TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for June, 2009

By Paul Biba

More and more eReaders are appearing. Here’s another new one from Elonex. It supposedly handles EPUB and Adobe, but I can’t find any other details as to formats. From The Bookseller:

Borders UK has unveiled its new ‘cheaper’ ebook reader. The Elonex ebook has been launched in all of the bookshop chain’s stores today (30th June), and is being marketed at £189 as a cheaper option to the Sony Reader.

The new device comes with 100 titles already pre-loaded and can hold up to 1,000 books (on a separate memory card). The titles can be read in landscape or portrait and text can be magnified. Users can read up to 8,000 pages between charges. It can also be read in direct sunlight. The device supports ePub and Adobe formats and is compatible with the e-books being sold on Borders website.

By Paul Biba

Now this is a big deal, at least to me. The Economist is probably the finest news publication in the world, IMHO. I am going to run, not walk, to subscribe. With The Economist and Foreign Affairs what more could you want? (Unfortunately the Kindle price and the paper price are almost exactly the same, but I’m going to subscribe anyway.)

From Amazon’s Kindle Blog:

You’ve been asking for it, and we’re pleased to deliver The Economist. The Economist is one of the premier sources for the analysis of world business and current affairs, providing authoritative insight and opinion on international news, world politics, business, finance, science and technology, as well as overviews of cultural trends and regular special reports on industries and countries.

Established in 1843 to campaign against the protectionist corn laws, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the liberal principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. The Economist also takes a fiercely independent stance on social issues, from gay marriage to the legalisation of drugs, but its main service to its readers is as a global newspaper: To uncover new ideas from all around the world.

As with all Kindle magazines, newspapers and blogs, new subscribers will enjoy a 14-day free trial.

By Paul Biba

The posting includes a video, which I can’t seem to embed here. Thanks to Digital Koans for the link:

The Library of Congress’s steadily growing digital collections arrive primarily over the network rather than on hardware media. But that data transfer can be difficult because different organizations have different policies and technologies.

The Library – with the California Digital Library and Stanford University – has developed guidelines for creating and moving standardized digital containers, called “bags.” A bag functions like a physical envelope that is used to send content through the mail but with bags, a user sends content from one computer to another.

Bags have a sparse, uncomplicated structure that transcends differences in institutional data, data architecture, formats and practices. A bag’s minimal but essential metadata is machine readable, which makes it easy to automate ingest of the data. Bags can be sent over computer networks or physically moved using portable storage devices.

Bags have built-in inventory checking, to help ensure that content transferred intact. Bags are flexible and can work in many different settings, including situations where the content is located in more than one place. This video describes the preparation and transfer of data over the network in bags.

By Chris Meadows

It isn’t April Fool’s Day, so this must be true: Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory is paying $7 million to buy embattled BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. (Here is the press release (PDF).)

Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factory, seems to believe that these pirates can be rehabilitated. He states:

"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ (sic) need faster downloads and better quality."

It would certainly be a good thing all around if the content providers and the pirates could reach middle ground. However, judging from prior events, it seems unlikely most content providers will be happy with anything short of 100% of their own way.

By Paul Biba

Thus says George Weidenfeld in this article about him. Lord Weidenfeild is founder of the British publishing firm Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The article has all sorts of interesting stuff. Well worth reading.

“I believe the electronic book has a future,” says Weidenfeld. “But that is the case for reading for information - some genres will, broadly, disappear in paper format. There will still be beautiful books, though, ones you’d want on your library shelves. They will remain as works of art or in the case of a book you want to have constantly in front of you. It will, of course, have an effect on the number of publishers.”

By David Rothman

An Espresso Book Machine is a hit with both the Northshire Bookstore and its many fans in little Manchester Center, Vermont.

Such a gizmo can get a 300-page book into a waiting shopper’s hands in minutes. Bookstores can use Espressos to help local writers break into print—not just conjure up classics and forgotten midlist books from central databases.

The Northshire machine is still an experiment, but as I noted several weeks ago, the early results are encouraging. For example, a local rabbi has printed more than 300 copies of his novel.

“Lurch”: More details on the “hulking jumble”

Now D.C. Denison of the Boston Globe is out with an upbeat, well-observed piece on on “Lurch,” the nickname of this "hulking jumble of machinery.”

“The size of a small meat freezer,” Lurch is “often groaning and shuddering in a corner behind the sales counter.” Lurch is just a start at version 1.5. Newer machines, like the 2.0 model in the photo, will be coming, and Northshire hopes to upgrade.

“If Northshire can make money printing books downloaded from massive online catalogs,” D.C. notes, “it will show how small brick-and-mortar bookshops might be able to match the overwhelming variety of products offered by a giant online retailer like Amazon.com.”

How Lurch’s cousin would fit in at Politics and Prose

Coincidentally the Washington Post has just profiled a local bookstore called Politics and Prose, and I can see it and similar stores benefiting just like Northshire.

P&P is a venerable local institution that prides itself on its pickiness. Might the store print books for any writers, but exercise its editorial judgment as far as which homegrown works it featured? Washington teems with specialists whose literary output may be valuable yet enjoy only limited demand. Perfect for Lurch’s cousins.

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By David Rothman

Wattpad’s Android plans aren’t the only good news for e-book-loving fans of the OS. Dell is working on a Web-capable gizmo a bit larger than the iPod Touch, says the Wall Street Journal. It runs Android. That would be another carrot for developers to do Android-based e-book apps.

The new handheld isn’t a sure thing, but if plans move ahead, it could go on sale later this year, perhaps with an ARM chip. It may or may not come with phone capabilities. If it does, Dell may offer it through cellular carriers.

Related: Techmeme roundup and The myTouch 3G as a possible e-reader—with promising Anroid apps on the way. Image (of a prototype, presumably) via CrunchGear.

By David Rothman

“An updated version of FBReader for Google Android is available from the Android market. The source package is downloadable from the homepage. This version uses Android native API for speed-up a book opening. New ‘androidish’ icons are used in the menu and library tabs." – Nikolay Pultsin, FBReader developer.

Related: Android-based iPod rival might be on the way from Dell: Boost for e-books.

By David Rothman

A major e-book success story has been unfolding just a few miles from me, over in Fall Church, Virginia, a nice, upscale suburb where the cops once rode around in Volvos.

Focused on erotic romance, a publisher named Loose Id has moved more than a million books—mostly in E.

And the editor in chief is Irene Daisy Williams of Falls Church, whom fans know as Treva Harte. She recently retired after two decades as a lawyer at the U.S, Patent and Trademark Office. But along the way, in addition to publishing others, she was cranking out hundreds of thousands of words a year.

Willliams goes for erotic romances and among other things writes up amorous werewolves, while at the same time emphasizing that she already has a hot male in her life: her husband, a lawyer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

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By Paul Biba

One reader suggested that it would be great to have a weekly roundup of posts. It would take some time, however, and I’m not sure I could do it. If I did it would have to be in the form below, where the title is in the url. What do our readers think? Do you want this? let me know because I don’t want to do it unless it would be a real service. I would do it every Sunday evening for the previous week, and you would have to read the titles from the links. Here is what it would look like for today’s posts. I would entitle it “Roundup” with a date so that it would be searchable. I await your comments:

http://www.teleread.org/2009/06/29/book-glutton-and-random-house-team-up/

http://www.teleread.org/2009/06/29/barnes-noble-gets-iphone-app/

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By Paul Biba

The Book Glutton people are so nice that it is always a pleasure to give them a little bit of publicity. This is from a press release I received:

The Random House Publishing Group has joined forces with the social reading platform BookGlutton to offer a chapter giveaway promotion of Sarah Dunant’s forthcoming novel SACRED HEARTS, on sale July 14.
Beginning today, the Random House imprint will make the first four chapters of SACRED HEARTS available to BookGlutton.com users. Special features will include an essay by the author and notes sprinkled throughout the pages about her extensive research for the book. Sarah Dunant will also log on to the site and answer questions from readers.

“We’re intrigued by the concept of social reading and want to give online book clubs the unique experience of reading and discussing our books in real-time.” said Avideh Bashirrad, Director of Marketing for the Random House imprint.

“We’re excited to offer Sarah Dunant fans a way to connect through her work. Books have always been a social experience. People love to talk about what they’re reading and BookGlutton lets them point to what they like inside a book just as they would in person” said Travis Alber, President of BookGlutton.

This promotion will be extended through the fall and will include more titles from the Random House Publishing Group.
Launched in January 2008, BookGlutton is a web-based reading platform that enables people to connect and chat about books, inside the books. The Unbound Reader is built entirely on open web standards, is free to use, and allows both shared comments and real-time chatting on a chapter-by-chapter basis. http://www.bookglutton.com

By Paul Biba

From the Publishers Weekly daily email report:

B&N president William Lynch said the company launched the app based on the growth it has seen over the past year in its mobile traffic. With the app, he said, users can access “exclusive content and customer reviews, as well as information about the more than 50,000 events in our stores.” They can also purchase items, view B&N Recommends lists, watch video interviews with authors and access other features of BN.com. Thanks to a partnership with LinkMe Mobile from Evryx Technologies, Inc. and Spotlight Mobile, Inc., customers can use their iPhone or iPod touch cameras to snap a photo of a book’s front cover and get product details, editorial reviews and customer ratings.