Barnes and Noble unleashed a new eBook sampling program today, called Nook for Web. It allows you to read excerpts of books before you buy them in any internet browser on MAC or PC. There is no sign-in required and you don’t even have to register with the company to start checking out some eBooks!
When you are browsing Barnes and Nobles catalog of eBooks there is a new icon called “Read Instantly”. When you click on that you will automatically pull up the book on your internet browser. It basically shows the cover art, table of contents and two pages of the book. Support will be incoming in the next few months for this new sampling feature for smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. Even the iPad right now does not have the ability for this added functionality to properly work.
The entire reading experience of the samples is fairly solid via HTML5. You can Customize the reading experience using the intuitive navigation bar. Choose between 8 fonts and 8 font sizes and a single or double page layout. Simply collapse the navigation bar once preferences are selected to reveal a clean, easy-to-read page. There is tons of options to optimize your reading experience and it should hopefully lead to a full online reader for tablets and phones. Some users have been reporting some small bugs with the online reading app. In some cases people are being prompted with error messages or your book timing out. Obviously this is the launch day and small proclivities are bound to happen.
Beginning today, Barnes & Noble is also offering six bestselling NOOK Books in their entirety at no charge for readers to try NOOK’s award-winning digital reading experience online. Visit www.nook.com/NOOKforWeb to browse the list of complimentary titles available, instantly read the sample and download the entire book for free using any Web browser now through July 26.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
