It’s not easy keeping up with technology, as this Best Buy commercial humorously illustrates:
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Consider the eReader.
If you’re in the market for one, you have to navigate a wide range of devices — from the Kindle to the Nook to the iPad.
As publishers, we want our books to be available everywhere, which means across all major eReaders.
With this in mind, we created a “cheat sheet” of the readers we watch most closely. This PDF (which you can download), compares the three leading eReaders (Kindle, Nook, and iPad), as well as the Kobo.
If you’re in the market for an eReader, I would first recommend the Kindle. It’s hard to argue with the pricing, the wealth of books available, and the fact that you can read your Kindle books across a wide range of devices — computer, iPad, BlackBerry.
If you’re a writer and you can only get your book onto the Kindle, you’re in great shape.
Right now, the Kindle accounts for well over half of all eBook sales — possibly as high as 70%.
The iPad, despite its gorgeous full-color screen, does not offer the most extensive or user-friendly bookstore. As this article notes, the Apple iBookstore accounts for only about 10% of all eBook sales. However, if you’ve produced a full-color book, the iPad is an important device to target.
The Barnes & Noble Nook appears to be making positive inroads, particularly the full-color version. A recent NYT article reports that more than a million magazine subscriptions have been sold on the Nook over the past seven months.
And then there is the Kobo, which you might not have heard of. In the US, the Kobo was heavily promoted through the ill-fated Borders chain. But Kobo has recently received a healthy bit of investment and is now focused on expanding into Australia and New Zealand. So we’re keeping a close eye on it.
Given the pace of eReader evolution, this blog post will probably be outdated six months from now. But I still expect the Kindle to be the leader, with the iPad making inroads.
PS: Here’s a NYT review of the latest Nook and Kobo devices.
Very informative. Glad I’ve got my book available for Kindle. Is it a waste of time to format for the others or should I be doing this as well?
JimmyB
Hi Jimmy,
I don’t think it’s a waste of time because the others all support the ePub format (while Kindle requires .mobi files). So once you’ve converted the file to ePub, you can upload it to the iPad, etc. Now, having said that, getting an account setup for the Apple iBookstore takes a fair amount of effort — and you do need an ISBN for the book. But the Barnes & Noble store is much less work. Best of luck on your book!
JY