LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Ebooks interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:53:05 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/CBzl3nwFLTY/ Bruce Brandfon, Scientific American: always charged for content and a few years gave it away for free on the web. Couldn’t monetize it by way of advertising. A year ago decided to publish tidbits and took the features stories off the web. Previously published features on the web for free before the magazine came out. As a result subscriptions increased. Lesson learned as publishers of content is that rates they were able to generate on the web were very small compared to the rates they could generate in print. Was able to replace direct mail by using website. Goal is to enhance experience to the extent that people will pay for site in addition to the magazine. People are hung up on devices too much cause that will shake itself out. Scary part is that 25 year olds getting information from completely different sources, not papers and magazines. Biggest challenge of us as curators of information is that we are now becoming responsible for the quality of the information we consume. Steven Kotok,The Week Magazine 500,000 print circulation and launched website last year. Don’t put the print content on the site. Launched a free website. Get 30K new subscriptions/year from website plus another 20K related subscriptions to the site. Website makes a profit on ad revenue. No free content any more. Looking back should have charged a higher subscription price earlier. Hard to see how publishers will create enough bells and whistles, in an economic manner, that will beat what is available on the web, which is competing on the same device. Michael Lonier, The Deal, LLC. Paid product is bulk of revenue. Financial news site. Have a magazine sold to corporations. Publish news and data all day long. Converted from a free model. Had to transform the company completely: different sales force, new marketing force and move to a business to business model. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:02:49 +0100 824959 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/5Xjjmnmvjkg/ Christopher Kenneally, Copyright Clearance Center, moderator; John Silbersack, Trident Media Group; Sara Pearl, Trident Media Group John Silbersack: literary agent. even for major authors electronic book sales only account for a few percentage points. Meeting with ebook companies who want to explain their ebook models almost every week, but still very little money being generated on these deals. Most companies don’t offer an advance but higher royalties. These companies are also selling a marketing platform. Probably not the time to fight the battle about who owns backlist ebook rights because of low monetary value. But it is a battle that will have to be fought eventually. 700 backlist works in the Isaac Asimov estate. How does the agent make them available? Time to try short term licenses and experimentation to find best way. Often these new products will be sold side-by-side with the original book. What makes this content different and takes it out of verbatim rights? For out of print books that have reverted to the author, spending a lot of time now sending termination notices to publishers. For the last 50 years in publishing has been a pretty common practice to use orphan works without permission and put aside some money in case someone comes forward. Not so different than what Google is doing now. For the working writer the Google settlement doesn’t make much difference because can opt in/out. How Amazon take a larger percentage of revenue from an ebook sale than the author gets. Sara Pearl: lawyer. Amazon thinks of themselves as publishers. Their view is that they are creating a new product. For front list publishers very clear that they keep verbatim rights, for “new media rights” those tend to be reserved by author. Author contributes about 20% of “enhanced” work and a lack of clarity about who creates the remaining 80% and what rights are involved. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:57:25 +0100 824960 http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/03/09/highwire-presents-findings-from-ebooks-librarian-survey-2/ HighWire Presents Findings From eBooks Librarian Survey “HighWire Press has released the full results of a Fall 2009 survey of librarians on their attitudes and practices related to ebooks. The survey was conducted as part of HighWire’s ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks. The report espouses some familiar and consistent themes: (Source: Stephen) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:54:59 +0100 824972 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/09/at-the-u-of-minnesota-e-books-cheaper-but-still-popular/ From the Article: Electronic textbooks are cheaper for bookstores and students, but University of Minnesota Bookstore Director Bob Crabb said they have yet to catch on with students. Electronic books have been offered for only a few semesters, but Crabb said he is surprised that their sales trail so far behind traditional books. The bookstore sells about 500,000 books every year, and Crabb estimated that only 2 percent to 3 percent of these are electronic books. “It’s a slow go,” Crabb said. “It’s catching on a little bit, but there’s still an awful lot of resistance from students.” Crabb said students have cited eye strain and their familiarity with using regular books as problems with electronic textbooks. [Snip] [Applied economics professor Donald] Liu said he would be interested in the [Macmillan DynamicBooks program but would want to poll his students before making such a decision. Liu said that whenever he can, he opts for smaller, more concise versions of textbooks. With many students studying a given topic for only a single semester, he believes that an expensive and lengthy textbook is often not the best option. “I think most instructors find that a very thick textbook containing many, many chapters is sort of a waste for students,” Liu said. Like the digital books currently available through the University Bookstore, DynamicBooks will be considerably cheaper than printed textbooks. Source: Minnesota Daily (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:40:25 +0100 824995 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/09/elsevier-signs-agreement-with-baker-taylor-to-supply-blio-with-rich-media-content/ From the Announcement: Baker & Taylor, Inc., has entered into an agreement with Elsevier – a leading publisher of scientific, medical and technical books – to provide rich, highly-formatted content on Blio. Blio is the revolutionary e-reader software application created by knfbReading Technology and powered by Baker & Taylor. “Baker & Taylor is thrilled to add Elsevier’s titles, which are essential in the scientific and medical communities, to Blio,” said Tom Morgan, Chairman and CEO of Baker & Taylor. Blio is the perfect e-reader software to showcase Elsevier’s books, which provide highly specialized and informative text and graphics. Readers will enjoy a truly interactive reading – and learning – experience.” [Snip] By the end of the year, Elsevier plans to launch between 8,000 and 9,000 titles, including titles within its life science, physical sciences and professional lists. Elsevier’s Focal Press has plans to introduce enhanced titles with embedded media on Blio for its post production list, including titles with 3-D effects. Source: B&T (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:25:08 +0100 824996 http://www.teleread.org/images/softskullinterviewRichardNash.mp3 I know this sounds a bit loony but…. Last summer, Richard Nash proposed a talk about the Novel in 2050  for South by Southwest (SXSW).  As usual, the geeks at SXSW voted it down (this happens to many worthy panel ideas).   Then I thought, these questions are good; why not have the same session anyway and have it in some room somewhere at South by Southwest?  Even if Richard Nash isn’t there to run it, I’m sure there will be enough literary geeks at SXSW to keep a good discussion going. So I wrote a little announcement about it.  If any readers plan to make it, you may run into some familiar names on Teleread. Richard Nash has a prior commitment, but he says he will show up anyway.  (Read Chris Meadows’ article about  Richard Nash here  and an audio interview David Rothman did with him last year). It will be on Sunday March 14 at 2:00 PM at South by Southwest. Location TBA. It could be awesome, or it could totally suck. South by Southwest attracts more people in web design/multimedia/politics than in publishing, but a lot of literary/freelance types end up showing up.  SXSW will have  a handful of interesting panels, including one or two about the iPad. See also: Chris Meadows about whether ebook conferences create a kind of  ebook elite.  Also, some artists have started to do live illustrations of SXSW panels which can be stunning to look at. See these panels and Honoria Starbuck’s amazingly fun abstract drawings.  (The picture you see was for last year’s Aristotle on Twitter panel). Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:01:18 +0100 824961 http://lisnews.org/times_they_are_achanging From Poynter.org, New York Times to spin off Book Review for e-readers: The New York Times is planning to offer its Book Review as a separate digital e-reader product, disaggregated from the rest of the Times content on the mobile devices, according to James Dunn, director of marketing for The New York Times. Dunn alluded to the plan during an afternoon session at the Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA) and E-Reader Symposium at the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute. Following the session, Dunn spoke briefly with Poynter's Bill Mitchell and provided additional details. Mitchell reports the Times will introduce a separate version of its Book Review for three e-reader platforms, beginning with the Sony e-reader in the next couple of weeks. Versions for Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook will follow. Dunn declined to say what the price will be for the Book Review on these platforms. (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:28:57 +0100 824913 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/03/09/e-book-giveaways-correlate-to-higher-print-sales/ Wired – “Giving away an e-book seems to lead to at least a spike in sales of the print version, Researchers at Brigham Young University have found, especially for fiction. In research that monitored the sales of 41 print books in the eight weeks before and after a free version was released, study authors John Hilton III and David Wiley said they found “a moderate correlation between free digital books being made permanently available and short-term print sales increases.” (Source: Library Stuff) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:00:56 +0100 824953 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/lehfczUSCYI/ Are you a news junkie like me?  I find myself constantly checking my iGoogle page or Google Fast Flip (http://fastflip.googlelabs.com) to see the latest stories.  I’ve also got my RSS reader going as well. However, one of my biggest problems is figuring out a way to keep my eReader current.  Since I’m using an older model Sony (PRS-505) that has no wireless connection, it’s been challenging in trying to figure out the best way to do this. Recently I’ve found a great application that might be a way around this, helping me to keep my Sony up to date.  I’m talking about an application from HP called “Tabbloid”.  This small application seems to have flown “under the radar” so to speak, but its premise and execution so far have been flawless.  Basically, it’s a small customized newspaper that’s emailed to you each morning and consists of news and other stories created from your own RSS feeds or topics of your choosing.  The service is free and is really easy to use!  Interested? To get started, head to the main Tabbloid page located at http://www.tabbloid.com/.  From there, add your news sources.  These can be feed urls extracted from your current RSS reader, OPML file, or just single addresses that you might already know.  If you’re not much on the techy side of RSS, Tabbloid also has preformatted lists of subjects such as technology, business, sports, etc. that you can choose from. From here, it’s a simple matter of adding your email address and specifying how often you want the delivery to take place.  This can be daily or weekly and you have the option of choosing your time of delivery as well as the time zone you might be living in.  After this, save your customized delivery options and check your email to get started.  Each morning you will get a freshly made PDF as well as a summary email of the contents. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:37:20 +0100 824962 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/7Zir71RSI8Y/ Margo Baldwin, President, Chelsea Green Publishing; Clint Greenleaf, President, Greenleaf Book Group; Robert Miller, President, HarperStudio; Sara Nelson, Books Editor, O, the Oprah Magazine, Moderator Margo Baldwin: needed to be niched to stay in business – environment and sustainable living. Try to get a book out from manuscript to bound book in 4 to 5 weeks. Can get well known authors this way. Their books don’t require big advances. They have a mission to help save the world and tends to attract like minded authors. Their specialty books require little marketing and people can easing find them on the internet. Do own distribution cause this helps them control their cash flow. Don’t do business with Borders because think will be gone soon. Their big growth is in specialty retailers (garden stores, for example). The overall pie can grow, not shrink, for certain kinds of books because you can make multiple kinds of products surrounding a single book. Pie for hardcovers will shrink but other parts of the pie will grow. If have a brand can role out many different versions of a book. Big worry is that they are becoming a technology company and it means that every job in the company has to be rethought. Very hard to move retail chains off returns. Worries about piracy and will be more of an issue if consumers don’t get prices they want. In total expects an expanded marketplace with access to a lot of people who didn’t buy books before. Clint Greenleaf: done well because broke from the traditional model. Publishing is only business where if someone self-funds is looked down upon. Clients pay for up front costs. But only take 3% of the books offered to them because won’t sell crap. Will do editing. Found ” everything” didn’t work because buyers wouldn’t take them. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:06:43 +0100 824963 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/_TvQUqTQ4ns/ SmashWords is getting smashed by Read an E-book Week, reports Nate the Great at Nate’s Ebook News blog. Smashwords is running a special promotion for the week, with 3,000 authors participating, and seems to be running into some bandwidth bottlenecks. This level of demand is certainly a great sign for the viability of the medium. AllThingsD’s “MediaMemo” section reports that Barnes & Noble has hired Time’s Jonathan Shar to head up its "Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble.com" division. Shar is a 15-year veteran with both print and digital experience. B&N could probably have done a better job coming up with a department name, though. The New York Times is planning to spin off its Book Review section as a separate e-publication for e-readers, New York Times Marketing Director James Dunn said today at a journalism symposium in Columbia, Missouri. Within the next few weeks, it will be published first for Sony, then for Kindle, and Nook e-readers. Dunn said that the paper would be looking at other sections to see what might best be spun off as further separate publications. It seems that a Stanford survey has determined iPhones may be “addictive”—essentially by asking people, “Hey, do you think you’re addicted?” I’m not entirely sure I find that methodology convincing. Still, the convenience of always having something to read in my pocket is hard to deny. The EFF has managed to obtain a copy of the license that must be signed by iPhone app developers. Since “the first rule of App Club is you don’t talk about App Club,” they had to file a Freedom Of Information Act request with NASA in order to look at it without agreeing to abide by it. Fred von Lohmann reports that the license is extremely restrictive and one-sided in Apple’s favor—no surprises there. But it’s the rules of the road if you want a piece of the 40-million-iPhoneOS-device pie. Digg us. Slashdot us. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 824964 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/4BsxHqugbr0/ Cathie Black, President Hearst Magazines; Jane Friedman, CEO, OpenRoad Integrated Media; Evan Schnittman, VP Global Business Development, Oxford University Press, Moderator Cathie Black: starting advertising campaign about how important magazines are to counter the relentless death knell publicity about magazines. Very tough 18 months, don’t have a consumer problem, have an advertising problem. But looks like a good first half and advertising starting to come back. All magazines working on a multi-platform basis now. Magazine company is a “diversified” magazine company today. Becoming an advertising agency themselves. Consumers starting to buy magazines again. Raised magazine prices on newsstand, but increased size of the publications also. Every one of her magazines has a website. In 08, 40% of profits came from overseas editions. Magazine industry will be smaller in 10 years. Will never see another 2007 advertising revenue again. Now charging for some of the services that they used to offer to advertisers. 5 years from now: digital advertising revenue today is pennies on the dollar. Devices: don’t want to be in the device business. Consortium created with 5 publishing companies to try to avoid the mistakes the newspaper industry made – give it away for free. Consortium will try to work out issues for the future. The content created for one device may not work on another device. Zinio is worth looking out. Jane Friedman: in an absolute revolution in books. Changing for the better as book publishers never know who the ultimate consumer was. No data, no statistics, the publishing business had nothing. Need to publish for the consumer and so had to understand what the consumer wanted and this was unheard of in the industry. Strong believer in the backlist. Physical books will always be around. But what is changing is how people read when they want to read. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:39:55 +0100 824965 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/uh0ZI4oIo9U/ On Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka posts an editorial wondering whether cheap paperbacks still have a place in the market when their prices are undercut by e-books. He mentions a line of extremely inexpensive paperbacks that Penguin has been publishing in Australia at the “low” price of AU$9.95 (or about US$9.05) to celebrate its 75th anniversary. (I guess paperbacks must normally be much more expensive over there, given that’s a couple of dollars more than many regularly-priced ones go for over here.) Many of these books are available as e-books in the public domain, for free, but Penguin has still managed to sell over 250,000 copies of those paperbacks in the first three months. Of course, anyone who has followed Baen for long is familiar with the idea that free e-books promote sales of printed copies, so that may be what has happened here. Regardless, it certainly shows that paper books are not out of the sales running yet—even reprints of old ones. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 824966 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EurTGTHxHEI/ Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch wonders whether e-books might not be the next type of app to be purged from the App Store. (As we’ve been wondering here for quite some time.) Though Kincaid makes it clear he does not think e-book readers such as Stanza or Kindle will go, since they provide a great deal of additional functionality themselves, he points out that all of the stand-alone appbooks (especially those that are just a wrapper around a Project Gutenberg public-domain text) cause a great deal of clutter in the e-books category, and would offer an inferior experience to the iBooks interface on a big-screened iPad. It is worth pointing out that apart from the “sexual apps” purge, Apple has recently begun cracking down on “cookie-cutter” applications—apps built on templates, such as wrappers of simple RSS feeds, that provide similar functionality to a standard mobile webpage. (Ironically, this would probably apply to our own TeleRead iPhone app as well.) It would seem that a Project Gutenberg e-book in an app wrapper would be no less a “cookie-cutter” app than a RSS feed in an app wrapper. But apparently Apple is limiting itself to blocking new cookie-cutter apps rather than purging existing ones, at least for now. I almost wonder if I should keep reporting on this sort of speculation, as it does not seem like it is going to be productive to worry about it until we see more concrete actions on Apple’s part. Like Kincaid, I still maintain that Apple has no reason to eliminate alternate e-book reading apps from its store. Those stand-alone appbooks do cause an awful lot of content clutter, though. I remember when there were only a couple of dozen, but there are now more than 29,000—1,478 pages’ worth. It’s impossible to browse usefully through that much content. Something to make the app store more navigable would be a good idea. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 824967 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/QNNVUqutiuM/ Amazon Kindle Review has a long article about the new Alex ereader. They have gone into the user manual and list a lot of the features and operating parameters. Well worth a read for any of you who, like me, are interested in this device. Here are the first six features they mention. There are a lot more at the site. # The features are very well thought out. The number of options is a bit overwhelming. There are literally dozens of different settings. # There are Notification icons in the LCD status bar including – new email, battery indicators, uploading/downloading data, and more. Plus you can scroll through notifications and open them. # ‘Touch and Project’ feature that lets you project the text content of a website from the LCD screen to the eInk screen. # There’s an Alex Market to download applications. You can also download applications from your browser. # Alex’s browser has 5 text sizes, javascript, and a pop-up blocker. You can also clear the browser cache, history, and stored cookies. # Email App supports up to 5 POP3 or IMAP accounts. The Email App is very impressive. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:20:44 +0100 824968 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/vdMlcx_1ZH4/ Nieman Journalism blogger Martin Langeveld posts a whitepaper currently being presented at a journalism conference at the University of Missouri in Columbia. The whitepaper reflects on the ways that the iPad will change the face of publishing. Langeveld writes: iPad is not a linear, incremental development. It’s not a simple next step after everything that has preceded it (even iPhone); it’s a new direction that will have unpredictable impacts on digital behavior. He then proceeds to…predict these “unpredictable impacts”. They include a substantial increase in mobile shopping, as the iPad provides a much better display medium than a smaller-sized smartphone screen, and a decline in print and “insert” advertising as ads move increasingly to the mobile web. It is even possible that mail-order catalogs will stop being shipped by post, as the iPad and tablets like it end up as “coffee table” devices. Langeveld lays out a list of assumptions for publishers to make, and strategies to pursue, based on this idea. Papers should “reinvent content for the mobile Web and iPad,” and journalists should “develop new streams of content, in new formats and with new kinds of interactivity and connectivity.” In some ways this reminds me of the “burn your boats” advice from Marc Andreesen that I covered the other day. Langeveld seems to be saying that the iPad is going to bring a sea change in the way things are done, and you must adapt or get swept away. On the one hand, I’m not sure I buy it. It seems a little early to start predicting The End Of The World As We Know It before the device even hits store shelves. On the other hand, prognostication is an important part of doing business, so if you don’t try to predict what’s coming you might end up getting left behind. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 824969 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/a5iZFvjMPqQ/ The digitization process is complete and all 31 volumes of Grant’s collected papers are now available on line through the Mississippi State University libraries. The volumes contain thousands of letter written by the president and other materials and photographs. You can view the documents through the U. S. Grant Associations website here. (via ResourceShelf) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:10:02 +0100 824970 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/So5pFwCy4F8/ Rich Adin is starting a series on this on his An American Editor Blog. While I think it’s a bit off topic to reprint them in full here, the articles are worth reading for Rich’s usual thoughtful attitude towards books and what surrounds them. I suggest you go over and take a look. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the first one: I have been thinking about what goes into my decision whether or not to buy a particular book. An ever-increasing numbers of books are available every year — enough to overwhelm any dedicated book buyer. I suspect that the only time the decision was (relatively) easy was in the days of scribal versions and the early days of the printing press and moveable type. I recall reading that even at the time of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, thousands of books and pamphlets were being written and published every year. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:00:24 +0100 824971 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/SJ4J_qlebV0/books-overtake-games-iphone-apps In what is predicted to be a pivotal year for ebooks, with next month's iPad launch, the number of books available as iPhone apps now exceeds the number of gamesThe electronic book passed another milestone this month, with the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passing the number of games for the first time. According to data released earlier this month by the mobile phone advertising company Mobclix, there are more than 27,000 books now available as apps. Games lag behind, with 25,400 published this year, followed by entertainment, education and travel.It's a trend that seems to be gathering momentum, with the number of book apps outnumbering games almost two to one over the past month. Next month's launch of the iPad, Apple's new tablet reader, alongside a dedicated book store, is set to accelerate the shift to electronic reading still further."The iPhone has always been perceived as a games-centric device, said Canongate's digital editor, Dan Franklin, "so the idea that books are outranking games is very exciting."Franklin, who moved into digital publishing a year ago, said that his first thought on getting the job was, "When are Apple going to do something?" because "they have form". A move from Apple into the ebook market will "bring new people to reading like they have brought new people to music with the iTunes store", he added."It's a very exciting time," agreed Penguin's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen. "It's very exciting that people are using iPhones to read books.""I travel on the tube every day," he continued, "and you do see people reading books, reading newspapers and playing games. As publishers we need to be on the things that people are using during that distraction time, that commuter time. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:02:24 +0100 824855 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/TyNLyJ_e0rE/het-rolex-learning-center-een.html Wie het Rolex Learning Center, dat onlangs in het Zwitserse Lausanne werd geopend, voor het eerst ziet, vermoedt niet meteen dat hij of zij naar een bibliotheek kijkt. Toch is dat wel degelijk zo. Een citaat uit de perskit: The main library, containing 500,000 printed works, is one of the largest scientific collections in Europe; four large study areas can accommodate 860 students with office space for over 100 EPFL and other employees; a state-of-the-art multimedia library will give access to 10,000 online journals and 17,000 e-books, with advanced lending machines and systems for bibliographic search; a study centre for use by postgraduate researchers will provide access to the universityʼs major archive and research collection, and there are teaching areas including 10 ʻbubblesʼ for seminars, group work and other meetings and a Language and Multimedia Centre and associated administration offices. Het gebouw ziet er wonderbaarlijk uit en is zonder twijfel een knap staaltje architectuur, maar toch heb ik het gevoel dat er iets ontbreekt. Warmte? Uitstraling? Ik ben er nog niet helemaal uit. Als ik de video en foto's bekijk voel ik weinig enthousiasme in ieder geval. Van enthousiasme is ook niet meteen sprake als ik het artikel The battle of Britain's libraries lees, in The Guardian. Dat artikel gaat over een paar 'superbibliotheken' en dan vooral over de door Nederlanders ontworpen nieuwe bibliotheek van Birmingham. Het lijkt wel alsof groot en protserig de nieuwe norm zijn geworden. Het artikel bracht me wel op het spoor van een interessant onderzoek naar de toekomst van bibliotheken, uitgevoerd in opdracht van Margaret Hodge, de Engelse Minister van cultuur. Volgende week zal zij de resultaten van dat onderzoek publiceren. De verslaglegging van de interviews met experts is nu al te downloaden. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:28:00 +0100 824763 http://bibliotequices.blogspot.com/2010/03/as-e-compatilidades-dos-e-books.html A entrada dos e-books nas bibliotecas enfrenta um problema maior que a questão financeira: a compatibilidade de sistemas.Site: www.toondoo.com/cartoon/1459265Bibliotequices: http://bibliotequices.blogspot.com (Source: Bibliotequices) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825004 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/NBImPYpFBxE/ Today Valve Software officially announced that its Steam digital game distribution platform will be coming to the Macintosh in April. But they are not stopping there. Macintosh owners who have already purchased the PC version of compatible Valve games (those built on the Source engine, such as Half-Life 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead) will get the Macintosh version free. (And this will continue into the future, too: buying a new game will get you both versions from now on.) Imagine if buying the Kindle version of an e-book bought you the eReader version, too for one price—and Mobipocket, EPUB, and PDF versions as well. Baen does something like this, of course—when you buy a Webscription e-book, you get it in all formats they offer, and can redownload it whenever you need to—and Fictionwise does the same thing for its DRM-free “multiformat” books. But as Steve Pendergrast has said, publishers regard each e-book format as a separate “edition”—so if you buy a DRM-locked title from Fictionwise, you must choose which format you want at time of purchase—and if you buy a Mobipocket book but later decide you need it in eReader, your only choice is to buy it again. This “Tower of e-Babel” makes it terribly difficult to future-proof your purchases. If the next reader you buy does not read the format of your existing library, your only option is generally to crack the DRM and convert your library to a new format. Of course, Amazon and other big companies are banking on this, trying to lock customers into their own formats so they have less choice when it comes time to upgrade. This is one of several factors that may be holding the e-book market back. The sooner publishers get a clue and start letting us buy the book in a way that will let us use it in all devices we own, the better. At least Valve is going to let us do that for its games. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:46:16 +0100 824756 http://www.echosdoc.net/index.php#info1048 L'Agence internationale pour l'ISBN a publié, ce 22/02/10, une série de recommendations sur l'application de l'ISBN dans l'édition numérique : "E-Books and ISBNs: a position paper and action points from the International ISBN Agency". (Source: EchosDoc : actualité de l' I. & D.) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0100 824824 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/P78_85-_U_w/ Michael Norris, Senior Analyst, Simba Information. Independent analyst and has no stake in the information. 57% of adults buy at least one trade book and 42% buy no books. Of those who buy 55% buy paperback and 48% buy hardcover. The vast majority of people who buy books only buy 1 to 5 books/year. Main channel is bookstores, followed by “other” such as Walmart, Costco, etc., online is third and book club fourth. For independent bookstores majority of customers buy more than 5 books/year. Price sensitivity and books. Surveyed Kindle hardware owners: overall message was that if they can’t get the books they want from a publisher they won’t buy the book or will buy a different book. It seems to be easy to get riled up about a price change in the abstract, but when comes to the reality most people who really want the book will buy it. People strongly objected to iTunes selective pricing when introduced last April and it didn’t effect their sales. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:44:31 +0100 824757 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ngY_a8SjCYE/ John Ingram, Ingram Industries; Evan Schnittman, Oxford University Press; Michael Tamblyn, Kobo; Roland Lange, Google Kobo: started by pbook seller who felt was going to loose 5 to 10% of sales to ebooks. Idea was to “compete” with the book seller and keep ebook sales under the same roof. Will be working with publishers, OEM, retailers and carriers. Feel devices will get more and better and that you should be able to read the book on all of them. Book should follow you from device to device. 2m books in catalog and delivered books to 200 countries. Purchased books mirrored in the cloud so will follow from device to device. Will be on iTablet. DRM is tied to the user’s account. Price is the major discussion of ebooks right now. Publishers don’t usually ask what readers want and what readers are doing right now. People buy ebooks in the $6 to $11 price range. Current ebook consumer is price sensitive. Requires razor thin margins and lots of volume to make money. Average sale price is $8.76. With agency model publishers set prices and retailers not allowed to discount. Redistribute 9.99 to 13/15, but publishers make less money per book. Publishers are betting that consumers will follow. First time that industry has raised the price of an existing format, and while doing this will be limiting the tactics retailers can use to entice consumer. Based on assumption that consumers will pay more, but we’ve just never asked them to. Kobo’s focus groups show that consumers want instant and convenience, device portability and price came in number 5. But price was still in the mix. Concept of bundling: talking with some publishers but publishers seem frightened about anything that would “devalue” the pbook as an asset bundling runs into this. They have data that indicates that consumers would like this. Google: Partner Program, 2m books from 30,000 publishers worldwide. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:37:33 +0100 824758 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/A-FU2t4tNnc/ 9 to 5 Mac has done some frame-by-frame dissecting of the Oscar Night iPad commercial (which has since been posted on-line, including a slow-motion version) and noted a few interesting facts. The commercial shows Ted Kennedy’s memoir True Compass priced at $14.95—which 9 to 5 Mac points out is cheaper than the $23 hardcover, but also the $19.95 Kindle version. Of course, there is no guarantee that this pricing is valid; it could simply be a mock-up for the commercial. Also, iWork involves the use of a “My Documents” folder. I’m not sure whether this is just an iWork thing, or is the promised “sandbox” to be used for USB syncing third-party applications as well. Either way, as 9 to 5 Mac notes, the nomenclature is interesting. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:40:32 +0100 824583 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/just-who-is-reading-ebooks/ With the caveat that this blog post comes via the OverDrive blog, Cindy Orr has compiled a useful set of stats and demographics (NOT using OverDrive research or numbers) about people who read eBooks. Here are a few examples: Early adopters of the Amazon Kindle had a few things in common–they were Amazon customers, could afford the device, were not afraid of technology, and saw how the reader could help them read while commuting or traveling. By and large they knew about no other readers, and were willing to buy all their books from Amazon. “eBook reader consumers are very cost conscious.” (via Florida Communications Group) “This may be one of the few technologies that trickle down from an older generation to a younger one.” (via IPG Emerging Media Lab) More Stats in the Complete Blog Post Source: OverDrive’s Digital Library Blog (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:40:09 +0100 824601 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/leyPWmHZ1p4/ Steve Forbes, Chairman & CEO, Forbes Media; David Granger, Editor-in-Chief, Esquire Magazine As economy recovers will certain forms of media lead the way in growth: all past patterns thrown out the window because of changes with the web plus bad economy at the same time. Shouldn’t look to the past for comfort or discomfort the question is whether the changes made now will work. Will see advertising creating content now. How does need for integrity mix with need to ally with advertisers: this is where brand is critical. People will rely on a brand to help them plough through all the information available. Important to use web to slice and dice to appeal to unique audiences. Are media’s difficulties a good thing? No, but unavoidable. What the web is doing to media is just the beginning. Patterns in terms of advertising and classified changing made worse by recession. Not end of world, just means we have to figure out how to change content. One size fits all marketing no longer works. You need to devise specific solutions for each advertising client. Ge over platforms and delivery and figure out what is value added. People still want useful content. Get over idea that everything is corralled, can’t do it in age of digitization, but new models will emerge. Can we get consumer to pay more of the freight? People accustomed to free content and will only pay if they truly feel they are getting value added information. Can’t be commodity news. Want unique information. Will pay for specialized information. However, whatever amount people will pay, it will not match revenue from advertising. Valued added: way presented, user delivery, content. Aggregators may be able to charge for specialized aggregation. What about iPad and other platforms: there is an upside, but tablets will not do what Google did. These platforms will help your micro-pricing – pay 59 cents for this or that. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:53:47 +0100 824584 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/mrvOlBK3xfw/ Cynthia Cleto, Springer Science + Business Media; Joshua Talent, eBook Architects, moderator; Pablo Defendini, Tor.com; Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Knopf Doubleday Cleto: in STM market things are different. First move was into electronic journals, so STMs tend to have their own platform for sales to scientists. Large proportion of business is sales to institutions and libraries. STM does everything in house cause already have platform and content is highly technical so it must be absolutely correct. Have 35,000 ebooks on their platform and is easier for the work flow to have everything in house. PDF and HTML formats. Library distribution: sign a contract with libraries and then open up access to whole university for simultaneous user access to both journals and electronic books. Paying for a license but get open access, but has to be for the entire collection. Launched ebook collection in 2006 and have massive adoption even before devices came along. For trade stuff have specific marketers and partner with retailers like Amazon. Also market trade stuff to libraries and actually have people who help librarians to market trade books. Want to keep usage high so that libraries renew the contracts. Have created some social networking through society portals, but since are working in a collection individual authors less important. In their market are DRM free. Defendini: Tor has own print bookstore on line. Use Ingram for delivery. Haven’t found a consumer friendly solution to buying ebooks on the site, so that’s why print sales only. Macmillan-wide outsource ebook production to companies that have ebook production services. Very little QA goes on and allows a lot of crappy ebooks to hit the market. Personally believes that this QA process should come in-house. Tor deals with libraries through third parties, such as Baker & Taylor. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:23:26 +0100 824585 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/z218fWv3Gzo/ From an article in the Toronto Star: In his 2003 thesis, University of Michigan student Greg Kozak studied the life-cycle assessment of paper books versus e-books. He found that a paper book created four times the greenhouse gas emissions of an e-book reader. Print books needed three times more raw materials and 78 times more water consumption than e-books. In another study out of the University of Berkeley, reading a newspaper electronically released 32-140 times less CO2 and used 27 times less water. For more information see Resource Shelf here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:20:17 +0100 824586 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/dcRgaFGmUbU/ The Wall Street Journal has reprinted this section the Oxford work and it has some interesting history. Here’s part of it: In July 1945 Vannevar Bush, a pioneering engineer in the development of analog computing, published an article in which he introduced the Memex: a hypothetical instrument to control the ever-accumulating body of scientific literature. He envisioned an active desk that performed as a storage and retrieval system. A Memex user would consult a book by tapping a code on a keyboard, bringing up the text. The Memex had many features that are now familiar components of e-books: pages, page turners, annotation capability, internal and external linking, and the potential for storage, retrieval, and transmittal. However, Bush imagined that all this would be accomplished through the miracle of microfilm. (via Resource Shelf) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:19:53 +0100 824587 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/OdpnTCJ2HIQ/ I certainly looks as if it might be, as the videos on Engadget show. Engadget has an article full of pictures and videos about the new product, As fjtorres, who give me the heads up, points out there are rumors about Amazon and MS getting together to respond to the iPad and hints at CES about an MS/Blio collaboration. Here’s one of the videos from the article: Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:17:57 +0100 824588 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ihiHWOoB0f8/ Steve Jobs was seen attending the Academy Awards last night (his second company Pixar’s movie Up won Best Animated Feature and Best Score), and the first TV commercial for the iPad was screened twice over the course of the show. iBooks was a fairly large part of the commercial’s focus. A decent commercial, though I couldn’t help but notice the clip from Star Trek during part of a montage of screenshots and images was in full-frame and looked rather cramped. Speaking of the iPad, CNet has an iPad FAQ that sums up what is generally known about the device. A good summary, though not much in the way of new information. And speaking of FAQs, here’s a story I found on Nate’s Ebook News: Educause, a thinktank dedicated to “the intelligent use of information technology” in education, has come out with the latest in a series of articles called “7 Things You Should Know About…” The subject of this article is e-book readers (PDF download). It’s a good basic summary of e-books in education, focusing largely on their utility for holding college textbooks, and their advantages and disadvantages compared to paper books. The Google Books settlement gets another examination in the pages of the Mercury News. The article is a good summation of the key issues of orphan works, privacy, and competition surrounding the settlement, just in case anyone here doesn’t already know what they are by now. And in a follow-up to Saturday’s story about Ubisoft’s consumer-unfriendly DRM, BoingBoing and Slashdot are reporting that Ubisoft’s DRM authentication servers went down yesterday—and had been down for ten hours as of the time the article on The Escapist was posted. That’s a ten hour outage on a weekend, during which time no one who purchased the game legitimately and did not crack the DRM could play even a single-player game of Assassin’s Creed II. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 824589 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/FMltJCOvwLs/ I can’t do any better summarizing this article than Resource Shelf did (I know because I tried), so here’s their summary: The first study of magazines and their various approaches to websites, undertaken by Columbia Journalism Review, found publishers are still trying to work out how best to utilise the online medium. There is no general standard or guidelines for magazine websites and little discussion between industry leaders as to how they should most effectively be approached. [Snip] The researchers found the approach to fact-checking and sub-editing for online content website standards were in general much less rigorous than for printed editions; 51 per cent of original content that appears on web sites is either not copy-edited at all, or is copy-edited less rigorously than in print. Just under half (43 per cent) of respondents reported either a lower standard for fact-checking online (35 per cent), or no fact-checking at all (8 per cent). Strangely, they found that websites are more likely to have lower standards in these areas as web traffic rises and when content decisions are made by independent web editors. Many website editors correct errors without acknowledging the mistake; they are often more likely to be corrected than print, but less likely to publicise the correction – particularly when an independent web editor is involved. The most common reason for material to appear online is because it ran in the print edition, often because it is breaking news, multi-media content or to maintain freshness and, sometimes, because the quality is not high enough to run in the print edition. [Snip] The researchers found most magazines are not keeping pace with mobile display and interactivity technology. Less than one in five are designed for smartphones and very few are formatted for e-book readers (4 per cent). ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:10:20 +0100 824590 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/5hblPPRquXI/ Elsevier has launched its new Elsevier insights series in the areas of life and physical sciences, engineering, computer science, tourism, and finance. 21 volumes are planned for 2010. More information here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:00:01 +0100 824591 http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2010/03/nicholas-carr-is-google-making-us.html In 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote a very provocative article in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making Us Stupid?. While he loves the wonderful access the Internet gives him as a writer to all kinds of information, Carr has noticed that it seems to have changed how he reads the materials he gets online: For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. That is the basic premise of the article. That the huge sea of information that is the Internet seems to somehow subvert HOW we read, from deep, meditative reading to a kind of skimming. And Carr does not just rely on his own and others' anecdotal evidence. He presents some impressive experimental data. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits , conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824664 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/ikqFURmsuME/future-british-libraries-margaret-hodge Coffee shops, gigs, free cinema tickets, flashy architecture . . . is this the future of our libraries? Stuart Jeffries on government plans to shake things up – and the people standing in their way'It will be much more than just a library. Perhaps we should call it a palazzo of human thought," says Mike Whitby, Birmingham city council's leader, as he reclines in his vast office. He's talking about the new £193m Library of Birmingham, currently under construction at Centenary Square between those other two Brummie palazzi, the Repertory Theatre and the former civic centre called Baskerville House.Cardiff, Newcastle and Swindon already have new super-libraries, while Liverpool and Manchester's central libraries are undergoing multimillion-pound renovations. Councillor Whitby thinks Birmingham's will be better than any of them. Thanks to Dutch architects Mecanoo, the library will be a highly transparent glass building wrapped in delicate metal filigree, housing within its 33,500 sq m a few million books (fingers crossed). It is a key component in the city's bid to be the UK's capital of culture in 2013 and should help fulfil Whitby's aim of putting Birmingham in the top 25 world cities by 2020, as ranked by the Mercer Quality of Living survey (it currently comes joint 56th, with Glasgow).Whitby's office looks out on to the existing Birmingham Central Library, an inverted modernist ziggurat built in 1973-4. This is the building Prince Charles famously described as a place where books were incinerated rather than borrowed. Unlike him, I once spent long, happy hours reading here, amazed that so many books (2.5m of them, stretching over seven floors) were at the disposal of a non-princely nobody like me. Now culture minister Margaret Hodge has given the go-ahead to flatten this Grade II-listed building; demolition will be completed over the next five years. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:30:01 +0100 824352 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/07/new-eli-7-things-brief-explores-e-readers/ The latest brief from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. It’s an overview on E-Readers and is two .pdf pages long. Access Complete 7 Things Report on E-Readers Topics Include: + How Does It Work? + Who’s Doing It? + Why is It Significant? + What are the Downsides? + Where is it Going? Access Other 7 Things Reports Source: EDUCAUSE Hat Tip: Info Literacy Weblog (Sheila Webber) (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:58:57 +0100 824287 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/07/electronic-ink-paperless-display-technology-saves-trees-and-the-environment/ From the Article: Unlike the LCD screen, E Ink’s technology enables the electronic reader to replicate the look and feel of a printed book: Displays have the visual appeal of ink-on-paper and use no backlight so that screens can be viewed under almost any lighting condition, including direct sunlight, all the while using little power. Typically, one battery charge of four hours can power 7,500 continuous page turns. [Snip] In his 2003 thesis, University of Michigan student Greg Kozak studied the life-cycle assessment of paper books versus e-books. He found that a paper book created four times the greenhouse gas emissions of an e-book reader. Print books needed three times more raw materials and 78 times more water consumption than e-books. In another study out of the University of Berkeley, reading a newspaper electronically released 32-140 times less CO2 and used 27 times less water. In the U.S., where e-reader sales have taken off, customers are able to download books, magazines and major daily newspapers such as USA Today. It’s a future the newspaper industry is eyeing with careful suspicion — online readership has already endangered the print format, putting thousands of traditional newspaper men and women out of work. But French newspaper Les Echos has been offering its content on the e-reader iRex iLiad since 2007. Stories are delivered wirelessly and updated every hour. Cost for the subscription and the unit is around $600 Cdn. While newspaper subscription is not yet available on the only ebook in Canada, the Sony Reader Digital Book, company spokeswoman Candice Hayman said a major Canadian newspaper, which she declined to identify, recently expressed interest in the device. Rita Toews who we mentioned in the previous post about E-book Week is quoted several times in this article. Access the Complete Article Source: Toronto Sun (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:11:41 +0100 824289 http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/toews.mp3 Several sources including TeleRead remind us that Read an E-Book Week 2007 begins today. Canada’s Rita Toews is the organizer of this special week long event. Steve Jordan Writes: Rita Toews has been working her butt off, interviewing for periodicals and blogs, contacting and drawing in new participants and promoters and twittering until her fingers are hoarse! As the list of partners and promoters of e-books has grown, the number of participating authors and publishers has increased enormously. On Smashwords, over 3,000 authors will participate in the promotional event. Blio, QBook, Diesel E-Books and Sylvan Dell Publishing have joined most recently. The event has been mentioned as far away as Poland and England and as close to home as the Huffington Post. And the exposure to e-books being created by the soon-to-be-released iPad is drawing even more interested parties in. Links e-book Book Store (Access Content to Download) A Librarian Speaks: Interview with Head of Reference, Wright State University Libraries, Sue Polanka Writer and Photographer, Sara Rosso, Shares Her Views on the Advantages of E-books. Much More Content on the Web Site Keep Current with the E-book Week Twitter Feed (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:00:56 +0100 824290 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/D9XlSkKv5xM/ You know the Pixel Qi screens that are one of the forthcoming “better-than-e-ink” display technologies? Gizmodo and the “What’s Happening at Pixel Qi” blog note that a DIY 10” screen replacement kit will be out in the second quarter of this year, bringing the ability to swap out your netbook’s 10” LCD screen for a transflective Pixel Qi model that can be read in direct sunlight. Writes former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen in the Pixel Qi blog: It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbuld [sic]: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting the old screen and plugging this one in. That’s it. It’s a 5 minute operation. In the same entry, Jepsen writes about a group of girls in Nigeria in the One Laptop Per Child program who opened a “laptop hospital” to do repairs and screen-swaps themselves. Interesting to see that young geeks and tinkerers are the same the world over. There is no word on what the price of the display kit will be. But given that screens are traditionally the most expensive part of the gizmos that include them, I wouldn’t bet it’s going to be all that cheap. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:50:07 +0100 824273 http://lisnews.org/comic_about_trying_download_audiobook_library Ouch! Web designer and cartoonist Brad Colbow calls this strip Why DRM Doesn't Work--but the subtitle reads "How to Download an Audiobook from the Cleveland Public Library." Colbow's not taking a shot at Cleveland Public, but at the frustrating (for him--and, I admit, for me, too, as a patron) experience of trying to use Overdrive...one that ends with the strip's protagonist choosing to "give up on [the] stupid library" and head for BitTorrent. (Source: LISNews.org) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:28:10 +0100 824375 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/qL6T4vt_NRY/ Found via Nate’s Ebook News: Ben Bova, author of the Cyberbooks e-book satire novel (which recently became available as an e-book itself), has an editorial in a local Florida newspaper about the current e-book situation. Given that he was one of the first recent SF writers to consider the idea of e-books seriously, it is interesting to see what he has to say. Bova writes that his premise in Cyberbooks was that “electrons are cheaper than paper.” Ninety percent of a book publisher’s expenses are the cost of hauling paper across the countryside: from paper mill to printing plant, from printing plant to book distributors’ warehouses, from warehouses to book stores. I figured that a book published electronically could go directly from the publisher’s office to the retail buyer, via the Internet. Publishers could save enormous expenses. He goes on to talk about how e-books are now with us, but that just like in his satire, things are starting to go “drastically wrong.” Apart from people feeling uncomfortable reading on a screen (to which Bova. a long-time e-book enthusiast even apart from Cyberbooks, has a classic retort), he brings up the Amazon/Macmillan price feud: Amazon wanted to price the books it offers on Kindle so low that they could corner the market on electronic books. Macmillan countered that they couldn’t make a profit on books sold at such low prices. He then gets the order of events wrong when he says that it was Apple’s introduction of the new iPad that got Amazon and Macmillan to come to an agreement. In fact, it was the introduction of the iPad, and Apple’s agency pricing model, that kicked off the dispute to begin with when Macmillan decided they liked the idea and wanted Amazon to use it too. Finally, Bova wonders whether, since the production costs are so much lower for e-books, authors should get a bigger share of the royalties than in the past. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:26:02 +0100 824274 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/z4yQcOg6hDM/ Off to New York to attend the Publishing Business Conference & Expo on Monday and Tuesday and then the Th(ink) E-Readers 2010 Summit on Wednesday. Karen Holt will also be there, so between the two of us we should be able to keep you informed. If any of you are coming, I’ll be moderating the panel “New Business Models Made Possible With the Advent of E-Books”. We’ll have Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit: Josh Koppell, co-founder of Scroll Motion; Andrew Malkin, VP, Book Content, Zinio; and Richard Rhorer, Director of Business Development, Macmillan. It will be at 11:30 am on Tuesday at the Odets Suite on the 4th floor. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:16:01 +0100 824275 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/t44lwez-GAA/ That’s the question asked by Plug Your Book. For some people, especially those outside the US, it might be a good idea. In theory, there’s no reason not to list a book with Mobipocket. I get a few sales a month through them — for every 25 Kindle sales, I get one or two Mobipocket sales. Mobipocket is a Paris-based eBook company that Amazon bought a few years ago. Its eBook format is the underlying language for the eBooks in Amazon’s Kindle store. Books listed with Mobipocket automatically show up as Kindle editions, as long as the publisher selects Amazon as one of the authorized retailers. More, including a couple of downsides, at the website. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:39:24 +0100 824276 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/NlgZEhzHPGU/ New Features * Experimental support for conversion of CHM files * Experimental support for fetching annotations from the Kindles * Support FreeBSD out of the box (except USB) * News download scheduler: Don’t try to download news when no active internet connection is present (linux/windows only) * EPUB to WPUB conversion: Preserve font encryption * calibre-server: Add –pidfile and –daemonize (unix only) options * Plugins: When loading a plugin zip file extract to temp dir and add to sys.path, if the zip file contains binay code (pyd/dll/so/dylib), instead of just adding the zip file to the path, as python cannot load compiled code from a zip file Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:16:52 +0100 824277 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/n1RjVLE5LPQ/ According to Engadget, Spring Design’s ereader, Alex, has hit the FCC. Here is the FCC picture of the device and Engadget has more detailed pictures on its site. According to them the Alex’s user manual is also available for download. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:01:14 +0100 824278 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/lV3SmasPmLU/ The Gadgeteer is reporting on the release of a bunch of new cases for the Nook and Kindle. Some of them look pretty neat, especially the ones with the built-in stand for propping the reader up. Big Think has an interview with Yale Professor of Computer Science, David Gelernter, expressing some rather silly opinions of the paper book. “Abolishing the book is like abolishing the symphony”. Google Magazine Archive has now incorporated 40 years of IDG Publishing. This includes InfoWorld and Network World and some issues of Computerworld. Check Resource Shelf for details. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:00:15 +0100 824279 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/B4cyBvU2mqk/ Read an E-Book Week has begun for 2010, and this year promises to outdo all previous years by an order of magnitude.  Rita Toews has been working her butt off, interviewing for periodicals and blogs, contacting and drawing in new participants and promoters and twittering until her fingers are hoarse! As the list of partners and promoters of e-books has grown, the number of participating authors and publishers has increased enormously.  On Smashwords, over 3,000 authors will participate in the promotional event.  Blio, QBook, Diesel E-Books and Sylvan Dell Publishing have joined most recently. The event has been mentioned as far away as Poland and England and as close to home as the Huffington Post.  And the exposure to e-books being created by the soon-to-be-released iPad is drawing even more interested parties in. (Selfless promo: I am offering my novel, Chasing the Light, free for the download on my site.) This is your chance as well, to get out there and promote e-books to those who may not have tried them, or wonder what the hoopla is all about.  If you have a reading device, show it off.  If someone has questions about how and where to buy, elucidate them.  If someone is looking for new reads, tell them about some of the independents you’ve discovered, or the classics you’ve rediscovered, through e-books.  And, of course, find some new authors and reads of your own! For more information about REBW10 and what you can do, visit www.ebookweek.com. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:58:41 +0100 824280 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/ZaVM65Pozz8/ First web copyright crackdown coming http://icio.us/ntafpv # Smoke got in my eyes http://icio.us/ctr1zq # Federal Intellectual Property Enforcement Gears Up http://icio.us/10roe2 # People and Ideas on the Future of Repositories-in-the-Cloud http://icio.us/3pp4is # DigitalKoans Break http://bit.ly/9hqtHe # HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey http://bit.ly/beJZTz # Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning at NCSU http://bit.ly/blD1Cw # "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" http://bit.ly/bIXDTe # Systems and Electronic Services Librarian at Lebanon Valley College http://bit.ly/bW2B4q # SPARC: Campus-Based Open-Access Publishing Funds http://bit.ly/d5zdDU # Northeastern University Libraries sign SCOAP3 Expression of Interest http://icio.us/j4zxdm # The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement http://icio.us/ue4fvp # EFF demands FCC close copyright "loophole" in net neutrality http://icio.us/0rysff # Digital Video: Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access http://bit.ly/dvJ2uR # Applications Programmer/Analyst Associate at University of Michigan http://bit.ly/961HjL # Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA http://bit.ly/cUgwo9 # Programmer/Analyst, Digital Library Tools at Indiana University http://bit.ly/c0T97y # DSpace 1.6 Released http://bit.ly/9WlK0l # Supreme Court Sends Tasini Case Back to Appeals Court http://icio.us/kas5b5 # Library Groups Join in Filing Motion on Copyright Appeal http://icio.us/vproo3 # BURO crashes through 9000 items barrier http://icio.us/2sw1jw # Open Access to Research Outputs Institutional Policies and Researchers' Views: Results From Two Surveys http://icio.us/eddeo1 # Aptara Survey Reveals Publishers’ Evolving Response to eBooks http://icio.us/khh3lz # Digital initiative starts http://icio.us/sflmuz # Fighting a Copyright Charge http://icio.us/th1tii # Top 10 Best Security Plugins for Wordpress http://icio. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0100 824224 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/07/report-summary-summary-of-%e2%80%9cmagazines-and-their-websites%e2%80%9d/ Summary by Emily Braham (via Online Journalism Review) The first study of magazines and their various approaches to websites, undertaken by Columbia Journalism Review, found publishers are still trying to work out how best to utilise the online medium. There is no general standard or guidelines for magazine websites and little discussion between industry leaders as to how they should most effectively be approached. [Snip] The researchers found the approach to fact-checking and sub-editing for online content website standards were in general much less rigorous than for printed editions; 51 per cent of original content that appears on web sites is either not copy-edited at all, or is copy-edited less rigorously than in print. Just under half (43 per cent) of respondents reported either a lower standard for fact-checking online (35 per cent), or no fact-checking at all (8 per cent). Strangely, they found that websites are more likely to have lower standards in these areas as web traffic rises and when content decisions are made by independent web editors. Many website editors correct errors without acknowledging the mistake; they are often more likely to be corrected than print, but less likely to publicise the correction – particularly when an independent web editor is involved. The most common reason for material to appear online is because it ran in the print edition, often because it is breaking news, multi-media content or to maintain freshness and, sometimes, because the quality is not high enough to run in the print edition. [Snip] The researchers found most magazines are not keeping pace with mobile display and interactivity technology. Less than one in five are designed for smartphones and very few are formatted for e-book readers (4 per cent). Again, web sites are more likely to have multiple display options when independent web editors are in charge of budget or content decisions. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:01:33 +0100 824292 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/07/last-weeks-digitalkoans-tweets-2010-03-07/ First web copyright crackdown coming http://icio.us/ntafpv # Smoke got in my eyes http://icio.us/ctr1zq # Federal Intellectual Property Enforcement Gears Up http://icio.us/10roe2 # People and Ideas on the Future of Repositories-in-the-Cloud http://icio.us/3pp4is # DigitalKoans Break http://bit.ly/9hqtHe # HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey http://bit.ly/beJZTz # Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning at NCSU http://bit.ly/blD1Cw # "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" http://bit.ly/bIXDTe # Systems and Electronic Services Librarian at Lebanon Valley College http://bit.ly/bW2B4q # SPARC: Campus-Based Open-Access Publishing Funds http://bit.ly/d5zdDU # Northeastern University Libraries sign SCOAP3 Expression of Interest http://icio.us/j4zxdm # The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement http://icio.us/ue4fvp # EFF demands FCC close copyright "loophole" in net neutrality http://icio.us/0rysff # Digital Video: Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access http://bit.ly/dvJ2uR # Applications Programmer/Analyst Associate at University of Michigan http://bit.ly/961HjL # Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA http://bit.ly/cUgwo9 # Programmer/Analyst, Digital Library Tools at Indiana University http://bit.ly/c0T97y # DSpace 1.6 Released http://bit.ly/9WlK0l # Supreme Court Sends Tasini Case Back to Appeals Court http://icio.us/kas5b5 # Library Groups Join in Filing Motion on Copyright Appeal http://icio.us/vproo3 # BURO crashes through 9000 items barrier http://icio.us/2sw1jw # Open Access to Research Outputs Institutional Policies and Researchers' Views: Results From Two Surveys http://icio.us/eddeo1 # Aptara Survey Reveals Publishers’ Evolving Response to eBooks http://icio.us/khh3lz # Digital initiative starts http://icio.us/sflmuz # Fighting a Copyright Charge http://icio.us/th1tii # Top 10 Best Security Plugins for Wordpress http://icio. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824483 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/scm99FCR5Fs/ On TeleRead founder David Rothman’s The Solomon Scandals blog, Rothman links to a love song to printed newspapers by journalist Danny Bloom, “I Just Can’t Live (Without My Daily Snailpaper)”.  It’s a remarkable song, full of nostalgia about various newspapers and personalities associated with them. It definitely grows on you over its 6-minute length. But at the other end of the spectrum is the TechCrunch piece in which Erick Schonfeld talks about a recent conversation with Netscape-founder Marc Andreesen. Bringing up the legend that Cortez ordered his ships burned upon arrival in the New World to make sure there would be no going back, Andreesen says that this is also his advice to old-media companies such as newspapers and magazines when it comes to trying to adapt to the Internet: shut down the print version altogether and focus all their efforts on the web. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will. Andreesen observes that with the coming of the iPad, various print papers and magazines are coming out with “tablet versions” or looking into paywalls, while web publications such as TechCrunch itself are not. He notes that the audience size of the iPad, even if it sells millions of units, will still be dwarfed by the two billion people currently on the web. Media companies simply don’t understand the new media, Andreesen says, whereas technology companies are used to dealing with constant change. He feels that attempting to preserve the old ways of business and charge for content is shortsighted. He comes back to the simple fact that the open Web is where the users are. Talking about paywalls and paid apps is like saying, “We know where the market is and we are not going to go there.” Print newspapers and magazines will never get there, he argues, until they burn the boats and shut down their print operations. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:07:59 +0100 824155 http://www.blogpocket.com/2010/03/06/todo-va-a-cambiar-leccion-de-coherencia/ El primer libro que leo en mi iPhone no podía ser otro que Todo va a cambiar. Escrito por Enrique Dans, y con licencia Creative Commons, se edita no solo en papel sino también para iPhone/iTouch y, en mayo, en formato ePub. Me he dado cuenta de que leer en el iPhone no es tan incómodo como pudiera parecer. Se puede cambiar el tipo de letra, su tamaño y el color. Y en poco tiempo, saldrá una versión 2 de ‘Todo va a cambiar’, con algunas mejoras y alguna sorpresa, según nos anuncia su autor. Para los que nos tachan de piratas, decir que me he gastado 12,99 € (la versión en papel cuesta 19,95 €). Como nos recuerda Enrique Dans en ¿Cuadrando el círculo?: Free as in “freedom”, not free as in “free beer” (Richard Stallman). También compro todos los libros de la colección Planta 29. Porque me parecen no solo brillantes iniciativas sino también una impagable lección de coherencia con lo que se predica. Defender la Red tal y como nació, con los bits moviéndose en libertad, no tiene nada que ver con el pirateo. Ni la música y el cine morirán por ello. La música y el cine, si es que desaparecen, lo harán gracias a la ceguera de la Industria del entretenimiento. Es por todo ello que ‘Todo va a cambiar’ ha ido directamente a mi iPhone, para devorarlo en cualquier lugar y en cualquier momento. Hasta ahora, he leído la interesante introducción de Vinton Cerf y el primer capítulo, cuyo título es ‘Música, películas, mentiras e Internet’, donde Enrique Dans, directamente, desmonta toda la mitología existente alrededor de la inevitable muerte de la música y el cine, pregonada por la Industria de ambos sectores y las entidades de gestión de derechos de autor. Un libro, en definitiva, escrito con la acostumbrada claridad que Enrique Dans le imprime a estos asuntos y que me promete una grata lectura … en cualquier momento y en cualquier lugar. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:38:03 +0100 824328 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3LdnUP2Nm0c/ Journalist-blogger Alan D. Mutter writes an editorial in his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, about Rupert Murdoch’s relaunch of the Wall Street Journal as a New York metro-area local paper in an effort to hurt the New York Times (which I mentioned a few days ago). Mutter feels Murdoch’s action is irresponsible tilting at windmills, wasting money and goodwill at a time when he should be more concerned about getting News.corp through the transition to being a digital media provider. In Nate’s Ebook News, Nate the Great mentions that the head of South Korea’s second-largest on-line bookstore thinks that, at least in terms of Korean adoption, e-book readers will be a flash in the pan. Nate points out that the South Korean consumer electronics market is very different from the American market, with a lot more consumer choice available. Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog has a great piece on how the touchscreens of smartphones stack up against each other. It turns out that the iPhone’s touchscreen is far and away the best out of several units tested. There is a very interesting picture of what diagonal lines drawn across the screen by finger look like on each model. The iPhone’s lines are basically straight, but the other phones mostly have squiggles instead of straight lines. Assuming Apple keeps up the same attention to detail, this bodes well for the iPad. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 824040 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Kn6MLyLM7B0/ E-books are not the only medium that has to suffer from Digital Rights Management (DRM). In the past, we covered the backlash against the restrictive DRM bundled with Electronic Arts’s computer game Spore—including a one-star Amazon review campaign that was a precursor to the Amazon/Macmillan one-star review campaign Ficbot mentioned a few weeks ago. In recent days, another computer game’s DRM has been taking the spotlight. Ubisoft has come out with a much more restrictive than usual DRM system, in place on its game Assassins Creed 2, that actually requires gamers to be connected to the Internet continuously throughout their entire gaming session—even if they are only playing a single-player game. There are on-line-only e-book readers, of course—web apps such as Ibis—but just imagine if your Kindle required you to be connected to Whispernet at all times or else your e-books would not open. What if you had to dial in to Fictionwise every time you wanted to read an eReader book? Internet Lockdown vs. Unreliable Internet The rationale behind this restrictive DRM was that it would supposedly be more effective and harder for pirates to crack, so the games would be limited to people who actually paid the money to buy them. The problem is that this ends up hurting gamers with less reliable connectivity—most notably, American soldiers stationed overseas. The issue is Internet connectivity. "Net connectivity on some of the larger [Forward Operating Bases]—I’m on Victory Base, it’s HUGE and very built-up—is not terrible. However, we all have severe bandwidth caps with the ‘government sponsored Internet,’ drops in connectivity, or we have to pay a high price for ‘civilian’ Internet," [one soldier] explained. Other groups affected would include people in rural areas that don’t have access to broadband, people who can’t afford it, and travelers. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 824041 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/DSDmaP4wvxk/ From Resource Shelf: This new compilation of resources includes: + Open Access Digital Collections + Select General Resources (Individual Websites Include URLs When Available Including: ++ Biography ++ French Telephone Directory ++ French Dissertation indexes + French Newspapers, Periodicals and Government Documents ++ Newspaper Indexes ++ Newspapers ++ Full-Text Online ++ Periodical Indexes and Bibliographic Databases ++ Government Documents + French Archives and Manuscripts + Select French Materials from the LC Special Collections Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:00:53 +0100 824042 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ZR-LtAMeW0w/ Wideman is a two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Wideman has been a National Book Award finalist and is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award. According to Publisher’s Weekly, he will be publishing his new book Briefs, Stories for the Palm of the Mind, a collection of short stories, through Lulu. Wideman wanted to be in charge and take more control over what happens to his book, the story says. He is also rebelling against what he calls the publishing industries “blockbuster syndrome”. The book is being published by an arm of Lulu that is trying to lure established authors to the self-publishing service. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:43:48 +0100 824043 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/bsm4QTToJDk/highwire-press-2009-librarian-ebook.html HighWire Press has released the full results of a Fall 2009 survey of librarians on their attitudes and practices related to ebooks. The survey was conducted as part of HighWire's ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:39:32 +0100 824017 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/G3IaqJCAKl8/ Laptop Magazine has taken the Edge for a spin in one of their typically thorough reviews. They think that the product is innovative, but find that it straddles the divide between ereader and mobile internet device, making it not the best one for either. They also feel that it needs a round of updates to the software. This dual-book is not the best tool for robust productivity, and it’s overkill for consumers mainly interested in surfing the Web, or simply reading eBooks. Still, at $499 the Edge is less expensive than the business-centric Plastic Logic Que, which starts at $649. And it’s only $10 more than the 9.7-inch Kindle DX. Entourage’s device may be bulkier than both, but it also has more features and flexibility. We like the Edge overall, but it may be best to hold off until the initial spate of updates are complete and the app store is ready. I had a demo of the Edge at TOC and I think that the reviewer misses the point of the device. My own thoughts will follow shortly. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:20:51 +0100 824044 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/i7VgC_TMrTQ/ What piece of technology most makes you feel like you’re “living in the future”? Laptop Magazine asked a number of speculative-fiction writers that question, including Jeffrey A. Carver, John Scalzi, Charlie Stross, and Tobias Buckell. Interestingly, most of them responded the iPhone (or in Scalzi’s case, the iPod Touch). Jeffrey Carver said, after the Star Trek-inspired nature of his flip-to-open cellphone: My second thought was eBook reader. I love reading on my Sony Reader and also on my Dell PDA, which I keep almost for the sole purpose of using as a book reader, especially for reading in the dark. And the new iPad looks about as much like the electronic reading slates on Next Generation as you can get. I agree with Scalzi: the iPod Touch epitomizes “futuristic tech” for me. If only Douglas Adams were still alive, he would be amazed at how completely his vision has been realized in this little pocket-portable information appliance. Even more so the iPhone (though I don’t have one of those yet). What gadget says “I’m living in the future” to you? Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 824045 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EFmothrmsKQ/ One of my favorite op-ed columnists is Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald. I don’t always agree with him, but like certain other columnists (Froma Harrop, Paul Krugman, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, Linda Chavez, and George Will), I always read his opinion piece. Some people are worth reading and their opinions worth considering, whereas lining the litter box is the proper place for certain other columnists (Michelle Malkin comes readily to mind) – they simply lack any pretense to intelligent conversation. (If I want to be harangued, my wife and kids can do the job expertly.) In a recent column, Pitts observed: “But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it’s a wall. And you shouldn’t have to hit it to find that out.” This made me think of the ebook war between ebookers and publishers. Each side in this war has firm positions and beliefs from which they seemingly will not bend. eBookers expect low prices, no DRM, no geographical restrictions, near-perfect editing and formatting; publishers expect high prices, DRM, and good-but-not-perfect editing and formatting. Pricing and DRM are the hot button issues (along with geographical restrictions for those ebookers living outside the United States). The reality for ebookers is that in the near term DRM is going to remain. Bang your head against that wall as often as you like, but until publishers find a way to minimize their financial gamble and until authors feel confident that ebookers will pay and not pirate, DRM will be part of ebooks. The financial stakes are simply too high for some publishers and many authors to give it up. Even the ebookers’ “friend” Amazon hasn’t been touting a non-DRM world for ebooks. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:09:57 +0100 824046 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/dS7QbUQEcqI/ From the press release: The Final Report from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, called “Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information”, is the result of a two-year effort focusing on the critical economic challenges of preserving an ever-increasing amount of information in a world gone digital. The full report is available online. “The Data Deluge is here. Ensuring that our most valuable information is available both today and tomorrow is not just a matter of finding sufficient funds,” said Fran Berman, vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and co-chair of the Task Force. “It’s about creating a “data economy” in which those who care, those who will pay, and those who preserve are working in coordination.” The challenge in preserving valuable digital information – consisting of text, video, images, music, sensor data, etc. generated throughout all areas of our society – is real and growing at an exponential pace. A recent study by the International Data Corporation (IDC) found that a total of 3,892,179,868,480,350,000,000 (that’s roughly 3.9 trillion times a trillion) new digital information bits were created in 2008. In the future, the digital universe is expected to double in size every 18 months, according to the IDC report. More info at Resource Shelf. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:43:51 +0100 824047 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/OVClpeuuvpk/ As the iPad’s United Kingdom launch nears, The Bookseller reports that Amazon is speaking to literary agents in the UK about selling e-book rights directly to Amazon. A number of American e-book publishers are approaching UK agents as well, including Rosetta Books (who e-publishes exclusively through Amazon). At the moment, there seems to be some turmoil in the UK publishing industry as authors and publishers are still arguing over royalty rates. Publishers have "missed a trick" by making authors anxious, [a leading London agent] said. "The whole debate over Google has intensified the feeling among authors that they are being conned. It is shaping up to be a stand-off." It is not surprising that Amazon should be scrambling to sew up whatever e-book rights it can. Every additional title will help it draw eyeballs away from the iPad—and based on the results of that survey we mentioned yesterday, it looks like it will have an uphill climb. On a related note, Charlie Stross’s latest “Common Misconceptions about Publishing” blog post covers the topic of licensing in various different areas and languages (though it focuses on printed books, not e-books). Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 824048 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/05/highwire-press-2009-librarian-ebook-survey/ HighWire Press has released HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The survey was conducted as part of HighWire's ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks. The report espouses some familiar and consistent themes: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Related Posts "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" Google Book Search Settlement Hearing Transcript "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:05:40 +0100 823991 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/G1iJ4VEMtV8/ HighWire Press has released HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The survey was conducted as part of HighWire's ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks. The report espouses some familiar and consistent themes: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Related Posts "Internet Archive Dishes up BookServer as Digital Books Market Heats Up" Stanford University Preparing Proposal for Text Mining Center Providing Access to 30 Million Digitized Books Plus Highwire Journals Barnes & Noble's eBookstore Offers over 700,000 E-Book Titles Open Publication Distribution System Draft Released Sony’s eBook Store to Offer Over a Half-Million Public Domain Books from Google (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:05:36 +0100 824226 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/05/gbs-march-madness-paths-forward-for-the-google-books-settlement/ The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement." Here's an excerpt from the press release: This diagram, developed by Jonathan Band, explores the many possible routes and outcomes of the Google Books Settlement, including avenues into the litigation and appeals process. Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers, is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." As the diagram shows, however, Judge Chin’s decision is only the next step in a very complex legal proceeding that could take a dozen more turns before reaching resolution. Despite the complexity of the diagram, it does not reflect every possible twist in the case, nor does it address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur or the impact of Congressional intervention through legislation. As Band states, "the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute." Related Posts "The Amended Google Books Settlement is Still Exclusive" "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:03:58 +0100 823993 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/X9rWOMIh1Ec/ The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement." Here's an excerpt from the press release: This diagram, developed by Jonathan Band, explores the many possible routes and outcomes of the Google Books Settlement, including avenues into the litigation and appeals process. Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers, is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." As the diagram shows, however, Judge Chin’s decision is only the next step in a very complex legal proceeding that could take a dozen more turns before reaching resolution. Despite the complexity of the diagram, it does not reflect every possible twist in the case, nor does it address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur or the impact of Congressional intervention through legislation. As Band states, "the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute." Related Posts "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" Digital Video: The Google Books Settlement: Issues and Options The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying? Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing Postponed "Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:03:06 +0100 824228 http://lisnews.org/former_book_designer_says_good_riddance_print A recent blog post by Craig Mod, a self-titled computer programmer, book designer and book publisher, offers a thoughtful and distinctive perspective on the move of books from paper to interactive devices like Apple’s iPad. Mr. Mod summarizes his argument in the subtitle of his post: “Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.” Mr. Mod divides content broadly into two categories: content where the form is important, such as poetry or text with graphics, and content where form is divorced from layout, which he says applies to most novels and non-fiction. This kind of thinking makes a key point: instead of arguing about pixels versus paper, as many book lovers tend to do, it is more useful to focus on whether the technology is a good match for the content. Full article at the NYT Bits Blog (Source: LISNews.org) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:47:44 +0100 823843 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ZDttWzMyZnk/ From their website: We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. In the future, we’ll be adding more advanced features for searching and browsing, but for now, enter any keyword into the box below and dive in. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:30:49 +0100 823867 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/academic-libraries-tulane-u-libraries-invest-in-digital-sources/ From the Article: In the aftermath of Katrina, more than 700,000 of the library’s print volumes were submerged, along with 1.5 million individual pieces of microfilm. All recordings from the Maxwell Music Library were lost. After receiving relief funds, the library immediately reinvested in online facsimile collections, eJournals and eBook back files to replace and digitally preserve destroyed materials. Through the generosity of the collections’ publishers, Tulane purchased roughly $10 million worth of online resources for only slightly more than half of the actual cost. [Snip] [Associate Dean Andy] Corrigan said he considers books no less important than the university’s database collection. A significant portion of the library’s funding, however, is now dedicated to online resources. Howard-Tilton currently invests more than $8.1 million annually into library acquisitions. The library allocated $2.9 million for digital resources in 2010, which mostly includes subscriptions to online journals. A separate $2.1 million is allocated for serials, which includes both online journal subscriptions and print backups. In all, 41,670 unduplicated digital subscription titles are currently listed in the Tulane Libraries online catalog and eJournals list. Access the Complete Article Source: Tulane Hullabaloo (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:38:43 +0100 823882 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/03/05/shelf-life/ NYT – “People who reject e-books often say they can’t live without the heft, the texture and — curiously — the scent of traditional books. This aria of hypersensual book love is not my favorite performance. I sometimes suspect that those who gush about book odor might not like to read. If they did, why would they waste so much time inhaling? Among the best features of the Kindle, Amazon’s great e-reader, is that there’s none of that. The device, which consigns all poetry and prose to the same homely fog-toned screen, leaves nothing to the experience of books but reading. This strikes me as honest, even revolutionary.” (Source: Library Stuff) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:52:36 +0100 823863 http://nnlm.gov/mcr/news_blog/?p=5639 Tried an e-book lately?   How about ” Subject Librarians:  Engaging with the Learning and Teaching Environment?”  Perfect for academic libarians! Check out the NetLibrary collection of the NN/LM MidContinental Region. The collection consists of more than 90 business and technical books oriented toward use for librarians. If you access the collection through the NN/LM MCR webpage, it’s free, AND you can also print out a handy brochure. Newest titles (and this is one of them!) are highlighted in red. Try it today! See: http://nnlm.gov/mcr/education/netlibrary.html (mm) (Source: Midcontinental Region News) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:33:19 +0100 823936 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/penguin-publishing-the-ipad-and-the-book/ A look at some of the ideas Penguin has for reading and using books with the iPad. This post includes a 3 minute 20 second video where you can see some of the ideas in action. Source: Scholarly Kitchen See Also: First Look: How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad Many of Penguin’s iPad books seem hardly to resemble “books” at all, but rather very interactive learning experiences, from its Dorling Kindersley and kids imprints – the Vampire Academy “book” is “an online community for vampire lovers” with live chat between readers, and the Paris travel guide switches to street map view when placed on a table. [Snip] “We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about. “So for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications, for sale on app stores and HTML, rather than in ebooks. The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.—-John Markinson, CEO, Penguin Publishing This article includes a video. Source: paidContent.uk (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:48:24 +0100 823886 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/jP_zlcl9htc/ Editor’s Note: I’m a big comics fan. I have a complete collection of Pogo, Peanuts and many others. Pearls Before Swine is right up in that category. Imagine my glee when its author, Stephan Pastis, personally, replied to my request to reprint this. I’ll never wash my monitor again. His blog is always worth reading. PB I bought three William Faulkner books and forced myself to read them all. One of them had a family trying to move their dead mom all over town. One of them had somebody looking for the father of her kid. And one of them was called The Sound and the Fury. If you ever want to be so confused that your brain starts to ooze out your ears, read The Sound and the Fury. I defy you to make one bit of sense out of that monstrosity. Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different character, one of whom is mentally retarded (or, in the parlance of today, an “individual with an intellectual disability.”) You could pour words out of a bucket and end up with a more comprehensible book than that. So thanks to William Faulkner, I am now done reading fiction. Now I have moved on to watching movies by famous directors. One of those directors whose films I am now watching is Howard Hawks. One of his movies is The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Yesterday I watched The Big Sleep. I followed the plot for about ten minutes. Then the thing exploded into the most ridiculously complicated storyline I have ever seen, involving twenty-five different characters, all of whom are lying and killing and lying about the killing. By the end, I didn’t care who killed whom. I just wanted them all to die so that the film would end. Mercifully, after what seemed like the better part of three days, it did. So at the end of the movie, I checked the credits. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:44:34 +0100 823868 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/kWB7my_um7s/ Changes: A Vietnamese interface translation has been added. LitRes integration, which was broken in the previous version, has been fixed. HarperCollinsPublishers announced the launch of its Print on Demand (POD) service which will allow Australian and New Zealand readers the chance to purchase individual copies of books that were previously out of print. See the Google Book Monster attack at Book Patrol along with a mind-boggling chart from the Library Copyright Alliance. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:27:22 +0100 823869 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/68z6dcIE5Yc/ A survey of about 3,200 consumers shows that 40% of people who plan to get an ebook reader in the next 3 months are planning to get an iPad. 28% are planning to get a Kindle. 6% said they would get a Nook, 1% a Sony Reader and 25% are unsure. ChangeWave, who did the survey, asked owners who had a unit whether they would have changed their mind if the iPad had been available. 45% said no and 27% said yes. ChangeWave says that the Kindle has a 68% market share with the Sony Reader second, coming in at 10%. Lots more interesting information in the Investors.com report. Thanks E-Reader-Info for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:33:23 +0100 823870 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/GYbrNah_pVk/ Wired’s Gadget Lab  reports that Popular Science has put its entire 137-year archive of scanned articles on-line for free. The archives even include original period advertisements. Kudos to Popular Science for foregoing the paywall! At MobileRead, Nate the Great has linked a pair of articles about e-book reading on Android. The first one comes from GearDiary, and the second is Nate’s own from Nate’s Ebook News. Worth reading if you’re considering getting an Android-powered device! Mike Shatzkin has a long piece at his Idea Logical blog about O’Reilly’s new digital distribution service and what it might mean to smaller publishers. Shatzkin notes that O’Reilly is distributed in print by Ingram, which has an e-book operation of its own—and now O’Reilly is not only not doing e-books through Ingram, but is inviting others (including fellow Ingram customers) to join them. Shatzkin points out that, just as the big print publishers have the scale to do printed distribution of books in ways that smaller publishers cannot, O’Reilly has that same kind of scale for doing digital distribution. And since they are offering free conversion services and a one-year contract, they become very attractive to smaller print publishers looking for a good digital distribution solution. Nate’s Ebook News reports that HighWire Press has released the results (PDF file) of a survey of the attitude toward e-books of librarians at 138 libraries on 5 continents. The librarians who responded predict rapid growth of e-books in libraries, and have a number of other interesting things to say as well. Ars Technica reports that the EFF is asking the FCC to remove a provision from its proposed network neutrality regulations. The provision states that network neutrality does not apply to illegal content, such as pirated e-books. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 823871 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/qSb8P6IP-5Y/ According to this press release from Apple, the iPad will hit stored on Saturday, April 3, and beginning on March 12 customers can reserve a WiFi and 3G model. The 3G model will be available in late April and all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April as well. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:38 +0100 823872 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/204koYQWUPU/ Londubh Books has launched in Ireland. The house is headed by Jo O’Donoghue was formerly publisher at Currach Press. The first list features books by Terry Prone, Eoghan Corry, Sean McMahon and Frank Crummey and can be viewed here. Love the logo! (via Irish Publishing News) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:52:30 +0100 823873 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/F6AB9SQ5XUI/ Egmont will be launching 21 titles which will be priced at 80% of the pbook version. Ten titles will be available this month. Egmont says that it feels that this price structure is “fair” and that half price would be too much of a discount. Included in the release are: You’re a Bad Man Mr Gum (Andy Stanton), Just Henry (Michelle Magorian), West End theatre hit War Horse (Michael Morpurgo), and children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams). Egmont described ebooks as the “least exciting” platform for the children’s market. More info here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:30:37 +0100 823874 http://chicagolibrarian.com/node/537 So I'm famous, I guess. I made it into the student newspaper, the DePaulia, on the subject of e-books: "I've got a great book collection, and there are great atlases and things like that. [T]here's a great book we have here, The Burnham Plan of Chicago, it's wonderfully illustrated from 100 years ago. [W]ould an electronic version replace that?" said Leo Klein, part time librarian at the DePaul Library. Of course, not every book fits into this category. In fact, the majority don't, which is why I'm perfectly happy to access them online. It's just the distribution methods, some quite restrictive and proprietary, that give me indigestion. read more (Source: Chicago Librarian - Design, Techology & Culture from a Librarian living in Chicago) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:28:13 +0100 823668 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/N3DctillM9E/ Amazon is approaching UK agents in a vigorous manner to get ebook rights from their authors, says the Bookseller. However, ongoing royalty disputes are slowing down the process. The current offering of 25% for ebook royalties on a backlist title is not something that is going down well in the UK. According to the article, part of the difficulties with getting rights is that the Google debate has made authors feel that they are being conned and has made them more cautious than they would ordinarily be. Rosetta Books, an ebook publisher, is also going after UK ebook rights for backlist books and is favoring an exclusive Amazon deal as part of the package. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:22:37 +0100 823875 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/nHzJQ_CgzeY/ Found via BoingBoing: Simon Owens at Bloggasm reports that two BYU academics have looked at the sales of 41 print books for 8 weeks before and 8 weeks after after they were released as free e-books. (You can read their results here.) They found that there is a “moderate correlation” between the release of free e-books and a growth in the sale of the print version in most cases. Interestingly, one of the cases where there was not a correlation—and sales actually went down—was in the case of the free e-books Tor.com offered temporarily to promote the new blog, and only to people signed up for their newsletter. Why were the results from Tor so different from the others? This question cannot be answered with certainty. The only thing we know is that Tor’s model of making the books available for one week only and requiring registration in order to download the book was substantially different from the models used to create free versions of the other books we studied. Owens spoke to John Hilton, one of the study’s authors, about the study. Hilton pointed out that even if sales of those specific titles did not benefit, they may have had other benefits that were not measured by the study—signing more people up for the newsletter and bringing them to Tor.com, for example. But of course, things could change with the release of the iPad and other next-generation e-book readers that follow. Owens notes: Those who have advocated free ebooks sometimes argue that people inherently don’t like reading longer works on a screen, so they would sometimes buy a print title after sampling it online. But this new generation of e-readers are designed to be read just like dead-tree books, adding a new dynamic to the mix. If ebooks themselves become a valuable commodity, why give them away for free? Though there are other beneficial factors apart from just sales, of course. Building up name-recognition, for example. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 823639 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/_ixPTuCC8Rg/ I went into New York yesterday to attend Publishing Point’s Vook meetup. Their presentations have been getting more and more interesting, so if you are in the New York area take a look. The presentation was made by Brad Inman, Vook’s CEO. Basic concept: filmmakers and authors come together. Filmmakers come from a network set up under the name of Turn Here. Feels that Apple will give tools to creators to make new things that go over and above ebooks and enhanced ebooks. Apple already did this with graphic design and music. Very interested in the education area. Can read and watch at the same time. Surveys show that many readers like to do both. Primary sales channel is iPhone: 7 to 1 over the browser and working on an iPad version. Mixed media will be like adding sound to movies, especially with Apple. Have nothing today in devices that emulates the power and utility of the printed book, but something will come along and then things will take off. How they think about growth of Vook: discovery phase, then move on to early adopters, then to proof of concept and then scale up. With the digital work can actually find out what people are doing in each phase. This is not a form that people instantly “get” so getting influencers to advocate it is important for marketing. What they’ve learned: readers want mixed media content, hard for publishers and authors to create mixed media, no in-hose mixed media creative teams, rights roadblocks, no industry scalable technology, video opportunities endless. Good medium to take books out of backlist, update them and turn them into mixed media. Pick right media, very good for serial rights. Thinks that this medium should be a shorter form than “movies”. On web stuff tends to be short and people are used to that. The full presentation will be up on the Publishing Point site if you’re interested. Note the picture. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:10:32 +0100 823640 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/jS2V_9-M1qE/ I got the following question from Peter Pov in the Netherlands: I was wondering if you could help me with the following question. How much of the cost of an e-book goes to DRM? I am asking because Dutch publishers are arguing with Dutch authors that money they win by skipping the print and distribution process, goes entirely to DRM. This just feels wrong, but I have no numbers to back me up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:47:50 +0100 823641 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/V2wC1uc60hk/ I received the following email from a contributor to TeleRead who would like to remain anonymous, at least for the time being. I can assure you, though, that the author is qualified to do what he is proposing: I have (anonymously) started a site which may or may not turn out to be interesting or useful: http://the-great-white-ebook-shark.blogspot.com The idea is firstly to hunt out worthwhile ebooks, especially from independents, and also, usually, to analyze a sample of text showing why it is good or how it might be made even better. This will help to inform readers about the techniques, etc., of composing prose — and with luck will make them more discerning. So far I have only had one author turn me down — his was a good story, but there was a lot wrong with the text and I think he didn’t want to upset his “editor”. The others have been sporting and humorous. When there are enough books listed on the site, it could prove a handy resource for like-minded readers. Anyhow, I hope you’d like to post about this. I’d appreciate the hits, for their own sake of course, but also because I’m hoping for readers’ suggestions to follow up. It’s tough finding quality out there! … Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:30:51 +0100 823642 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/-DzB-m9oW3w/ Yesterday we covered Penguin CEO John Mackinson engaging in a fair amount of hyperbole concerning the future of the e-book in a post-iPad world. “The definition of the book itself, as far as we can see, is up for grabs.” Now blogger Craig Mod, a six-year publishing-industry veteran, goes into more specifics, at considerable length, about what the iPad might mean for the format of electronic books. This is a long and thoughtful article with plenty of illustrations that is definitely worth a read. Formless vs. Definite Content Mod divides books into categories of Formless and Definite Content. Formless Content is your average fiction book, or non-fiction without many illustrations and tables. The text is the all, and it does not matter how it is paginated or reflowed—it still reads the same on any device. Definite Content is designed and formatted to be read in a particular way, with pictures and charts embedded in text at specific places. Textbooks are a good example. Devices such as the Kindle or iPhone, Mod says, have historically had trouble presenting works Definite Content due to the black-and-white nature of the Kindle, or the small screen size of the iPhone. But the iPad presents new possibilities for e-book formatting, and not just in the tired old “add video to it” multimedia sense. Mod observes that the page-turning metaphor could be entirely abandoned. Books could scroll continuously horizontally or vertically, or scroll horizontally for new chapters and other divisions then vertically within that chapter or division. Ending the “Disposable Book” Mod thinks that, in the end, all Formless Content and some Definite Content will end up on the iPad or devices like it. He feels this could mean the end of the “disposable book”— The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 823643 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/hD4CukEF_fM/ Received an email from Aptara to tell me about their survey of more than 300 U.S. publishers from the trade, professional and educational markets. The survey was attempting to find out why publishers weren’t making more profit from ebooks. The survey revealed two major findings: * Most publishers are selling eBooks through their own eCommerce sites and missing the vast consumer audiences provided by major distribution channels. * Publishers are producing eBooks that cannot be read on most mobile devices, limiting the opportunities for wider consumption. Other findings include: * Over 50% of publishers who responded are offering titles in eBook format. * 60% who do not currently offer eBooks plan to do so in the near future. * 65% of publishers produce eBook versions of titles that are also offered in print. You can find a link to their survey on their front page under the news and events column. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:10:00 +0100 823644 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/LDi_vyP78eI/ Editor’s Note: Back in May of last year we published an article about the start of Adamo Books in Hungary. At that time I wrote to Atilla and asked him to keep us informed as to how he was doing. I am very proud that I received the following email: I am Attila Lukács from Adamo Books, the Hungarian ebook site that started last year. You wrote that you would like to have more info on how things are going at Adamo Books. Here is their report PB Our site, Adamo Books (www.adamobooks.info) started to operate on June 15, 2009 offering password-protected PDFs. At the beginning we only had 23 titles to offer for download. It took a while for us to realize that we had to change our security method, but a couple of months later we did: we dropped password-protected ebooks and chose to sell PDF files into which customer’s data are copied into while being downloaded. At the same time we started to use Google Analytics to have information on site visitors. We noticed that most visitors came from the capital Budapest. We thought that most of our customers would be from Budapest,but we were wrong: although our first downloader, a woman was from Budapest, later most customers downloaded ebooks from other towns or settlements in Hungary. Int he first five months of our operation, we had customers from the following places: Budapest, Budaörs, Dunaújváros, Nemesnádudvar, Szarvas, Halásztelek, Vértessomló, Sóskút, Gödöllő, Albertirsa, Nyíregyháza, Tatabánya and Veszprém. But because our sales numbers are still tiny (weeks ago I joked my business partner Peter about selling our sales data to BookScan…) it doesn’t mean a lot. What’s more, latest data indicate that „Budapesters” will buy more ebooks from our site than customers from any other settlements or towns in Hungary. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:00:16 +0100 823645 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/bvfqR_rANcg/ Journalist-blogger Alan D. Mutter writes on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur that the first big web copyright content crackdown is going to commence later this month. Jim Pitkow, CEO of Attributor—the company we covered a few days ago for its survey claiming that e-book piracy had cost the publishing industry $2.8 billion so far—says that “about a dozen” publishers and other media organizations are part of the coalition engaging Attributor to carry out this crackdown. They will start with sites that repost “80% or more of copyrighted stories more than 10 times per month.” After offering violators a chance to come into compliance, Attributor will then, under the DMCA, ask search engines to remove offending pages from search, and banner ad operators to stop serving ads for those pages—and if worst comes to worst, they will ask hosting services to shut the sites down. “We are not going after past damages” from sites running unauthorized content said Pitkow. The emphasis, he said is “to engage with publishers to bring them into compliance” by getting them to agree to pay license fees to copyright holders in the future. According to Pitkow, the sanctions can be effective even against offshore websites, because most of them use banner ad providers located in the United States. He also notes that Attributor has had “a 99% success rate” in taking down unauthorized e-book postings on the web. I found this entry interesting, but it left me with a good deal of puzzlement. I can certainly understand Attributor taking action against illicit e-book postings. In fact, since major companies got on the web ten to fifteen years ago, overt piracy on websites (such as the “W4R3Z” scene) has been rare given how easy it is to find and shut down. But since the organizations Pitkow talks about are “wire services, traditional print publishers and ‘top-tier blog networks,’” I find myself wondering exactly who this crackdown is going to target. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 823646 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14528 Academic Services Librarian (University of South Florida Libraries) Librarian: The University of South Florida’s Academic Services Department seeks an energetic, creative, and resourceful Librarian to deliver reference, research, and instruction services to faculty and students. The position collaborates with library and teaching faculty. A strong commitment to applying customer service techniques and practices in delivering instruction and reference services is necessary, as well as participation in scholarly research and professional activities. This position reports to the Director of Academic Services. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:40:01 +0100 823583 http://medinfo.netbib.de/archives/2010/03/05/3658 Endlich mal eine Umfrage, die meine Vermutungen bestätigt , insbesondere über nicht zeitgemäße DRM-Geschäftsmodelle á la Elsevier oder UTB. HighWire Presents Findings from eBooks Librarian Survey. 138 Bibliothekare aus 13 Ländern wurde von HighWire über ihre Meinung zu Onlinebüchern befragt. Die 5 wichtigsten Ergebnisse: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. (siehe dazu auch unsere Umfrage zu Mehrwertbüchern) Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Warum macht HighWire sowas? “We don’t think there’s enough concrete information out there to advise our publishing partners as they form their strategies in ebook publishing,” says HighWire’s Director, John Sack. “Many have tried a number of different distribution avenues and are now looking to have more hands-on control of their ebooks programs. We are working to help them find the best means of doing that.” Wie geht es weiter? HighWire is also conducting one-on-one interviews with students and faculty to determine their needs and expectations. Through a series of interviews, surveys and data collection activities throughout 2010, HighWire will continue to help their scholarly publisher customers understand the evolving needs of libraries and individual readers. Umfrage im Volltext [via liblicense] Related posts Wie entwickelt sich der Markt für Lehrbücher? Lehren aus den USA (0) Springer White Paper on eBooks in Libraries (0) Elsevier’s StudentConsult II (0) What we achieved by promoting our E-Books (0) What do faculty and students really think about e-books? (0) (Source: medinfo) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:24:37 +0100 824872 http://bibliotequices.blogspot.com/2010/03/fisher-price-ixl-leitores-digitais.html Leitor de ebooks para crianças dos 3 aos 6 anos: "iXL" da Fisher-Price. É um iPad para o infantário:Com imagens, músicas, jogos e livros animados, chegará ente verão a uma loja perto de si!Fonte:www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/fisher-price-ixl-is-a-tweener-that-no-kid-needs-convincing-of/Bibliotequices: http://bibliotequices.blogspot.com (Source: Bibliotequices) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825015 http://bibliotequices.blogspot.com/2010/03/descarte-massacres-ebooks-e-bibliotecas.html A questão foi já aqui falada relativamente a um caso específico mas hoje o assunto volta à ribalta pela Ministra da Cultura.A destruição de milhares de livros pelas editoras portuguesas é "um massacre" que deve ser resolvido a curto prazo. Esta é a reacção de Gabriela Canavilhas, ministra da Cultura, que explicou ao i a sua posição perante as notícias de que o Grupo Leya destruiu dezenas de milhares de livros antigos de autores como Jorge de Sena, Vasco Graça Moura ou Eugénio de Andrade. ( Jornal i )Para além de se saber que nesse lote "havia de tudo, livros amarelecidos, livros escolares que já não estavam de acordo com o plano nacional, amolgados...", ficamos a saber que autores consagrados não podem ter livros antigos.Fica a promessa da Ministra da Cultura:o seu ministério irá "fazer tudo o que estiver ao seu alcance para evitar a destruição de livros", nomeadamente estabelecendo parcerias com transportadoras para fazer doações sem que isso represente um custo adicional para as editora. ( Jornal Público )O problema não é apenas o facto de se terem destruído livros quando os podiam oferecer via mecenato (e que tal oferecer em Portugal e não pensar apenas em Timor e afins?). Por outro lado percebe-se que existam razões práticas como custos de armazém, de transporte que as empresas privadas não querem suportar.Quem está mais atento a outras questões globais também percebe o problema causado pelo excesso de produção documental em papel (quantidade de documentos mas também de títulos) a nível ecológico e de custos na obtenção da matéria prima para o papel.Isaías Gomes Teixeira, administrador-delegado da Leya, sublinha este facto afirmando mesmo que não é uma perda total pois "foram destruídos para reciclagem, para obter papel".Assim o que aconteceu foi apenas uma 'mui nobre' acção de reciclagem e gestão de stocks com redução de custos. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825014 http://www.lisnews.org/books_age_ipad "As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over? We’re losing the throwaway paperback. The airport paperback. The beachside paperback..." Read the rest @craigmod (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:48:27 +0100 823770 http://lisnews.org/books_age_ipad "As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over? We’re losing the throwaway paperback. The airport paperback. The beachside paperback..." Read the rest @craigmod (Source: LISNews.org) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:48:27 +0100 823617 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/new-report-highwire-presents-findings-from-ebooks-librarian-survey/ From the Summary (2 pages; PDF): The survey was conducted as part of HighWire’s ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks + Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. ? Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. ? While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. ? DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. + While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. + DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. HighWire is also conducting one-on-one interviews with students and faculty to determine their needs and expectations. Through a series of interviews, surveys and data collection activities throughout 2010, HighWire will continue to help their scholarly publisher customers understand the evolving needs of libraries and individual readers. Access the Full Text of the Report (38 pages; PDF) Source: Highwire Press Hat Tip: Gerry M. (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:38:50 +0100 823492 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/the-electronic-book-an-excerpt-from-the-oxford-companion-to-the-book/ Here’s a an excerpt from Chapter 19 of The Oxford Companion to the Book (2010) placed online by the Wall Street Journal. A nice chunk of basic digital technology history. The excerpt ends with this passage about Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in 1971. That’s right, 1971. In many ways, eBooks aren’t a new idea. However, these days all of the technologies (not sure about the business models) to power and view eBooks appear to be aligning. In 1971 Michael Hart at the University of Illinois began Project Gutenberg (PG) by creating electronic texts of small, public-domain works, beginning with the *Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the US Constitution. These were hand-keyed: a labour-intensive, and volunteer, effort. When the capacity of storage media increased, PG digitized larger books, including Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and the Bible; and with the development of affordable optical character recognition (*OCR) technology by the mid-1990s, PG could rely on a speedier processing method, which eventually had nearly the same accuracy as rekeying. This pioneer initiative continues on 40 mirror sites with thousands of books that can be read on any computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), or reading device. Access the Complete Excerpt Source: WSJ, Oxford University Press (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:29:46 +0100 823493 http://chicagolibrarian.com/node/537 So I'm famous, I guess. I made it into the student newspaper, the DePaulia, on the subject of e-books: "I've got a great book collection, and there are great atlases and things like that. [T]here's a great book we have here, The Burnham Plan of Chicago, it's wonderfully illustrated from 100 years ago and it's like, would an electronic version replace that?" said Leo Klein, part time librarian at the DePaul Library. Of course, not every book fits into this category. In fact, the majority don't, which is why I'm perfectly happy to access them online. It's just the distribution methods, some quite restrictive and proprietary, that give me indigestion. read more (Source: Chicago Librarian - Design, Techology & Culture from a Librarian living in Chicago) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:28:13 +0100 823529