Disney

We know that Barnes & Noble has the technology to process ebook transactions in its stores, and with a new holiday promotion the company announced Thursday, we’re seeing more ways that technology can work. Between December 20 and 24, customers who go to a Barnes & Noble physical store and buy an ebook from a list of 20 qualifying ebooks — including The Hobbit, Life of Pi and the entire Hunger Games trilogy – can “instant-gift” another ebook on that list for free.

Rainforest Action Network has launched a campaign urging HarperCollins to end the use of fiber from controversial sources after it said that independent forensic tests found significant quantities of pulp from Indonesian rainforests in several of the publishing company’s books.

Mixed tropical hardwood and high-risk acacia fiber were found in HarperCollins’ bestselling children’s book “Fancy Nancy’s Splendiferous Christmas,” RAN said. Acacia was also found in HarperCollins titles including “Splat the Cat: The Perfect Present for Mom and Dad” and “Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past,” the environmental group said.

 Amazon has enabled something that on the surface sounds great for kids: A child-centered service that runs alongside a family's Kindle Prime membership and gives kids aged 3 to 8 unlimited access to Prime content on a Kindle Fire tablet. (Prime costs $79 a year, and the new kid's FreeTime Unlimited package is an extra $3 a month per child).

But even in this enlightened digital age there's a clear question whether unlimited content is more than kids can handle. Let's discuss.

Amazon’s new unlimited digital offering for kids, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, is a very ambitious program. For a set monthly price, families get unlimited access to ebooks, movies, TV shows, educational apps and games aimed at 3-to-8-year-olds. Kindle FreeTime Unlimited works only on the newest Kindle Fires as an extension to Kindle FreeTime, the parental controls feature that lets parents set time limits on kids’ various uses of the tablet.

On Friday afternoon, The New York Times' Nick Bilton posted an item on the paper's Bits blog entitled "Apple Now Owns The Page Turn," citing U.S. Patent D670,713.

Incredulous, Bilton wrote:

This design patent, titled, “Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface,” gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application.

Yes, that’s right. Apple now owns the page turn. You know, as when you turn a page with your hand. An “interface” that has been around for hundreds of years in physical form. I swear I’ve seen similar animation in Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons.

(This is where readers are probably checking the URL of this article to make sure it’s The New York Times and not The Onion.)

Last year when it launched its Nook Tablet Barnes & Noble strongly hinted that it was looking to add a video service to the device that would allow users to buy and rent movies and television shows.

Well, it took a little longer than expected, but today the company has announced that it's launching Nook Video this fall in the U.S. and the UK this "holiday season" with content from major studios, including HBO, Sony, Starz, and Warner Bros, and Disney.

September 13, 2012 (NEW PROVIDENCE, NJ) -- More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 – nicknamed YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44.

Arnaud Nourry, Chairman of Hachette Livre, announced today that after seven years at the helm of Hachette Book Group, David Young has decided to return to the UK to be with his family.  His last day as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hachette Book Group will be March 31, 2013.  He will remain Chairman of HBG and will return to the U.S. approximately one week per month.

OverDrive's industry-leading catalog of eBooks and audiobooks topped 1 million titles in July, with surging demand for eBooks and new publisher partnerships driving unprecedented growth. The fastest growing segments, Children's/Young Adult and International (including popular non-English content), signal exceptional expansion opportunities in library and school markets in the U.S. and overseas. Every day throughout OverDrive's growing network of 19,000 libraries, schools, retailers and device manufacturers (OEMs), millions of readers in 20 countries enjoy popular titles from bestselling authors on Kindle® (U.S. only), iPad®, Nook™, iPhone® and all major eReading devices.

NEW YORK, NY – August 6, 2012 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced new NOOK Tablet customers will receive an instant free collection of exciting and beloved Disney eBooks as part of our NOOK Kids Summer Reading Program (www.nook.com/kids-summer-reading). This collection features a variety of NOOK Kids picture books along with interactive Read and Play™ and Read To Me™ titles featuring favorite Disney characters, perfect for families to read together. This limited time offer applies to new in-store purchases of both NOOK Tablet 16GB ($249) and NOOK Tablet 8GB ($199) at any of Barnes & Noble’s nearly 700 stores nationwide.  This is the third collection of eBooks offered through the NOOK Kids Summer Reading Program, specially designed to keep children engaged in reading all summer long.