Barnes & Noble released an Android version of the Nook ebook reader. It’s the same path that Amazon followed. They have a hardware device for reading ebooks. But as other mobile devices start to get more popular they also allow those devices to hook into the same content. Effectively putting your library “in the cloud”, so that you can download the books you’re reading to your different devices and keep your reading position synced across them. I’m already an avid Kindle user on iPad, iPhone, and Android. But I gave the Nook reader a try just to see what it’s like.

If you’re on your Android device right now you can hop to Nook in the Market directly, or just search for “Nook” in the Marketplace app. Compared to the other readers I’ve seen, the Nook feels a bit amateur. The reading experience itself is the real laggard here. I’m hoping they can polish this thing up in future revisions. A few screenshots to show you what I mean.

This is the main library interface:

I downloaded a free book. One of the Google Books scans, which is nice. Like the other platforms they’re tying into the free content at Google to provide a ton of free scans of classic and public domain works. Kudos on that. Some of the Google Books efforts include direct scans of pages instead of the text. Here’s what a scan page looks like:

And a page of text:

That lack of margin on the reading screen is really killing me, and I don’t see a way to adjust it. I also like to read with full justification, which doesn’t appear to be an option either.

Here’s a shot of the ebook store, just for the sake of completeness:

The storefront is pretty decent, about on par with the others.

Overall though the interface is still a bit clumsy, the reading experience itself needs some work, and the app itself is buggy (I’ve had it crash twice in the short time I used it). I’m very happy to see an additional ebook reader out, but this one needs some more work before it’s ready for prime time.