ReadWriteWeb

Barnes and Noble will launch its rumored Nook eBook reader later today at an event in New York City. Thanks to an early leak of the device on the B&N Web site, however, we already know most of the details about the Nook. We can now confirm, for example, that the Nook will retail for $259 and that it will feature two screens: a small LCD touchscreen at the bottom of the device and a standard 6-inch eInk display above the smaller screen. The Nook will be available for pre-order today and will ship on November 30. One of the most interesting aspects about the device, besides the two screens, the 2 gigabytes of on-board memory and the microSD card slot, is that B&N will allow users to lend books to their friends.

Spring Design, a relatively unknown hardware design company, just announced that it will enter the eBook market with a dual-screen eReader based on the Android operating system. This device, the 'Alex,' will combine a 6-inch eInk display with a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen. According to Spring Design's press release, the company will use an 'enhanced' version of the Android OS that has been optimized to facilitate the integration between the two screens. Spring Design plans to release this device later this year.

When Barnes & Noble launched its eBook store, it immediately attracted a lot of potential customers. According to Compete's Dillon McGovern, more than four times as many people visited the eBook section on B&N's website than the Amazon Kindle store during the first week after the launch in July. After just about a month, though, these numbers returned to normality and today Amazon once again leads the pack by a very wide margin. While B&N was able to attract a lot of interest in its new eBook offerings, it was clearly hurt by the fact that it didn't offer users a hardware eReader yet.

Do you remember college and all those textbooks you couldn't sell back to the bookstore? I do. I own one of the most expensive doorstop collections in existence. For this very reason, Flat World Knowledge is announcing record numbers on their open text book program. As of this coming September, more than 40,000 college students at more than 400 colleges will access the publisher's e-learning services and textbooks. Business and economics professors from across the country are flocking to the site to meet their students' needs. Given that the program started in Spring 2009, with only 1000 textbooks sold to 30 colleges, the growth for Fall 2009 is phenomenal.

The Free Software Foundation's Defective By Design campaign just added the Amazon Kindle to its list of DRM-related offenders. The organization started a petition against Amazon for restricting readers' access to their own books and effectively discouraging reading options. Complaints include Amazon's switch to publisher-controlled text-to-speech disabling and the removal of several pre-purchased works from the device. Most recently, 17-year-old Justin Gawronski filed suit against the company for removing George Orwell's 1984 from his Kindle and rendering his electronic notes worthless.

Sony just dropped the price of all new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in its eBook store to $9.99. In addition, the company also announced two new hardware eReaders: the Sony Reader Pocket Edition with a five-inch screen for $199 and the Reader Touch Edition ($299) with a touch screen and Memory Stick and SD card expansion slots. The new devices will be available by the end of August.

While Sony has always offered very attractive eReaders, the prices in Sony's eBook store were a deal-breaker for many who had been considering buying a Sony eBook reader. Amazon generally charges $9.99 for an eBook, but until today, Sony often asked for $11.99 or more.