Readmill first gained attention for its clean ebook reading interface, which lets users highlight and share passages from ebooks without leaving the app. At launch, the app only supported DRM-free EPUB files, limiting it primarily to DRM-free public domain titles. Last October, though, Readmill added support for Adobe DRM and PDFs, opening it up to a much broader range of titles, including those from Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Google Play. (Kindle books still aren’t supported, though, because of Amazon’s proprietary DRM.) Twenty-two independent ebookstores also have a “send to Readmill” feature, so that a user can buy an ebook and immediately sync it to his or her Readmill account.

Readmill’s new iPhone app syncs with the iPad version, so a user can start a book on one device and pick up where he or she left off on another. “We were finding that a growing number of our users wanted to read their ebooks in this way, and the ability to read via a smartphone has been the most requested feature within our existing community to date,” said Readmill cofounder and CEO Henrik Berggren, “so this was a natural next step in development.”

Berggren previously led business development at Berlin-based social music company Soundcloud. Readmill raised its first funding round, an undisclosed amount from Wellington Partners, last June. The company would not disclose how many members it has, saying it’s focusing on user experience for now.

Most kids still haven’t read an ebook.

46 percent of kids have read an ebook, up from 25 percent in 2010. (That’s actually a higher percentage than their parents: 41 percent of parents had read an ebook, up from 14 percent in 2010.) This means, of course, that 54 percent of kids still haven’t read one.

57 percent of girls who had never read an ebook said that they wanted to, compared to 46 percent of boys. I asked Scholastic if the company also broke down the percentage of children who had never read an ebook by gender, and they did: 52 percent of the kids who’d never read an ebook were boys and 48 percent were girls. Based on the survey’s sample size, Scholastic says, this difference wasn’t statistically significant.

Huge growth in reading on tablets.

The most popular device for e-reading was a laptop or netbook, which 22 percent of children surveyed had used to read an ebook. The largest growth came from tablets — not surprising since the iPad launched in 2010, the last time this survey was conducted.

Kids claim they’d read more if they had more access to ebooks.

“I really need an iPad so I can read more,” wily children tell gullible parents. Just kidding! Although possibly a factor here.

Kids want a dictionary and note-taking features.

I loved this breakdown of the features that kids want versus the features that adults want in children’s ebooks. When you look at this, it becomes clear that many children’s ebook startups have been built around features that parents want (like “read-along” options and reading time tracking) — and it looks as if, in fact, kids are more interested in standard e-reading features like highlighting and note-taking.

The full report is here as a free PDF.

Nokia’s app will compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows in France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

The Reading app, first announced with the new Lumias at Mobile World Congress in February, will be available for the Lumia 900, 800, 710 and 610 this week. Nokia says, “While e-books are becoming a common sight in countries like the US and the UK, they are still in their infancy – or basically unavailable – in many parts of the world. And this is where the strength of Nokia Reading lies: in local language e-reading content.”

The company doesn’t specify how many titles are available but says there are “a wide range of local titles, as well as a large collection of English titles popular across the world.”

Barnes & Noble “intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of NewCo may occur,” the release says. The 8-K filed this morning explains that under a separation “B&N would continue to sell NewCo’s devices and device accessories and provide service and accept returns in B&N’s retail stores.”

The partnership with Microsoft “will allow us to significantly expand the business,” said B&N CEO William Lynch. Part of that expansion is a Nook app for Windows 8, “which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.” The release notes that B&N and Microsoft settled their patent litigation and “Barnes & Noble and NewCo will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its Nook e-reader and tablet products.”

Microsoft’s Andy Lees said, “Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We’re on the cusp of a revolution in reading.” As my colleague Kevin Tofel notes, Microsoft has experimented (mostly unsuccessfully) with e-reading in the past, and the B&N partnership could help it regain some momentum.

A focus on international growth

Barnes & Noble has said it will launch the Nook in the UK this year, reportedly in partnership with bookstore chain Waterstones, but the London Book Fair came and went with no announcement.

In an investor call following the announcement this morning, Lynch said “the large majority [of new users] are going to be incremental. If you look at where most of our content sales come from today, clearly we think the biggest opportunity through this partnership is in terms of growth internationally.” He added, “Anything internationally by definition is incremental because we haven’t been there yet.”

Microsoft will help cover the costs of international expansion. The 8-K explains that Microsoft will pay NewCo $25 million a year for the first five years, “for purposes of assisting NewCo in acquiring local Reading Content and technology development.” As Publishers Marketplace notes, “local actually means international.”

Microsoft will make advance payments to NewCo

According to the 8-K, Microsoft will pay NewCo $60 million for each of the first three contract years and an unspecified amount after that, up to an unspecified amount. Microsoft gets an unspecified revenue share from NewCo.

Publishers will sign e-book contracts with NewCo, not B&N

“Content lies” with NewCo, Lynch said. “The relationships with publishers will be Newco relationships.” In other words, book publishers would sign e-book contracts with the new company, not with Barnes & Noble.

Don’t worry too much about the Android part for now

The Nook e-readers and tablets are Android-based. Windows is not! “We’ve always said we want readers to be able to read in the device of their choosing,” Lynch said, adding, “if you want to read your book on an iOS product or Android product…you can of course do that.”

However, the 8-K notes that “NewCo will use the [Windows Phone] Marketplace as the in-application commerce transaction platform, when available, for commerce transactions in the NewCo Phone App, including payments and fees associated with Content acquisition and subscriptions (if available). NewCo will ensure that the NewCo Phone App will provide for in-app purchasing and will not link out of the NewCo Phone App to complete purchases of Content.” That would mean a change to Nook iOS apps, which currently get around Apple’s revenue share requirements by not allowing in-app purchases.

Ruckus Reader titles can be downloaded individually, or parents can buy access to the whole library for $24.99 for six months. The first title in a series is free; after that, titles are $3.99 each or 2 for $5.99. For now, Ruckus Reader offers 25 titles — a mixture of interactive “iReaders” (enhanced e-books with video and games), straight e-books and “vidReaders” (video books narrated by celebrities like Meryl Streep and Robin Williams). Ruckus CEO Rick Richter, formerly president of the children’s division at Simon & Schuster, told me the company expects to include around 500 titles by the end of the year.

In addition to the brand-related content it developed itself, Ruckus is partnering with other book publishers to deliver e-books as well. The first partnership is with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which is providing Curious George titles. Richter said other “major publishers” are “lined up.”

How do your kid’s reading skills stack up?

“Right now, 1 in 4 kids has access to an iPad,” Richter said. “In 70 percent of households where an iPad is resident, the child has access. In 40 percent of households, kids use the iPad every day. It’s a family device.”

Ruckus Reader tracks kids’ in-app reading skills — the apps support up to 4 accounts, so parents can track more than one child on the same title — and reports back to parents with a weekly “Reader Meter” e-mail that ranks children’s mastery of “phonics and word recognition, print awareness, fluency, alphabetic knowledge, sequencing and story comprehension in real time.” The rankings are weighed against the national Common Core State Standards. “We are trying to make sense of all the options available to children in a digital age and strive to understand when screen time is delivering real educational value,” Richter said in a statement.

Through a partnership with School Library Journal, each parent e-mail includes a list of recommended print books for their child’s reading level.

Of those who own a dedicated e-reader (like Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook), 49% are reading an e-book “on any given day” and 59% are reading a printed book. 39 percent of tablet owners are reading an e-book on any given day and 64 percent are reading a print book.

The longer people own an e-reader or tablet, the more likely they are to say that they are reading more: “45% of those who had owned an e-reader for more than a year said they were reading more, vs. 30% of those who had owned an e-reader for less than six months.”

Kindle is still the preferred e-reader, by far.

And iPad is still the preferred tablet, though Kindle Fire’s market share grew hugely after the holidays: from 5% in mid-December to 14% in mid-January.

Device owners are getting a lot of reading recommendations from online bookstores.

Borrowing is still a fuzzy concept. Pew says “among device owners who read e-books, 71% prefer to purchase their e-books, compared with 61% of all readers. Another 24% of device owners prefer to borrow their e-books, compared with 31% of all readers.”

Pew didn’t ask users to elaborate on where they are borrowing the books, but some are clearly turning to libraries.

The report also notes that e-book borrowers may be checking Kindle Owners’ Lending Library or taking advantage of the limited lending opportunities provided by some publishers through Kindle and Nook.