey have? Someone, who I later found out was Subtext’s co-founder Andrew Goldman, answered about an hour later, saying Ms. Fey has two daughters—a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old.

The Discussions section of the app neatly organizes all social interactions in one place, so people don’t have to skip back through books to see the continued conversations surrounding a question.

I like the way Subtext subtly notifies readers that notes exist: by showing a tiny thumbnail image of the user who posted the note in the margin of a book. Tapping on that image opens the note. I commented on some existing discussions by tapping the Reply button.

I created a note for one book passage using a related Web link, and the steps for doing this were clear and understandable. I kept this visible only to myself; other times, I made notes about passages and shared them only with my friends who I could invite to use Subtext via Facebook or email.

But what’s to stop someone from posting something inaccurate or abusive? Users can flag any note as inappropriate or as a spoiler, and the note is reviewed by the company. Users can vote on others’ comments, and over time, comments with more votes will be more broadly distributed.

As of now, authors and experts have enhanced just 18 books in Subtext, though users have left thousands of notes across books. The few books enhanced by authors or experts were fun to read. Steven Levy remarked on a line in his book, “In the Plex,” that described his travels from San Francisco to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore and Tel Aviv: “Newsweek paid for my trip, shelling out over $10,000 for my expenses. Kind of ironic because a couple of years later, Newsweek itself sold for $1.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120124/subtext-app-makes-readers-thoughts-an-open-book/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111206/apple-book-publishers-face-european-antitrust-probe/ http://allthingsd.com/20111206/apple-book-publishers-face-european-antitrust-probe/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:11:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=150709 Apple’s entry into the e-book business hasn’t been a huge success, but it has still registered with European antitrust regulators. They’ve started a formal investigation that is supposed to determine whether the company and five major publishers “engaged in anti-competitive practices.”

A press release from the European Commission doesn’t provide much detail into the probe, which will look at Apple along with Lagardère Publishing’s Hachette Livre, News Corp.’s HarperCollins, CBS’s Simon & Schuster, Pearson’s Penguin and Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

The EU says it will “investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition.”

It also says it will look at the “agency” pricing agreements that Apple pushed through when it introduced the iPad back in 2010. Those deals allow publishers to set the retail price of their books, and give retailers like Apple’s iTunes a set percentage of the transaction.

The previous wholesale model, championed by Amazon, allowed retailers to set the price of books. After a series of high-profile negotiations, Amazon has moved to the agency model as well; the e-commerce giant still dominates the e-book market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111206/apple-book-publishers-face-european-antitrust-probe/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111120/mark-cuban-takes-shot-at-writing-an-e-book/ http://allthingsd.com/20111120/mark-cuban-takes-shot-at-writing-an-e-book/#comments Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:53:19 +0000 Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=146019 Mark Cuban has 335,000 friends on Facebook and 760,000 followers on Twitter. Monday, the Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team will test just how friendly those fans really are.

Mr. Cuban has written a 30,000-word e-book, “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.” Culled from blog postings Mr. Cuban has made over the years about his business career, it will be available for $2.99 through online digital-book retailers. To drive sales, Mr. Cuban plans to tap all his online followers.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111120/mark-cuban-takes-shot-at-writing-an-e-book/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111007/so-the-kindle-version-of-where-the-wild-things-are-is-out-of-the-question-then/ http://allthingsd.com/20111007/so-the-kindle-version-of-where-the-wild-things-are-is-out-of-the-question-then/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:01:40 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=129919

I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.

Maurice Sendak, to Guardian reporter Emma Brockes, about how much he hates e-books

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