Because it is browser-based, Chegg’s eTextbook Reader is completely platform agnostic: it will work on an iPad, Mac, PC, or Android tablet. Chegg also allows users the option of using the eTextbook version of a book while they wait for their physical copy to arrive. Purchasing a hard copy grants customers seven days of access to the eTextbook version.

The timing of this announcement is interesting, to say the least. As we have reported previously, Apple is holding an event tomorrow in New York where they plan to make an education related announcement that will probably relate to ebooks and the textbook industry in some way.

Chegg has included a video on their website showing their eTextbook Reader in action. Check it out below and let us know what you think in the comments.

[Source: Chegg]

Whether you regularly fit the description above or are just jonesing for something different, there’s a new service that can give the development of a book more pliability by involving you, dear reader, more actively with what happens in the book. It’s not a novel idea but it’s new again thanks to Coliloquy, a publisher of “active fiction,” which is roughly defined as books in which readers affect the course of characters or plots by selecting from possible choices based on what you’d like to happen. Wish Barry had taken a left than a right at that fatal intersection? You can do it. Think Veronica should’ve shot that hostage instead of letting the bad guys get away? You can do that, too. (Well, I have no idea if you can do these specific things – they’re just examples. You can’t go bananas with your directorial control as you’ll have to stick with pre-determined choices set within the book.)

The best comparison to this method of reading – and I swear to God, I wish there was a better way to describe it because everybody else that’s covered this story has been using this very same comparison but it really is the best way to make you understand – is to recall those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from the 1980s and 90s. Coliloquy has built off of that idea and brought it to Kindle devices. Their press release goes into detail:

Coliloquy’s new publishing format enables multiple story lines, serial and episodic story-telling, personalized content, in-book engagement mechanics and the delivery of prompts and special or exclusive extras to create a more fluid and immersive story-telling experience.

Coliloquy comes out of the Kindle Developer Program for Active Content and will be available immediately on Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle DX and Kindle Keyboard devices. By delivering titles as active content applications, rather than static publishing files, Coliloquy enables new kinds of engagement made possible by advances in electronic book distribution. Multiple “what if” story lines let authors and readers explore different permutations of character relationships.

(And in case their name makes your butt itch, the odd spelling is intentional. They explain: “We created ‘coliloquy’ as a portmanteau of soliloquy and colloquy.”)

The selling point of Coliloquy is that you can literally re-read a book and have it be different each time you go through it (given you don’t exhaust the amount of scenarios available for readers to choose from). What’s more is that they’re taking the choice-based platform one step further beyond the traditional Choose your Own Adventure series and involving the books’ authors for future installments of a series. As readers forge their own paths in the books offered by Coliloquy, feedback is sent to the authors who may “test and refine new ideas based on insights of the readers.”

As of today, Coliloquy has four book titles in their interactive offerings:

No word yet if these will be available in other ebook markets like Nook later. If you’re a Kindler out there and you happen to give these books the old college try, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Apple more or less confirmed those reports today when it began sending out invitations to an event in New York City on January 19th at 10 AM in the Guggenheim Museum. The invitation is quite short on details – which is not at all surprising – but at the very least we can probably expect Apple to announce that it is bringing textbooks into iBooks.

We will definitely be paying attention to this event, and will let you know what Apple announces next week.

Amazon today announced Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series. The program will take a line of Pearl’s favorite out-of-print books and republish them in physical print editions, audiobook form and as eBooks in the Kindle store.

Nancy Pearl, a famous librarian, wrote a best-selling book titled “Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason.” The book contained approximately 1800 book recommendations. Unfortunately, a large portion of the books that Pearl recommended were out of print or hard to find. She received letters from readers asking where to find these books which led her to the idea of partnering with Amazon for this new venture.

The Book Lust Rediscoveries series will publish six books a year. It will allow a whole new generation of readers to discover classic books that were so hard to find before.

Pearl is a celebrity among librarians and book lovers across the country. She may also be the only librarian to have an action figure made in her likeness. She is known around the country for her intimate knowledge on books thanks to her television and book club programs.

“I’m thrilled that Book Lust Rediscoveries makes it possible to republish many of my all-time favorite novels, all of which have long been out of print,” Nancy Pearl said. “Helping these wonderful books find new readers is, for me, a joy and a delight. I was blown away by Amazon Publishing’s enthusiasm for the project and the extent to which they really understood what I wanted to do.”

The first two books to be published in the series are “A Gay and Melancholy Sound” by Merle Miller and “After Life” by Rhian Ellis.

Pearl is donating a portion of the proceeds from the sales to her foundation at the Nancy Pearl Endowment for Public Librarianship at the University of Washington’s Information School.

“A Gay and Melancholy Sound” is scheduled to be published on April 3 this year and “After Life” is set to release on June 5.

Both books will be published by AmazonEncore, a subsidiary of Amazon Publishing.

“We’ve all been there: the Internet is suddenly down, and you can’t keep on reading your ebook to see what the character decides to do next,” says Google Books Product Manager Xinxing Gu. “Or you’re about to head to the airport and want to be able to dive into a newly-purchased ebook during a long flight.”

“Whether you are flying through the air, backpacking through the European countryside, or simply facing intermittent network connections, you can always read your Google eBooks in your Chrome browser or on your Chromebook,” says Gu.

Offinline access requires the installation of the Google Books app, which can be found in the Chrome Web Store.

Obviously you’ll have to download the eBooks themselves while you’re still online.

Mouseover the cover of books you’ve downloaded, and find the “make available offline” checkbox that pops up. This option can also be accessed by clicking the “i” in the right-hand corner of your screen.

In the Google Books Help Center, Google offers 5 tips and best practices for offline reading in the web browser:

1. You can only use this feature with flowing text (EPUB) books, as scanned pages (PDF) are too large for offline reading and not supported at this time.

5. If you have multiple windows open with the Google Books app, only one of the windows will show the percentage of Downloading completed. All other windows will simply display “Downloading”. Our engineers are aware of this issue and are working to fix it.

Offline reading is also supported in Google’s mobile apps.

Barnes & Noble is one of the top booksellsers in the U.S., and this is clearly a move to stay competitive with its rivals as the technology pushes more consumers into digital books.

Keep in mind that Barnes & Nobles already sells as much as 27% of eBooks, and the Nook Tablet, being much cheaper than the iPad (though $50 more than the Kindle Fire) at $249, has a real shot at boosting that number up.

One advantage Barnes & Noble has versus Amazon is the giant chain of retail stores, where it can push its device in front of very targeted customers. Sure, there are plenty of places to pick up a Kindle, but people go to Barnes & Noble specifically for books. The company’s loyal customers go to their stores, and is an important audience to get the device in front of in a physical setting.

I’d be surprised if the price doesn’t come down to be more competitive with the Kindle Fire at some point. You may recall when the two companies got into something of a price war last year. I don’t see why this won’t happen again.

In fact, last year, we also saw Barnes & Noble take advantage of that brick & mortar element when it set up the big Nook boutiques in stores.

The Nook tablet gives users access to movies, TV shows, music, etc. through services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and others. It has a collection of apps, including a web browser and email. It also, of course, has the Nook reading experience.

“In Nook Tablet, we’ve created the best wireless media tablet in the portable 7-inch class,” says B&N CEO William Lynch. “Nook Tablet’s VividView display has been designed to be the world’s finest screen for readability and viewing content. We’ve utilized that breakthrough display technology to bring consumers the largest digital catalog of color and interactive books, magazines, children’s books and high-quality apps through our NOOK Store.”

The company also lowered the price of its Nook Simple Touch to $99, and ts Nook Color to $199

“These three products, at these super-low prices, represent the highest-quality portfolio of reading and entertainment products on the market at the best value,” says Lynch.

Now, we’ll see how consumers respond. The holidays are coming up, so there’s a very good chance sales for the quarter will be pretty good.

The Nook Tablet can be pre-ordered today, and should hit stores next week.

“Let’s say you are reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and you’d like your friends to read it with you (or you have a witty comment to let loose),” says Google Books Product Manager Abe Murray. “Simply click on the Google+ Share box on the About the Book page or in a Google Books preview, enter your message, then select which circles you’d like to share details about the book with, and click ‘share’.”

When you share book info on Google+ it displays the book’s cover, the description, and title, which links back to the About the Book page on Google Books. It’s basically like sharing any other link.

“You can also simply paste the About the Book or Google Books preview URL into your Google+ Share box,” says Murray. “This will show the cover and book details, helping your friends know exactly what you’re sharing with them. While you’re sharing books, you can also +1 them, and the titles will appear in your profile on the +1 tab.”

Google pitches the concept as a way to share your favorite books with “literary circles”. To me it looks like just a way to share a link to a book. For those in book clubs in which the members all have Google+ profiles, this will probably be helpful.

The visibility of all of this should be greatly helped by Google’s initiative to get authors of web content using its authorship markup, which effectively puts authors’ profiles in greater view in search results. This should apply to book reviews.

Google recently announced that it is teaming up with Pottermore, JK Rowling’s new site, which will open up this fall to provide eBook services. The two are partnering to integrate Pottermore with various Google products and APIs. The Harry Potter book series will launch in eBook form on Pottermore.com in October, and they’ll also become available through the Google eBooks platform. I’m guessing these will be make a lot of appearances on Google+.

The app will sync the user’s Kindle Library, along with the last page read, bookmarks, notes, and all of that good stuff. it also comes with a touch-optimized version of the Kindle store. It can be used with Safari on iPad/desktop and Chrome.

Features, as described by Amazon:

• An immersive view of your entire Kindle library, with instant access to all of your books
• Start reading over 950,000 Kindle books instantly within your browser
• An embedded Kindle Store optimized for your web browser makes it seamless to discover new books and start reading them instantly
• New Kindle Store for iPad is built from the ground up for iPad’s touch interface
• Your current book is automatically made available for offline use, and you can choose to save a book for reading offline at any time
• Receive automatic software updates without the need to download new software
• Select any book to start reading, customize the page layout to your desired font size, text color, background color, and more
• View all of the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that you’ve made on other Kindle apps or on Kindle
• Sync your last page read across your Kindle and free Kindle apps so you can always pick up where you left off

“We are excited to take this leap forward in our ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere,” said Amazon Kindle Director Dorothy Nicholls. “We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser. The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS. To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books.”

Kindle Cloud Reader is available today for Safari and Chrome, but will also become available for IE, Firefox, and the BlackBerry Playbook browser (as well as other mobile browser) in the coming months.

In Amazon’s latest earnings report, the company reported better revenue than expected, suggesting that the Kindle played a significant role in this.

“Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we’ve seen in over a decade. Kindle 3G with Special Offers has quickly become our bestselling Kindle at only $139,” said CEO Jeff Bezos. “Customers love the convenience of a 3G reader — no hunting for or paying for Wi-Fi hotspots. Amazon picks up the tab for the 3G wireless, so you have no monthly payments or annual contracts.”

The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 950,000 books – 800,000 of these books are $9.99 or less.

Reports indicate that Amazon is gearing up to produce tablets to take on the iPad 2.

The Harry Potter book series will launch in eBook form on Pottermore.com in October, and they’ll also become available through the Google eBooks platform. When users buy it, they will be able to keep it in their Google Books library in the cloud (as well as on other platforms).

“Pottermore will be the exclusive place to buy Harry Potter ebooks and digital audiobooks,” says Larissa Fontaine in New Business Development for Google Books. “You’ll be able to buy ebooks from the Pottermore Shop, push them to your Google Books library and store them alongside your other Google eBooks. Your other Google eBooks may be purchased from any of more than 250 independent booksellers or from Google directly.”

“Also under this agreement, Google Checkout will be the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com,” says Fontaine. “When you visit the Pottermore Shop, you’ll be able to pay for your purchases using Google Checkout, in addition to using a debit or credit card.”

Pottermore will also take advantage of Google’s YouTube for global video broadcasts.

Google eBooks can be read on the web, and through apps for iOS and Android, as well as on over 80 e-readers. A new Google eBooks-integrated e-reader from iRiver is being sold at Target, Google announced a couple weeks ago. With this one, you can browse, buy and read Google eBooks with your e-reader through Wi-Fi, rather than downloading and transferring them from computer to e-reader with a cord with other devices.

The plans for the site were announced via online scavenger hunt last week, and when visited, the site announced “Coming Soon” and linked to a countdown on YouTube. Today, JK Rowling has released the YouTube video detailing what to expect from the new site.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you,” Rowling says in her YouTube announcement. “Because no author could have asked for a more wonderful, diverse and loyal readership.” And considering the buzz surrounding this new site and the upcoming film conclusion of the series, I would say she’s spot on.

Rowling says Pottermore will be an “online reading experience like no other.”

Part of the site will be a Harry Potter store where fans can purchase, among other things, audiobooks and for the first time ever eBooks of the series.

“Pottermore will be be built by you, the reader…Pottermore will be the place where fans of any age can share, participate in and rediscover the stories,” Rowling says. This hints at some sort of social network layer to the experience, possibly even user-generated content.

Possibly the most exciting part of the new site will be the new content from Rowling herself. She says that she has been “hoarding” information about the world of Harry Potter for years, and the site will be the place where it will be revealed. It doesn’t look like this information will be any new adventures for Harry Potter but rather an expansion of the world. Possibly encyclopedic in nature? Backstories? We will have to wait to find out.

It’s been reported than Rowling has written over 18,000 words of new Harry Potter material for the site.

Pottermore will be open to everyone in October, but a select few (1 million) users will be chosen to “help shape” the experience of the site on July 31st (Harry Potter and Rowling’s birthday). You can sign up to receive email notifications on the site.

Part social experience, part new content and part online store? Are you guys excited about Pottermore?