LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Data from over 1500 librarian RSS feeds is collected and output via different categories. This feed contains the latest headlines from the user generated query: ebook Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:26:28 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kraftylibrarian/OLay/~3/1Ncy1KeD3dc/ Last week I sat in on the Springer LibraryZone Virtual eBook webinar and it was a very interesting discussion.   Many libraries (especially academic) are investigating and collecting e-books in lieu of some printed text.  How much they are collecting and the nature by which they to the selection process seems to vary according each library, their type, size, consortia involvement, usage data, etc.  The reasons why and how much they bought all varied but the frustrations, questions, and concerns the faced were very similar and seemed on the minds of every librarian regardless of their library, type, size, consortia involvement, etc.  So what were these concerns? DRM- Digital rights restrictions.  It seems that every publisher has different rules and while some things can be put on electronic reserve others cannot.  While some things can be shared through ILL or on Blackboard others cannot.  This is not only a particular frustration among librarians but also patrons who aren’t as savvy with copyright issues.  The patrons get frustrated with DRM restrictions for library materials and they are even more frustrated with the restrictions for e-books they buy themselves.  Their view is, “I bought, don’t tell me how I am allowed to use it.”  I am not saying this is always the right or wrong thought process, but it is their thoughts and to a certain extent librarians. Access – How do people find your e-books was a common question among the librarians.  The e-books publishers don’t always have decent MARC records (if they have any) that can be easily added to the catalog.  So the cataloger must work to add them into the catalog, yet more and more patrons really don’t use the catalog these days.  They would rather randomly search the library’s website or Google. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:10:53 +0100 868390 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/how-to-for-determining-if-ibooks-are-drmed-misses-copyright-point/ Katie Gatto at our sister blog Appletell has made a post explaining how to determine which e-books in your iTunes listing are DRM-protected and which are DRM-free. It is a useful little tutorial for those who are not sure (or, for that matter, bother to purchase iBooks titles in the first place). However, annoyingly, Gatto repeatedly conflates DRM with copyright. She begins the article with “If you want to know which of your ebooks are DRM free and which have been protected by copyright,” then mentions that this process “will let you know if a book has DRM protections or if you’re free to share it with others,” and says that if a book is listed as protected, “it has a copyright attached.” She then concludes, “Use accordingly to avoid lawsuits.” Of course, if you use according to her advice, you probably won’t be avoiding lawsuits. It should be needless to say that plenty of non-DRM-protected e-books (such as those sold by Baen, or posted online by Cory Doctorow) are fully copyright-protected—meaning that while you might be able to share them with friends, you are not necessarily legally free to unless the holder of the copyright allows it. Might a decreased understanding of copyright be one of the casualties of the media industry’s reliance on DRM? I didn’t think the fact that everything is copyrighted under current copyright law (including books, e-books, Internet posts, and even scribblings on the backs of napkins) was that hard to understand, let alone that foregoing DRM does not mean you are foregoing your right to protection under the law. Or perhaps peer-to-peer is to blame for this “anything not strictly forbidden must be permitted” attitude. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:15:00 +0100 868288 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/CQTdZsvuRRQ/ Katie Gatto at our sister blog Appletell has made a post explaining how to determine which e-books in your iTunes listing are DRM-protected and which are DRM-free. It is a useful little tutorial for those who are not sure (or, for that matter, bother to purchase iBooks titles in the first place). However, annoyingly, Gatto repeatedly conflates DRM with copyright. She begins the article with “If you want to know which of your ebooks are DRM free and which have been protected by copyright,” then mentions that this process “will let you know if a book has DRM protections or if you’re free to share it with others,” and says that if a book is listed as protected, “it has a copyright attached.” She then concludes, “Use accordingly to avoid lawsuits.” Of course, if you use according to her advice, you probably won’t be avoiding lawsuits. It should be needless to say that plenty of non-DRM-protected e-books (such as those sold by Baen, or posted online by Cory Doctorow) are fully copyright-protected—meaning that while you might be able to share them with friends, you are not necessarily legally free to unless the holder of the copyright allows it. Might a decreased understanding of copyright be one of the casualties of the media industry’s reliance on DRM? I didn’t think the fact that everything is copyrighted under current copyright law (including books, e-books, Internet posts, and even scribblings on the backs of napkins) was that hard to understand, let alone that foregoing DRM does not mean you are foregoing your right to protection under the law. Or perhaps peer-to-peer is to blame for this “anything not strictly forbidden must be permitted” attitude. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:15:00 +0100 868289 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/handheld-e-book-readers-and-scholarship-report-and-reader-survey/ Received the following email. The report is quite interesting, but is way too long to summarize here: ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) recently concluded its survey to test the use of digital scholarly monographs for research purposes on various handheld reading devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader, and Apple’s iPhone. HEB has just published the detailed results of this survey and an overview of the process of converting titles for handhelds, including costs, in a new whitepaper available at: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/heb-whitepaper-3.html Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:57:25 +0100 868290 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/ou55lWkhfJ8/ Received the following email. The report is quite interesting, but is way too long to summarize here: ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) recently concluded its survey to test the use of digital scholarly monographs for research purposes on various handheld reading devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader, and Apple’s iPhone. HEB has just published the detailed results of this survey and an overview of the process of converting titles for handhelds, including costs, in a new whitepaper available at: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/heb-whitepaper-3.html Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:57:25 +0100 868291 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/author-meredith-greene-talks-about-ebooks/ From her article in the Sacramento Book Review: As I read through the month, I snuck looks at the various eBook blogs and industry news pages that I frequent, adding comments where incited to and re-tweeting when especially impressed. A particular piece by J. A. Konrath caught my eye on Monday, titled The Changing Face of Publishing; in it, Konrath voices fears that the paper book industry may be spiraling downward. “I’m sensing a shift.” he writes, “And this shift will likely prove fatal for many of the parties involved. If, as I suspect, publishers are going to print fewer books, that will result in a death spiral. Fewer books printed means fewer sold in bookstores, which will no longer be able to stay open. Without bookstore orders, publishers will print even fewer books. And so on.” After reading the above, I glanced over at the sizable stack of advance copies on my backyard table and realized that if Konrath’s prediction played out, my lengthy season of receiving free paper books to review might also be waning. Advancing technology takes its toll – remember metal typewriters with hand-turned rollers? I saw one the other day on display in an antique store window; it was selling for $300. As long as paper books are around I’ll read, review and display them on my shelves, encouraging my children to take down a volume when bored, or curl up with them by the fire on a windy winter night, reading from tangible pages in the flickering firelight, yet I will also continue to write eBooks and self-publish online, for that’s where the money is. No one buys the paper versions of our books anymore – they are simply too expensive. The air surrounding my stack of books has a melancholy feel to it all of the sudden, as if an end to an era looms, while under it another gathers strength. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:50:36 +0100 868292 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/Zpi8AFlrtqE/ From her article in the Sacramento Book Review: As I read through the month, I snuck looks at the various eBook blogs and industry news pages that I frequent, adding comments where incited to and re-tweeting when especially impressed. A particular piece by J. A. Konrath caught my eye on Monday, titled The Changing Face of Publishing; in it, Konrath voices fears that the paper book industry may be spiraling downward. “I’m sensing a shift.” he writes, “And this shift will likely prove fatal for many of the parties involved. If, as I suspect, publishers are going to print fewer books, that will result in a death spiral. Fewer books printed means fewer sold in bookstores, which will no longer be able to stay open. Without bookstore orders, publishers will print even fewer books. And so on.” After reading the above, I glanced over at the sizable stack of advance copies on my backyard table and realized that if Konrath’s prediction played out, my lengthy season of receiving free paper books to review might also be waning. Advancing technology takes its toll – remember metal typewriters with hand-turned rollers? I saw one the other day on display in an antique store window; it was selling for $300. As long as paper books are around I’ll read, review and display them on my shelves, encouraging my children to take down a volume when bored, or curl up with them by the fire on a windy winter night, reading from tangible pages in the flickering firelight, yet I will also continue to write eBooks and self-publish online, for that’s where the money is. No one buys the paper versions of our books anymore – they are simply too expensive. The air surrounding my stack of books has a melancholy feel to it all of the sudden, as if an end to an era looms, while under it another gathers strength. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:50:36 +0100 868293 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/S-weF0xPXNw/ From the Aptara site: You’ve committed to an eBook strategy for growth. Now what? One of the most perplexing problems facing publishers is how to master the technology, workflow and format variables required to optimize eBook production, while still producing print and piloting Apps in parallel. The solution lies in modifying your publishing processes to enable cost-effective, multi-channel output. In this webinar, eBook and industry experts from Gilbane Group and Aptara describe an approachable single content strategy for achieving production flexibility and monetizing content assets in an explosive, mobile-centric market. Event Date: 09/28/2010 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:46:20 +0100 868294 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/aptara-offering-free-webinar-on-ebooks-apps-and-print/ From the Aptara site: You’ve committed to an eBook strategy for growth. Now what? One of the most perplexing problems facing publishers is how to master the technology, workflow and format variables required to optimize eBook production, while still producing print and piloting Apps in parallel. The solution lies in modifying your publishing processes to enable cost-effective, multi-channel output. In this webinar, eBook and industry experts from Gilbane Group and Aptara describe an approachable single content strategy for achieving production flexibility and monetizing content assets in an explosive, mobile-centric market. Event Date: 09/28/2010 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:46:20 +0100 868295 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/h625QTM7SKM/ Sometimes we get accused of becoming an Apple blog, we post so much Apple-centric stuff, but there’s a reason for that. Apple might be obnoxious in its app approval behavior, closed in its development platform, and prudish in its gatekeeping, but there’s no denying that they make some damned fine e-book reading devices. My iPod Touch was my sole e-reader for most of the two years I had it, and I still miss it badly. Matt Buchanan makes a similar point on Gizmodo, where he says that if the rumors are true about the new iPod Touch that will (presumably) be revealed tomorrow and it ends up with the same retina display, Facetime camera, and 5-megapixel rear camera as the iPhone, it has the potential to be a device “serial killer”—replacing just about every gadget one would carry around (iPod, point-and-shoot camera, motion picture camera, notepad, gaming device, etc.) except the phone. Buchanan says: Inexplicably, there’s never been a credible iPod touch competitor. The Zune HD doesn’t run apps (the handful it’s got don’t count), so it’s limited in what it can do—it’s simply a very good music player. Android is still a miserable place to be when it comes to media, and on top of that, all of the Android "tablets" have been thoroughly mediocre. There’s nothing out there that’s remotely like the iPod touch. And obviously, there’s a demand for it, since it’s the only iPod whose sales are still growing. The iPod Touch has basically taken over the ecological niche vacated when PDAs evolved into smartphones, in much the same way as rats or cockroaches might evolve to replace humans after we kill ourselves off. There haven’t been any real competitors, perhaps because most tablets are larger and most devices the same size are smartphones. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:15:00 +0100 868298 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/new-ipod-touch-could-replace-several-gadgets-at-once/ Sometimes we get accused of becoming an Apple blog, we post so much Apple-centric stuff, but there’s a reason for that. Apple might be obnoxious in its app approval behavior, closed in its development platform, and prudish in its gatekeeping, but there’s no denying that they make some damned fine e-book reading devices. My iPod Touch was my sole e-reader for most of the two years I had it, and I still miss it badly. Matt Buchanan makes a similar point on Gizmodo, where he says that if the rumors are true about the new iPod Touch that will (presumably) be revealed tomorrow and it ends up with the same retina display, Facetime camera, and 5-megapixel rear camera as the iPhone, it has the potential to be a device “serial killer”—replacing just about every gadget one would carry around (iPod, point-and-shoot camera, motion picture camera, notepad, gaming device, etc.) except the phone. Buchanan says: Inexplicably, there’s never been a credible iPod touch competitor. The Zune HD doesn’t run apps (the handful it’s got don’t count), so it’s limited in what it can do—it’s simply a very good music player. Android is still a miserable place to be when it comes to media, and on top of that, all of the Android "tablets" have been thoroughly mediocre. There’s nothing out there that’s remotely like the iPod touch. And obviously, there’s a demand for it, since it’s the only iPod whose sales are still growing. The iPod Touch has basically taken over the ecological niche vacated when PDAs evolved into smartphones, in much the same way as rats or cockroaches might evolve to replace humans after we kill ourselves off. There haven’t been any real competitors, perhaps because most tablets are larger and most devices the same size are smartphones. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:15:00 +0100 868299 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/TxrbEIk--ww/ From the Project Gutenberg News comes this article by Michael Hart: The latest Project Gutenberg Grand Total figures have just passed 37,500 titles this past month and will have 40,000 eBooks during our 40th year celebration, 1,000 a month over 40 years doesn’t sound like much, but we are on track right now to do 5,000 this year. We are currently giving away about 100,000 books a day, just through the one single site: http://gutenberg.org. About 3 million eBooks per month or 36 million per year. In 2000 USB flash drives were just getting started with 8M “IBM Memory Sticks” available for about $60 and also 16M and 32M size were available. Today 1,000 times as much memory, 8G, is available from over the counter stores for $20. I just bought a somewhat larger “terabyte pocket drive” for $75 over the counter. Larger is a relative term in this case, it’s still pocket-sized, but just requires a doubly larger pocket and the weight is noticeable and a “wall wart” power supply is required, so I should NOT think the term “pocket-sized would be appropriate but I bought it anyway, sight unseen, due to misunderstanding or being misled by the advertizing. Still, it’s no larger and not much heavier than a book, and it will hold 2.5 million such books in .zip format. Think for just a moment about how much a terabyte would cost you back in the year 2000, how much power it took, and how hard it would be to fill it up. Google wouldn’t even announce its “invention” of eBooks for about 5 more years, Project Gutenberg wouldn’t have 10,000 titles for another 2 3/4 years, so just think of the changes we have in store by 2020, the next decade. We should all be considering getting petabytes if we do have them already by then, and all of the findable book titles that are public domain should have been put into at least some eReadable formats, if not most or all. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:37:29 +0100 868302 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/project-gutenberg-timeline-events/ From the Project Gutenberg News comes this article by Michael Hart: The latest Project Gutenberg Grand Total figures have just passed 37,500 titles this past month and will have 40,000 eBooks during our 40th year celebration, 1,000 a month over 40 years doesn’t sound like much, but we are on track right now to do 5,000 this year. We are currently giving away about 100,000 books a day, just through the one single site: http://gutenberg.org. About 3 million eBooks per month or 36 million per year. In 2000 USB flash drives were just getting started with 8M “IBM Memory Sticks” available for about $60 and also 16M and 32M size were available. Today 1,000 times as much memory, 8G, is available from over the counter stores for $20. I just bought a somewhat larger “terabyte pocket drive” for $75 over the counter. Larger is a relative term in this case, it’s still pocket-sized, but just requires a doubly larger pocket and the weight is noticeable and a “wall wart” power supply is required, so I should NOT think the term “pocket-sized would be appropriate but I bought it anyway, sight unseen, due to misunderstanding or being misled by the advertizing. Still, it’s no larger and not much heavier than a book, and it will hold 2.5 million such books in .zip format. Think for just a moment about how much a terabyte would cost you back in the year 2000, how much power it took, and how hard it would be to fill it up. Google wouldn’t even announce its “invention” of eBooks for about 5 more years, Project Gutenberg wouldn’t have 10,000 titles for another 2 3/4 years, so just think of the changes we have in store by 2020, the next decade. We should all be considering getting petabytes if we do have them already by then, and all of the findable book titles that are public domain should have been put into at least some eReadable formats, if not most or all. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:37:29 +0100 868303 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/09/01/online-conference-ebooks-libraries-at-the-tipping-point-sepetember-29-2010/ From the August Issue (Published 8/31/2009) of the Book Industry Study Group Bulletin (BISG): BISG is a supporting organization for several industry conferences each year, including ebooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point presented by Library Journal & School Library Journal. Sponsored By: OverDrive (Platinum) Gold sponsors: Baker & Taylor; Capstone Digital; Gale Cengage; and Springer Keynote Speakers Ray Kurzweil, National best?selling author Kevin Kelly, Founder, Wired magazine R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute, Syracuse U. URL: www.ebook?summit.com ebooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point is an online conference that functions just like an in?person conference, with keynote speeches, special tracks and an exhibit area. The day?long event will bring together librarians, technology experts, publishers and vendors in a virtual setting to explore how the book is changing in the digital world. Date: September 29, 2010 Time: 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. EDT Location: Online event Cost: Early bird pricing extended through August 13, 2010 with registration as low as $19.95 (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:21:45 +0100 868115 http://www.teleread.com/2010/09/01/after-youve-printed-a-book-what-do-you-do-with-it-gutenbergs-problem/ Boston.com’s Tom Sococca has an absolutely fascinating interview with Andrew Pettegree, author of The Book in the Renaissance. The parallels between printers’ problems at the time and the publishing industry today are legion. Inventing the printing press was not the same thing as inventing the publishing business. Technologically, craftsmen were ready to follow Gutenberg’s example, opening presses across Europe. But they could only guess at what to print, and the public saw no particular need to buy books. The books they knew, manuscript texts, were valuable items and were copied to order. The habit of spending money to read something a printer had decided to publish was an alien one. Nor was print clearly destined to replace manuscript, from the point of view of the book owners of the day. A few fussy color-printing experiments aside, the new books were monochrome, dull in comparison to illuminated manuscripts. Many books left blank spaces for adding hand decoration, and collectors frequently bound printed pages together with manuscript ones. “It’s a great mistake to think of an absolute disjunction between a manuscript world of the Middle Ages and a print world of the 16th century,” Pettegree said. As in our own Internet era, culture and commerce went through upheaval as Europe tried to figure out what to make of the new medium and its possibilities. Should it serve to spread familiar Latin texts, or to promote new ideas, written in the vernacular? Was print a vessel for great and serious works, or for quick and sloppy ones? As with the iPad (or the Newton before it), who would want to buy a printed book, and why? Pettegree’s book is available from Amazon for $26.40 but not in an ebook version yet. I guess I’ll have to wait to read it. Thanks to a tweet from johnmiedema1 Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:20:21 +0100 868304 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/JZkuOwOgy4Y/ Boston.com’s Tom Sococca has an absolutely fascinating interview with Andrew Pettegree, author of The Book in the Renaissance. The parallels between printers’ problems at the time and the publishing industry today are legion. Inventing the printing press was not the same thing as inventing the publishing business. Technologically, craftsmen were ready to follow Gutenberg’s example, opening presses across Europe. But they could only guess at what to print, and the public saw no particular need to buy books. The books they knew, manuscript texts, were valuable items and were copied to order. The habit of spending money to read something a printer had decided to publish was an alien one. Nor was print clearly destined to replace manuscript, from the point of view of the book owners of the day. A few fussy color-printing experiments aside, the new books were monochrome, dull in comparison to illuminated manuscripts. Many books left blank spaces for adding hand decoration, and collectors frequently bound printed pages together with manuscript ones. “It’s a great mistake to think of an absolute disjunction between a manuscript world of the Middle Ages and a print world of the 16th century,” Pettegree said. As in our own Internet era, culture and commerce went through upheaval as Europe tried to figure out what to make of the new medium and its possibilities. Should it serve to spread familiar Latin texts, or to promote new ideas, written in the vernacular? Was print a vessel for great and serious works, or for quick and sloppy ones? As with the iPad (or the Newton before it), who would want to buy a printed book, and why? Pettegree’s book is available from Amazon for $26.40 but not in an ebook version yet. I guess I’ll have to wait to read it. Thanks to a tweet from johnmiedema1 Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:20:21 +0100 868305 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/5Rpy6MdMt9A/ Today’s links of interest: Borders Reduces E-reader to $99And there you have it. An ereader below $100. Oh, wow, the world is still turning. Random House’s Strong Half-Year Results Driven By ‘Dragon Tattoo’ SalesStieg Larsson, who will not likely be producing more books, drives huge dollars to Random House. His ebook sales are phenomenal. Which leads to the question: does the lack of an iBookstore agreement hurt RH in any way? A Moment of JenFrom Jennifer Weiner: Instead of asking which books and which authors deserve the Times’ coverage, maybe we should think about what kind of book review section readers deserve. Not a crazy idea at all. (Source: Booksquare) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:15:06 +0100 868022 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/31/publishing-statistics-slides-from-recent-presentation-by-ceo-of-wolters-kluwer-nancy-mckinstry-at-2010-beijing-international-publishing-forum/ On Sunday, Nancy McKinstry shared her thoughts about publishing, China, her company and a number of other topics during the 2010 Beijing International Publishing Forum. You can find a the news release here. Included in the 34 slide presentation are a number of statistics and other items that might be of interest. Access the Presentation Slides (PDF) Examples Include: Facts About Wolters Kluwer + Approximately 19,300 employees in more than 40 countries across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America + 3.4 EUR billion revenue Total Number of Professionals (Global, With Sources) + 8.4 Million Physicians + 13 Million Nurses + 2.5 Million + A List of Three Megatrends Impacting Wolters Kluwer Business Today + Numbers and Comparisons Including 10 Petabytes, All U.S. Academic Research Libraries 1/2 Yotabyte, The Entire Internet in 2009 + Wolters Kluwer 2010-2012 Strategy + A Breakdown on Wolters Kluwer Revenue by Format and Types (Cyclical, Books, Subscriptions) Example: In 2009 52% Electronic vs. 34% Print; 71% Subscriptions vs. 11% Books + China Digital Publishing Developments Examples: .5% of the total output of the publishing industry in 2009 + Digital journal 0.6 bln; eBooks 1.4 bln; online advertising 20.6 bln; online gaming 25.6 bln; and mobile phone publishing 31.4 bln + Almost 90% of the Chinese publishing houses have developed an eBook publishing business + Wolters Kluwer in China Source: Wolters Kluwer (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:41:17 +0100 867909 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/e7sniLX0nHg/  by Judith Jordet, MLS From the Article: If each inmate could have a library of over 1,000 titles in one small e-book reader, it would cut down on hiding contraband among the books (such as sandpaper to erase their uniform logo), remove the unsanitary habit of reading books in the rest-room, cut down on repairing books (averaging 20% or over 1,200 books destroyed each year), free up space by limiting the 3 X 8 foot long bookshelves that only hold 640 books for 100 inmates in each unit, encourage struggling readers to listen to a book while reading the text on the screen, and, finally, allow anyone to increase the size of the font so LARGE PRINT will never be limited to a few titles! However, my research revealed problems that only a niche market can solve. I studied the Kindle, Sony and Nook e-book readers; all of them are equipped to access the Internet. I wish an e-book reader existed that only accessed the millions of legitimately published books (rather than anonymous individuals self-publishing on the Internet, not accountable to anyone even for spelling or grammar). Imagine an e-book reader that specialized in accessing books by title, author, subject, date, publisher, language, format (audio, digital) and/or keyword! Much More in the Complete Article Source: Corrections.com Via Resource Shelf and Frank Sleightholme Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:16:50 +0100 867891 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/4_MbXWInI7g/ According to Feedbooks: This is an introduction to the Open Publishing Distribution System Catalog 1.0 specification. This document is informative rather than normative. When this document disagrees, if ever, with the OPDS Catalog specification, please refer to the spec. Via a tweet from @liza Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:17:02 +0100 867898 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/TyikTs5LqPo/ We’ve previously mentioned the Kaplan free ebook offer, now that offer has been extended until September 6, according to a press release. The titles for the extended promotion are: 1. Kaplan ACT Strategies for Super Busy Students 2. Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Dictionary 3. Sharp Vocab 4. Sharp Writing 5. Kaplan Portable GMAT 6. Kaplan Portable GRE Exam 7. Kaplan PMBR: Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE) 8. Kaplan PMBR Finals: Constitutional Law 9. Kaplan MCAT Organic Chemistry Review 10. Kaplan MCAT Biology Review 11. Kaplan NCLEX-RN 2010 -2011 Edition 12. Kaplan CCRN 13. Kaplan101 Algebra Practice Questions 14. Kaplan 101 ASVAB Practice Questions 15. Kaplan101 GRE Quantitative Practice Questions 16. Kaplan 101 GRE Verbal Practice Questions 17. Kaplan 101 MAT Practice Questions 18. Kaplan 101 PSAT/SAT Critical Reading Practice Questions 19. Kaplan101 Biology Practice Questions 20. Kaplan 101 SAT/PSAT Writing Practice Questions 21. Kaplan 101 GMAT Verbal Practice Question Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:12:20 +0100 867900 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/08/30/opds-catalog-1-0-specification/ The OPDS Catalog 1.0 specification has been released. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: The open ebook community and the Internet Archive are pleased to announce the release of the first production version of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content. OPDS Catalogs are an open standard designed to enable the discovery of digital content from any location, on any device, and for any application. . . . Based on the widely implemented Atom Syndication Format, OPDS Catalogs have been developed since 2009 by a group of ebook developers, publishers, librarians, and booksellers interested in providing a lightweight, simple, and easy to use format for developing catalogs of digital books, magazines, and other content. (Source: DigitalKoans) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867650 http://dallnet.blogspot.com/2010/08/mysteries.html Liz Petty brought this book to my attention: Murder Past Due (Cat in the Stacks Mystery Series), by Miranda James. It is available in paperback and ebook - from Barnes and Noble and in print from Amazon.com. (Source: Lex Scripta) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867852 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/31/libraries-coalition-volunteers People who know how borrowing books helped to transform their own lives now need to hold their councils to accountNaturally, those who most loved libraries as children are now their most articulate supporters. Some were dismayed by Margaret Hodge's report on public libraries earlier this year, which praised the network as "a triumph of infrastructure and branding". In the coalition era, they may be equally crestfallen at the Future Libraries Programme's promise of "customer service improvement opportunities" in Greater Manchester.Do not be deceived by the familiar jargon. The government's current vision is very different from Lady Hodge's. The 10 projects are testbeds for many of the ideas that the coalition would like to apply to other public services. Two London boroughs are considering a merger of their library provision. Suffolk wants community groups to manage them. Most controversially, some of Bradford's books could be moved into shops. Lady Hodge's excellent suggestion that a library card be issued automatically to every baby has been ignored. More understandably, her enthusiasm for ebook lending – which sounds pleasingly modern, but is fraught with copyright and technical obstacles – has also gone. National guarantees are out; cheaper offerings, aimed specifically at the communities they serve, are in.Recruiting more volunteers to help run libraries is a laudable idea (though it may well come at the expense of professional librarians' jobs). Only 15,000 people currently volunteer.The internet has made some of libraries' traditional functions almost redundant, as well as driving down the cost of books for those who can afford them. Yet given the pressures they face, libraries have held up rather well: 83m children's books were issued last year, which represents around 90% of the number lent out a decade earlier. The same period has seen broadband installed in every library and a boom in reading groups. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:05:11 +0100 867635 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/N-KWcwQY8tU/ From Catalogablog: Version 1.0 of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content has been released. The open ebook community and the Internet Archive are pleased to announce the release of the first production version of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content. OPDS Catalogs are an open standard designed to enable the discovery of digital content from any location, on any device, and for any application. The specification is available at: http://opds-spec.org/specs/opds-catalog-1-0. Based on the widely implemented Atom Syndication Format, OPDS Catalogs have been developed since 2009 by a group of ebook developers, publishers, librarians, and booksellers interested in providing a lightweight, simple, and easy to use format for developing catalogs of digital books, magazines, and other content. OPDS Catalogs are the first component of the Internet Archive’s BookServer Project, a framework supporting open standards for discovering, lending, and vending books and other digital content on the web. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:29:00 +0100 867540 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/xqsg4mU3Mwc/ From the Kobo blog: With Kobo and US publishers, it’s been a long-distance relationship. Lots of planes, a river of email, plenty of phone and Skype. And like all long-distance relationships, it starts to get a little tired. Another meal at the airport. You wonder if they’re seeing someone else. You want more. Someone has to move. We asked the publishers if they could all move to Toronto. They said something about the lease on their Manhattan apartment and how they were focused on their career right now. It looks like it’s up to us. So I am happy to announce that Kobo has opened an office in New York, focused on publisher relations and content acquisition for the US market …. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:07:54 +0100 867542 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/V5glbwdfiLs/ This Saturday, I drove about 30 miles west of Springfield to visit the Gay Parita Sinclair, a restored period filling station in Paris Springs, just west of Halltown, Missouri on old Route 66. Several huge photo blow-ups of the place hang on the wall in the breakroom at TeleTech where I work, in keeping with the building’s “Route 66” decor theme. It was only last week when I googled it that I realized I had actually driven right past it without even noticing it twice while on my way to Carthage. I guess I’d mentally filed it as “just another gas station” without realizing. So as penance, this time I drove out there specifically to see the place. While I was there I happened to notice, amid the shelves of period and Route 66 memorabilia, a couple of old Brownie cameras. “I used to have that camera,” I said, pointing to the one on the right. “You don’t look that old!” the lady who was showing me around (the daughter of the Sinclair’s owner) said. And it’s true, I wasn’t that old. But the camera was. My first childhood camera, when I was very young, was a Kodak that shot on 127 film. I wish I remembered the exact name of the camera so I could google it; I’ve tried to find images of 127 film cameras online but none of them looked familiar. I think it must have been twenty years or so old even then, or ten at the least—it had that kind of late fifties, early sixties design sensibility to it. I didn’t have a flash so I could only take pictures outdoors, and my parents only bought me black and white film because color was more expensive. But I took a number of pictures, and had a number of pictures taken of me. (Yes, that’s a very little me at right. That’s how old I was when I first had that camera.) My second was that Brownie Hawkeye, the same model as in the photo above. I no longer remember where it came from, whether it had belonged to my Dad when he was a kid or if he just found it in a second-hand store. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:15:00 +0100 867543 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/2qdpsI9ux-c/ Here are two somewhat related questions I’m being asked a lot lately: #1: Which bookstore experience do you prefer, Apple’s iBookstore or Amazon’s Kindle bookstore? #2: Which e-reader device do you believe is going to “win”? My answers to both of these might surprise you. Regarding the first question, I thought when I bought my iPad I’d never buy another ebook from Amazon. Boy, was I wrong! I’ve owned an iPad for almost 5 months and all but one of my ebook purchases have been from Amazon. And the one iBookstore purchase I made is one I’d like to take a mulligan on and buy from Amazon instead. Why? One (hyphenated) word: multi-platform. Although I’m extremely down on Amazon’s continued investment in the e-reader hardware space, I’m a huge fan of their ebook business. (Well, all except for the crazy DRM they still implement…but that’s more a problem with publishers than Amazon.) Towards the end of my Kindle usage I was feeling pretty stupid for buying all those Kindle ebooks. Now I’m glad I did. Anything I bought from Amazon can be read on my iPad, my iPhone, my Mac, a Windows computer and pretty much any other piece of hardware I’m likely to use. Has anyone seen Apple’s iBooks app for Windows? How about the iBooks app for the Blackberry? Better yet, do you think there’s a chance Apple will release an iBooks app for the Android platform? No, none of these exist today and the likelihood of them ever coming about is slim to none. Steve Jobs makes some awesome products but he’s not a fan of cross-platform usage. So although the iBooks app is nice, I refuse to paint myself into a corner and be limited to a single platform. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:36:56 +0100 867546 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/XLafCtt_DCg/ From Manybooks addministrator: A kind visitor pointed out that many (if not most) of the Kindle/Mobipocket links were missing from the mobile version of the site: mnybks.net Happily, that issue has been resolved. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Kindle to test with, let alone the latests model, the Kindle 3 — would anyone care to try a download or two directly to the Kindle 3 via it’s built-in web browser, and let me know how it works? Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:22:44 +0100 867548 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/lOKzxRd12Qg/    1. Smashwords Smashwords continues to kick goals in self-publishing. In an increasingly crowded market, I just don’t think you can beat Smashwords for ease of use, price (you can’t do better than free), and distribution. Fling your words to Smashwords, and you’ll quickly end up with an ebook in multiple formats, playable on all devices, and distributed to iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store. Soon they’ll be adding Amazon to the already impressive list. The website could use prettying up, but this offering is the best one-stop-shop free solution out there. Other services include Lulu, Scribd, iUniverse and Amazon Digital Text Platform, but none of these has the reach, ease of use, low price, and cross-platform openness of Smashwords. NB: As an experiment, soon I’ll be self-publishing something I have up my sleeve, and monitoring both what distribution channel sells how much, and whether ebook beats pbook. More on that soon. 2. Pages ePub export via iWork Last week, Apple updated its popular iWork suite of applications,  allowing self-publishers to export their words in ePUB format from its Pages word processor. It was a small update – iWork 9.0.4 to be precise – but potentially an important one for publishing. There’s even a Pages template for use in creating an ePub document that you can get here. Given that Pages can now give you ePUB and PDF, this means you can spread your work everywhere, including Amazon’s Kindle Store (via their Digital Text Platform, above). Liza Daly, of digital publishing consulting firm Threepress Consulting, has a very thorough review on her blog. In it she delves all the way down into the CSS it creates and the OPF file. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:07:53 +0100 867550 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/KPrOaDSJenU/ From Boing Boing: My August Publishers Weekly column reports in on my experiment to see which of the major ebook stores would carry my books without DRM, and with a text disclaimer at the beginning that released readers from the crazy, abusive license agreements that most of these stores demand as a condition of purchase. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo were all happy to carry my books without DRM, and on terms that gave you the same rights you got when buying paper editions. Sony and Apple refused to carry my books without DRM — even though my publisher and I both asked them to. More in the article. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:00:47 +0100 867551 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/goEpEpOr7i0/ Neuer Trend in den USA: pBooks – Lehrbücher zum Entleihen. Die FAZ berichtete über den Geschäftserfolg von Chegg. [via @Andrea_Arndt] (Source: netbib weblog) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:11:47 +0100 867471 http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/2010/08/open-publication-distribution-system.html Version 1.0 of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content has been released.The open ebook community and the Internet Archive are pleased to announce the release of the first production version of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content. OPDS Catalogs are an open standard designed to enable the discovery of digital content from any location, on any device, and for any application.The specification is available at: http://opds-spec.org/specs/opds-catalog-1-0.Based on the widely implemented Atom Syndication Format, OPDS Catalogs have been developed since 2009 by a group of ebook developers, publishers, librarians, and booksellers interested in providing a lightweight, simple, and easy to use format for developing catalogs of digital books, magazines, and other content.OPDS Catalogs are the first component of the Internet Archive’s BookServer Project, a framework supporting open standards for discovering, lending, and vending books and other digital content on the web. (Source: Catalogablog) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867723 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/zN2d83MEZec/ Several weeks ago, Greg McQueen released a 100 Stories for Haiti Podcast focused on ebooks, offering an insightful and well-balanced look at the state of ebooks. He interviewed multiple authors and even yours truly to explore what ebooks mean to authors, readers and the future of publishing. For me, the highlight of Greg’s excellent podcast was Smashwords author David Robinson, a 60-year Yorkshireman who presented an audio essay on indie ebook publishing. This is a must-listen. Mr. Robinson is a gifted orator, and he has created one of the best-articulated manifestos on e-publishing I’ve heard. One comment that struck me as particularly insightful is when he explains how it’s not so much rejection that bruises the soul of a writer, it’s the chronic condition of being ignored. As you’ll hear below, his wry wit and precision delivery add a richness and meaning his written words alone could never convey. I think after you give him a listen, you’ll be a fan too! Click the play button above to listen to David Robinson’s essay. To listen to Greg McQueen’s entire podcast episode about ebooks, here’s the full audio (see episode 3): Via Mark Coker’s Smashwords blog. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:56:50 +0100 867297 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/29/e-books-not-all-mu-u-of-missouri-students-eager-to-switch-to-digital-textbooks/ Note: The following article was posted online Saturday afternoon. Less than 24 hours later the article is no longer accessible. We linked to a cached version of the via Bing. While VERY far from a scientific study this article addresses a few questions we’ve wondered about for some time. 1) If given a choice would students select e-text over print? 2) How much does the cost of the book vs. e-text factor into the equation? 3) Do some students still want print even if electronic is available? The one issue not mentioned is if the students who want to stay with text know how an ebook looks and works and what features it offers vs. print? From the Article: Hundreds of classroom textbooks are now offered in digital formats. At the University Bookstore more than 200 different titles are produced digitally, said Michelle Froese, the bookstore’s manager of public relations. Professors often supplement textbook readings with digital PDF documents on blackboard and electronic reserve. Yet these materials are not on all students’ radars. The Columbia Missourian talked to 20 students to determine their awareness of digital offerings, as well as their preferences. Seven said they did not know whether or not their course materials were offered digitally. Another nine students reported that they do not want to use digital textbooks. The remaining four students said digital textbooks are acceptable as an option to carrying books around campus. Six students commented on the comparative costs: If a digital book is cheaper, they buy it. “I think it’s better that way if I can get used to it,” said Johnny Kiu, a senior finance major. Monica Zawicki said it would have to be a significant price difference before she would switch. A $20 difference, she said, is not worth it. DeAndrea Tobias did switch when a textbook that cost $175 to buy in a bookstore was discovered to cost $9.95 using a mobile application. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:37:44 +0100 867565 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/29/apple-ipod-apps-music-industry • Apple earned $410m from 5bn apps downloads in two years• IFPI reports 2009 CD sales fell by 12.7% losing £1bn in value The invitation to Apple's event on Wednesday at the Yerba Buena centre in San Francisco shows an acoustic guitar, with a soundhole in the shape of the Apple logo. Seasoned watchers of the company know that this is the time of year when the iPod gets a refresh, yet there's a shadow over the digital music player that turned Apple from an also-ran computer company into a force in the technology world.The latest sales figures for the quarter to June showed 9m sold – the lowest quarterly number since 2006. In short, the iPod, launched in October 2001, looks to be in terminal decline. While Apple is unworried – sales of its iPhone and iPad are booming – the drooping figures for the digital music player market are a concern for another sector: the music companies.The music industry had looked to the iPod to drive people to buy music in download form, whethe r from Apple's iTunes music store, eMusic, Napster or from newer competitors such as Amazon. The problem for them is that digital music sales are only growing as fast as those of Apple's devices – and as the stand-alone digital music player starts to die off, people may lose interest in buying songs from digital stores."At a time where we're asking if digital is a replacement for the CD, as the CD was for vinyl, we should be starting to see a hockey-stick growth in download sales," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Forrester Research who specialises in music and digital media. "Instead, we're seeing a curve resembling that of a niche technology."At the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) , which represents the worldwide music industry, a spokesman agrees that the growth of digital sales has slowed. Figures for 2009 released earlier this year show that while CD sales fell by 12.7%, losing $1. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:06:44 +0100 867265 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/CBfRmVEvhZA/ This is a brilliant essay in the Guardian and I think all hardware reviewers should take note of it. Naughton discusses how people are making an “… an elementary schoolboy mistake, namely the assumption that, in a networked world, it is the hardware that matters most. According to this view, because the iPad, viewed purely as a device, was seen as incomparably superior to the Kindle, it followed that Apple would triumph in the ebooks market.” He then goes on to say: In the end, however, it’s not hardware that matters, but the effectiveness of the overall system in which the device is embedded. That was the great lesson of the Apple iPod: although the hardware was lovely from the outset, it would never have had the impact it had without the link to iTunes software on the PC/Mac and thence to the iTunes store. Other companies had made nice MP3 players, but none had put together a seamless system for getting music from CDs or online retailers on to them. Apple did and the rest is history. You really should read the whole thing. In this regard, I don’t generally toot my own horn, but here are a couple of excerpts from an article I wrote in August of 2008 about Sony and Amazon. It’s entitled Amazon is right – Sony is wrong – Digital Editions sucks: I like things simple as well. This hit me like a fish in the face when I installed Fictionwise’s eReader on my iPhone. Want a book – go to Fictionwise on the phone and download one. It hit me again, more like a whale in the face, when a I told a colleague about a free ebook being offered by Amazon. He has a Kindle and, while I watched he fired it up and downloaded the book while standing outside in the sunshine. No computer, no USB cable, no card reader, no Sony software, no Adobe software, no Calibre software, no conversion programs, no WiFi router. He bought a book without a computer – while standing outside in the sunshine. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:01:48 +0100 867298 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/nxy7FB-ERFU/ Here are a couple more reviews that are worth your time. I’ve selected excerpts that deal with the browser. The first is from The EBook Reader. Among other things the reviewer says: I opted for the WiFi only model because I couldn’t foresee needing to use the 3G all that often—but now I’m regretting that choice because the new WebKit browser actually works better than I’d expected, at least with WiFi. It’s not blazing fast and is somewhat limited but is useful for checking email, getting news updates, downloading free ebooks from Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Baen, etc., and the article mode is a cool feature. The second is from Dear Author: The Kindle 3 sports a webkit browser which is supposed to do a better job of rendering pages. Don’t go to Dear Author because it crashed my Kindle 3 each time I attempted to load it. I had better results with sites like Twitter or Google or even Gmail because of the lack of images. I powered up IbisReader because IbisReader allows you to upload DRM free ePubs and read them on the web. The IbisReader actually looked fairly decent although the letters were crisper and looked more like a native book in the Article Mode. The problem was in Article Mode, you couldn’t access any links. In order to move to the next chapter, you would have to switch to Web Mode. … Click on the thumbnails for larger images. [Not included in this excerpt.] The first one is article mode and the second is web mode. The benefit to this is that you can read your epubs (DRM free) via the Kindle but only by using IbisReader. Otherwise, you’ll need to convert your epubs to mobi. This does give you some insight on how you will be able to access the Google Editions cloud from a Kindle device as well. Problematically, is that currently there is no caching of content so you would a) always need access to the internet and b) have to reload a book each time you visited the web. Not ideal. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:34:03 +0100 867193 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/r5KhDwGrhbg/ Max Ackermann erinnerte mich gestern (Danke!) an eine gelungene Werbung des MacMillan-Verlages für das Buch von Lane Smith It’s a Book. Natürlich ist das Buch auch in einer elektronischen Version verfügbar, die zudem 3 $ weniger kostet… (Source: netbib weblog) Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:17:43 +0100 867176 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/RYtz0mR8K9g/ Here we go again: Categorize your Kindle books by the Dewey Decimal System Pictures of Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 screens Kindle 2 and 3 under the microscope Used game controversy continues; e-book vendors could stand to learn from Valve (again) by Chris Meadows “If it were my money, there’s no way I’d put up with this cr*p”, says young reader Lessons from tech support: E-books are not necessarily easy by Chris Meadows First AmazonCrossing title released: The King of Kahel Publishers, rejoice! A free e-business plan right here! by Joanna Ebook review by Joanna: Prestwick by David Hough by Joanna Reading in captivity – by Matt Hayler New service to alert you of new books Will product placement ‘Demolish’ e-books? by Chris Meadows View from Down Under: The ebooks and the damage done by Jason Davis Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:40:08 +0100 866621 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/08/27/daily-tweets-2010-08-27/ Czech Copyright Bill Undercuts Copyleft, Artists http://icio.us/ocdsgm # Japan’s National Diet Library Collaborating with Library of Congress on Digitization of Prewar Japanese Resources http://icio.us/v1xped # More on Mendeley and Repositories http://icio.us/vrqihp # Provider-Neutral Ebook Records, Help! http://icio.us/ejoe5v # Dear JSTOR: What Went Wrong? http://icio.us/zs0ftt # New: National Library of Poland Puts 20 Digital Collections Online http://icio.us/4v0ytx # Elsevier to Launch Soon a New Science Platform http://icio.us/1pynol # Southern African Music Collection Society Fighting Attempt to Put Public Domain Works Under Copyright http://icio.us/cfhjfa # Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Accord Likely to be Signed in September http://icio.us/0q12el # American Council of Learned Societies' Humanities E-Book Goes Live with Koha http://icio.us/20ul52 # What Everybody Knows http://icio.us/51x4e0 # Learned Society Members and Open Access http://icio.us/bmvhtn # (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867659 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/Ntn4B-4k9Xs/ Czech Copyright Bill Undercuts Copyleft, Artists http://icio.us/ocdsgm # Japan’s National Diet Library Collaborating with Library of Congress on Digitization of Prewar Japanese Resources http://icio.us/v1xped # More on Mendeley and Repositories http://icio.us/vrqihp # Provider-Neutral Ebook Records, Help! http://icio.us/ejoe5v # Dear JSTOR: What Went Wrong? http://icio.us/zs0ftt # New: National Library of Poland Puts 20 Digital Collections Online http://icio.us/4v0ytx # Elsevier to Launch Soon a New Science Platform http://icio.us/1pynol # Southern African Music Collection Society Fighting Attempt to Put Public Domain Works Under Copyright http://icio.us/cfhjfa # Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Accord Likely to be Signed in September http://icio.us/0q12el # American Council of Learned Societies' Humanities E-Book Goes Live with Koha http://icio.us/20ul52 # What Everybody Knows http://icio.us/51x4e0 # Learned Society Members and Open Access http://icio.us/bmvhtn # (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:00:00 +0100 867322 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/lRIz6ZrCZUk/ New Features * Driver for the Kindle 3 * Users can now customize what actions appear in the toolbar and context menus via Preferences->Interface->Toolbars * Draw a thin broder around the cover in the edit metadata dialog. * Create (almost) all temporary files in a subdirectory so as not to clutter up temp directory * FB2 Output: Add option to try to generate FB2 sections from the TOC. This may or may not work, depending on the file, so use with care. * Add an option to remove all tags from selected books in the bulk metadata editor. * Add a tweak to control how the dates in the Date column are formatted. Bug Fixes * Fix regression in 0.7.15 that broke the Similar books action and the add books to library from device action * Add ZIP and RAR to the input format order preferences. * Update podofo in all binary builds to 0.8.2. Should fix bug where setting metadata in some PDF files would cause file truncation. * Add/remove header wizard: When running on PDF input, replace non breaking spaces with normal spaces, since it is hard to write regexps to match non breaking spaces with the regex builder wizard. * Fix crash is user tries to switch libraries whiel a device is being detected * Title sort now ignores leading quite character. Only applies to newly added books. * Conversion pipeline: Don’t fail if parsing extra css raises an exception. Instead just ignore it. * SONY driver: Use the tz field (available in newer readers) to set timestamps correctly, when available. * Shortening file paths: Handle the case of very long filenames with periods in them. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:25:58 +0100 866394 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/zV5dAyHt0g8/ The Bookseller’s FuturEBook blog has an interesting look by Chris Meade at how today’s authors have more power to promote themselves and build relationships with fans than ever before, leading to a new viability for self-publishing. The Amplified Author of 2010 (term coined for authors engaged in the social web) can sit at her desk and speak directly to her readership through a blog, can expand that circle of readers gradually by using Twitter and other social networks, can find an active readership interested in offering criticism and ideas, can publish work through print on demand and put it on the global bookshelf of the web, can set out her stall of publications and services on a website where she can also offer to run workshops, teach, write reviews, perform; she can take her work to publishers and broadcasters able to give detailed evidence of who her readership is and what they think of her work. Once she makes it into print, she can use her own energies and laptop to promote her masterpiece. Of course, we have already heard much of this sort of thing, especially in the wake of established authors such as J.A. Konrath or Seth Godin deciding to go it alone and move away from traditional publishing. But the FutureEBook piece explains that thinktank if:book (The Institute for the Future of the Book) is creating “a new kind of hub for writing in the community". They call this hub a “Unilibrary”. It is to be located in Hornsey Library in London and is planned to to include a “co-working space” with a voluntary social network, aimed at helping local creative types get together and create. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:15:00 +0100 866397 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/Y0MRJLZPIKg/ Me and My Kindle has a great post today about this important topic. She’s reading an ebook on her Kindle, and then the camera pans back to reveal she’s reading it at the beach. (“Silver moons and paper chains,” the background music sings. “Faded maps and shiny things…)” The camera pulls back before you can read the whole page, as though Amazon’s trying to tease you. But one day, I decided I finally had to find out: exactly what ebook is that? If you want to find out what the book is, then go over and take a look. David Cassel has gone even farther and found the song in the ad and the singers thereof. The photo is a screenshot from the ad. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:10:20 +0100 866398 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/irfNiaZb5xM/ From Munsey’s Technosnarl: Apple, with its new “epub” export feature in word processing software Pages, just sent a shot across Amazon’s bow. Y’all may have heard, there’s a bit of a bottleneck for publishers getting their titles into the Ibookstore. I’m still in the 30s, with more “pending.” Short version of why that’s happened is, well, Apple’s only had two months working with smaller presses. Things go wrong. Longer version ties into history: everybody who launches, Amazon on down, has problems integrating titles. Of course, the fact that Apple was relying on a supposed standard (Epub), that… works in theory but not practice, even if valid, didn’t help matters. There are certain parallels with the history of Mobipocket, another firm that initially relied on “standard inputs” when it launched, before loosening up a bit and taking over the world. With Pages, you’ve got Apple making its own tools for Epub export that I suspect will fly in the Ibookstore, alongside Apple making certain improvements in Producer (NDA), and would-be Apple publishers no longer dependent on half-assed Adobe software or 3rd-party integrators. This will get interesting. /If it matters, sales of my 30-odd books in the Apple store are already equal to sales of around 500 books in the Kindle store a year ago, and the growth is fast. Ya might call it unprecedented. Though of course, I don’t expect all, or even a third, of Olympia will be there. //Hurray for a return to side-loading and DIY mobile interfaces. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:35:17 +0100 866400 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/TirS9xpsIy4/ Risen is one of a growing genre of ‘self-published’ books which had previous life as a print release from a traditional publisher. This re-release by the author is under his real name (Pinnacle Books published it under the byline of ‘J. Knight’) and includes some bonus short stories. ‘Risen’ a fun, fast horror tale. In a small town called Anderson, a long-suffering woman kills her scumbag husband—quite definitively—and is shocked when he comes back to life again, seemingly fitter and happier than before. But he’s not the only one… A reporter and his local cub, a troubled lad named Tom who has own demons, pursue the truth in classic horror-tale fashion. The depiction of small-town life was excellent, but most of the characters proved a little too cardboard after a time. This is definitely a plot-and-action centered story. It reminded me a little of early Dean Koontz—not the depth of some of his classier stuff, necessarily, but good old adventure stories with evil forces and out-of-their-depth Everypeople trying to fight them. Not the sorts of books you remember for the ages, but fun reads for what they are. I have been asked to comment on formatting—I generally don’t notice it, but I did find the formatting a bit sloppy on this book. The chapter headings all had a larger font to distinguish them, but there was no extra spacing to indicate a break. It just ran together a little. An extra paragraph break at the end of the chapter would have made this book look a lot nicer. I save my 5/5 for books with a little more staying power than this one. But for what it is—a good old-fashioned genre read—it was very good. I give it a 4/5 and my strong recommendation. Via Joanna’s E-Finds blog. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:02:00 +0100 866403 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/dz2ME-muwPI/ I always find the quarterly Wattpad metrics report to be fascinating. It is one of the only regular surveys of ereading habits. Here is an excerpt from the latest report. You can find the full report here. Ivan Yuen, CTO and co-founder of Wattpad provides insight into the results: “We are continuously impressed with the variety of devices readers use to consume ebooks. Six to twelve months ago, people only thought about the major ereader offerings and the iPhone. But in the last quarter we’ve seen incredible growth in the usage of iPads and Android tablets, as well as netbooks and other mobile devices. I expect this trend to continue. EBooks that are only available on one device or in one format will be missing out on many fast growing segments of the market.” Some Key Findings Include: - Smartphones continues to be the most popular mobile device to read ebooks in the US, with Apple iPhones, iPads and iPods as well as Android devices being the key drivers. - Use of Apple and Android devices in eBook consumption continues to expand with Wattpad reporting a 25% increase in consumption , where as BlackBerry devices experienced a –9% drop in usage. - Apple’s iPad has been quickly adopted for eBooks consumption since its introduction in April 2010. In Q2, the iPad accounted for 5% of eBook consumption among Apple’s core mobile products; iPod/iPhone/iPad. - The growth in smartphone usage continues to come from North America and Europe, where as Java devices continue account for the majority of growth in Asia. - 38% of the total number of eBooks consumed on Wattpad are read by English literate readers. - US continues to be the leader in English eBook consumption (70%), followed by UK (14%), Australia (8%) and Canada (7%). These numbers are based on a billion minutes that readers and writers spent on Wattpad during the second quarter. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:42:24 +0100 866407 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/9BT8cBsfmn0/ Given Australia’s geographical position, we’re used to seeing “Made in China” stickers on the backs of everything from TVs to Australian flags. For a while, Korea made a play as our chief supplier of everything, then Japan had a tilt at the title, but China is still king. In fact, China is now the world’s manufacturer. And I, for one, say hooray. During the last month, the promised flood of cheap ereaders and touchscreen tablet computers has begun here. And they haven’t been big brands. I either have reviewed, or am about to review three – the Kogan eReader, the LASER EB-101 multimedia ereader and the Pioneer Computers ePad 7. They are all very different but all have a pedigree that leads straight back to China. All three brands make their devices in the world’s most populous nation, where the labour is a fraction of the price of that in the West, and the economy is ticking along nicely. Tech companies have flooded China with orders in the last decade – remember the recent tragically overworked Foxconn employees in Shenzhen? For years almost all Chinese goods in Australia were rubbish. But times have changed – in China, you now get what you pay for, like anywhere else. Apple can get their high-quality goods made there to the highest standards, and young entrepreneurs like Ruslan Kogan (of the Kogan brand above) can make devices very cheaply, and successfully undercut his competitors. So they have the cheap end of the market well covered, which means a low barrier to entry for tech suppliers, which means volume. (NB: At least one of the devices above is not really up to snuff – you’ll have to read the reviews! – and the build quality of all of them won’t make Stevie Jobs lose sleep.) So is a flood of cheap devices of all creeds and colours good for ebooks? A resounding yes. Certainly in Australia, at this stage of ebooks adoption, I’d say that quantity trumps quality when it comes to both ebooks and ereaders. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:25:27 +0100 866102 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/gQAtbt9WCnU/ Here we go again: Categorize your Kindle books by the Dewey Decimal System Pictures of Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 screens Kindle 2 and 3 under the microscope Used game controversy continues; e-book vendors could stand to learn from Valve (again) by Chris Meadows “If it were my money, there’s no way I’d put up with this cr*p”, says young reader Lessons from tech support: E-books are not necessarily easy by Chris Meadows First AmazonCrossing title released: The King of Kahel Publishers, rejoice! A free e-business plan right here! by Joanna Ebook review by Joanna: Prestwick by David Hough by Joanna Reading in captivity – by Matt Hayler New service to alert you of new books Will product placement ‘Demolish’ e-books? by Chris Meadows View from Down Under: The ebooks and the damage done by Jason Davis Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:06:08 +0100 866108 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/GxqopwFj3L0/ From the Kobo blog, important news for Kobo fans: Great news for all of you that have the Kobo eReading app on your iPhone or iPad – you can now bring in books from other eBook services to your Kobo library! And, for those of you that have an iPhone or iPad and haven’t downloaded the Kobo app, here is just one more reason why you should. What does this mean you ask? We now support the ability to add ePub or PDF books* to your iPhone**, iPad and iPod touch applications. You can add books from other sources such as Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks directly to your bookshelf where they will appear alongside your existing Kobo library. This is another enhancement to enable you to read and enjoy your books using the Kobo service, wherever and however you choose to get them. No need to be confined by the Kobo app and bookstore; Kobo stands behind its promise of open standards letting you explore eReading from many sources. The Kobo app is easy to use and clearly displays your bookshelf so that you can bring in PDFs and ePub files from any source and keep your library organized in one location on your device. Plus, you can customize your reading experience with adjustable font sizes and styles, book mark styles, shelf views and more. The applications also include other great features such as automatic bookmarking, the ability to have multiple bookmarks and night reading – so when you can’t put that great read down you won’t keep your loved one up. * ePubs and PDFs added to Kobo must not be encrypted (non DRM) ** Requires iOS 3.2 and higher Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:23:11 +0100 865823 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/26/listen-to-text-article-text-to-speech-now-available-free-direct-from-ebsco-for-ebscohost-public-and-school-library-databases/ From the Announcement: EBSCO Publishing has added text-to-speech (read aloud) support to EBSCOhost databases, including its major school and public library databases, by embedding Texthelp Systems’ SpeechStream toolbar—a valuable benefit provided at no additional cost to the user. Users will be able to take advantage of this new feature with any full-text articles available in HTML. Text-to-speech support, already featured in EBSCO’s English Language Learner Reference Center, allows users to read along while a human-sounding voice speaks the text on the screen. The support toolbar provides significant assistance to those for whom text-to-speech capabilities are highly valued such as English Language Learners, users with low vision, slight physical and/or learning disabilities, as well as eBook and PDA users. [Clip] Utilizing the text-to-speech feature via the EBSCOhost platform provides many advantages. Users have the ability to read-aloud by selected text, sentence, paragraph, or continuous reading with dual color synchronous highlighting (highlighting of the passage being read with a second color highlighting the specific word being read aloud at that moment). User control of read-aloud personalizes the learning experience for each user. Users can control reading speed as well as select between three different high-quality voices—American, British, or Australian. These options also enable teachers and professionals to incorporate the features as a tool for teaching English and reading. Source: EBSCO Publishing (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:44:34 +0100 865870 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/6NfyxLnb7pI/ From the University of Michigan Press blog: The University of Michigan Press announced today that it launched a new ebook rental program for more than 250 of its scholarly titles, allowing students or faculty to rent digital copies of the books at a discount for a month or six months. “The University of Michigan Press is committed to providing our titles in every format people would like to use, and to keeping readers’ costs down wherever possible,” said Karen Hill, Assistant Director and Digital Manager for the Press. “We expect that the lower rental prices will be a special help for students and faculty who only need a book for a single semester or a single research paper.” Costs will range from 40% of list price for a 30-day rental to 75% of list price for a 180-day rental. For example, a paperback textbook might carry a list price of $22.95; it could be viewed as a rental for $10 for 30 days, or $18 for 180 days. Scholars who rent a book will have the option at the end of the rental period to buy it permanently at an additional charge. Purchased versions include additional interactive features. If customers endorse the program, the Press may make as many as 325 books available by the end of the year. Electronic files purchased from the Press Web site are accessed using Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) free software. ADE files are delivered via download links sent by email, and can be shared across up to six devices registered to the user. ADE is currently available for PC, Mac, and Sony Reader, with more devices to come. To see a list of the titles currently available for rental, visit www.press.umich.edu/ebooks. Thanks to Dan D’Agostino for the link. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:11:23 +0100 865831 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/3M-6SNgJ_jo/ + Kaplan Publishing experiments with free e-books by Chris Meadows via TeleRead That’s right 95 free full text e-books from Kaplan Publishing (The Test Prep Folks) Available Through Monday, August 30, 2010 for iPhone/Pad/Touch). NOTE: YOU MUST ACCESS THE KAPLAN E-Books using the URL http://bit.ly/9×76SL with Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPad, or iTouch.) We just tried it and are now downloading a title. No problems (-: You CANNOT access/download the books via a regular web browser. + Kobo Sends eBooks and eReaders to Canadian Troops in Afghanistan (via Kobo Blog) + The ABCs of E-Reading by Geoffrey A. Fowler And Marie C. Baca, via WSJ A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books. Of those surveyed, 58% said they read about the same as before while 2% said they read less than before. And 55% of the respondents in the May study, paid for by e-reader maker Sony Corp., thought they’d use the device to read even more books in the future. The study looked at owners of three devices: Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, Apple Inc.’s iPad and the Sony Reader. + Working Towards Project Gutenberg’s 50th Year By Mike Cook, Project Gutenberg News + Are E-Books Worth the Money? – Wall Street Journal by Brett Arends via WSJ + 10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books by Tim Carmody via The Atlantic + Random House publishes first-ever ebook original by Paul Biba at TeleRead Via Resource Shelf Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:00:45 +0100 865832 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/zRb-ncyWhiA/ I just had to reprint this comment by Clytie Siddall. The comment was in response to Joanna’s article Publishers, rejoice!: Today I spent some time hunting down in ebook the next few volumes of a series my teenage daughter had started. I’d bought the first volume (The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett) from Fictionwise in the halcyon international e-reading days before geolimitations were imposed. She read it this week, and was happily anticipating the next volume in the series. I found the ebooks at Borders Australia, and bought them. The ensuing conversation: Her: OK, so I just get this from your Bookshelf and open it in eReader. Me: Unfortunately, no. I can’t get it from Fictionwise, and I can’t get it in that format. Her: Why not? Me: That’s a good question. I’ve been looking for the answer for several months now. You know I’ve got a dozen different readers on my iPhone? Her: Yes, but… I thought I wouldn’t have to go through all that cr*p. Me: You and the rest of the reading public. Borders have it in ePub– Her: So I can open it in Stanza! Me: Um, no. Her: Why not? Stanza does ePub. Me: Yes, but these books have DRM. She gives me a disgusted, iTunes-generation look Me: It is doable, sorta. You need to download the desktop reader, and the iPhone reader, and log in to my account at Borders… After half an hour of setup, we’re still waiting for the books to download Her: If it were my money, there’s no way I’d put up with this cr*p. (She gives up and starts playing video games) There you are, publishers: one keen reader and customer of the future. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:26:08 +0100 865835 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/25/e-book-roundup-95-free-e-books-from-kaplan-publishing-details-below-kobo-sendg-revolutions-before-the-e-book/ + Kaplan Publishing experiments with free e-books by Chris Meadows via TeleRead That’s right 95 free full text e-books from Kaplan Publishing (The Test Prep Folks) Available Through Monday, August 30, 2010 for iPhone/Pad/Touch). NOTE: YOU MUST ACCESS THE KAPLAN E-Books using the URL http://bit.ly/9×76SL with Mobile Safari (iPhone, iPad, or iTouch.) We just tried it and are now downloading a title. No problems (-: You CANNOT access/download the books via a regular web browser. + Kobo Sends eBooks and eReaders to Canadian Troops in Afghanistan (via Kobo Blog) + The ABCs of E-Reading by Geoffrey A. Fowler And Marie C. Baca, via WSJ A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books. Of those surveyed, 58% said they read about the same as before while 2% said they read less than before. And 55% of the respondents in the May study, paid for by e-reader maker Sony Corp., thought they’d use the device to read even more books in the future. The study looked at owners of three devices: Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, Apple Inc.’s iPad and the Sony Reader. + Working Towards Project Gutenberg’s 50th Year By Mike Cook, Project Gutenberg News + Are E-Books Worth the Money? – Wall Street Journal by Brett Arends via WSJ + 10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books by Tim Carmody via The Atlantic + Random House publishes first-ever ebook original by Paul Biba at TeleRead (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:26:19 +0100 864850 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/aug/25/amazon-kindle-sellout The new £109 version of its e-reader has been a hit - but Amazon still isn't specifying how much of a hit in actual numbers (updated)Amazon has sold out of its new low-priced Kindle - and says that demand has been higher than ever.According to a press release issued today, "Amazon.com today announced that more new generation Kindles were ordered in the first four weeks of availability than in the same timeframe following any other Kindle launch, making the new Kindles the fastest-selling ever. In addition, in the four weeks since the introduction of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product, continuing Kindle's over two-year run as the bestselling product across all the products sold on Amazon.com. The new Kindles started shipping to customers today - two days earlier than previously announced.""Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon.com for two years running and our new generation Kindles are continuing that momentum," said Steven Kessel, senior vice president, Amazon Kindle. "Readers are excited about all that the new Kindle has to offer - 50% better contrast, 20% faster page turns, 15% lighter, up to one month of battery life - and a new price of only £109."However, Amazon is not saying, and shows no signs of saying, precisely how many Kindles it has sold, or how many the latest sellout means it has sold. Similarly, when it makes proclamations about the number of ebooks "sold", it's surprisingly reticent about explaining whether those "sales" include free downloads. Earlier this year it touted the fact that it had sold more ebooks than hardbacks on the US store over three months - but of course we weren't allowed to know how many hardbacks it had sold, nor ebooks, nor whether they were paid-for ones. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:41:18 +0100 865469 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/griffey/~3/m9QSVSvOtSE/ This morning I got a tweet from Bobbi Newman that said: librarianbyday Can someone explain to me the tech reasons Kindle doesn’t work with library ebooks, know its DRM, want more specific plz & thnx @griffey More than you ever wanted to know about filetypes, DRM, and eBooks…here we go. There are two different things going on when someone tries to open an eBook file on an eReader. One is filetype…how the file itself is organized internally, how the information contained within is encoded. This is analogous to the difference between a Word file saved as a .doc file, a Word file saved as a .docx file, and an Powerpoint file (.ppt). All are different filetypes…the program involved in the creation, editing, and display of those files describes the information contained inside. Right now, there are two main filetypes being used to describe eBook files: the Amazon eBook standard, or .amz file, and the ePub file (.epub) that is used by just about every other eBook vendor. Amazon  purchased Mobipocket (an early ebook vendor/distributor) way back in 2005, and used their format as the basis for their current proprietary .amz filetype. ePub, on the other hand, is an open, XML based eBook standard, and is used by a huge number of eBook vendors…indeed, it’s easily the standard for current ebook publishing. But filetype is only half the battle. In addition to the way the file is organized/structured internally, there is also Digital Rights Management to deal with. Think of DRM on an eBook as a lock, with your eReader having the key to open the lock and display the file. Without the lock, the eReader can’t open the file at all…can’t even see what it is. And if it has the key, but can’t read the filetype, that’s no good either…in that case, you can view the contents of the file, but will have no idea how to render it on the screen properly. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:31:58 +0100 867681 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/snus_v0LFK8/ From Project Gutenberg News: One of our newest projects is to solicit suggestions as to where Project Gutenberg should be in it’s 50th year. The current suggestions are: 1. Make it more obvious that PG wants error messages–how to write them, where to send them, etc. 2. Make it more obvious that PG will send DVD’s so the people who have to pay by the megabyte can use PG. 3. An extensive library of human read audiobooks. 4. Please make it more obvious how to do PG eBooks for Kindle, Sony, nook, and other eReaders. 5. More current books under Creative Commons licenses. More apps for cellphones. A model to encourage new writers to share their work in the same spirit. Showcase how people who used to be on the bad sides of various digital divides enjoyed and benefitted. 6. Please add more bookshelves, particularly one to do eBooks from each country and make sure each one has at least one eBook to show how it can be done. 7. Proofread the Top 100 or so downloaded books to the point where we they approach perfection. As part of the last point above, we are right now looking for volunteers to fine tooth comb the PG eBooks of Alice In Wonderland, Through Looking-Glass & Hunting Of The Snark for errors. So we need as many volunteers as possible to let us know if you would like like to proofread Top Tens. If you have a project you would like to work on then why not send us a note and we’ll see if we can get a team of volunteers to help. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:57:15 +0100 864771 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/25/truce-battle-ebook-rights Agent's plans to issue independent digital editions of books by Random House authors abandonedAuthors including Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis have been welcomed back into the digital embrace of their publisher Random House after controversially declaring that they would sell ebook editions of their work independently.Last month literary agent Andrew Wylie shocked the books world when he announced that he would be selling 20 modern classics – including Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Roth's Portnoy's Complaint – exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle store, bypassing the books' traditional publishers as well as other booksellers. Wylie, through new company Odyssey Editions, wanted his authors to be paid a higher royalty for digital editions of books: the current standard rate is 25% of net receipts, but the Authors Guild estimated that under the Wylie deal they would be receiving up to 63% of the retail price of the book.Random House, which publishes 13 of the books in physical format, was outraged at the development and promptly issued a statement announcing that it would not enter any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency – home to 700 authors and estates – until the situation was resolved. It claimed the titles were "subject to active Random House publishing agreements". Agents and authors, on the other hand, have argued that if digital rights were not specifically granted to a publisher, they remain with the author.Yesterday Random House appeared to have got its way. A joint statement issued by the publisher and the Wylie Agency said the two parties had "resolved [their] differences", and that the 13 "disputed" Random House titles – which also include Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, VS Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival and books by John Updike and Orhan Pamuk – were being removed from Odyssey Editions and taken off sale. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:52:16 +0100 865454 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/AdYAi6j2nGA/university-of-michigan-press-launches.html The University of Michigan Press has announced that it launched a new ebook rental program for more than 250 of its scholarly titles, allowing students or faculty to rent digital copies of the books at a discount for a month or six months (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:46:31 +0100 865680 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/qeVMeUdWVqc/ Today’s links of interest: RH and Wylie Come to Terms; Random ‘Wins’Always worry about headlines that include wins. In this case, one wonders how much it cost Random House to win (presumably higher royalties than they’d been willing to give, possibly some sort of cash consideration). And one wonders how this impacts those who previously purchased the books. Will they be allowed to keep them? Will there be a transfer of publisher, making it invisible to the consumer. And, of course, one wonders which books were impacted by this deal. Nook Drives 21% Increase in Revenue for Barnes NobleBarnes and Noble also claiming an overall 20% of entire ebook market. Good to see their digital numbers exceeding expectations. (Source: Booksquare) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:15:05 +0100 864898 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/7fU3a5CCDzc/sixth-annual-summer-of-code-flexes-some.html Our sixth annual Google Summer of Code program has wrapped up and we want to highlight some of this year’s amazing participants and projects. Summer of Code offers students developers all over the world the chance to get paid to write code for open source projects as an alternative to a summer job.Kicked off in 2005, the Summer of Code has brought together more than 3,400 students with more than 200 open source projects from all over the world to create millions of lines of code. We work with several open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects through three months of coding.There was some really awesome work done by more than 1,000 students from 69 countries in this year’s Summer of Code. Of those students, 6.5 percent were women representing 23 countries—six times higher than the estimated proportion of women in the open source community. Here are just a few of the women:25 reference manuals in her purse Ann Marie Horcher, an information systems security Ph.D. candidate at Nova Southeastern University was mentored by Docbook.org. Ann Marie worked over the summer to create an application that transformed a docbook file to epub format used in ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Noble Nook and the iPad. As a result of Ann Marie’s project, it’s now easier to move technical documentation to a portable format so she “can carry my 25 reference manuals for my project with me in my purse.” And now, so can everyone else.Check out Ann Marie’s YouTube video illustrating her work and its results here.Geophylogenies now displayed on Google EarthKathryn Iverson, a University of Michigan bioinformatics graduate student was mentored by National Evolutionary Biology Synthesis Center and wrote a library implemented in Java with KML to build geophylogenies—geographical evolutionary histories of organisms. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866216 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/griffey/~3/O0QRPLZikYg/ Here’s a video of me demoing The Elements ebook on the iPad at the Texas Library Association conference this past summer. Was just a quick tech demo of how things like The Elements will change our concept of a “book” in new ways because of the technological possibilities of these new platforms. (Source: Pattern Recognition) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:46:35 +0100 867682 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/24/ap-exclusive-e-book-deal-with-amazon-is-called-off/ From the AP (via Crain’s NY Business): An exclusive e-book deal between Amazon.com and the agent for such classics as “Invisible Man” is no longer exclusive, and no longer a deal. Random House Inc. and the Wylie Agency announced Tuesday that “Invisible Man,” ”Rabbit Is Rich” and more than a dozen other works were being “removed” from a program brokered between Wylie and Amazon that offered them as e-books available only through the online retailer. Instead, Random House, which had claimed electronic rights, will publish the books on a “non-exclusive basis.” The original deal had enraged publishers and rival booksellers and led to Random House suspending business with Wylie. From Publisher’s Weekly: A Joint Statement From the Wylie Agency and Random House “We are pleased to announce that The Wylie Agency and Random House have resolved our differences over the disputed Random House titles which have been included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program. These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House U.S. controls their rights. The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House’s current e-book customers. Random House is resuming normal business relations with the Wylie Agency for English-language manuscript submissions and potential acquisitions, and we both are glad to be able to put this matter behind us.” From the ResourceShelf Archive: + A Complete Client List from The Wylie Agency + From NPR: In E-Publishing Revolution, Rights Battle Wears On + eBook News: Wylie/Amazon + Amazon. ... Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:51:12 +0100 864862 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrarylawBlog/~3/k4vVVGZ-_b8/libraries-and-ebooks-legal-issues-query.html I'm preparing a talk on the legal issues concerning libraries and ebooks.  If any readers can help me find any modified licenses that libraries have negotiated with ebook device sellers or ebook sellers, please let me know.  And if you have any specific legal questions, send them to me so that I can use them to help me prepare my talk. THANKS. (Source: LibraryLaw Blog) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:58:11 +0100 865844 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/Mm_rXb36YGg/ … you can skip this post if you are here for the library tech. This one fits in the “balancing and being mum” bit of the blog tagline. I’m insanely proud of my family this week. BROADBAND INNOVATION AWARD My husband, Stewart, was instrumental in developing  the software for discerning unusual patterns in video surveillance footage for the Icetana company, which grew out of his research group at Curtin University. Last week the company pitched to over 400+ potential investors, mentors, entrepreneurs and customers at the Tech 23 event in Sydney – and won $25 000 from the New South Wales Government for the “Broadband Innovation Award”. (Of course, I can bring librarianship into this one – check out another one of the finalists – readcloud , which claims to be “the world’s first social ereading software”. It uses the ebook itself as the platform for social discussion about the book’s content. This Australian firm is not to be confused with Copia, which claims to be “the first social eReading experience designed so you can discover, connect and share what’s meaningful” – but they do this by integrating a website and a their own ereading device ) LEGO Then today my Mr12 came second in his school’s Lego club “Science Fiction City” building competition. He instigated the group last year and it has been a source of many, many hours of joy for him and his mates at lunch times. The support teachers are in on the act and buy ridiculously attractive large Lego sets as prizes that whip the kids up into a frenzy of creativity. Mr12 let on that they have a “Greenhill Award” in the club for each term’s competition – for whoever “shows spirit and never gives up”. ... Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:01:24 +0100 866139 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/OS6KwW1KR2E/ …well, that was the advertising for the event on Wednesday…. I have updated and very much expanded my presentation about ebooks. This was for a Professional Development session for the Association of Independent Schools in Western Australia at  Hale School. The slideset, handout and a movie of me delivering it are embedded below. If you want to find some great practical tips about useful sites and applications from a voracious Australian ebook reader please check out the comment from Clytie on my previous post. She has been incredibly generous with her time by writing a very comprehensive comment that would be and excellent blog post in itself. In answer to your question about ebooks in Australian libraries, Clytie, I recently tried to make a comprehensive list over at librariesinteract.info: Ebooks for loan in Australian public libraries – who’s doing it? Topics covered in the presentation are: History Print vs audio vs ebook Reading devices Platforms and software Formats Content Ebooks in libraries Pushing it – ebooks beyond 2D text Here is the slideset: Ebooks in Australia View more presentations from sirexkat. Here is the handout (saved as a document at slideshare, which gives it clickable links in the embed below – novel!) Ebooks in Australia Handout View more documents from sirexkat. Movie: ebooks in Australia (Source: Librarians matter) Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:19:57 +0100 866140 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Librarianinblack/~3/FE_H5_X34LA/lib-recommends-%e2%80%93-2010-08-18.html Is the Android sticker on my MacBook ironic? http://tweetphoto.com/39846912 Brilliant! RT @sxseventy Today I have invented the sarcasterisk*. It’s for typed sarcasm. Example: Sure, that sounds like a fantastic* idea. My first sarcasterisk* sarcasm: “Oh yes, library eBooks have very flexible* use policies & are easy* to download.” Ta-da! Ebook Summit Preview: At the Tipping Point http://bit.ly/9L9X9k If we believe this we must press library eBook licensing NOW. Via @ALA_TechSource: How Libraries Ensure Ongoing Freedom http://bit.ly/cYrTuX Niiiiiice! Bash that info overload! “Email Sucks. 5 Time Saving Tips” direct (via @kevinrose): http://bit.ly/a0p1aP Attention library geeks, nerds & dork! Check out the “Geek the Library” campaign – http://www.geekthelibrary.org/ More free eBooks! From @mashable: 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers – http://mash.to/2rlVw Worth a read. The M Word – Free Ebook on Social Media Marketing (via @DigiLibraryBlog @ALALibrary @scstatelibrary): http://ow.ly/2qMHx A good recommendation from @s_francoeur If you miss the EtherPad service that allowed massive real-time document collaboration, try Sync.in. From @PierreTran: 50 Open Source Replacements for Really Expensive Software | Datamation http://bit.ly/cJb8g3 #opensource http://bit.ly/b4tiuG Libraries could totally use this on self checks & kiosks! Miracle Film Turns Any Surface into a Touchscreen (@mashable) http://mash.to/2r39d from @loriayre: New RFID stndrd uses ISIL codes 4 lib locations. US would have 2 use OCLC. Can nonmembers get codes? http://icio.us/5xykgb 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web – http://mash.to/2qVaI From @davidleeking: New blog post: Twitter Search Engines http://bit.ly/aFGrbB 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web (from @mashable) – http://mash. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:25:10 +0100 866668 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheUbiquitousLibrarian/~3/OZuyBRiG96U/i-read-my-first-ebook-all-the-way-through.html I read my first ebook from start to finish. Sure, I’ve dabbled with ebooks before, I’ve even bought a few for my iPhone, but a few weeks ago I read one cover to cover over one weekend. Granted the book was awesome (Source: The Ubiquitous Librarian) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866121 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/18/five-laws-of-library-science-ebook-edition.html Andy Woodworth has printed an update of Ranganathan’s Five Laws, only how they relate to Ebooks: Five Laws of Library Science (Ebook edition) Ebooks are for use. Every reader his or her ebook. Every book, any ereader. Save the time of the ereader patron. The library is an evolving organism. See Andy’s post for his full details, but these are a great reminder that the more things change, the more we have to remember our fundamental principles. found via LisNews (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:55:42 +0100 867177 http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/2010/08/18/ereaders-changing-library-models/ So I got in conversation on Twitter last with David Lee King and Jason Griffey about ereaders and libraries. My main point of interest today was ereaders and reserve materials and how we could make it easy for students to get reserve materials to their ereader. DLK chimed in and said ILL materials would be good to think about as well since they too are often scanned. Griffey point out that to get epub format which is the nicest thing to have for ereaders one needs to OCR what is scanned. This isn’t the current practice in libraries so scanned materials would be PDF which isn’t ideal because one can’t resize and reformat on ones reader as easily. For my part, I’d like to see it dead easy for student to get their ILL and reserves. As easy as it is for me to get new books. Meaning if at all possible I don’t need to play games of hook my device up to my computer and load things. Cause maybe my ereader is the only thing I carry around with me. Sitting Tweeting Griffey and DLK I remember seeing something about students and Nooks on the Barnes and Noble site. It took a minute to find NOOKStudy, which looks like a cross between an ereader application and course management software. There are some very interesting and appealing thing about it. Particularly in the vein of going where your users are. Digging through the website several possible opportunities for libraries jumped out at me. Particular the Research Online functionality which is highlight seems like an ideal opportunity for libraries to provide content to users. I could definitely seen how one could integrate the WorldCat Search API into this or even just WorldCat.org. Being able to integrate with library resources and add library material to this would be really cool. Not long after my conversation the new issue of Library Journal came out with a series of articles on ebooks and libraries from Jason, Eric Hellman, Barbara Fister, and Char Booth. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:08:55 +0100 866371 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BookfindercomJournal/~3/g4WOTkTv5E8/how-to-sign-an-ebook.html Not one week after my post about signing eBooks I see this on the Baltimore Sun Read Street blog... (Source: BookFinder.com Journal) Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867750 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/griffey/~3/JO7KGNJauFI/ I just had a brief piece published over at Library Journal entitled Ebook Sanity. It was something that just poured out of my head unchecked one day, and I was lucky enough to find a home for it as a part of the build up to the upcoming Library Journal Ebook Summit. Here’s a very short teaser: …consider the idea that the First Sale principle doesn’t apply to ebooks and other digital content. Maybe this is the fact: information in the digital age is such a different beast than in the print age that we not only shouldn’t draw analogies but we actually can’t. I hope that you head over and read it. Also take a look at the other excellent essays linked off the side from Eric Hellman, Barbara Fister, and Char Booth (holy hell how did I end up in a set with those people? I’m so not worthy). I would love to hear any thoughts you might have on the topic…I’m still forming my conclusions around some of these issues. How do you think libraries can and should react to ebooks? (Source: Pattern Recognition) Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:37:18 +0100 867684 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/5KBg2k9P0TI/ Today’s links of interest: Ebook SanityInteresting look at ebooks from the perspective of a librarian. (Source: Booksquare) Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:15:06 +0100 864902 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/zcGn/~3/uPqBMYNDLO8/ebook-on-social-media-marketing-is-free.html A resource center called Go-To-Market Strategies is offering a free ebook download of a title called "Social Media Marketing GPS." To get the download, you need to register your name & contact info (and they hope you'll sign up to get their other email alerts).  The email described the ebook like this:  Forty prominent marketers from Canada, England, India and the United States were interviewed on Twitter. The focus was on how to leverage social media, not in terms of the technology, but as a vehicle to build and nurture stronger business relationships. Each tweet included the hash tag #smgps.What developed was the first business book of interviews written on Twitter by the people who were working in the space. Twitter became both a content platform and a distribution channel. I haven't downloaded or read this, but I have gotten other titles from this company, TradePub.com. It isn't geared toward libraries, but I think it's valuable to use business info that comes from outside our field. So if you're into social media, you might find this useful. The form to complete to qualify for the free download is here. Note the questions that TradePub.com asks before it gives you the "free" book--this is how the book's sponsor builds its own database of people who are interested in this topic. (In tiny type at the bottom of the page is a link to the Privacy Policy.) So be sure to cull your free lesson in mailing-list marketing from this organization as it takes your info for its own purposes. Make it a two-way street. The M Word Blog teaches your library and non-profit tips, tricks and trends of the marketing trade. (Source: The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries) Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866127 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/H9WmcD1eviQ/ Are you Australian and want to read Tim Winton or John Marsden or Peter Carey using Kindle reader? Dream on. Last night I had a friend in the US take a screenshot of the Amazon.com Kindle Books Store at the same time as I took a screenshot in Australia. I wanted to compare the number of items available to people in the US with the number of items available to people in Australia. I created a set of screenshots at Flickr , Kindle Store: Australia vs USA if you want to see the screenshots below more clearly. In Australia – you have access to 129, 393 works. But look at the New Releases – 3901 in the last 60 days. In the USA, you have access to 197, 947 works … but  6361 New Releases in the last 60 days. This means that while Australians have access to only aboout 65% of the Kindle ebook stock available to people in the US, when you look at recently published items, that drops to about 61%. When I logged out of Amazon.com, I noticed that the sidebar now let me change my country or region (at the top right hand side). I did a few comparative searches. Tim Winton – no ebooks available in Australia, 4 ebooks available from the US. Peter Carey? One ebook for Australians (The Tax Inspector) with about 10 US ebooks. Can someone please explain to me how these restrictions on getting Australian content in Australia helps Australian writers, readers or publishers? I’m a little slow at understanding how. My favourite, though was with Australian Young Adult writer, John Marsden. 8 results for readers in the US. If you are a teen in Australia searching for your favourite author? You get this: (Source: Librarians matter) Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:51:01 +0100 866141 http://poesygalore.blogspot.com/2010/08/mockingjay-instantly.html I asked for and received a Nook for my birthday, in large part because the library system I work for started offering ebooks for dedicated devices last month and I'm increasingly feeling the need (and desire) to have a hands-on familiarity with the formats we offer and the devices they work with so I can explain the ins and outs to patrons (Whew). I hadn't yet felt the need for a dedicated ereader for purely personal use--I have an iPod Touch and find reading ebooks on it comfortable enough.When I mention the Nook the others, the first question I get is, "Why not a Kindle?" Two main reasons: one, the library's ebooks--most libraries' ebooks--all libraries' ebooks?--aren't compatible with the Kindle. Amazon has chosen to make a device incompatible with ePub, the most popular--and closest thing to an early "universal"--ebook format. This is tough at work, when eager new Kindle owners come up to the information desk asking how to check out library ebooks to read on their Kindles. We post a list of compatible devices, but most folks don't check that before purchasing an ereader (and many have received Kindles as gifts). Amazon has made the Kindle a pretty inconvenient and unfortunate device for most libraries (though some libraries actually purchase Kindles to loan out), at least for the time being. It doesn't endear me to the Kindle--though I have no problems with the device itself. More importantly, I still haven't been able to get over Amazon's handling of last summer's Orwell fiasco. I have no idea if Barnes & Noble would've handled it better; I just know how Amazon handled it. Terribly.I'm not sure how long the dedicated ereader will last (as opposed to a device like the iPad). The Nook takes a while to start up (a minute or so), and a second or so to load a new page at every page turn. ... Sat, 14 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866258 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/7Gi1DdtCqlA/ It thrills me that the book community is actively participating in the South by Southwest Interactive festival. For some, it’s an opportunity to explore the latest and greatest in technologies and trends; for others, it’s a chance to discover how others fit into the publishing ecosystem; and, for all, it’s a chance to connect with a wider community, expanding points of view. Not only is the bookish world attending SXSWi, but they are also actively participating as speakers. Which means, yes, once again I bring you a listing of book-related panels with brief descriptions. Part of the panel selection process is a bit of a popularity contest, and your vote for these panels helps get book programming on the schedule. Check out the panels, take a moment to go through the (painless) registration process, then please vote. My panels, ahem, are listed first, and every vote is appreciated by me and each of the great people who put together great proposals! (And if I’ve missed something, shout out in the comments, please!) Note: I’ve shortened some of the descriptions. Click through for full descriptions and comments on proposals. 21st Century Publishing Models: Turning Tradition Upside-Down: This panel features me, Angela James of Carina Press, Pablo Defendini of Open Road Media, and Kirk Biglione of Oxford Media Works. It will be awesome. New publishers are building thriving businesses with digital first/print maybe and books-as-apps approaches. With industry giants crowding the bestseller lists and the number of titles published each year growing, how do these independent digital publishers compete in the book marketplace? Veterans of this constantly evolving business model explain how they are building twenty-first century publishing houses, combining the strengths of traditional publishing with cutting-edge technology. Beyond the Book: New Publishing Models That Work: Simon St. Laurent, O’Reilly Media. ... Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:30:37 +0100 864903 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Librarianinblack/~3/nIGczx2tZBA/lib-sites-and-sources-2010-08-11.html Should libraries loan eBook readers? West Vancouver Public Library is loaning Kindles, a reader that doesn’t work w/ library eBooks.  I say no way.  We’re making ourselves obsolete by subscribing to media with DRM restrictions, platform restrictions, and format restrictions that will ultimately kill the library as a materials lender: http://bit.ly/96OT4Y # Building a Stylish Blog #Design Layout in #WordPress http://ow.ly/2n1MG (from @line25, via @sixrevisions) From @mosio: Texting generation doesn’t share boomers’ taste for talk – http://bit.ly/blCbcW Women Who Tech TeleSummit http://bit.ly/9HYbhz (via @librarianbyday) #biblioteca Engineers @ Google Books blog claim they have calculated the total number of books in the world (via @ALA_TechSource) – http://n.pr/b0BQr9 Project Gutenberg eBooks available on Boston Public Library’s ‘Virtual Branch (via @DigiLibraryBlog) http://goo.gl/fb/hsJRc #libraries Win7 Tablet -VS- iPad! [VIDEO] (via @notpatrick) – http://bit.ly/bzG2Qi From @brainpicker: Why metadata matters for future of ebooks – excellent Wired article (via @charbooth) – http://is.gd/eaTYI # 19 tips for effective online conferences (via @ALA_TechSource): http://bit.ly/aBoXmN SJPL Digital Futures Department staff the esteemed John Blyberg @ San Jose’s Vegetarian House. http://twitpic.com/2divml Powered by Twitter Tools (Source: LibrarianInBlack) Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:10:00 +0100 866674 http://wulibraries.typepad.com/bionews/2010/08/new-wiley-and-springer-sites.html Wiley and Springer both brought up new web sites for their ejournal and ebooks recently. The new Springer interface has been available as their Beta site for several months. On the new platform you will find: Related documents for every article or eBook chapter; this is nice but only leads you to related documents within the Springer universe PDF Preview for eBook chapters. Note: I find this especially useful in when browsing in collections we do not subscribe to because you can see several pages of each chapter online even though we do not have full access to the book. Then, if needed, you can search the catalog or Mobius to find out if we have the book available. The ebook collections which we do have, 2005+, are Biomedical & Life Sciences, Medicine, Computer Science, and Mathematics & Statistics. Enhanced browsing features. Note: use the TOOLS menu if you would prefer to turn off Access Indicators or search-term Highlighting. View abstracts without leaving search results Improved search functionality - including searching by citation Easy filters for Online First and Open Access articles Wiley Online Library is also more than just a new "look." More info about Features and Benefits. My favorite feature so far is that it is much easier to see when access is freely available or accessible (due to WU-license). I have noticed several links on subject pages that need repair, particularly Wiley links, but the links from the library online catalogs and EJournals Holdings list seem to be up-to-date. If you have bookmarks or RSS feeds to Wiley or Springer tables of contents alerts or new book alerts, you may need to update your links. Please let me know when you have access problems or when you note other new features. I really appreciate your reports. (Source: Biology Library News) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866609 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/xMoxVy9ZkS4/ I love local book stores and libraries. Browsing, pulling books from shelves, taking my choice home with me then and there… But sometimes at 11pm I just want to order an obscure print title or technical book and have it delivered. The convenience of not having to find time for a physical visit  is worth paying for some days.  Sometimes I want to consume a book as an *experience* rather than as an object. If  it is not available as an ebook, then I want it delivered as soon as possible.  As an aside, I think that both libraries and bookshops will need to very quickly come to terms with this “experience vs artifact” desire – a point made very well by Emily Lloyd in ShelfCheck 423B By poesygalore | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon Last year I mentioned to my friends  Penny and Con that I might try not to rely on local bookstores when buying books for the library, but instead order solely online and have them delivered. Suddenly they were excited and yelling – “Booko, Booko, try Booko”. Just last week one of the students in my classes was recommending Booko to his classmates as a way to get cheaper text books, so I suspect that there are still some library folk who do not know about this tool. Dan Milne was sick of trying to work out the best prices for online books – especially when one took into consideration the exchange rate and the cost of shipping. That’s how Booko came about. Plug in details of the book you want and it dashes off to search several local and overseas shops to calculate the cheapest one.  Dan now gets a small “referrer fee” when one purchases an item as a result  of a link from Booko – but he doesn’t let it affect the search. ... Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:13:21 +0100 866142 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/KK5ujeQvuzM/nylink-donna-dixon-moving-to-suny-press.html Donna Dixon: New Co-Director at SUNY Press Donna Dixon (Director of the Member Programs Team) will be transferring from Nylink to SUNY Press where she will be Co-Director along with James Peltz, who is currently an executive acquisitions editor at the Press.  This new role will be a great opportunity for Donna to broaden her experience to include the university press arena.  At the same time, she will bring a wealth of knowledge regarding publishers and information providers in her dealings with such organizations while at Nylink.  Her work at SUNY Press will include contract and financial management duties as well as other tasks as required. We will miss Donna’s experience and positive approach to challenging issues.  While she will be moving into this new role immediately, she will be “just across the hall” now that SUNY Press is relocated to Corporate Woods.  We wish her the very best and expect to stay in touch on a regular basis. Dealing with Information Overload with the Librarian in Black September 22, 2010: 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Overwhelmed by your RSS feed, email and social networks? Learn how to dig yourself out of the information pile! Join us for a webinar that will give you skills and techniques to deal with your ever growing pile of things to read, do, store and tweet. About the Instructor: Sarah Houghton-Jan is the Digital Futures Manager for the San José Public Library in the heart of the Silicon Valley. She is also the author of the blog LibrarianInBlack.net.  Sarah was named a 2009 Library Journal Mover & Shaker as a Trendspotter.  She trains and consults for libraries all over the world about issues of library and technology.  Her book, Technology Training in Libraries, was published in 2010. For more information about this webinar, or to register, see our website at http://www.nylink.org/education/LIBInfoOverload.cfm. ... Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:43:00 +0100 864880 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/J0zBe9hQkIM/idsconf10-making-smart-choices-data.html August 3, 2010 -- Tuesday Session #3 (2:50 pm - 3:40 pm) • Making Smart Choices: Data Driven Decision Making in Academic Libraries (Joint Session: Collection Development and Administrators) Though librarians are swamped with data from hundreds of sources, most of us have little time to gather that information, and even less time to think about what those numbers mean. This is unfortunate, because these data can often tell us a tremendous amount about how our students and faculty use our libraries and what they think about libraries and library collections. Just a little bit of time with these data can force us to rethink how we run our libraries. This session will explore some of the ways in which we can use data to change the way we build collections to better serve our users. Tweet From Now in the Auditorium: Michael Levine-Clark returns for Making Smart Choices: Data-Driven Decision Making in Academic Libraries #idsconf10 oodja Three case studies:  1.  Could a library buy used books instead of new?  #idsconf10 oodja could a library buy used  books instead of new? research question 10 years ago...  #idsconf10 cyriloberlander I'm pretty sure that Michael Levine-Clark is my new Library God #idsconf10 librarianross Used copies of in-print academic books-Choice (11 listings per title, avg discount 26%), NYT Notable Books (32 lpt, avg disc 34%) #idsconf10 oodja Conclusions:  Most recent books were available user/discounted #idsconf10 oodja NY times notable books used for analysis - 320 titles, 34% average discount, most listed at 11 sites. #idsconf10 cyriloberlander RT @oodja: The ideal model- user-driven purchases + special collection development #idsconf10 kepitcher Huge discounts may still not balance out savings of vendor approval plans, but definitely do for firm orders #idsconf10 oodja Case study #2:  What do users really think about ebooks?  #idsconf10 oodja At U. ... Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:25:00 +0100 864888 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/05/springer-and-t-m-c-asser-press-sign-agreement-on-ebook-law-book-program/ From the press release: Springer and T.M.C. Asser Press, a prominent Dutch specialist publisher for international law, have signed an exclusive agreement on their future collaboration. Under the agreement, Springer is to handle the marketing and distribution of T.M.C. Asser Press’s English language book program. Asser will continue to be responsible for its program planning and title development with its authors. The agreement also provides a framework for Springer handling the production of the 35 Asser Press English-language titles annually and its backlist. They will all continue to be branded as T.M.C. Asser Press titles. Marketing and distribution for the book portfolio were previously handled by Cambridge University Press. The first titles will arrive at Springer for production in August 2010. Springer will publish all new T.M.C Asser Press titles on its online platform www.springerlink.com, marketing them worldwide with its existing eBook packages as well as producing the books in print-to-order (PTO) format. The metadata for the individual titles, such as ISBN, title and author, allow them to be clearly identified as T.M.C. Asser Press titles and hence quickly to be located on the Springer website. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:09:24 +0100 864726 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/05/use-dropbox-as-a-cloud-bookshelf-for-stanza-by-piotr-kowalczyk/ By now Stanza is the most robust e-reading application for iOS. It’s packed with features other apps, like Kindle or iBooks are missing. However it has one big disadvantage: no cloud-based bookshelf. The application is associated to a device not an account. There is no way to sync books and bookmarks like in Kindle. It’s fine when you have one device. Things get complicated to those iPhone or iPod Touch users who are buying iPads. They realize that to read books they collected in Stanza, they need to download them again. There are a few ways to transfer books to Stanza. I’d like to add to the list a simple solution, which gives at least part of cloud bookshelf functionality. It’s Dropbox (AppStore link), an application available for both iPhone and iPad. Sure, no sync is possible, but at least you can manage you book library from a single place. [Note: It is also possible to put one's Calibre library on Dropbox in a form that Stanza can access ---C.M.] This is possible with a recent update of Dropbox. You are able to export documents to other apps, even those ones which can’t be opened by Dropbox itself – like ePub. Please note in the screenshots below, that ePub files can be opened only by Stanza, and pdf files – by Stanza and iBooks. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:00:16 +0100 864727 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/05/metadata-not-ebooks-can-save-publishing/ Here’s another one from Tools of Change. It’s an important subject and I hear over and over at seminars, and read over and over in articles, that publishers are not paying enough attention to the interrelationship between metadata and digital publishing. This is from an article by Nick Ruffilo: Why won’t ebooks save publishing? E-books represent a format, just like hardcovers and paperbacks. Because they are a different format, they require different pricing. Things that are consumed and priced differently do open themselves up to a new market but unless that new consumption method is revolutionary, the growth (new readers) to the market cannot be large. E-readers will never be purchased by non-readers in the hopes of becoming readers (until they reach an extremely cheap price-point). The iPad is one such device that can create new readers. Its conceivable that someone who would buy an iPad and is not a book buyer, but because they can do so while sitting in their La-Z-Boy, will buy a book. If they like that book, they may even buy another. Ok. Now re-read that last statement. “If they like that book, they may even buy another.” If they don’t like the book, their sentiment of “this is why I don’t buy books” will be solidified. Another non-book-buyer remains a non-book-buyer. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:40:07 +0100 864729 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/05/survey-consumer-attitudes-to-ebook-reading/ Kat Meyer has an article over at Tools of Change about the Book Industry Study Group’s latest consumer ebook survey. Here’s a couple of items. A lot more at the site: # Right now Kindle holds the top spot for devices @ 40% – just passed the PC/laptop in the last survey @39% # Almost all PC / Laptop are .pdf still # Nearly half (49%) of ereading devices continue to be acquired as a gift from someone else # Cost of entry is still the top reason people who read ebooks have not switched to a device. # Among ebook buyer, print is definitely losing ground – nearly 50% of ebook readers now say they are buying exclusively or almost exclusively ebooks/ 49% indicate they either MOSTLY or Exclusively purchase ebooks Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:33:33 +0100 864730 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Eastman39s_Online_Genealogy_Newsletter_COSLA_eBook_Feasibility_--- Libraries everywhere are struggling as the world switches from printed books and magazines to e-publishing. Where do libraries fit into this brave n (Source: pligg - all) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:00:27 +0100 864713 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=eBook_Use_in_Libraries_Survey_and_Summit Speaking of ebooks, do you use them in your library? And wouldn't you like to know how widespread their use is in libraries?LJ/SLJ is taking a (Source: pligg - all) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:00:18 +0100 864715 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/04/a-couple-of-epub-items-including-a-primer-on-the-e-book-format-and-the-official-epub-logo/ EPUB Format For Papers in Repositories by: Brian Kelly From the Article: If we wish to maximise the take-up of our repositories whilst minimising the effort in processing the files it seems to me that we should explore ways of creating derivative versions from the master source. So rather than uploading a PDF shouldn’t we be uploading the master file and creating a PDF automatically form this resource? And rather than creating an EPUB file, as I have done, shouldn’t the repository software create the EPub file from a HTML version of the file? And whilst I acknowledge that authors may not wish to make their original document (in, say MS Word or Open Office format) available to others and would regard the interoperability aspects of PDF as a feature rather than a flaw there should be nothing to stop the master file being stored in the repository but not openly accessible. Source: UK Web Focus Hat Tip and Thanks: Peter Suber + EPub Primer: Everything You Need to Know And More EPUB is a free and open standard developed by a third-party, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). These devices joined a growing list of eReaders that can read the format, and hundreds of libraries and independent bookstores now offer eBooks that aren’t restricted to a single device. Source: Laptop Magazine Hat Tip and Thanks: TeleRead + The Official EPUB Logo Congratulations to Ralph Burkhardt from Stuttgart Germany who submitted the winning design. Ralph Burkhardt, born in 1980, studied graphic design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd. Since 2010, he runs his own visual communications studio in Stuttgart together with a partner, named burkhardthauke – büro für gestaltung. He also gained recognition as a book author for the famous publisher Hermann Schmidt Mainz. He worked for agencies like Jung von matt and buero uebele and was responsible for clients such as: Mercedes-Benz, Wella, Bree and several cultural institutions. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:53:27 +0100 864671 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/lslVn7VeiH4/ According to an interview in Blackbook, Lonely Planet is launching a new series of interactive travel ebooks. The digital format will allow them to include hyperlinks within the book and to external websites. For example, POIs will include hyperlinked website addresses. Places can be bookmarked and terms can be searched in Google or Wikipedia. The new Discover series is meant to be viewed on the iPad initially and they are looking to get it on the iPhone. Five ebooks are available: Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy and France with more titles on the way. As new Discover titles are issued in print they intend to release them in ebook format as well. Much more info in the article. Thanks to eBookNewser for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:53:29 +0100 864664 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/04/lonely-planet-launches-interactive-ebook-travel-guides/ According to an interview in Blackbook, Lonely Planet is launching a new series of interactive travel ebooks. The digital format will allow them to include hyperlinks within the book and to external websites. For example, POIs will include hyperlinked website addresses. Places can be bookmarked and terms can be searched in Google or Wikipedia. The new Discover series is meant to be viewed on the iPad initially and they are looking to get it on the iPhone. Five ebooks are available: Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy and France with more titles on the way. As new Discover titles are issued in print they intend to release them in ebook format as well. Much more info in the article. Thanks to eBookNewser for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:53:29 +0100 864733 http://lisnews.org/ebook_use_libraries_survey_and_summit Speaking of ebooks, do you use them in your library? And wouldn't you like to know how widespread their use is in libraries? LJ/SLJ is taking a survey and wants your participation. It is designed to measure current and projected ebook availability in libraries, user preferences in terms of access and subjects, and library purchasing terms and influences. This survey is open to all types of libraries, and high level results will presented during LJ/SLJ's first ever virtual summit, ebooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point to be held on September 29, 2010. Detailed results will also be reported in LJ and SLJ later in the fall. Prizes...including an iPad for one lucky sucker...for your participation! Start here. Contest ends September 3. (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:16:38 +0100 864545 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/kszSP2VIwZo/seize-and-solve-this-challenge.html Most professional challenges encompass both a problem to be solved and an opportunity to be seized.  One of the current central challenges of our profession, it seems to me, involves ensuring that libraries become viable and valuable in the burgeoning portable eReading field.  How can libraries compete with the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Sony, and Barnes & Noble?  COSLA, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, recently released a report that addresses this crucial challenge.  Our mission, should we choose to accept it, can be stated bluntly:  If convenient, enriching portable eReading becomes about half of all reading for pleasure within the next few years, as most experts now are predicting, how can public libraries become integral to the portable eReading experience?  The report, “COSLA: eBook Feasibility Study for Public Libraries,” involved a working team of several state library directors, including Stacey Aldrich from California, Jo Budler from Kansas, Rob Maier from Massachusetts, and Jim Scheppke from Oregon, and staff members from Pinpoint Logic, a design strategy and research firm based in Portland, Oregon.  (Full Disclosure: I did a little bit of work on this study and was remunerated for doing so.)   Eva Miller from PinPoint Logic conducted most of the interviews with library, publishing, and information technology leaders and wrote most of the final report.  Way to go, Eva.  The work of the task force always focused on worthwhile action, noting that “COSLA members wanted to arm themselves for action, instead of waiting to see how commercial forces would impact popular reading materials and the public library's central role in providing them.”  In the beginning, the task force seriously considered having a portable reading device manufactured specifically for public library users utilizing the library lending model. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:08:37 +0100 867919 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/j556YM0Rq0Y/ A while back I was talking to an Australian who has been in the book publishing biz since Adam was on a skateboard. We were talking about other stuff, and I was bemoaning how it was that one industry (book publishing) didn’t learn from the recent mistakes of a similar industry (music publishing). Off the record (that’s why he doesn’t get a name here) he told me: “Truth is, I know the major publishers in this country saw the ebook writing on the wall, but they’ve done everything they can to stave off the change. They knew it would come but they figured if they could hold it off for a few extra years, they could bank these massive profits off $30 paperbacks, which would bankroll the costs involved in swapping over to ebooks.” Just stop and have a think about that. Keep in mind that this person is a straight-shooter and had nothing to gain my making this up.I believe this – not only because I’ve watched the moves (of lack thereof) of the local book industry over the last decade, and they fit. I also believe it because the person who said this clearly believed it, and he/she should know. He/she knows Australian publishing backwards, forwards, and from multiple angles. Lobbying the government to maintain protectionist legislation, setting prices WAY higher than overseas vendors citing higher freight and other costs, scaremongering about change and the demise of the industry’s ability to “foster local talent” (without doing a hellava lot of, um, fostering local talent). Blind Freddy could see that many – not all – Australian booksellers thought this way. But to have it spelled out to me as a strategic decision that many major publishers have taken, at the expense of the reading public (it has been demonstrated that at least some of whom, if not all, want to embrace ebooks), well that takes my breath away. But to quote the great Newman, “There’s karma, Kramer. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:23:19 +0100 864559 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/04/publishers-strategic-decision-to-resist-ebooks-left-them-screwed-by-jason-davis/ A while back I was talking to an Australian who has been in the book publishing biz since Adam was on a skateboard. We were talking about other stuff, and I was bemoaning how it was that one industry (book publishing) didn’t learn from the recent mistakes of a similar industry (music publishing). Off the record (that’s why he doesn’t get a name here) he told me: “Truth is, I know the major publishers in this country saw the ebook writing on the wall, but they’ve done everything they can to stave off the change. They knew it would come but they figured if they could hold it off for a few extra years, they could bank these massive profits off $30 paperbacks, which would bankroll the costs involved in swapping over to ebooks.” Just stop and have a think about that. Keep in mind that this person is a straight-shooter and had nothing to gain my making this up.I believe this – not only because I’ve watched the moves (of lack thereof) of the local book industry over the last decade, and they fit. I also believe it because the person who said this clearly believed it, and he/she should know. He/she knows Australian publishing backwards, forwards, and from multiple angles. Lobbying the government to maintain protectionist legislation, setting prices WAY higher than overseas vendors citing higher freight and other costs, scaremongering about change and the demise of the industry’s ability to “foster local talent” (without doing a hellava lot of, um, fostering local talent). Blind Freddy could see that many – not all – Australian booksellers thought this way. But to have it spelled out to me as a strategic decision that many major publishers have taken, at the expense of the reading public (it has been demonstrated that at least some of whom, if not all, want to embrace ebooks), well that takes my breath away. But to quote the great Newman, “There’s karma, Kramer. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:23:19 +0100 864735 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/NV8_FvfK7TY/ Cory Doctorow and Joe Konrath are not the only e-pushing authors with already-planted stakes in the dead tree world! A growing cohort of Smashwords authors established writers who have regained rights to some or all of their backlist titles and have chosen to e-issue it themselves. A recent encounter I had with Patricia Ryan, who is one of them, first alerted me to this growing trend. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 1: AS A MATCHMAKER Ryan found her way to me through a recommendation a Mobile Read user made to me when I was looking for some new titles. I had some Paypal balance to burn and did not want to incur transfer fees, so I wanted some Smashwords recommendations. I was especially interested in books that were either part of a series (so that I could have more than one to read if I liked it) or were non-fiction or historical-based so that I might get immersed in a world and maybe learn something. Patricia Ryan’s mystery novels, set in the 19th century, fit the bill perfectly. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 2: AS A PR TOOL Now, here is where the true beauty of the internet kicks in: Ryan had apparently set up a Google Alert on herself, and when her name came up at Mobile Read, she found out we were talking about her and came on over. She personally thanked each person who mentioned buying one of her books, addressed some concerns about formatting and sought feedback on what readers wanted to see next. Well-played, Patricia Ryan! This is the first time I have heard of someone using Google Alerts to run their own self-PR! We had a fascinating exchange on ebook publishing, both from the reader and writer standpoints. Some highlights of our discussion (note: this is posted with her permission!) below: MY OPENING SALVO: I really appreciate authors, especially established ones, who embrace the digital age and do not put up barriers to people getting the books. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:44:33 +0100 864560 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/04/established-authors-and-the-self-publishing-backlist-an-interview-with-patricia-ryan-part-1/ Cory Doctorow and Joe Konrath are not the only e-pushing authors with already-planted stakes in the dead tree world! A growing cohort of Smashwords authors established writers who have regained rights to some or all of their backlist titles and have chosen to e-issue it themselves. A recent encounter I had with Patricia Ryan, who is one of them, first alerted me to this growing trend. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 1: AS A MATCHMAKER Ryan found her way to me through a recommendation a Mobile Read user made to me when I was looking for some new titles. I had some Paypal balance to burn and did not want to incur transfer fees, so I wanted some Smashwords recommendations. I was especially interested in books that were either part of a series (so that I could have more than one to read if I liked it) or were non-fiction or historical-based so that I might get immersed in a world and maybe learn something. Patricia Ryan’s mystery novels, set in the 19th century, fit the bill perfectly. THE BEAUTY OF THE INTERNET, PART 2: AS A PR TOOL Now, here is where the true beauty of the internet kicks in: Ryan had apparently set up a Google Alert on herself, and when her name came up at Mobile Read, she found out we were talking about her and came on over. She personally thanked each person who mentioned buying one of her books, addressed some concerns about formatting and sought feedback on what readers wanted to see next. Well-played, Patricia Ryan! This is the first time I have heard of someone using Google Alerts to run their own self-PR! We had a fascinating exchange on ebook publishing, both from the reader and writer standpoints. Some highlights of our discussion (note: this is posted with her permission!) below: MY OPENING SALVO: I really appreciate authors, especially established ones, who embrace the digital age and do not put up barriers to people getting the books. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:44:33 +0100 864736 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/UiQEwrB40VI/ Simon & Schuster’s profits are up and so are revenues. The revenue increase was, in part, because of increased digital content sales. Their CEO, Carolyn Reidy, reports the Bookseller: … echoed other US publishers in indicating that ebook sales “right now” were approximately 8% of adult sales, but added that the exact percentage has been changing every month. With a nod to the Odyssey Editions flap, Reidy estimated that the number of titles it had available digitally would double if they were able to agree upon royalty rates with rightsholders for titles not yet available electronically. Reidy said they were “clearing those royalty rates piece by piece”. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:14:54 +0100 864562