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, 04 Mar 2010 22:59:27 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/new-report-highwire-presents-findings-from-ebooks-librarian-survey/ From the Summary (2 pages; PDF): The survey was conducted as part of HighWire’s ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks + Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. ? Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. ? While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. ? DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. + While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. + DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. HighWire is also conducting one-on-one interviews with students and faculty to determine their needs and expectations. Through a series of interviews, surveys and data collection activities throughout 2010, HighWire will continue to help their scholarly publisher customers understand the evolving needs of libraries and individual readers. Access the Full Text of the Report (38 pages; PDF) Source: Highwire Press Hat Tip: Gerry M. (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:38:50 +0100 823492 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Y1WslMKeaJs/ Found via Nate’s Ebook News, Publisher’s Weekly has a piece about Barnes & Noble experimenting with bundling e-book and paper book versions together. The idea is that when customers buy a physical book at a Barnes & Noble store, they would receive a coupon to get the e-book at a discount. Exact details still need to be worked out with the publishers. Certainly a number of people have talked about wanting to get both versions of the book at once. Sometimes people who buy the print book will then go ahead and pirate the e-book, reasoning that they have paid for ownership of the book so snagging an e-copy of it to read on an e-book device is tantamount to ripping a CD into mp3s to play on their iPod. But from the article, it does not sound as if B&N is truly planning what people usually think of as “bundling”—you will have to pay some extra money for the e-book version. Given that the e-book version has no marginal cost to produce, I expect e-book fans will still express disappointment that this offer does not go far enough. The article also mentions the possibility of putting print-on-demand machines into larger Barnes & Noble bookstores, something we have discussed before in regard to the Espresso device. But it turns out that Barnes & Noble is not the only retailer experimenting with e-book sales in physical bookstores. Publishing Perspectives has a brief piece on German e-book vendor Libri.de. Libri is putting software into bookstores that will let customers order books, pay for them in the store, then receive a link to the books via e-mail. Another German e-book service, Libreka, allows purchasing e-books in-store and saving them directly to a USB stick. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:36:59 +0100 823471 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infoesfera/~3/ByXWfm3y1R0/ Una de las cosas que más echo de menos desde que dejé la vida como estudiante son los viajes en Metro. No porque me haya convertido en uno de esos personajes que usan el coche para ir a la farmacia de la esquina, sino porque mis trayectos ahora son demasiado cortos, de escasas estaciones. Fue Daniel Pennac el que definió al Metro parisino la mayor biblioteca ambulante del mundo y aunque el de Valencia no se le acerca, esta ciudad, como otras, sufren también la transformación de los hábitos de lectura de sus viajeros. Si os fijáis un poco, aún es posible ver a personas que forran sus libros con papeles de periódicos para que no sepamos cuál es el objeto de su lectura, otros que retuercen las tapas de los libros convirtiendo al libro en una simple cuartilla y otros que lucen orgullosos los tejuelos de las bibliotecas de donde tomaron prestados sus ejemplares. Yo ya dejé de leer, me he apartado de esos hábitos, algo que lamento porque, junto a verse deslizarse el paisaje mientras escuchaba música, era una de las formas que más me gustaba a la hora de perder el tiempo al mismo tiempo que viajaba. Realmente, no tengo forma de saber cuando volveré a ser uno de ellos. A la vez que tampoco sé cómo leeré, ni bajo qué soporte. Hace unas semanas, me percaté que en un radio de cinco metros tres lectores se aprestaban a sus lecturas de formas muy distintas pero muy evidentes. Por un lado, el lector tradicional que tenía recostada su cabeza en una de las barras agarraderas de las que siempre echamos mano aquellos que no tenemos la fortuna de viajar sentados. Lo cierto es que parecía que su libro fuese bastante plúmbeo por la posición de su lectura, aunque hay lectores para todos los gustos. Por otro, el lector apresurado que utilizando su móvil deslizaba el texto, muy intrigado y con la cara cercana al terminal, incitándome a tratar de dilucidar si se trataba de SMS o de un texto muchísimo más largo. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:30:31 +0100 823365 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ZY_5eiGXJCs/ Do word choices matter? Do word choices misspelled matter? Is there a difference between break and brake? Not if you read some of the ebook novels I have read recently! Yes, I’m complaining about authors who don’t see the value in hiring a professional editor, authors who think they can both write a compelling story and either self-edit it or hire the next door neighbor to give it the editorial once over, and the publishers that encourage this type of thinking. Professional editors do serve a purpose and the more I read fiction ebooks, the more concerned I become about what will happen to readability, understanding, and literacy in the Age of eBooks.I do not intend to rehash the difference between types of editing (see Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor) or the difference between an amateur and a professional editor (see Professional Editors: Publishers and Authors Need Them (Part 1) and Professional Editors: Publishers and Authors Need Them (Part 2)). Nor do I intend to rehash the link between declining publishing standards and declining literacy (see Parallel Decline: Publishers & Educators). You can revisit those posts if you want. Instead I want to focus on the unfounded assumption by many ebookers that authors can do it all themselves — writing, designing, editing, marketing, selling, and whatever other “ing” is needed — in the ebook world, thereby doing away with publishers and other middlemen, yet increasing quality and decreasing cost and price. Let me be clear: It is not that the author cannot do all these tasks; rather, it is that few authors can do each task well and few authors either have the financial resources to hire these services directly or, if they do have the resources, the willingness to gamble their own money on the success of their book. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:30 +0100 823472 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/-KrMx-CY0Ls/ Rupert Murdoch has confirmed that the Wall Street Journal will be on the iPad. Meanwhile, the Washington Post just launched a paid subscription mobile news app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The price isn’t bad—$1.99 for 12 months—but this could go up after the first year. From Nate’s Ebook News comes word that Opera has updated its e-book reader widget. Only reads DRM-free EPUB, but Nate seemed to find it a decent reading experience. The EFF has updated “Unintended Consequences”, its annual “__ years under the DMCA” whitepaper. The time count now stands at 12, and the paper piles up ever more cases of abuses of process’s chilling effects on free speech, scientific research, competition, and innovation. (Found via BoingBoing.) MacRumors has found an Apple job posting for a manager for an “Asia Pacific & Canada” iBooks division. A number of other jobs postings are mentioned, too, including account managers. Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog reports that the iPhone news-reading app Instapaper Pro has updated to version 2.2, with a number of new features including an option for page-turning rather than scrolling, dictionary lookup, and an in-app browser. I use Instapaper quite a lot and find it really handy; the new features are great! Engadget has a couple of posts about some new Internet tablets coming out from Archos. The Archos Home Slates are 7” and 8” LCD tablets that are meant for home/family use. With only 2 GB of on-board storage, they seem to be pretty clearly meant for surfing and viewing on-line movies while connected to the Internet. However, depending on what apps are available, they could also make decent e-readers; after all, you could still fit quite a number of e-books into 2 gigabytes. Here’s a hilarious review of the Nook, “The Real Man’s Electronic Reader,” from The Faster Times. Don’t miss it. I visited the Nook counter with my boyfriend, John, who, most decidedly, is not a wimpy hipster. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 823474 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/a9yY1q-uhDE/ Sri Peruvemba, from E Ink, says that faster e-ink will come in 2 to 3 years and that color e-ink will show up in 2011. The color, he says will be more like a newspaper rather than that shown on an LCD. (via E-Reader-Info) Interesting blog, called Blog Critics, has a good article The Ebook Wars – First Salvo Fired. The Spring Design Alex webstore says Keep checking in and by the first week of March you’ll be able to order your Alex online. Been checking every day but no change. I really would like to order one of these after having seen a demo at TOC. I’ll keep checking and let you know when it goes up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:18:29 +0100 823476 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/PfgvsNr1Sds/ I’ve found some good blog responses to John Sargent’s post about Macmillan’s agency pricing model, which we reprinted the other day. In his Kindle Nation Daily blog, Stephen Windwalker praises Sargent for at last addressing the general public rather than just the industry insiders at whom his earlier entries were pitched—even as he remains critical of Sargent’s message. I had been critical of Sargent previously for addressing his earlier comments only to authors and literary agents, and consequently trying to position them to speak up on his and his company’s behalf, and this new post is well worth reading. He has not changed my mind, and I doubt he will change the minds of many ebook readers, but we will see. There are dozens of comments that give a good sense of the range of views generally in the ebook pricing controversy, and you may want to add your voice to those of other readers. Over on GigaOm, Matthew Ingram casts Sargent’s post as an attempt to protect the print publishing model from e-books’ disruption. As an example, he holds up Sargent’s statement that the agency model will allow them to publish e-books simultaneously with the release of the print books, thus “[solving] the problem” of windowing. Here’s the thing: This “problem,” as Sargent calls it, has been wholly created by publishers like Macmillan, who hold back the release of e-books in order to try and milk traditional hardcover and paperback sales for as long as they can. So now, in response to Amazon and others acceding to their demands on price, Macmillan is going to be good enough to stop doing that. This is the retailing equivalent of the serial killer who scrawls “Stop me before I kill again” on a mirror in lipstick. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 823478 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/D534wzZyEfw/ This is from Johannes Haupt in Germany. He sent me the following email: I’ve stumbled upon a quite unique multifunctional dual screen device at current Cebit fair: 1Cross B’ook combines E-Ink eBook Reader, GSM-Phone, Web Browser, E-Mail Client and Webcam in one body. Article + HD-Video -> http://www.lesen.net/ereader/book-ereader-handy-in-einem-2494/ OEM-Price is 290 USD, company is currently looking for distributors worldwide (good luck…). Imo it’s a bit to much and some way of cheap-looking due to the soft touch keyboard – full-lcd display with virtual keyboard (like astri myid) makes more sense. Plus, you look quite stupid with that thing at your ear although you can flip the E-Ink Display to the back…anyway: With e.g. pixel qi panel these kind of all-in-one devices will become an serious option for sure. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:15:48 +0100 823482 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/K6wZSNm5AzE/ This one will drive contributor Rich Adin crazy. Here’s an example of errors from the Kindle version Ruth Rendell’s The Monster in the Box. It’s from a post in the Australian blog Lifehacker: A keen US Rendell fan might be tempted to pay a visit to some of the locations mentioned in the book. Arrival at Stinted Airport (Stansted) is essential, followed by a visit to the nearby and much-oppressed town of Taxed (Thaxted). Further afield, he might be tempted to visit New Quay or Dollish (Dawlish), Lime Regis (Lyme Regis), or Sutton Cold Field (Sutton Coldfield), one of the pushest (poshest) parts of Birmingham. While in London, a visit to Wands Worth or Kingsbury, NEW (NW9) could be worthwhile. For transport, he could use a German car such as a VOW or a Mercy and should certainly remember to park close to the kern at all times. (via Resource Shelf) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:00:16 +0100 823485 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/nlKvcXehOe8/ Simon Owens’ Bloggasm has an interview with John Hilton, a doctoral candidate who recently coauthored a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Elextronic Publishing, entitled The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales. Here’s the abstract of the study: Increasingly, authors and publishers are freely distributing their books electronically to increase the visibility of their work. A vital question for those with a commercial stake in selling books is, “What happens to book sales if digital versions are given away?” We used BookScan sales data for four categories of books (a total of 41 books) for which we could identify the date when the free digital versions of the books were made available to determine whether the free version affected print sales. We analyzed the data on book sales for the eight weeks before and after the free versions were available. Three of the four categories of books had increased sales after the free books were distributed. We discuss the implications and limitations of these results. Check out Simon’s site to see what the author, pictured above, has to say about his publication. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:00:24 +0100 823312 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/s_K8NpICH4k/ Besides ebooks, one of my favorite things to view on my Sony reader is newspapers. Not just today’s newspapers, but historical ones. Being a history fan, it’s a great way to keep up with current topics I’m researching for my blog, Adventures in History (http://history.writingwithtony.com). Do you like old newspapers as well? If so, let me share with you one of my favorite resources as well some tips and tricks on getting the information to your reading device of choice. Chronicling America The Library of Congress Chronicling America Project, located at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/, is my all time favorite site for viewing newspapers. With over a million pages and full digital coverage from the late 1800’s up through the early 1920’s, from stories of the pioneer West to the “growing up” of America after World War One, there’s a lot of great stuff to get interested in! Getting started on the site, you need to remember there are two options offered: A regular searchable index of newspapers (the directory), and the digitized portion, which is the option we’re talking about today. It’s important to know that as you conduct your search, that every word on every page is searchable, the pages having been digitized with OCR software. If you have a specific topic or keyword that you are interested in, then you will probably start with a “phrase” or keyword search to get going. If you’re just browsing, then you can view resources by state, title, and even year of coverage. A nice feature offered by the site is the ability to construct searches with a “proximity” operator, which can help you with very specific keyword and topic searches. Results can be viewed and sorted by relevance, state, title and even date in a thumbnail or list style format. Individual pieces launch in their own viewer, with controls to zoom in or out as well as look closer at individual stories. ... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:40:44 +0100 823132 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/VORFLHrFLKM/ Who ever thought that help wanted ads would become an important source for journalists? Ilounge is reporting that Apple has a job listing for an iBooks Asia Pacific & Canada manager. The position will work with management, partners, production and marketing to determine strategies for iBooks in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, coordinating launches and securing content. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:20:00 +0100 823134 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/hDWpqtCwjlA/ Another swipe at the Times article, this time from an author. … The Big Six publishers are being very coy with these numbers. There’s a world of stuff hidden in that blended overhead and profit number. To begin with, they are burdening the e-book side of the equation with all of the overhead for the p-book side. Overhead costs should go down when you’re no longer operating traditional book factories. I have to say I’m disappointed in The New York Times. I would have expected them to ask harder questions. The publishers gave a range of royalties on e-books with a ceiling of 25% so that the max return for an author on an e-book still fell below the max return on a hardcover. When a publisher presents the above numbers to an author, writers are likely to zero in on that $.65 difference between the p-book and the e-book royalties. In actuality, a more reasonable number for that e-book royalty would be 30%, making it exactly the same $3.90 royalty shown for the hardcover. Previous TeleRead articles on this here and here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:59:18 +0100 822831 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/xQNnd94gFF4/ Ebrary has announced that 24 Starter packs for librarians are now available. The packs include career guides, infectious diseases, Southern US studies, special need education and others. The packs will have perpetual access and will include 15-40 ebooks that are not available otherwise from Ebrary. For further information you can go here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:48:27 +0100 822832 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/02/metadata-more-important-than-ever/ by Laura Dawson From the Column: Whether it’s “semantic” search or a more traditional browsing hierarchy, search technologies rest on metadata. Tags, definitions, clarifications (“when we say ‘porcelain’ we mean fine china, not toilets”) are all necessary to guide users to the information they want. [Snip] In my career, I’ve seen lots of publisher-generated metadata. There’s a reason why NetRead, Eloquence, and other data-scrubbing services exist. There’s a reason why Ingram, Bowker, and Baker & Taylor have departments of data editors who normalize and standardize that data. There’s a reason why librarians spend countless hours re-cataloguing titles for WorldCat. [Snip] But good metadata IS publishers’ responsibility, fundamentally. They can outsource that responsibility, but ultimately it does all come back to the publishers. As our digital landscape explodes – as web search becomes not just one way but THE way readers find what’s next on their reading lists – metadata only becomes more important. Access the Complete Column by Laura Dawson Note from ResourceShelf: Placing an item into the database (independent of type) with quality metadata makes it easier for the end user, librarian, customer, etc. to get it back out of the database in a timely and efficient manner. In some cases good metadata plus a good database can allow the searcher to learn enough about the contents of a book/eBook, dvd, etc. to make a decision about (do or don’t I want it?) the material without having to touch the actual item. Finally, we all know that for many users, it the item is not accessible on the first page of results (especially when web searching) it might as well be invisible. Only so many items can be in the first five or ten results. In many cases, the Invisible Web of 2010 is as large or larger than the one Gary and Chris Sherman wrote about nearly nine years ago. Source: Digital Book World (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:16:19 +0100 822855 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/irb_0ilYC-8/ One of the blessings of ebooks is that they are digital files that are easily corrected (note I said easily, not inexpensively), unlike the printed book, which once published becomes a fiscal nightmare if it is error laden. This problem, and what to do about it, came to mind as the result of a recent New York Times article, “Doubts Raised on Book’s Tale of Atom Bomb.” The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino was published in January 2010 by Henry Holt to acclaim. Alas, there may be a major problem: The technical details of the mission are based on in-person recollections of someone who was not there. So the question becomes: What is to be done? [Update: According to today's New York Times, the publisher, Henry Holt, has decided to recall all 18,000 copies of the book. Apparently other issues have arisen, including whether the author truly has a doctorate degree and whether other sources actually exist. Here the publisher is acting as a gatekeeper and warranting the quality of the book; what would be the case if the book had been self-published?] If this were an ebook the choice would not diminish in either importance or problems. To correct the ebook would lead to versioning and a never-ending attempt to always keep a book accurate and up-to-date — the never-ending rewrite. In one sense, this is good; in another, it is a scholarly nightmare: How will a scholar ever be able to cite or quote an ebook as a source? (Which is another interesting question: Can ebooks be reliably cited?) But failure to correct a major error, one that calls into question the validity and credibility of the book and author, as occurred in The Last Train from Hiroshima, is equally problematic. And what happens when three years from now another history-changing error is found? Clearly this is not much of a problem in fiction. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:15:40 +0100 822833 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/cKzbTuBNk2s/ All right, I will admit it: this is not about e-books. Well, not directly at least. But it does hold some interesting implications. I’ll get to the e-book connection at the end. A Game-Changing Event Yesterday, Valve updated the popular Portal first-person puzzle game with a rather cryptic patch that simply said “Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.” I simply thought this referred to the clock radio object in the game that is playing a cheerful tune when your character first wakes up. I remembered it having an unrealistic frequency on the dial, and figured maybe they patched to fix the art. But it didn’t take very long for more industrious fans on Valve’s community forums to notice that there were now new “radio” objects planted at various locations in the game, and they included audio files with a series of images encoded in them. Apparently Valve is launching a new “alternate reality game” (ARG), perhaps having to do with the Portal sequel fans have been awaiting, or maybe even the next episode of Half-Life 2. This may be the first instance of a gaming company (or at least a non-MMO company) to hint at something new using a patch to a game several years old. Even Halo’s “I Love Bees” campaign was entirely external to the game. And it’s really only possible to do this in the first place because Valve uses the Steam launcher/updater to push out new patches automatically and instantaneously, rather than relying upon fans to go to a website and download it. Thus, updating content gamers bought years ago is as simple as making a server change now. Does this sound familiar? “Patching” Books? In the e-book world, this instant-update-of-old-content feature has been used for ill in the past—Amazon’s infamous “1984” incident. And I’ve reflected on the possibility of using it for making corrections in the future. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0100 822837 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3XY03Rnj0lo/ Motoko Rich, in a piece for the New York Times today, has done a well-researched and elegantly tidy job of illuminating and calculating the costs involved for publishers in publishing books in traditional hardcover as well as ebook format. It’s well worth a look if you’ve been wondering what the real numbers are behind the recent ebook pricing controversy. Here’s how her numbers play out for a $26 hardcover: $26.00 Suggested retail price $13.00 Wholesale proceeds to publisher $3.25 Production, storage & shipping $0.80 Pre-press: cover design, typesetting and copy-editing $1.00 Marketing $3.90 Author royalties $4.05 Publisher’s gross margin She then compares these figures with an ebook at a $12.99 price point: $12.99 Suggested retail price $9.09 Wholesale proceeds to publisher $0.00 Production, storage & shipping $0.50 Pre-press: cover design, typesetting and copy-editing $0.78 Marketing $3.25 Author royalties $4.57 Publisher’s gross margin She doesn’t take the next step — which would be to run the numbers at the current ebook retail price point of $9.99, built as is her her $12.99 ebook math around the so-called “agency model” which calls for the retailer to take a 30% cut and send 70% off to the publisher. But here’s how the $9.99 price would look based on the numbers inherent in Rich’s piece: $9.99 Suggested retail price $6.99 Wholesale proceeds to publisher $0.00 Production, storage & shipping $0.50 Pre-press: cover design, typesetting and copy-editing $0.78 Marketing $2.50 Author royalties $3.22 Publisher’s gross margin Naturally, different readers may have a different take-away from all this, and Rich’s balanced approach shares useful perspectives from bestselling novelist Anne Rice and several industry insiders. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:10:06 +0100 822838 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/PIhFyGETg-o/ O’Reilly Media is launching O’Reilly Digital Distribution. It will be a new division offering a complete ebook publishing service to publishers. O’Reilly will over free conversion and distribute and market books to 24, and eventually 40, ebook distribution channels. The service can convert into any format. The fee will be 25% of sales and there will be no charge until the ebooks are actually in the distribution channels. O’Reilly says that the service is aimed at all types of books, not just technical ones, and they are looking towards even poetry and fiction. You can find more information here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:55:02 +0100 822839 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/fM_j8KwCu8g/ Australian librarian Philip Harvey, President of the Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association, penned an article with the above name for Eureka Street. In the article he says: Actually, libraries have a large measure of responsibility for the Information Revolution. Libraries must be super-sensitive to any form of information production and retrieval: it’s their job. In the early ’80s, when I was at library school, there were students who already resented being called librarians or library managers — we were Information Managers. Some heroic individuals had these words painted on their office doors when they went into the workplace. When you remind librarians that their title comes from the Latin root for book, they are much too busy figuring out how the translation button works on a research site to worry about a dead language . Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:50:28 +0100 822840 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/vybto5wyjtE/ Martyn Daniels has an article with the above title on his blog and opens with a quote from Wired executive editor Kevin Kelly that is as true today as it was 10 years ago when he said it. Martyn goes on to say: The companies who should have made the digital transition and who had something to offer have often lost the digital way or struggled. Bol.com was going to crush Amazon but didn’t understand global branding. B&N was going to be the internet bricks and mortar and learnt that teaming up with Amazon wasn’t the best strategy. BCA failed to understand what it had and what it didn’t have and lost the perfect digital launch pad. HarperCollins thought they had a brand and ‘Fire and Water’ would be a no brainer to the readers. Encyclopaedia Britannica thought that their brand was untouchable. The lessons are many and often hard ones. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:40:21 +0100 822841 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/KHSoKqcaoKI/ The most inspiring session I attended at last week’s Tools of Change conference was by Bob Pritchett, President/CEO of Logos. What was so special about Bob’s presentation, “Network Effects Promote Premium Pricing“? Two words: content and value. It’s causing me to stop looking at individual ebooks and start thinking much bigger. I downloaded the Logos iPhone app during Bob’s talk so that I could have a better feel for what he was describing. You might think it’s nothing more than an ebook reader like Stanza but there’s more to it than that. It comes with a number of books built in, including a few Bibles. If you’re using one translation and you wonder what the same verse looks like in another translation, just touch the verse number, select one of your other Bibles and the app takes you right to that same verse. Seems pretty simple, right? That’s just the start. Curious to learn more about a person, place or word in the Bible? Just touch and hold and the Logos app lets you search for it throughout the Bible or in a seemingly endless list of other Logos products.This is the “network effect” Bob referred to in his session’s title. You start reading the Bible in the Logos app but before you know it you’ve hopped to several other resources, clicking from one link to the next, learning more and more along the way. It’s similar to when you start researching something in Bing or Google and a couple of hours later you realize you’re 20 links deep; you have no idea how you got there but every link has added to the journey. When was the last time you had that feeling with an ebook or app? Have you ever had that feeling in an ebook? I haven’t, and that’s because most publishers are just selling an individual ebook, not a network of content. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:00:20 +0100 822454 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/HDD8B5vlF7w/ Kassia Kroszer at Booksquare has a great wrap-up of the Tools of Change conference, in which she talks about her own and others’ presentations, links to interesting blog articles, and shares some general thoughts on the state of the e-publishing industry at this point. There are far too many interesting observations to summarize, so I’ll just pick out a few to mention here. Early on, Kroszer points out that “all publishing is already digital”—insofar as manuscripts are by and large now submitted electronically, rather than as typewritten or handwritten pages. But publishers are still using an old-fashioned print-based workflow, and there is room for some savings by going to a more streamlined digital workflow instead. Later, Kroszer talks about emerging markets around the world. Piracy in these markets, she says, may indicate that there is a demand that is not being served—which is an opportunity to develop a viable marketplace in those markets. “I firmly believe viable marketplaces are the first line of defense when it comes to piracy.” Near the end, she notes a distinct lack of participation by major trade publishers. Their representatives are attending the conferences, but not making the sorts of presentations on innovation or new initiatives that the smaller publishers are. I get the need for big surprises and playing cards close to the vest, but as I lead into my final point, I think the fact that large trade publishers aren’t sharing information plays into a larger industry criticism. Where is the innovation? Where is the leadership? Individuals and small publishers are openly sharing their work, but where are the big publishers? It is the actions by those trade publishers that we hear the most about—for example, when Macmillan’s insistence Amazon change its pricing model caused Amazon to pull Macmillan’s books. They are the ones who essentially make the news. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100 822455 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/lwmOtkDnSP0/ I suspect that Macmillan’s upper management feel elated after getting Amazon to agree to an agency distribution and pricing model. But a few pin pricks to deflate that elation are probably warranted. Macmillan showed some, but not much, gumption when it stood up to Amazon. Would Macmillan have taken the stand it did in the absence of Apple paving the way? I doubt it; Macmillan hasn’t shown any strategic or tactical brilliance in the ebook wars — this was its first bold stroke. None of the publishers who are pushing the agency model have shown much initiative. All of the initiative has come from outside the publishing world, which is not a good sign. So I will again suggest a way for publishers to lead the way: an international repository. Yes, I’m tooting that horn again. eBooker anger will not go away and ebookers will not suddenly be willing to live with restrictive DRM and high prices without knowing that they will be able to read the book they lease today on the device of today, tomorrow, and of 10 years from now. Publishers are rubbing salt into the wound by agitating for higher ebook prices yet not addressing the most pressing issues – that publishers want a high price for a leased book that has a relatively short useful life because of DRM. (I understand that for some people the most pressing issue is geographical restriction, followed by DRM. I am also aware that some ebookers can easily remove DRM, but the vast majority of ebookers cannot and do not remove DRM.) When it took on Amazon, Macmillan was the public relations loser with its ultimate audience, the ebooker. If there was a winner in that debacle, it was Amazon, not that Amazon deserves any prize for caring about its customers. Contrary to public perception, I think Amazon caved to Macmillan’s demands so quickly because it gave Amazon an excuse to make a profit yet shift the blame for higher pricing. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:55:15 +0100 822458 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/umjyGAZ5hfU/ A few days ago I mentioned that independent book publisher Author Solutions had announced an e-book distribution deal with Scribd. Today it comes out they have announced a similar deal with Barnes & Noble for the Nook. As with the Scribd deal, AS e-books will be set at a default price of $9.99, but authors may choose to set their own prices instead. Erin Cox at Publishing Perspectives notes with some amusement that, shortly after Nintendo announced a classic e-books cartridge, Random House has now announced it will be making video games. The Wall Street Journal article is fairly sparse on details, but notes that this is an effort to find a new revenue stream due to economic pressure from publishing cutbacks and the likelihood that the increasing popularity of e-books will cause lower revenues. Also on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka posts an editorial wondering whether the e-book age means an end to the serendipity of finding a good book through browsing bookstores and junk shops. A couple of stories from the UK: TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes that UK consumer rights group Consumer Focus has issued a report saying copyright law is “outdated” and so confusing that millions of people are breaking laws without even realizing it. (Meanwhile, in America, an appeals court just struck down an “innocent infringement” defense—that it was possible to fileshare music without realizing it was wrong—in a music filesharing case.) Unfortunately, the Digital Economy Bill (which I mentioned earlier today) seems to be going in exactly the wrong direction. Catherine Neilan at TheBookseller.com reports that UK libraries are especially vulnerable to local council budget cuts, with an estimated 25,000 jobs endangered by the recession. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:45:30 +0100 822460 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/MRsvIf0fx_U/ Charlie Stross has posted the third in his series of “Common Misconceptions About Publishing” posts, and this one is a must-read for anyone who wonders about the terms of publishing contracts. Stross takes one of his old contracts and dissects it in extreme detail, explaining what provisions it has and what each provision means. Of particular interest to e-book fans will be the discussion of contracting books separately by geographic region, and how this relates to e-book editions. My UK publisher has the exclusive right to sell ebooks in the UK and associated territory, and my US publisher has ditto in their regions. This is why, as often as not, if you go to somewhere like Fictionwise or Diesel and try to buy an ebook edition of one of my books, it’ll let you get as far as proffering payment then tell you to sod off because you live in the wrong country. This is stupid, sucky, and serves nobody’s best interest (not even the publishers), but as I mentioned in the first of these posts, group-wide policy on e-rights is set by executives so high up the totem pole they can’t even see the ground, much less the realities of ebook publishing. Discussion of how things should be arranged, as opposed to how they are arranged, is deferred for another posting. In the comments that follow, Stross promises to devote a future entry expressly to how and why the e-book market is messed up and what might be done to fix it—and perhaps provides a bit of a preview when he explains that to do e-books properly, Tor would have to amend literally thousands of existing contracts that were made before e-books. Another interesting note has to do with Stross’s discussion of copyright, since Stross lives in the UK where copyright laws are subtly different from in America. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0100 822461 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3jqNuOp7vW8/ Exact Editions has a thoughtful discussion of the Apple bookstore and the format of ebooks. The question is whether to continue to deliver ebooks as apps now that the Apple bookstore is about to come on line. If this conclusion is warranted, it presumably follows that for books that are not ’straightforward chapter based’ there remains a compelling case for going down the books as apps route. In point of fact, a very large proportion of books are not straightforward and chapter based. ePub is not a happy format for books with lots of illustrations and tables. So that should keep us busy at Exact Editions. But something else follows from his point: publishers and even worse, readers are going to have to make choices. We are going to expect our audience to read books in one way, as eBooks, on the iPad if they are simple books, but in another way, in another format, say digital editions as apps, if they are not so easy. The experience of reading books will become increasingly fragmented. Gee, the “to be or not to be” picture would work here too, wouldn’t it. Let’s give it a try. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:45:55 +0100 822462 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/A-npSdFPO_M/ In All Things D’s “MediaMemo” section, Peter Kafka calls attention to the effect Apple and Adobe’s dispute over Flash is having on Condé Nast’s plans for iPad versions of Wired and other magazines. (Note: one of the images with the article is a cover from GQ, which may not be work-safe.) That tablet Wired Magazine demo we covered a couple of weeks ago was built using Adobe technology, including Flash, which means it would be a no-go for the iPad as-is. In effect, unless Apple and Adobe can come to some form of agreement, Condé Nast is going to have to go with two parallel development tracks for the iPad—the new multimedia experience created for the Wired app, presumably translated into some non-Flash setting, and iPad-enhanced versions of the iPhone apps that are already available for such magazines as GQ. The iPhone apps may be less desirable to users, given that they do not incorporate all the multimedia and user-interface features of Wired’s demo, but Condé Nast does not seem to want to deal with the added uncertainty for magazines that have not already put such significant effort into developing a new framework. Until fairly recently, e-magazines and e-books seemed to be similar applications of the same technology. But this type of issue shows how clearly they have diverged. If e-books are like webpages, then magazines seem to be more akin to RSS feeds, and require a different way of handling things. It’s just Condé Nast’s bad luck that the way Wired settled on involves a technology Steve Jobs refuses to have on his devices. In a tangentially-related note, PaidContent.org notes that the Wall Street Journal reports that five leading magazine publishers, including Condé Nast, are getting together to launch an advertising campaign about how printed magazines are better than the Internet, at the very same time they are preparing those magazines for digital distribution. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 822464 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/MMI2bve35IY/ That’s what this article in Shelf Awareness is saying: In a story called “Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book,” the New York Times tries to answer the question of “just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one.” The issue is a big one, considering that most consumers think e-books should be priced much lower than printed books and most large publishers say they can’t operate businesses at e-book prices many consumers expect. Unfortunately the first step of the story’s example–a hardcover priced at $26–seemed like a misstep. For that book, the Times wrote, “The bookseller will generally pay the publisher $13.” Of course, this may apply to wholesalers and some large retail accounts, but most booksellers only dream of a 50% discount on the average hardcover. As a result of positing a high retail discount, the article leaves the hypothetical publisher of its typical hardcover with lower gross profit than would actually be the case. So while the example is illustrative for one type of title to one type of customer, it begs even more questions. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:48:10 +0100 822465 http://www.text2go.com/Portals/0/SpeechSamples/text-to-speech-voices-that-don%27t-suck-narrated-by-amy.mp3 From eBooks Just Published: I’ve just released two incredible new text to speech voices for use with Text2Go. They are called Amy and Brian and have been developed by IVONA Software. I really think they’re amazing – certainly the best I’ve ever heard. You can read the press release on the Text2Go blog or better still listen to the press release as narrated by Amy or Brian. As a matter of fact, I did listen to the press releases at the links above, and the voices are so good that I decided to post this article. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:17:21 +0100 822467 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/6Bb5Z9AVNw4/ibis-reader.html "Ibis Reader is the ebook reader for your smartphone, netbook, or computer that focuses on helping you find the best books and then getting out of your way. Ibis Reader gives every book lover the chance to experience the joy of digital reading. Whether you read on a computer or an iPhone (or both) your ePub books are always available and always in sync. Ibis Reader is being developed by Liza Daly and Keith Fahlgren of Threepress Consulting Inc" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:22:03 +0100 822421 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/01/how-much-does-it-cost-to-produce-an-ebook-vs-a-printed-book/ Update: Some talk in the book industry that the numbers used in the New York Times story below may not accurate. Plus, the pricing method that works for one type of book might not work for another. TeleRead has more with commentary from Shelf Awareness. Mokoto Rich writes: (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:15:06 +0100 822484 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/booksquare/~3/e7SuPAjPUB0/ My mark of a good conference is how I feel when it’s over. It’s a given that I’ll be exhausted (I am an introvert after all), so the test is whether or not I’m inspired to do something. Read, write, create, think. This is how I felt at the end of this year’s Tools of Change conference. Ready to roll. There are a lot of of conferences focused on the changes facing publishing. Some might say too many, but I disagree. Over the next few decades, we will see all sorts of shifts in publishing, and these conferences — which thanks to the magic of technology have extended beyond the in-person realm to include far-flung audiences via social media discussions, webinars, and more — tackle the wide range of opportunities, challenges, and imaginative thinking that leads to innovation. As I explore my takeaways from this year’s Tools of Change, I start from this position: all publishing is already digital. Granted, there may be a few authors out there who submit handwritten or typewritten manuscripts (and if so, dear publishers, allow me to express my sympathy). Those are the exceptions. Every manuscript begins its life in digital format. So. All publishing is already digital. What I see as one of the biggest challenges facing existing (or traditional) publishers is that they still haven’t managed to make the shift from a print-based workflow to a digital workflow. Motoko Rich of the New York Times wrote about the costs of producing a book, yet didn’t explore the fact that some (not a lot, granted) savings could be realized through more efficient workflow. (Actually, there is a lot of to chew on in Rich’s piece, including the ever-popular advances-not-earning-out problem, something that increases costs for everyone.) I’ve watched this conference evolve from a curiosity to a conversation. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:54:40 +0100 822366 http://lisnews.org/libraries_lead_ebook_revolution Have you read an e-book yet? Do you think it means the end of bookshops and libraries as we know them? Will book people have to turn into e-book people to meet the brave new world? It's all a bit early to say. I [Philip Harvey, see below] haven't read an e-book and when asked by borrowers if I feel that my profession of librarian is under threat, I ask them if they themselves have used an e-book. No, is the consistent reply. But they know chapter and verse about the developments, usually from what they have seen on the internet. The new slimline gadgets can display everything a text maniac wants to get their hands on. Or so it seems. More on ebooks, Google, digitisation, and the Information Revolution from Philip Harvey, President of the Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association in Australia's Eureka Street. (Source: LISNews.org) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:34:35 +0100 822272 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Y4jFh6WkX3Y/ Remember the Dear Author survey I suggested you take? Well the results are in, but are not very useful Dear Author will let you download the raw data or download a set of Powerpoint slides, but they are not giving us any hint of the results on their blog. Personally, I don’t need to fool with data and I certainly don’t want a bunch of Powerpoint slides on my Mac that I will have to download extra software to read. Pity – waste of time to have filled it out. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:28:53 +0100 822285 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/B9w35mEEmxI/ Gizmodo reports on a temporary art installation in New York City that blocked off Water Street for a few hours with…a street-covering expanse of books with LED flashlights on top. Spanish art design team Luzinterruptus explained we want literature to seize the streets and become the conqueror of public spaces, freely offering to those who walk by a space free of traffic which for a few hours of the night will succumb to the modest power of the written word. So to promote reading and literacy, you…put books where they can be walked on or driven over? What next, promoting patriotism by burning a flag? In an update to yesterday’s Quick Note about the Joo Joo shipping delay, Gizmodo reports that the device’s shipping has been delayed until March 25th by a manufacturing problem. This means, among other things, that  the Joo Joo is going to be launching at the same time as the iPad. Not really the best time to introduce a competing tablet, but then Fusion Garage hasn’t exactly had the best of luck so far anyway. Mediaweek reports that another Condé Nast magazine (besides Wired, which we already covered) is preparing for an iPad launch. This one is the popular women’s magazine Glamour—and The New Yorker is said not to be far behind. Whether they will be using the same Adobe AIR platform as Wired’s tablet app is not clear. Engadget reports that Qisda (nee BenQ) has submitted a Linux-based, wifi-equipped, e-ink-screened e-book device for FCC approval. Not sure what else there is to say about that. Yet another e-ink reader, with support for the usual formats, plus wi-fi? Nice, but it just means one more brand that might be shaken out of the market in months to come. TheBookseller.com has a story about artist Jonathan Howard planning to release a multimedia appbook children’s e-book, because he feels “publishers are failing to exploit the strengths of digital platforms. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:15:00 +0100 822160 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3AOBIvw59SA/ * Support for the Teclast K3 and Elonex e-book readers * Add ‘Recently Read’ category to catalog if Kindle is connected when catalog is generated * When adding PRC/MOBI files that are actually Topaz files, change detected file type to Topaz * MOBI Output: If the SVG rasterizer is not avaialbale continue anyway * News download: When using the debug pipeline options, create a zip file named periodical.downloaded_recipe in the debug directory. This can be passed to ebook-convert to directly convert a previous download into an e-book. * Add Apply button to catalog generation dialog Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. var showHover=false; (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:10:10 +0100 822163 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/mLWoMPlZEAE/ Publishing and ebook bloggers and pundits are claiming that Apple has created an uneven playing field between the iBooks App it will soon roll out for its iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices and the Kindle Apps that are available alongside for buying and reading books from the Kindle Store on the same devices. According to Jay Yarow at the Silicon Valley Business Insider, customers using the Kindle for iPhone App “have to leave the app to buy e-books,” whereas “the iBookstore will let you seamlessly buy books from within the iBooks reader app, with the iTunes account it’s already aware of.” Sounds ominous, except that it is not true in any noticeable or significant way. Whether Yarow is simply confused, is trying to make a controversy where one does not exist, or is confusing the present (and the Kindle for iPhone App) with the future (and the iPad and or a potentially changed Kindle for iPhone App), is unclear. Since Yarow’s report rang false for me based on my prior experiences using the Kindle for iPhone App with the iPod Touch, I revisited the experience. * I turn on the iPod Touch, press the little Kindle for iPhone App icon, and press the “Get Books” button in the upper right corner. I am delivered instantaneously to the Amazon Kindle Store, just as the Kindle would deliver me (a tiny bit more slowly, I might add) to its version of the Kindle Store. * The Kindle Store recognizes me immediately because, in order to have downloaded and initially opened the Kindle for iPhone App, I have already entered the email address and password associated with my Amazon account. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:00:33 +0100 822164 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/97CzqUXVils/ Im VÖB Blog ist zu lesen: “Auf PaperC können die IFLA Publications, die im De Gruyter Verlag erschienen sind, online durchgeblättert/durchsucht/bei Kauf als PDF downgeloadet etc. werden. Auch andere buchwissenschaftliche und bibliothekarische Literatur ist schon zu finden.” PaperC ist kostenpflichtig, wenn man Seiten ausdrucken oder verwenden will, erlaubt aber die Lektüre am Bildschirm nach Registrierung ohne weitere Bedingungen. Die Suche innerhalb von PaperC ist – wenn auch letzthin eine erweiterte Suche ergänzt wurde – noch verbesserungsbedürftigt, beispielsweise führt eine Suche nach “One-Person Library” nach sehr vielen irrelevanten Ergebnissen, da der Begriff als einzelne Suchwörter interpretiert wird. Phrasensuche wäre also sehr wünschenswert! Dennoch lohnt sich die Suche, haben doch die Ergebnisse eindeutige URLs und man kann sie daher ohne weiteres als Lesezeichen ablegen (wer keinen sozialen Bookmarkservice verwendet, ist selbst schuld!) oder verlinken. Dadurch muss man sich die Arbeit nur einmal machen … Ach ja: PaperC – da war ja noch die Meldung von Infobib von vorgestern, dass viele Bücher vom O’Reilly-Verlag eingespeist wurden. Wird immer interessanter, nicht wahr? (Source: netbib weblog) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:04:25 +0100 822141 http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-outside-us-kindle-experience.html Back in Nov last year, a colleague lent me his Kindle for a testdrive (I'm not sure if the features have changed/ improved since then).Overall verdict: It was easy to learn how to use it. Handling the Kindle was easier in some ways but harder for some aspects.Whether something like the Kindle is "better than a print book" depends on what criteria we're using. And advantages/ disadvantages might be relative as well. E.g. if cost is the main consideration, I'd go for a pbook anytime. But even then, it's relative. If you regularly buy books, then the cost per book may be lowered as you purchase more eBooks and spread the fixed cost of the Kindle.Though one can't help compare it as an "eBook" Vs. a "pBook" (i.e. print book), I think both formats should be appreciated for what they uniquely offer rather than whether one is better than the other. They both give different user-experiences.Content is still king. Both the electronic and print book versions have inherent pros and cons, which affects the reading experience. But I can still never get through Tolstoy's War and Peace, regardless of "e" or "p" versions.That said, here's my rambly review (btw, you may find my review contradicting what I wrote about making comparisons, but I'm "comparing" more as a benchmark for explanatory purposes):INITIAL IMPRESSIONSMy first thoughts were: "Sleek and stylish; makes you want to pick it up and just... use it!" The whole thing just felt right in my hands. Here's how it looks like in its synthetic leather cover:This was how it looked like without the leather cover (I placed a pen on it so that you get a sense of its dimensions)It's really thin and light. The size difference is even more apparent when placed next to a hardcover book (incidentally the hardcover book was titled "The Shock of the Old", heh). ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822612 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/CjsZz9-DgDc/ (See also: Jack Matthews: An Introduction, and Interview with Jack Matthews (Part 1 and Part 2). Many authors rail against  the inanities and injustices  of the literary marketplace; Jack Matthews plays it like  a  game. And if you’re playing, it’s a lot more fun to play as a book collector than as an author. The book collecting sport is part treasure hunt (Matthews calculated  that over his lifetime he had driven more than    a million miles in search of books) and part casino. Which books are likely to appreciate in value and which ones are likely to plummet? These are fundamentally economic and recreational questions, not literary ones. Jack Matthews is a cheerful capitalist (delightfully bargaining people down and unapologetic about showing up at estate sales to buy rare books from clueless relatives of the deceased). Although Matthews is primary a fiction writer,  his 1977  best selling book Collecting Rare Books for Pleasure and Profit is a practical guide for how to turn an expensive hobby into an occasionally lucrative pastime. First and foremost, Matthews believes that books are economic creations: Even the finest, most beautiful, most desirable books have cost money; they have been paid for at sometime, by someone; even if they were lovingly constructed by one man, from the papermaking to the designing and casting of the type, and then bestowed upon others as gifts, somebody had to pay for the raw materials and previous workmanship. We live in that kind of world. It is, among other things, an economic world, and any object that possesses – or is considered to possess – value is likely to wear some kind of price tag. Whatever has a price tag shows some character and potential as an investment. (CRBFPAP, p 55) When he once asked author and bookstore owner Larry McMurtry what he thought about investing in rare books, McMurtry replied, “We don’t like customers who regard books as investments. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:37:20 +0100 822021 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/wTQfJlTbtEE/ Earlier this month, as a guest writer on Charlie Stross’s blog, Elizabeth Bear wrote an essay about “the future of web publishing,” centering around the “hyperfiction environment” called Shadow Unit in which she takes part. I couldn’t help but be amused by the subject of the post. You see, history repeats itself. Bear et al may very well be right about being part of the “future” of Internet publishing—but in the format in which they are writing, they have also stumbled squarely onto its past. To note, I do not mean this in any derogatory sense. Though I have not read through the Shadow Unit stories myself, it sounds very much like an excellent setting with a lot of hard work put into it, and like the writers and fans alike are having a lot of fun. What amuses me is how precisely Bear’s description of the setting also fits all those other settings that have come before, even if the Shadow Unit writers were not aware of them. Hyperfiction and Shared Universes To summarize the post, which is itself well worth reading, “hyperfiction” can be non-linear (written out of order and with branching side-stories, rather than being a linear narrative), interactive (whereby people following along can adopt in-setting personas and “(role-)play along”), multimedia (text, images, audio, video, etc.), confusing (with no clear story order and all that branching and supplemental material, people can easily get lost), self-funded (Shadow Unit takes donations but does not sell advertising), and extraordinarily rich (many people working together can create a remarkably well-realized world). Bear may call it “hyperfiction,” but in actuality no new name was really needed. As described, Shadow Unit is a perfect example of what we who have been writing them for years now call “collaborative fiction” set in a “shared universe”. Collaborative fiction on the Internet has a rich history. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:15:00 +0100 821906 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/l6Ws0nutgn0/ A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post on O’Reilly’s Tools of Change website that I wanted to cover, but it was so long that I never actually got around to looking at it in the detail I needed, until now. Fortunately, the article is still no less timely. This piece is an interview with Richard Nash, a theater-director-turned-publisher who has now launched a “social publishing” start-up called Cursor. Nash talks about Cursor and its goals, then goes on to discuss some of the broader implications of publishing meeting the kind of “Web 2.0” interactivity that is a hallmark of today’s Internet. It’s a fascinating article, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. After the jump, I will discuss it and bring up some supporting examples. A Collaborative Cursor As Nash explains it, the intent of Cursor is to create the sort of peer-review writing circles that should be familiar to anyone who has written amateur or fan fiction on the Internet. So far, these circles have more or less evolved naturally, when a ‘net writer finds a few fans whose opinion he trusts and starts circulating his material by them for opinions prior to releasing it. (I’ve been part of several such groups, as writer or reader.) What Cursor plans to do is to make it possible to create that kind of collaborative environment—essentially, to identify or build a community around a writer’s work, then get that community as involved as possible in every aspect of creating that work. There is scope, definitely, for more classic collaborative writing. We’ll certainly permit that. But our instinct at the moment is that most writers want to write what they write individually. That collaboration is certainly useful here and there. It’s a great writing workshop tool. But basically, it’s designed to help individuals to write individual works. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:15:00 +0100 821907 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/jQWzI-hpWjs/ The human mind is a remarkable device. Present it with a challenge and in no time a host of solutions are returned for consideration. Take, for example, an idea by Michael Hart. 1971 and enter Michael Hart. Mr. Hart was handed the gift of gifts – $100,000.00 worth of computer time with a mainframe computer. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. The first “e-book” was born—a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Since 1971 e-books have morphed into electronic reading in every imaginable format for every imaginable genre. Doctors carry the complete Pharmacopeia in their PDA, businessmen carry slide shows and presentations, and comic books – yes comic books, are now being read on a hand-held device. Among the free offerings during Read an E-Book Week, March 7 – 13, you will find comic books, sports fitness books, children’s homeschool materials, poetry, and books in a variety of languages from Apache to Russian. Mr. Hart went on to create Project Gutenberg, the first free on-line library. He stated in an interview with Andrea Kobeskzo: “The goal of Project Gutenberg has always been to create An Information Age not as something on the order of “The Digital Divide,” but something greater in terms of bringing literacy and education to the masses free of all charge and in a way the vast majority can access instantly.” Free e-books in Apache, Ukrainian, Polish… I think Mr. Hart’s dreams is coming to fruition. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:30:58 +0100 821908 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/xtyBxplu-ho/ The Book Industry Study Group is reporting that the Agency has issued its position paper and reaffirmed its 2005 recomendation that ISBNs be assigned to different forms of electronic publication. This is a controversial topic, as many epublishers resent the extra expense of additional ISBNs. This expense can climb further if one considers that each version of an ebook, i.e., Epub, Mobi, html, etc. should be assigned a different ISBN. For more information check the article here. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the tip. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:20:00 +0100 821909 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/MkQOebWYpiA/ The New York Times’s “Bits” blog has a piece on the contracts Amazon has been offering publishers, offering them a greater share of revenue in return for “most favored nation” status meaning that Amazon’s price must always be lower than or equal to the prices at which an e-book is offered for other devices. Given that publishers are now going to be dictating the pricing and Amazon is going to be facing competition from the iPad, such a guarantee may be more important than ever before. It’s also interesting to note that many e-publishing contracts still go only month to month as the publishers try to get more concessions from Amazon. The article also suggests that magazine and e-publishers, unhappy with the relatively small cut of revenue they get from Amazon’s Kindle sales, may be planning to offer a free app for the iPad at the moment, then come out with paid products once Amazon is able to display multimedia as well. Since Apple has handicapped the Amazon Kindle Reader’s online sale ability, Amazon is definitely going to need all the price advantages it can get. I suspect that publishers are probably going to see it to their advantage to keep the price the same across multiple platforms, rather than let Amazon keep the low price lead. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:15:00 +0100 821910 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/vHiVODKy1oA/ Here’s another review. This time from The-eBook-Reader. The reviewer likes the unit but feel that it is priced too high. Here’s a video that was included in the review: Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:02:14 +0100 821911 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/8GUnYJBKqqs/ If you have an iPhone you know that when you want to buy a book you have to leave the Amazon book reading app to do it. This will not be the case when Apple launches its own bookstore for the iPad, and will thus give Apple a competitive advantage over Amazon and Barnes & Noble. According to the Silicon Valley Insider: Amazon didn’t built the app this way from the beginning. We have learned that when Amazon first submitted its Kindle application for the iPhone to Apple, Amazon included its own payment system within the app, so customers could just pay for e-books and download them right in the app. When Apple spotted the payment system, it told Amazon to get rid of it, according to a source familiar with Amazon’s operations. More information here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:08:25 +0100 821792 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/YgaMek3fMYo/ Here is a free addon to your Firefox installation. I’ll quote from the site, and, by the way, why not give the author the translation help he asks for: EPUBReader is a Firefox addon which let you read ePub-files just in the browser. You don’t need to install additional software! If you click on a link to an ePub-file, you are normally prompted by the Firefox “save as” dialog. With EPUBReader installed, the ePub-file is downloaded, processed and directly displayed ready to read! An ePub-file is essentially an archive of HTML files. So why not read ePub-files with a program which is specialized in displaying HTML-files and many people have already installed? That’s the idea which lead to the creation of EPUBReader as a Firefox addon. It runs on every platform Firefox does (Windows, MacOS X, Linux). EPUBReader is available in 8 different languages: English, French, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Portuguese (European), Spanish, Traditional Chinese. Coming soon: Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Tamil. Your language not listed? It would be great, if you help with the translation, it just takes about 30 minutes. Please contact me here. Above is a screenshot of an epub book I downloaded from Manybooks and displayed in the reader. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:46:26 +0100 821793 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/_1bWgxTZpY0/ We reported on the release of the new Ibis ereader app at TOC here. Now, Wired Gadget Lab, via Charlie Sorrell, has taken it through its paces and he says: I have been playing around with Ibis for a little while and it really does behave like a local application, although sometimes it is not quite as fast when flipping between different sections. In fact, there’s only one thing that really gives it away: scrolling is a lot slower. Whereas in a native app you can “throw” a page and it speedily scrolls up or down, the “elastic” holding the pages of web apps is a lot stronger. It’s not just Ibis. This is a problem with all non-native applications on the iPhone. As a full-featured e-reader, Ibis is surprisingly good. As a proof-of-concept for non-approved, non-App Store applications, it is straight-up amazing. Read more at the Wired site. Thanks to ResouceShelf for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:56:43 +0100 821794 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/lM9sDioJhao/ Here’s an interesting one. A new ereader, the KeyReader, was introduced into Singapore. It’s got wireless connectivity and is locally made in Singapore. The reader will be able to access the over 900,000 books in the collection of Singapore’s National Library board for free. The manufacturer, iCell, is also in contact with other Singaporean content producers. More info at The Straits Times. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the heads up. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:07:09 +0100 821797 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/yGRC7NnXgCg/ Here is WorldCat’s list for January. You can find more details here. 1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer 2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 3. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer 4. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks 5. Push by Sapphire 6. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer 7. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer 8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling 9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 10. The Help by Kathryn Stockett 11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling 12. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown 13. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 14. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 15. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne 16. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 17. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey 18. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett 19. Going Rogue by Sarah Palin 20. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child Gone from the list: 6. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown 7. Delphine by Molly Bang 8. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 13. Sea Swept by Nora Roberts 14. Cajun Night Before Christmas by Trosclair 18. The Sounds of Slavery by Shane White and Graham White 19. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:49:50 +0100 821799 http://wiredforbooks.org/mp3/JackMatthews1984.mp3 (See also: Jack Matthews Interview  Part One. (Parts 2 and 3 will appear in the next week). My introduction to short story writer Jack Matthews could not be more accidental. Between 2007 and 2008, I had been downloading and listening to a series of author interviews conducted by Don Swaim during the 1970s and 80s. Don Swaim did a series of 3 minute interviews with CBS Radio Services called Book Beat, presumably when authors showed up in NYC for a book tour.  Swaim shot the breeze with authors for an hour, talking about random things, and later found enough material for the three minute segment that actually aired.  But he saved the audio from the full interviews, digitalized them and put them online. The Wired for Books  interviews themselves are unpredictable, unrehearsed, meandering, sometimes dull and sometimes overly focused on topical irrelevancies (See Note below). Unlike the erudite interviews of  the KCRW Bookworm podcast, (which Michael Silverblatt conducts like a graduate student eager to show off his profound understanding of an  author’s oeuvre),  the exigencies of a radio schedule gave Swaim little time to do real preparation.  Over the decades  Swaim interviewed a number of literary greats (both recognized and unrecognized). At the same time, he interviewed a lot of popular authors, biographers, historians  and celebrities who had no business writing books. Sometime in 2008, I was listening to a random mp3 while doing housework.  It was a fascinating interview with a man who collected rare books and had recently published a book about book collecting. Midway through the interview, I realized I had already heard the same interview while driving from San Antonio to Houston. I remember making  a mental note to look the author up, but never did. His name was Jack Matthews, and the interview was done  in 1984. (Listen to the mp3). ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:49:44 +0100 821800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/HO0E6YDkHXE/ Reading paper books is an emotional experience for which many of us have developed nostalgia. We remember our Dr. Seuss books, our early school readers, our library adventures, then the teen years and really ranging into our individual tastes. Right now, most of us did that with paper books. Ten years from now? I’m not so sure. I remember in the 1990s when a few Chicken Littlers were warning about the death of paper books. I laughed at them. I remember in the early 21st century when writers first started wondering about whether they should protect their electronic rights. The industry laughed at them. On Christmas Day, Amazon sold more ebooks than paper books. I’m not laughing anymore. I am selling ebooks. And I am writing books with the expectation that they will be ebooks.Since I became interested in this issue, my research has shown that Kindle, Nook, and other ereader-device owners not only buy and read more books than they ever have before, they are trying genres and subject matter they never would have picked up otherwise. One man on the Kindle Boards hadn’t read a book in 30 years because of visual impairment. Because he can now blow up the text size, he has read four books since Christmas. Teachers are taking their Kindles into classrooms and making reading cool again. Kids already have their own personal devices and are used to them. That’s their nostalgia. I fully appreciate those who defend the smell of pulp and ink, the tactile sensation of pages, the brilliance of a four-color paper cover and foil-stamped title logo. I love paper books, and I believe they will be around for the rest of my lifetime. There will still be bookstores, but they will be specialty shops and antiquaries instead of commerce centers. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:00:35 +0100 821804 http://www.shore.com/commentary/weblogs/2010/02/my-notes-from-interview-on-ebooks.html I just sent off some responses for an email-based interview as background for an upcoming article on ebooks in a magazine. I thought that I would share them with you in the raw here to open a discussion on ebooks that we can continue on Buzz or via the comments section of this blog. What are your thoughts about how publishers should approach ebooks?Questions and my responses:—It seems like the specifications for e-readers vary widely from device to device, and this year’s offerings look just as varied. Are there particular capabilities or specifications that publishers are really looking for from e-readers right now? What would an e-reader “silver bullet” device need to be capable of?Some publishers are beginning to consider new content and features for ebooks, such as video interviews with authors and "hooks" into Web content such as social media services. In some instances publishers are hoping that such value-add content may allow them to command higher prices for ebooks than the prices that have dominated for ebooks from major publishers since the introduction of ebooks on Amazon's Kindle platform. To this end a platform such as Apple's new iPad is attractive to publishers, as it offers a device that can work well as a general computer and as a display mechanism for rights-protected content. But there will be relatively few titles that will be targeted for such enriched content. So what is the "magic bullet" platform for ebooks? The one that's been out there for more than fifteen years, I would argue: the Web. Ebooks will do best when they can be linked into Web content effectively, not necessarily on the device on which we like reading book content the best. With dozens of new kinds of mobile devices being introduced every year, now, it would be counterproductive for book publishers to try to target only a handful of devices for commercial success. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821770 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/h7npdQIGqUw/ Actually, more like 18 now, since I only just found out about it myself. But until Friday, February 26, 2010, at 3:08 p.m. CST, author and occasional TeleRead contributor Moriah Jovan is giving away the first two books in her series, The Proviso and Stay, for free. They are available for download as two zipped files, 10.6 and 13.5 megabytes respectively, each containing the book in question in HTML, ePub, imp, LIT, PDB, PDF, and PRC formats. I haven’t read these yet myself, but am always on the lookout for good reading material. Give them a shot! Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:07:35 +0100 821516 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/16XvWRzwQrg/ Earlier today, I touched on mobile device demographics showing that Apple by and large rules the mobile device roost (the iPod Touch more so than the iPhone). Here’s some more interesting stats from Gizmodo, sourced from AdMob’s January mobile metrics report. Fully 65% of the iPod Touch’s owners are 17 or younger, versus only 13% for the iPhone. This is only natural, of course; non-wealthy parents are going to be somewhat reluctant to foot the $70/mo smartphone service plan bill for an iPhone when an iPod Touch does most of the same things. (In fact, one of my uncles emailed me a question once about getting such a device for his son.) Given that iPod Touches account for over half of Apple’s mobile devices, this means that over 40% of all iPhoneOS devices currently seeing mobile use are in the hands of teenagers. The implications of this demographic for publishers and e-book vendors should be obvious. The younger generation tend to be more willing than older folks to read off of screens, after all, and here millions of e-book capable devices are in their hands. Even if J.K. Rowling firmly refuses to license Harry Potter e-books, there are plenty of other young-adult titles that could be promoted. But kids are not going to have the disposable income of their parents, and not all of them will be able to convince their parents to buy them things. (Indeed, other charts in the Gizmodo article suggest that iPod Touch users download more apps than iPhone users, but the majority of them are free.) So it would seem that keeping prices reasonable would be a good way to entice this crowd to buy. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:32:46 +0100 821418 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/VTJzibEeKAU/ I’m back from an exhausting time of trying to cover TOC for you guys and here are a few thoughts about my overall impression of the conference. TOC is a rather odd duck in that I don’t think it quite knows who is eating its eggs. It is a mixture of low level, in the trenches, stuff and very high level thought pieces. This makes many of the sessions suitable for the worker bees and mid-level managers (for example those on copyright, the workshops on the first day). The dichotomy comes in when TOC goes with its keynotes. These are very high level sessions that are more suitable for upper management (for example the interview with Ray Kurzweil or Law is Not a Business Solution) who are more concerned with larger issues such a strategy and planning. The two don’t really meld. The overall message being sent by the conference was inconsistent this year. Throughout the sessions publishers were being told that innovation was the key to success. Do things differently, do new things, think in new directions. But the message of the final keynote by Tim O’Reilly was that publishers will never win in the technology race and they they should do what they always do, but just do it better. Not what everyone else was saying. Should you go next year? On the whole I would say yes if you are in management up to the mid-level. I do know from talking to attendees that people make a lot of contacts here, so if you are in a small business it might just be the place for you to meet one of the big guys you haven’t been able to get ahold of or to be able to find contacts to help you in the operation of your business. As to specific presentations, three stand out in my mind as head an shoulders above the others. The first is Peter Meyers 10 Ways to Enhance Your iPad Books. This really was an eye opener when it comes to how to think about really enhancing books, not just enhancing them by adding a video. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:35:24 +0100 821419 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/zR_eJl8_P-U/ Publishing Perspectives reports that French readers seem to think that brick and mortar bookstores are more expensive than on-line purchasing "when, in reality, book prices are supposed to be the same across all channels.” (Is that true in France? It definitely is not in the USA, but I seem to recall hearing somewhere about European regulation of pricing.) Ars Technica reports that at a conference on Tuesday, Apple COO Tim Cook said that, since the majority of Apple’s revenue now comes from the iPhone family of devices, Apple now considers itself a “mobile device business” and the iPad will be a natural extension of that business. A cautionary tale from Jim Macdonald at Making Light: vanity press PublishAmerica is now offering to submit five copies of its authors’ books to Random House’s acquisitions editors—provided the authors order at least 10 copies of that book themself at half-price. What PublishAmerica isn’t trying very hard to make clear is that there is no guarantee Random House will actually look at those books (indeed, they’ll probably circular-file them the same way they would any unsolicited manuscript)—but as Macdonald says, PublishAmerica doesn’t really care because they already got paid for those ten books. There’s a difference between self-publishing houses and vanity presses, and that difference should be pretty obvious by now. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:15:00 +0100 821420 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EHpJjGzzAus/ Publishing Perspectives has an interesting story about a book assembled to raise money for Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. The idea behind 100 Stories for Haiti was to assemble 100 stories from all over the Internet, and then publish them as a book and e-book. Author Greg McQueen says that the book would not have been possible five years ago, before the dawn of social networking: As it happened, I posted [to social networks] an appeal for stories on the morning of Tuesday, January, 19. Just one week after the earthquake that left over 200,000 dead. The final deadline for submissions was Wednesday, Jan, 27 and the manuscript actually went off to the printers on Feb 14. So, in three weeks, we went from an appeal to a finished manuscript. It is being published as a print book by UK publisher Bridge House Publishing and an e-book via Smashwords on March 4th. Pricing for the print book will range from £2.30 for the UK to £10 (about $15.41 at current rates) for the rest of the world; the e-book will have pay-what-you-like pricing starting at £1. In a separate editorial, Edward Nawotka uses this book as an example to wonder why traditional print publishers cannot come to market faster. As some comments to his post point out, in part it depends on the kind of book. An 80,000-word collection of assorted stories is naturally going to be faster to edit than a 120,000-word novel that has to go back and forth between publisher and author several times. Still, it is interesting to note that at least some print publishers can work faster if they really want to. Just consider all the books on O.J. Simpson that suddenly blossomed on bookstore shelves like dandelions in the sidewalk when his trial was going on. In fact, any time there is any big newsworthy event, there is a veritable explosion of sudden books about it. This is definitely food for thought. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:15:00 +0100 821423 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/VHysIWPy1C0/ I’m a big magazine reader. In addition to the many books I buy each year (I have more books in my to-read pile than I can read within the next few years), I subscribe to a lot of magazines. My subscriptions include Smithsonian, The Atlantic, The Week, The Economist, American Heritage, New York Review of Books, Business Week, PC World, U.S. News & World Report, The Scientist, Discover, and several more. I begin my day, every day, with a pot of tea and the day’s New York Times and my local newspaper. Between the books I buy and the magazines and newspapers to which I subscribe, I spend a lot of time reading! I admit to being curious. I like to keep up with what is happening around me and I really dislike the 10-second news blurbs that TV and radio offer (although National Public Radio deserves kudos for All Things Considered). I think being broadly read helps me as an editor. But times are changing. Magazines and newspapers are struggling. Several that I had subscribed to have folded print editions and are now available online only, such as PC Magazine and a book collecting magazine to which I once subscribed; once they became online-only magazines, I stopped reading them. Unlike the magazines that have made the transition to online-only status, I haven’t followed – I really hate sitting at my computer to read an online magazine: Isn’t spending my work life on my computer sufficient? Do I have to be chained to a computer — be it laptop or desktop — for my pleasures as well as my work? This feeling of being chained to work is one reason why multifunction devices don’t appeal to me for pleasure pursuits. As illogical as it seems, I actually distinguish between reading on my computer and reading on my Sony Reader, a dedicated reading device. I enjoy reading on my Sony Reader, equally as much as I enjoy holding a print copy of a book. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:10:15 +0100 821424 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/FYW8hD3PH2Q/ Michael Serbinis is CEO of Kobo, and as such his prognostications are of more than a little interest. The following is reprinted, with permission, from his blog: 1. A $99 eReader. Controversial I know, but device makers are pouring into the space and while $99 may not come until 2011, I would not be surprised at all to see it this year. If you are selling an eReader north of $249, it had better sing and dance, clean the house… and make a mean soufflé. 2. The $4.99 Bestseller. Yes, eBook prices are going up, but what happens when some pubs go agency and some don’t? Prices will be all over the map, and publishers and retailers will test all kinds of pricing schemes. We may also see a class action on pubs going with agency. 3. Amazon Launches the Super Kindle. Lab126 (Amazon’s holding company that makes the Kindle) is hiring enough hardware engineers to launch a smartphone, tablet, and a line of high efficiency home appliances. Are they making a SuperKindle? Thanks to the NYT’s Nick Bilton for starting yet another hype cycle for a device that doesn’t yet exist but will descend from heaven and make all our lives better. 5. Google Announces Google Editions. Again. And (a picture of) a Tablet. 6. We will share our eBooks in 2010. Sharing our favorite books is a natural and essential practice. Customers expect it, we’re ready, we just need publishers to come to the table 7. Over 15 million new eReaders sold in 2010. My best guess is that 3-4m were sold in 2009, mostly by Amazon and Sony. Forrester guessed 6m for 2010, but from my perspective they are missing the mark by about 2.5x. New entrants will diminish Amazon and Sony’s share (and I don’t mean B&N). 8. By 2015, At least 50% of eBook sales will come from entrants that don’t even sell hardcopy books today. 9. The Google Book Settlement (G.B.S., let your imagination run with other meanings for the acronym) saga continues. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:51:37 +0100 821425 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ka_6hY7eYSQ/ Last week, Publishing Perspectives covered the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. One of the facts that came out was that smartphone use had more than quintupled from 2.4% of the mobile market to 15.4% in 2008. Publishing Perspectives reporter Hannah Johnson noted: If book publishers add one thing to their to-do lists this year, it should be to develop and execute a mobile content strategy to take advantage of this growth. The article goes into detail about how the market for media content on these phones is growing by leaps and bounds, but is limited to a certain extent by app store fragmentation—each smartphone maker has its own separate app store. To try to solve this problem, twenty-four mobile carriers are joining together to create a cross-platform app store called the Wholesale Application Community, Carriers include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Vodafone. The goal is to “establish a simple route to market for developers” and to provide customers with access to the widest range of apps available. No specific launch date was announced. E-book app developers still have a chance to get into this community from the beginning. The article does not mention whether Apple will be cooperating with this effort. Given that (as I mentioned earlier today) Apple has about 95% of the mobile handheld device market and is notorious for keeping its platform closed, if Apple is not on board then they may reach considerably fewer than the “three billion consumers” the article projects. Cell Phones More Important? Elsewhere on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka thinks that cell phones may be more important to the future of publishing than dedicated e-reading devices. Whereas in the US dedicated devices such as the Kindle, Nook, and iPad get most of the spotlight, these devices have been slow to make it to the rest of the world and so most people elsewhere read on their mobile phones. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:15:00 +0100 821426 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/yKsCfTzD6W8/ For any serious ebook’er, getting stuff to read is of utmost importance! Tweets, emails, notes from friends, the New York Times Best Seller List, these are all good resources for more information, but very often only mention scraps of what you are really looking for. While we can always “Google” it and probably find out what we need, this quick solution can very often leave us lacking in depth. Sometimes a library/book centric site will help you find things a lot faster! Enter WorldCat! A product from the folks at OCLC, http://www.oclc.org, this online catalog of over a billion books and still growing can be found at the following site: http://www.worldcat.org. Integrated across the Internet in sites such as Google Books and others, as well as in thousands of libraries across the world, WorldCat is a fast, free method of searching for your next eread.Why? So what’s the big deal about another online catalog? Without dwelling too deep into “library-ese”, the WorldCat catalog is a partnership between OCLC and thousands of libraries working together to provide electronic records of books (and ebooks) published, purchased, and used on a daily basis. Because of this integration, WorldCat can point you to different places that may have the one title you are looking for or maybe even download it from your local public library. Searching and Finding Trying WorldCat for the first time, the simple search box lets you type in as much as you know about the book you are looking for. If you do have more information or want a more granular search, then advanced options such as year, ISBN, ISSN and lots more are available for your selection. (Remember as well that you can also look for other types of material at this point, including DVD’s and even CD’s, if you are so inclined. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:03:30 +0100 821427 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/i802NXGIh80/ Unlike the fear of ebooks that seems to be overtaking publishers, and is almost palpable at conferences such as the recent Tools of Change, Penguin boss John Makinson has no fear of their arrival. This is important because Penguin is the world’s second largest English publishing house. In an interview in the Mail Online, Makinson says that: “The transition from physical to digital is a momentous moment for the industry …. The decisions that we take now on behalf of authors will determine the future of publishing.” He feels that Apple’s move into digital books will “introduce a large new audience to the reading of electronic books.” Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:54:54 +0100 821428 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/chuDqe82DIU/ Competition is a good thing. Lately, I have found that between Fictionwise, Sony, Amazon, and Kobo there is always a promo code or coupon out there somewhere. It used to be that I would only buy from Fictionwise; I got very attached to their reward system and would buy new releases at high prices because they had a large rebate and then spend the rebate on dozens of other books. I am at the point now where there is just too much in my to-read folder, and I am realizing that a large portion of it isn’t stuff I really care about. I would rather spend less money on just the book I want than spend more money on a book I maybe want, and five others I don’t care about! So, with the arrival of The Promo Code Wars, I have been investigating other ebook stores. Here is a round-up of how I’ve been doing. 1) Amazon I haven’t bought from them yet (except a replacement for my Kindle’s on-board dictionary) because there is no Kindle for Mac software yet and I prefer to manage all my books through there. But I think that once Mac support is available, Amazon may become more of a destination for me because their prices are often cheaper than anyone else’s. I also like the idea of synching with my iPod Touch and being able to start a book there if I am traveling light, and then resume it at the point I left off when I move to the Kindle later 2) Fictionwise I still buy a lot of books from them. Their multi-format titles are affordable and in my opinion, the way an ebook purchase should be: when you buy it, it’s yours and you can download it in any format you wish, as many times as you need to. So, I can download a copy right onto my iPod Touch using the eReader app, then download a Kindle version and transfer it via USB. It couldn’t be easier. I also love their magazine subscriptions. I subscribe to Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock; both are excellent short fiction magazines. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:21:42 +0100 821430 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/fc_h_7dRntQ/ Mobile Marketer covers a report (PDF file link) by “mobile audience media company” JiWire that says consumers are more often using wifi-enabled devices for Internet access on the go. The article claims 56% of consumers who use mobile Internet connect to the Internet via a handset. The report adds that 21% of mobile Internet consumers primarily use “non-laptop” mobile devices (handsets or netbooks) for mobile Internet. “People are utilizing a tremendous range of devices from laptops to netbooks to e-books when choosing to remain connected while on the go,” said David Staas, senior vice president of marketing at JiWire. It is interesting to me that Staas said “e-books” given that the only e-book I know of that offers any kind of useful Internet connectivity is the Kindle (I’m not counting the Nook here, since its net access can only be used for downloading e-books), and that device does not currently use wifi at all. On the other hand, the report itself pictures a Nook on the chart that breaks wifi use down by device (e-book readers come in at 4%, just ahead of cameras at 3%) so perhaps they are not quite so picky as I am. I will say that I’ve used my iPod Touch a great deal in public wifi locations myself. It’s a great little device for surfing the web, checking and writing short e-mails, and social networking. But I’ve also used my Motorola RAZR2 cell phone for that purpose, and it does not use wifi at all. The second half of the article talks about the use of mobile devices for on-the-go shopping, with 49% of consumers making mobile on-line purchases and 47% using mobile Internet as their primary purchasing source. Amazon and eBay were mentioned as being among the top destinations (certainly not surprising for those people making on-line purchases through their Kindles). I was skeptical of those numbers until I clicked through and read the actual report. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:15:00 +0100 821431 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/25/penguin-boss-unfazed-by-march-of-ebooks/ From the Article: When it first appeared in the 1930s, the paperback was regarded with suspicion and alarm in the book industry. Deploying a brand new technology, it brought cheap literature to the masses, transforming reading habits. The revolution shook the gentlemanly world of publishing to its core. [Snip] Three quarters of a century later the British company behind this disruptive force, Penguin, finds itself at the centre of another epoch-defining upheaval. The relentless march of the electronic book – epitomised by Amazon’s Kindle reader and the forthcoming Apple iPad – threatens to hollow out the publishing world in the same way as the internet has altered forever the dynamics of the music industry. Penguin boss John Makinson likens the rise of the ebook to the moment when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. [Snip] …publishers do enjoy a number of advantages over the music giants in the digital age. For one, Kindle, iPad or Sony Reader buyers cannot digitise their libraries in the way that music lovers can rip their entire CD collection onto the hard drive of their computer and then upload songs onto their MP3 player. Secondly, piracy is still in its infancy in the ebook market. Sure, it’s possible to find pirated copies of best-selling titles on the web, but the threat is nowhere near as grave as it was for the music business in the early 2000s. For these reasons, publishers still wield considerable power over the internet and tech giants seeking to break into their domain. If download stores like Apple attempt to force down the price of ebooks – as they did with songs – the likes of Penguin and Random House can play their trump card, according to Makinson. ‘If retailers try to drop the price below a certain level they simply won’t get the file,’ he said. [Snip] People will expect to pay less for an ebook than a physical book, particularly a hardback,’ Makinson concedes. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:59:14 +0100 821272 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/49Dl9v0_7ik/ A couple of weeks ago, Paul reported on self-e-publishing site Scribd’s plans to add direct mobile download capability. CNet reports that Scribd has now done so: Scribd-hosted documents can be sent to any of a dozen different e-book devices (including Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Palm, EZReader, and others) with two mouse clicks. The documents are sent as PDF files via e-mail or SMS message link. At present, only DRM-free titles are supported, but Scribd CEO Trip Adler has plans to expand to copy-protected versions in the future. Another part of Scribd’s mobile strategy is creating device-specific Scribd reader applications, which will be released later this year. Much as Amazon does with its Kindle Reader app, these will allow readers to download Scribd documents into their device and keep track of where they stopped reading. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:00:24 +0100 821267 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/hKvLswl_dTk/ We’ve reported on Nintendo DS e-book applications several times over the last few years—both homebrew apps such as dslibris and a commercial cartridge containing 100 public domain e-books released in Europe in 2008. The other day, Paul received an email suggesting the new Nintendo DSi XL could be an e-book reader for Europe in lieu of the Kindle. Times Online actually reviewed it in this capacity in January: Secondly, the bigger size makes the DSi XL a serious rival for more expensive eBook readers. I’m not sure about this, but if the console can open .txt files, then there’s no reason you can’t download your own out-of-copyright classics and bung them on an SD card. I’ll check this out later. It turns out it might well be an e-book reader for America, too: today, CNet reports that aforementioned 100-public-domain book cartridge will be released on this side of the Atlantic in June, at a standard retail price of $20. (Business Week has another such report.) Publishing Perspectives reports that a similar bundle of French public-domain literature is coming out for the DSi in France on March 5th. The $190 DSi XL’s screens will be 93% larger than the old Nintendo DS’s (increasing in size from 3.5” to 4.2” diagonally according to Wikipedia), and support wider viewing angles. They are expected to retain the same 256×192 pixel resolution, however. While this is not as good a resolution as the iPhone’s 3.5”, 480×320 screen, it is still better than the 160×160 pixel display on the original Palm PDAs, and plenty of people read e-books on those in the old days. It does provide over twice the screen area as an iPhone. This is another example of the e-book convergence strategy that worked so well for the Palm and the iPhone: put e-books on things people bought for other reasons. Since the DS has an app store, it is entirely possible that multiplatform e-book apps could be ported to it. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:32:52 +0100 821268 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/24/another-college-student-not-thrilled-with-ebooks/ No, it’s not a trend at all. However, it’s interesting to read how college students (we’ve posted three so far), people who have grown-up with mega amount of technology feel about a technology they could be/will be using at college sooner than later. Specifically, reading eBooks. Last week, we posted two columns by two different writers from two different universities (U. of Maine and Marist College). In both cases the student journalists were far from becoming eBook fans. That said, both understood that eBooks were the way technology was heading. One thing both columnists mentioned was how much they liked the smell of books, especially new ones. Today, Alex Kuskowski, the literary columnist for The Daily Cardinal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shares her thoughts in a column titled, “Alex can’t rekindle her love of electronic books.” Here are a few of her thoughts: I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never been one for technology. We’ve never really got along, and by that I basically mean I’m a human circuit breaker. [Snip] Unfortunately for me, like the phrase “GTL” (which stands for gym, tanning and laundry according to the cast of “Jersey Shore”), technology is creeping into my life, and I feel both are something that must be reversed immediately. [Snip] As exemplified by the focus of my rants, I am all for people reading; however, I have to stand up and defend the printed word from these attacks. Take the idea of trading up to an electronic version of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” You will be paying about the same price to carry around a lighter version of that beast of the novel, but you will lose the overawed stares of those around you when you pull it out for some light, before-class reading. So retain the moral high ground with me and stick to reading the printed word. Trust me, even at the Kindle price of $9. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:44:32 +0100 821166 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/GWxpB0Y7aSQ/ Tim O”Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly media. Challenge is not to build the coolest and most enhanced ebooks. The publisher will never be a winner in a technology race. Innovations do come from publishers, but that’s not the heart of what publishers do. Publishers’ job is to do for authors those things that authors can’t do for themselves. Be creative, but remember what you really do. Which is often the boring stuff. If not good at those things then someone will take your place. It’s not easy to be found in this new world. Big haystack. All of the top blogs today are publishers and publishing with one of these will get writer more visibility that they can get on their own. Even iPhone apps are having a haystack problem. Given this there will always be a role in society for aggregators, and this should be a core competency for a publisher. Getting authors known and distributed. Publishers must be excellent distributors. Publishers must have the capability to create products in new formats and sell it into new channels. Publishers extremely weak in SEO. Social media marketing: you gain and bestow status based on those you associate with. More important to build your status rather than trying to push product. Use social media to build the status of your authors rather than just to push product. Just like with Google, a new breed of social media analytics are coming on board and should be used in designing your social network. There will be ebook analytics as well. An ebook knows it is being read and this will lead to a lot of interesting tools. Should be doing a lot of pricing experiments to find what works. One nice thing about the agency pricing model is that it allows the publishers to experiment with pricing rather than distributors. Social media is not about trying to sell something but is about trying to add value to community who cares about what you card about. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:04:56 +0100 821140 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/yTXMkPn-6ug/ Ramy Habeeb, established first Arabic language ebook house. Arab publishing market behind western publishing, and its lessons also applicable to other emerging economies. 60,000 titles published every year. Arabic market is the size of the US. Problems: distribution is still very primitive, In Egypt, 80% of books only available within 5 kilometers of publishing house. Censorship is still a problem. Three kinds: on purpose, self censorship and unconscious censorship. No viable OCR solution available in Arabic. International standards are a problem. Nobody uses ISBN numbers. They have them but don’t use them or any other international standard. Industry is ripe to be entered and needs the major players. Mobile phones are everywhere, villages won’t have a library or bookstore, but will have 4 mobile phone stores. Would be an excellent book distribution system. PoD would work wonderfully in Arab countries and also to bring Arab books to the US. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:35:24 +0100 821141 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/72oy4oO33qE/ Frances Pinter, Bloomsbury Academic. Startup academic publisher. Publishing monographs in academia, an endangered species. 1980 sold 3,000 copies of typical monograph, now sell about 350. Challenge: how do we get to a point where we can sustainably publish long form monographs. (Discussion covers only social sciences and humanities) Academics still want independent verification of quality, editing, typesetting, curation, branding. Pressures on academic community: expanding academic ecosystem and need more publishing services, governments and foundation wants to see impact for research they are funding. Pressures on academic publishers: technology driven changes require investment in time of global downturn, authors still want services and royalties and want “free at point of use”. New business model: website will go live in April. Put plain book content on line in HTML under Creative Commons. Will sell printed book and in Epub. Also sell enhanced ebook, content with extra content to be bought individually or by subscription. Going to create an experimental lab on line, with tools for collaboration, added value, cc licensing and monetization. Not sure where it will lead. Problem is that this doesn’t reduce first copy costs, duplicates the worst of the distribution issues with too many middlemen. Wants to find new pathways for money that is already there. Look at library budgets and take a small amount and aggregate and create an International Library Coalition for Open Access Books. Consortium will aggregate funds to pay for first copy costs and publishers publish as open access content and can make money on POD sales and formats, etc. Can get cost of monograph ot $2/copy for any library who participates. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:01:55 +0100 821142 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/46BX01RWhdA/ Angela Bole, BSIG; Kelly Gallagher, Bowker Consumer attitudes to ebook reading. Ongoing project. Very fresh data, completed survey last week and this is the first release to the public. Looked a print book readers who are moving to ebooks. Respondents had to have read an ebook. 95% confidence level, about 44K respondents. Purchasing behavior: #1 reason to buy an ebook is affordability 34% acquired their first ebook within the last sixth months Purchasers of ebooks are buying fewer hardbacks and paperbacks 47% read ebooks on a desktop, 32% on the Kindle, 11% on iPhone, 10% on iPod Touch, 9% on Blackberry, 9% on a netbook, 8% on the Nook, 8% on the Sony Reader, 13% on other 50% buy ebooks exclusively When asked what would make you pay more for an ebook, 3 of the top 5 items related to social network features When asked what the major benefits of ebooks were the top benefits were low cost, availability of free/promotional books When asked if they would be willing to wait 3 moths for the release of an ebook after the release of the hard cover, 30% said not sure, 32% said would be willing to wait, and 25% said would buy the hardcover instead When asked if DRM would change their purchase decision, 42% said maybe, 29% said no and 29% said yes Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:01:52 +0100 821143 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/_Otu2SVXOsM/scribd-mobile-document-service Document sharing website Scribd to challenge Apple and Amazon in the mobile marketDocument sharing website Scribd is making a more direct challenge to Amazon and Apple by launching a mobile service that it hopes will make it easier for millions of people to read on the go.The move could put the well-regarded startup – described as "YouTube for documents" – into more direct competition with larger rivals such as Amazon and Apple, which is set to launch the iPad and its iBooks application next month.Scribd already offers more than 10m documents online, including books from major publishers such as Random House and Simon & Schuster, but from today will also begin offering users the chance to read their files on any smartphone or ebook reader.A simple system to send files to their device – regardless of what it is – may help erase complexity and give people easy access to much more content, said Trip Adler, Scribd's co-founder and chief executive."Right now people are confused about which e-reader to buy, they're confused about how to get content onto their devices," he told the Guardian. "This solves all of that by putting all these devices so you can read any content on Scribd on your device."At the moment, most ebook readers acquire new titles through applications specifically built by the makers of their gadget – such as Amazon's Kindle book catalogue. Adler suggested that providing a broad range of material across all devices was largely uncharted territory, but that it should boost the popularity of ebooks and downloads of other types of documents."This should help increase sales, because if people can read things they buy on the web on their device, they are more likely to buy it," he said. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0100 821054 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/5Tp1b2gHhLc/ Several events in the past few weeks suddenly converged in my mind, causing me to realize that in the discourse about ebooks, especially about what constitutes fair ebook pricing, the unbridgeable divide is between believe and know. The first events were discussions about ebooks and what constitutes fair pricing for an ebook. Three types of people participated in those discussions: those who admittedly had no direct knowledge of the costs involved in publishing an ebook, those who did have direct knowledge, and those who believed they knew. As is typical of such discussions, those who admitted not knowing were open to learning and the other two types were trying to teach. But between the teachers there was no room to compromise; those who believed they knew — the believers — simply would not consider or accept that believe and know are not synonymous, that there is a chasm between the two words. Then came the New York Times Magazine article, “How Christian Were the Founders?”, which discussed the efforts by pressure groups in Texas to shape the secondary school curriculum by requiring textbooks to reflect their view of history. This pressure was previously applied to the science curriculum, the Kansas school board fight having made national headlines. The article and the ebook fair-pricing discussions brought to mind this war between two words: belief and knowledge. The core problem in the discussions about both pricing and textbook content is the chasm between believe and know. Believe, although having some slim foundation in evidence, signifies something unprovable (or perhaps less provable), and thus less firmly based in evidence, than know, whose foundation is firmly based on the provable and demonstrable. For example, we may believe there is minimal cost to creating an ebook of a pbook, but we do not know what that cost is — we can’t prove it or demonstrate it. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:49:03 +0100 821145 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/T_cIZUlFybY/ Thirteen months ago I reviewed a self-published e-book series called Worlds Apart. Everything I said in that review remains true (go ahead and read it—I’ll wait right here!) I just wanted to talk a little further about it in light of recent events. With the uproar over the Amazon/Macmillan pricing feud, a number of people have spoken up claiming that writers don’t need the publishers—they can self-publish and find their own audience. And to an extent this is true. I’ve certainly covered enough of self-published writer Henry Melton’s work here to make it clear what I think of it. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who simply won’t read self-published works because of their reputation for poor quality—if the books weren’t “good enough” to make it through a professional publisher, then they probably aren’t worth reading. And certainly this is true for quite a few works as well. Worlds Apart really falls somewhere in the middle. It has some great ideas behind it, an intricately-detailed background with page after page of supplemental material, and has excellent characterization and a gripping epic storyline. The problem is that it really needs the services of a professional editor. Editors make things better. Something that many “Storyteller’s Bowl” publication efforts have in common—certainly the Big Meow project by Diane Duane, and Fledgling and Saltation by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller—is that the authors planned to pay for the services of a professional editor out of the proceeds of their story subscriptions, because they knew it was an important part of the process. An editor can make a considerable difference in quality. Anyone who read the serialized first draft of Fledgling and then the published novel can tell you that the difference the editing process made was considerable. Worlds Apart has not gone through that process, and it shows. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:30:00 +0100 821146 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/9xJ8-FCBIF0/ Peter Costanzo and Rick Joyce Perseus Books Group: independent publishing company and distribute other independent publishers. Surveyed their independent publishing clients. What is most significant focus in 2010: ebooks, social media and direct consumer were highest top 3. What percentage of your titles will be ebooks in 2010: 30% less than 10%, 50% half or more made into ebooks. What are barriers to your ebook entry: highest barrie is poor fit of titles with device capabilities 43%, piracy 37%, retailer pricing 37%, cost of conversion 35%, confusion about technology standards or processes 34%, poor handling of color 34%, cost of conversion 35%. Planning on windowing? 43% plan to release e and p at same time. 30% wait and see, 8% window, 11% experiment with windowing. What format do you use: 40% PDF, 20% epub, 30% all, 12% azw, 21% other.Piracy: 25% unconcerned, 20% fairly small problem, 20% dangerous, 20 % unsure, 6% requires a technical fix iPad, what do they think: 40% too soon to tell, 37% will be a significant reading platform, 30% reading will be secondary on the platform Agency model, do you prefer? 50% unsure, 25% yes at 70% Price points for ebooks: no fixed pricing 41%, $10 to $15 30%, 20% $15 to $19 General presentation: Perseus has created a number of “enhanced” ebooks. Takes a huge amount of work and requires an incredible mix of talent. Large learning curve. If publisher uses third party developer can be extremely expensive. Digital product can complement paper product; for example in travel books you can publish segments of the guide as stand-alone books. For example, from a France guide you can take out museums of Paris and issue this as a separate digital book. In travel books when did separate apps sold 10K in a few months. Ebooks perfect for speed and timeliness so have digital books ready for breaking news. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:16:50 +0100 821148 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/P4YqMKhpwdk/ It is an interesting conundrum that every new data storage medium invented since the stone tablet has had a shorter physical lifetime before it degrades. American Scientist looks at this issue in light of the preservation problems presented by digital media. Kurt D. Bollacker begins by talking about issues in data migration from his own past (such as the time he painstakingly backed up his hard drive onto 20 floppy disks…then when he needed to restore discovered he could no longer find the backup software), then talks about how our current digital lifestyle makes it harder to keep our data safe. From an e-book reader’s point of view, this can be a problem: physical libraries will remain as they are for decades, while an e-book library can be wiped out by one hard drive crash. (Though some e-book fans have lost all their paper books in house fires but still had their e-book library safe on their computers, so this is not necessarily always true.) Bollacker goes into a great amount of scientific detail about how errors can creep in when media is damaged, and the fact that greater data densities in newer digital media means that the same amount of physical damage to a denser medium results in losing considerably more information. He also talks about methods of error checking and correction to lessen this type of damage. But on the other hand, the best medium in the world is no good to us if we lose the player for it. This problem is happening in the short term with older media formats from the early days of computers—how much more will it affect information archaeologists of our future? Even if they find a DVD that has been perfectly preserved for all that time, will they be able to read it a thousand years from now? The best solution, Bollacker suggests, is “data promiscuity”: making frequent backups, and transitioning media from old formats to new ones as they become available. But there are alternatives. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:45:00 +0100 821149 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EqFLCeFrYc8/ Over the last few days, a number of sources have reported on Apple’s decision to remove risqué applications from the app store, including swimsuit and lingerie applications. Over 5,000 applications have been purged in this sweep. Apparently parental restrictions just aren’t restricting enough; Apple exec Phil Schiller claimed Apple had been getting complaints from women about the “degrading” nature of the content. But there are some notable exceptions: apps from Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Victoria’s Secret, and other well-known corporate concerns. (Likewise, a bikini calendar app from the Hooters sports bar currently remains available, though its developer has not heard anything from Apple one way or the other.) Even though a number of the removed apps reportedly do not feature images any racier than the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and the very name Playboy has become a cliché for female nudity, these apps get to stay in the store. (However, Apple has since added back some of the more innocent apps removed in the sweep.) When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said. VentureBeat’s “DigitalBeat” section suggests that the real difference is that a lot of these brands are owned by media conglomerate content partners—Time-Warner, in the case of Sports Illustrated—that own a lot of other content Apple would love to put on its  iPhones and iPads. DigitalBeat also thinks it likely that one of the more important reasons for the cleanup is that Apple wants to position the iPad as an education-friendly device, and an app store full of soft porn apps really doesn’t look good to potential school and family customers. ... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0100 821150 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/gcXDrd2RLuc/kobo-launches-uk-ebook-store.html "On the heels of a major funding announcement and re-brand, Kobo (previously Shortcovers) has launched in the UK. Kobo is an eReading service for smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and eReaders. Kobo's use of open standards like EPUB and its unique cloud-based service enables consumers to build their ebook libraries without being locked in to any one device. Kobo also keeps all of a reader's devices in sync, enabling them to read from device to device. Since it launched in North America in early 2009, Kobo has been downloaded by more than one million users in 200 countries. The UK launch is the first region-specific launch for Kobo outside of North America. Kobo features eBooks from leading UK publishers such as Random House UK, Penguin Group UK, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster UK and Faber & Faber. With these partnerships Kobo will have nearly two million titles available in the UK - with bestsellers from £8.99 and less. Kobo is working with the Independent Publishers Guild to ensure that regional and independent presses are represented alongside major publishing houses. The service will include a bestseller list unique to the UK store and UK titles featured prominently on the site" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:58:22 +0100 821084 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/k6D1ifTA5xs/eight-questions-to-ask-when-evaluating-ebook-products-and-services.html EFF has published "Digital Books and Your Rights" [web page, 18-page PDF], a "checklist [that] represents the key questions that readers should ask of each new digital book product or service to evaluate whether it adequately protects their interests." Observing... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821674 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/57WDcIDuIeg/ CNet has an article about Smartwords, an idea from start-up company Wordnik that sounds terrific but sure seems hard to describe succinctly. As Smartwords’s website puts it: Smartwords is a lightweight, easy-to-use standard for retrieving and publishing real-time, contextually-aware information about words. It took reading through the CNet article a couple of times to figure out that it might better be described as “an integrated dictionary on steroids.” Existing e-book apps with dictionary support (such as eReader) are largely limited to clicking on a single word to get a definition. Wordnik wants to go further than that. With Smartwords, as CNet puts it: Wordnik and its partners are aiming to bring deep levels of context to any kind of electronic text—be it in e-books on readers like the iPad, Kindle, or Nook, or on computers or mobile devices—by examining words and the words around them and linking readers to potentially vast amounts of information about them. And that context is not just limited to the words around the one in question; Wordnik CEO Erin McKean suggests it might even go as far as checking out what other books you keep on your device so it knows to offer information only about words you probably haven’t seen before. Smartwords will also incorporate elements of social networking, allowing readers to share snippets of text on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. (Though I wonder if I am being too cynical to foresee a bit of difficulty getting many e-book device and app makers to sign onto this, publishers being notoriously paranoid about copy-and-paste ability.) It might also provide a useful source of demographic information for publishers—letting them know how long it takes readers to finish particular books, or where they stop reading. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:54:57 +0100 820942 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/23/brewster-kahle-delivers-keynote-speech-at-tools-of-change-conference-in-nyc/ Paul Biba from TeleRead provides a thorough summary of what Internet Archive Founder and Man in Charge, Brewster Kahle had to say during his keynote speech today at the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in NYC. Here are a few points, the rest are found in the full text post: + 1,800,000 books in the Internet Archive and it scans 1,000 books a day. + Costs about 10 cents a page to digitize a book and takes half an hour or so to do it. + Bookserver can also work with libraries and restrict number of copies of books loaned out at the same time. + Bookserver is not proprietary, but a set a standards for a distributed system that anyone can use. Access the Complete Post Source: TeleRead (Want More Coverage of the TOC Conference? Browse the Past Two Days of TeleRead’s Posts) See Also: New From the Internet Archive: Bookserver, An Open System Allowing Users to Search Multiple eBook Catalogs from a Single Interface, Makes Crawling Easier Too! (ResourceShelf, 10/2009) See Also: Brewster Kahle Profiled in Forbes (10/2009) (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:03:50 +0100 820965 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/rK-0MqE_Ql8/ 2001 ebook devices, 3 to 7 million in sales, Industry Standard. Kindle estimated sold about 2 million total. What went wrong: Not enough books available. Expensive and tepid publisher involvement. Prices were too high High prices, too few titles, no one wants to invest in a device. Usage patterns : Since they won’t buy a device, let’s put it on stuff they do use. PCs, PDA’s. Not enough periodicals—didn’t want to make compromises on quality, advertising doesn’t work the same, competition from free websites. Marketing. The challenge: For consumers books aren’t broken.The most successful free publisher online: is Yahoo. Yahoo publisher the equivalent of the national newspaper. What does that mean for today? Short stories. Needed, an itunes for short fiction. Including micropayment. Subscribe to an author: Next ten short stories for $10. “There are actually a bunch of authors I would subscribe to proactively on that basis and I think a lot of other people would too.” The backlist: “It’s really frustrating as somebody who reads a lot of fiction that I can’t get that stuff…It just shouldn’t’ be happening, we should be making that stuff available electronically.” Phantom value—when you convince yourself that the consumer values something because that’s what you’re selling. Questions for publishers: 1. How much reader-visible value does our editing add? 2. How much demand generation do we really do? “Be brutally honest with yourself about what you’re really doing there.” Could people laid off contract with authors independently. 3. Do readers value our brand (vs. the author) 4. Will print books go away? At what point does an author make more money by going electronic only? When about 25% of book buyers have e-reader devices book publishing will change dramatically. Penetration about 2 to 3 percent of the population. The iPad brings the tipping point closer. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:46:01 +0100 820946 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/1I8zWEHp-Tk/ From the press release: On the heels of a major funding announcement and re-brand, Kobo (previously Shortcovers) today launched in the UK. Kobo is an eReading service for smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and eReaders. Kobo’s use of open standards like EPUB and its unique cloud-based service enables consumers to build their eBook libraries without being locked in to any one device. Kobo also keeps all of a reader’s devices in sync, enabling them to read from device to device. Since it launched in North America in early 2009, Kobo has been downloaded by more than one million users in 200 countries. The UK launch is the first region-specific launch for Kobo outside of North America. Kobo features eBooks from leading UK publishers such as Random House UK, Penguin Group UK, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster UK and Faber & Faber. With these partnerships Kobo will have nearly two million titles available in the UK – with bestsellers from £8.99 and less. Kobo is working with the Independent Publishers Guild to ensure that regional and independent presses are represented alongside major publishing houses. The service will include a bestseller list unique to the UK store and UK titles featured prominently on the site. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:25:51 +0100 820947 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/vd8id7TY1LY/ From the press release: Wattpad … today announces an ebook distribution agreement with Sony Electronics. A selection of top unique Wattpad titles will be available on Sony’s Reader Store starting today. Titles available immediately include award-winning “Dinner with a vampire. Did I mention I’m vegetarian?” by Canse12 (http://www.wattpad.com/user/Canse12), “Destined To Happen” by lovemehunni (http://www.wattpad.com/user/lovemehunni), “Bye Bye Virginity” by Just-Krissy (http://www.wattpad.com/user/Just-Krissy) and many more. Many of these titles have been read over 1,000,000 times on Wattpad and are the top picks from Wattpad’s library of over 250,000 ebooks created by the community. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:03:37 +0100 820948 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/eYC1xipGJTo/ Barron’s “Tech Trader Daily” blog reports on a conference call from Barnes & Noble that had a lot to say about the Nook. Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio was very positive about the device, calling it Barnes & Noble’s “single best-selling product.” He declined to discuss how many of them Barnes & Noble had sold, however. Riggio said that the Nook had boosted B&N’s online sales by 67% in January, and would have boosted it even further if they’d had more devices in stock. B&N plans to expand its in-store marketing efforts for the Nook, citing their brick-and-mortar retail presence as one marketing advantage they have over the Kindle. Another point Riggio made was that Nook e-books could be read on the Nook but also in reader software for a number of platforms, including the Blackberry and iPhone. Still, having a branded device was an important part of B&N’s strategy, but the content catalog, cloud-style access, and customer service are important too. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:58:31 +0100 820949 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/1CJsW869ZCI/ Since my last listing of recently bought books, I’ve added a few and read a few. For example, I bought in hardcover and read Robin Hobb’s Dragon Keeper, the first book in a new fantasy series, and Lawrence Watt-Evans’ A Young Man Without Magic, also the first in a new fantasy series, both of which I enjoyed. I also read several ebooks, including Randolph Lalonde’s First Light Chronicles: Omnibus, Patrick Welch’s Brendell: Apprentice Thief, Wendy Palmer’s The Frog Prince’s Daughters, and Frances Evlin’s The Eternal Trees of Prand, to name a few, which were also enjoyable although several suffered from poor editing (e.g., misuse of compliment and complement, misspellings such as court marshal for court-martial). But fiction is not where I spend the bulk of my book money. For fiction, with exceptions for certain authors, of which Hobb and Watt-Evans are examples, I usually buy ebooks rather than hardcovers, and because of various publisher- and ebookseller-imposed restrictions, I tend to limit my fiction purchases to ebooks without DRM and that cost me less than $5. Primary, although not sole, reasons why I do not buy nonfiction in electronic form are the lack of universal DRM and good formatting (I’d like, for example, a table to look like a table, to be able to access footnotes, to view an illustration in its proper place). I want to know that what I buy today I can read next year or 5 years from now; not that I must rush to read a purchase for fear that it will be unreadable on my next reading device. I know that I can strip out the DRM, but I don’t want to do so; I shouldn’t have to take those extra steps to enjoy a purchase. And because of the uncertainty that DRM gives about future access to ebooks, and because I buy so many more nonfiction books than I can read in the near term, I buy nonfiction in hardcover only. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:22:47 +0100 820793 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/H6-qsOOm1IM/ This is just hysterical. Many thanks to Frank for sending it to me. From Hack A Day: [Mr C Camacho] picked up an inexpensive digital picture frame hoping to hack into it. He hasn’t had the time to crack open the hardware so that it will do his bidding but he did find a creative way to make it an ebook reader. Using a python script he processes books, creating images of the pages. The python script, available after the break, takes free books from Project Gutenburg and spits out JPG images. Page turning and bookmarking are not what they ought to be but the process does work. The thought of someone staring at a picture frame on the subway is a bit amusing but we’re sure that sooner or later someone will ask if it’s a new version of the Kindle. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:12:22 +0100 820794 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/oNlKdgggYSE/ Caren Milloy, JISC (United Kingdom): huge survey of users with over 23,000 responses on ebook use from students and academics and librarians. Data presented was all about students, despite the title. Highest users of ebooks: business students used them a lot more than other areas and medical titles were hardly used at all. How did they get ahold of the ebook: most student got them through the university library, as opposed to free, off the web, pirated, etc. Very few students actually purchased etextbooks. How did they read them, part or all of the book: read “in and out” by chapters as opposed to reading the whole book. Reading method: most viewed ebooks online as opposed to using devices. How much time did they spend viewing an ebook: 13 minutes How much time spent on a single page: spent less than a minute a page. Go to page, get the info and then get out. When did they look at the books: most used during lunchtime as opposed to the morning or evening. Impact on publishers print sales: no negative impact on the print sales during or after the project and in some cases an increase occurred in the print sales of the book. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:59:11 +0100 820795 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/VWKdW5QIMuc/ Speaker is Peter Collingridge of Enhanced Editions. Published The Death of Buddy Monroe. Came from a background of publishing, web page designing and film production. Value of books driven down by retailers and impact of digital has been very small. Want to make digital innovations to increase value of books. Sit between developer, consultancy and marketing house. UK publishing houses slow to uptake on the iPhone. They said they were not publishing houses. E-ink devices too limited. iPhone has the ability. Had to be a premium publisher to get value back into the book. Needed a hybridized book for a hybrid device. Feature set: use Epub cause is HTML and has good rendering; synchronize audio and text, this was ectremely difficult. Took a year to go from concept to first App. Extremely successful. Future of publishing based on their experience. Next 3 to 5 years: losts of change; must learn from the mistakes from the music industry; disruption is necessary for publishing to survive; traditional value chain in publishing is the same for plain ebooks; they blurred boundaries between roles of reader and of all parties to the value chain; Enhanced Editions moved in different direction than standard ebooks. Their value chain is not linear, but is cyclical and iterative. Must rethink many typical roles, for example rights and editorial skill set. Multimedia skills needed. Digital marketing different and requires a different skill set. Publishing industry must innovate fast to avoid disintermediation. Authors cutting out publishers to go with digital publishers. Potentially a flood of this happening. Agents are beginning to look for digital publishers because publishing industry is moving so slowly. Kindle, Sony Reader, etc. are simply an extension of the current book and do nothing to enhance the book’s value. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:18:35 +0100 820797 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3K1zvoZZuvg/ Skip Prichard, President and CEO of Ingram Content Group. Today’s ebooks are warmed over print books and will be changed into something very different in the next five years. There is no fundamental right for a business to survive and that included publishers. Publishers must stay focused in marketing creative and innovative content. Print and digital are going to merge and this is how the next generation of consumers will think. Kids spend 7.5 hours a day in front of a digital device and industry must recognize this. Industry must simplify – find mission and strategy and focus on it. The days of doing everything are over. Find something to make your company unique. Industry must connect with customers, must know them inside and out. Know who controls your destiny. Industry must break out the traditional models and find new way to serve up literature and content. Too many self-imposed limitations. New players don’t care about the way things were done in the past and so they will overtake those that do. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:16:30 +0100 820798 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/2PeEcFZ9BtQ/ Sameer Shariff, CEO, Impelysis. Social networking has opened up audiences. Publishing can’t continue with B to B business models. Marketing and sales must shift to a conversation paradigm. Publishers are going from B to B to B to C. The consumer now becomes the sales person with social networks. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:15:06 +0100 820800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/AiDrFue4yG8/overdrive-announces-new-ebook-digital.html "OverDrive has announced new services that will significantly expand its digital distribution network for copyrighted digital media. New digital book formats, streaming content services, and title discovery and fulfillment enhancements will be available in 2010, which will help OverDrive's publishing partners, retailers, and libraries capitalize on accelerating market demand" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:27:13 +0100 820741 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6720172.html?rssid=191 Opening of Tools of Change conference brings news of improvements to the ebook and media vendor's platform. (Source: Library Journal News) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:51:11 +0100 820688 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Vp7GFTNeOQ4/ Changes: The ePub format support has been improved: better CSS support has been implemented; the images in an <svg> tag are now visible; a bug in the unzip code has been fixed. Integration with network e-libraries was improved: authorization has been implemented for FeedBooks and Shucang sites. Full localizations for Dutch, Hungarian, and Spanish have been added. More info here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:45:31 +0100 820803 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/9A_XrME2pE8/ A lot of new stuff from them here. From the press release: OverDrive … announced today new services that will significantly expand its digital distribution network for copyrighted digital media. New digital book formats, streaming content services, and title discovery and fulfillment enhancements will be available in 2010, which will help OverDrive’s publishing partners, retailers, and libraries capitalize on accelerating market demand. During 2009, OverDrive achieved its fifth consecutive year of double digit growth and profitability by adding hundreds of retail, library, corporate, and school outlets for more than 1,000 publishers’ copyrighted eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video in more than a dozen countries. Building on this momentum, OverDrive will introduce new services for 2010, including: Content Reserve® Plus: OverDrive’s global distribution platform will integrate third party digital catalogs to add their eBooks, databases, music, video, and enhanced multimedia content to OverDrive’s network of retail and institutional accounts. In March, OverDrive will demonstrate interactive educational eBook products including “read aloud” features and DRM-free eBooks in “Open EPUB” and “Open PDF” formats at the Public Library Association National Conference in Portland, Oregon. OverDrive is now in negotiation with rights holders of databases, periodicals, newspapers, music by the track, HD and mobile streaming video, and reader apps to add their content to OverDrive’s current catalog of over 450,000 copyrighted digital titles. OverDrive Catalog Apps: OverDrive catalog apps, REST APIs, web services, RSS and other tools utilizing XML and open standards will enable mobile app developers and wireless devices to directly manage eBookselling, catalog access, discovery, and eCommerce support for customers of digital books directly from OverDrive-powered retail eBookstores, library catalogs, and other digital collections. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:25:06 +0100 820805 http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2010/02/ebooks-have-landed.html Nook and Sony Reader owners (with a Berkeley Heights Public Library card) can get eBooks for free from the library now! If you prefer, you can also just read the eBooks on a regular computer screen. Go to ListenNJ.com to choose from hundreds of eBook titles, both fiction and nonfiction. After you check out an eBook (you might have to join the waiting list if the eBook is currently checked out), follow ListenNJ's directions for downloading Adobe Digital Editions onto your computer. If you'd like to transfer the eBook to your Nook or Sony Reader, you'll also need to follow the directions for activating Adobe Digital Editions and your eReader with an Adobe ID, and transferring the eBook to your device. The eBooks check out for 7 or 10 days (your choice), and unfortunately don't work on Kindles. (Source: Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog and Buzz) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821330