Nook Spotlight Pick for April; NYT Subscribers Bypass Paywall

Each month Barnes and Noble offers the first ebook in a popular series for $0.99 as their “Spotlight” pick.

The Spotlight pick for April is Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks . It usually sells for $9.99.

Consider Phlebas has a 4 star rating over 62 reviews at B&N. Here’s the description:

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

In other B&N news, keeping up with Amazon and the Kindle, subscribers of The New York Times on the Nook ereaders will get free access to the NYTimes.com website, bypassing their newly-launched paywall.

Barnes & Noble customers with current subscriptions will be notified via email in the near future with more information on how to get free access to NYTimes.com. A digital subscription for the NYT newspaper costs $20 a month and it comes with a free 14-day trial.