TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for April, 2006

By David Rothman

EWeek looks anew at the Net neutrality issue.

Related: Save the Internet Coalition and E-books and the glories of Net neutrality. Many and perhaps most readers of the TeleBlog have Web sites. This is not an abstract issue.

Also: John Kenneth Galbraith’s obit in the New York Times and Galbraith-related video and audio clips. You don’t have to be a Galbraith-style economist to wonder if the laissez-faire zealots in Washington have gotten out of control on Net matters dear to us.

By Branko Collin

If–like me!–you love the feel of physical books, the way they smell, the sound they make when you rusttle through the pages; if you like the artifact almost as much as the book itself, because it is the print and the cover and the fact that it is always near you, and the fact that it has a history that reminds you of the marvelous story it contains; if the thought of destroying such a book horrifies you, do not read on.

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By David Rothman

The p-book world is looking more and more to tested e-authors, even if some entertainers like Ed Howerdershelt have yet to be discovered. Here’s an excerpt from Sara Fitzgerald’s Romance, Writ Large in today’s Washington Post:

MaryJanice Davidson [link added], a 36-year-old Minnesota writer, described her career as going “from the trailer park to the New York Times bestseller list in zero to 60.” She had been trying to sell her manuscripts since she was 21, and “was tired of being told that no one was interested in paranormal or really sexy books.” So she turned to e-publishing. Her first book, “Adventures of the Teen Furies,” was a young adult fantasy about a group of teenagers who were into gaming and their gaming personalities took over. It was published by e-book publisher Hard Shell Word Factory. “Little did I know,” Davidson said, “that the New York publishers were keeping an eye on the e-books.” (more…)

By David Rothman

“With the Abacus WristPDA you can read eBooks…provided you set the reader to use a BIG font…” – The Inquirer on the Abacus WristPDA.

The TeleRead take: And here you thought that e-books on an iPod would make you blind. (more…)

By David Rothman

“It seems very hard to reconcile Google’s support of this activity with their ‘Do No Evil’ motto.” – Harvard researcher Ben Edelman on the Google ads that appear on the typo-based Web sites–as quoted in the Washington Post.

The TeleRead take: Amen, Ben!

Disclosure: I own a very small slice of Google stock as part of my pathetic retirement savings.

By David Rothman

Remember the Kurt Vonnegut story where you must wear a mask if you’re beautiful and carry around lead weights if you’re trim?

I’ve used Harrison Bergeron before to warn against Draconian DRM. And now I’ll summon up the parallel again in reply to attacks by Palm Addict’s Peter Wolchak and Jennifer Chappell against interactivty.

No, we shouldn’t do interactivity for its own sake, but we also shouldn’t try to resist e-book standards that facilitate its spread. So, Peter and Jennifer, whether or not you’ve heard of OpenReader, here are some examples of useful interactivity:

• Literary classics. Enjoy the book the old-fashioned way, then switch on the links and enjoy forums and blogs embedded in the work–and viewable online as well as off. Reach your own conclusions, then discuss the writing with others. Become a better writer by reading their own takes on character, plot, description, dialogue and the rest.
• Romance novels. Share fantasies with other readers.
• Novels with reader-voted endings and other games-like features. Let the market decide that. Meanwhile, if you’re going to merge fiction and games, do it right.
• Political book clubs. Join an annotation group and dissect not just the books of friends but also those of foes. Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh types can annotate each other in depth rather than just shouting insults over talk radio.

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By Branko Collin

Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe reports that the first book related to the Northern Nut Growers Association (NNGA) has been posted at Project Gutenberg (PG). As you may remember, we reported on this rather unique joint venture between the NNGA and Distributed Proofreaders (DP) before. The latter are the largest supplier of etexts to Project Gutenberg.

The first of the books from the NNGA library to be posted to PG is “Nut Growing in the North: A Personal Story of the Author’s Experience of 33 Years with Nut Culture in Minnesota and Wisconsin” by Carl Weschcke (PG etext #18189). It was posted to PG on April 17. Currently there are 13 books/reports from the NNGA going through DP, with a number of others lined up. Read the extended report here.

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By Branko Collin

In a comment on yesterday’s home digitization poll Andre K refers to the blog of one Eric Mack, who in turn links to a funny DIY project by Muranushi Takayuki, the Fullauto Bookscanner, which is exactly that, and which is built using Lego. Cool!

The contraption has a pc that controls the process, an upside down flatbed scanner (so that the book can lie on its spine) and a page turning device. The lego is used for the latter part. The scanner scans two pages, then the page turning device first lowers the book, then rubs an eraser over the page in order to turn it.

By David Rothman

“Microsoft and The New York Times unveiled software on Friday that would allow readers to download an electronic version of the newspaper and view it on a portable device.” – New York Times. Also see CNet and Microsoft news release and Gates speech and AP item.

The TeleRead take: Wow, that’s right smack in PDF territory and notches up the battle between Microsoft and Adobe. “The software would allow The Times to replicate its look–fonts, typeface and layout–more closely than its Web site now does,” says the Times. But should the goal be a digital imitation of the paper Times or a usable electronic newspaper? And how is this effort going to differ that dramatically from those of outfits like Newsstand or Olive Software? Yes, there will be resizing features to help the software work on a variety of screens, but that’s hardly a Microsoft-only breakthrough. (more…)

By David Rothman

Henrique Catarrunas in Portugal, aka Henrycat, is one lucky e-book lover. Already a Librie pioneer, he’s now is playing with his “permanent loaner” iLiad over the weekend. Here’s part of a photograph, which doesn’t do justice to the screen’s contrast.

Meanwhile Henry assures MobileReaders that the machine can read HTML, just as the photo shows. And it also can read PDF although the early version of the reader is a bit slow. Pokey, too, is the provider of the linux software–this on top of some e-commerce hassles. No big deal. We’re talking hardware, not vaporware.

Apabi reader just part of the Founder e-book empire

But in TeleBlog Land, here’s what really caught our eyes. “Does anyone here know Apabi software reader?” Henry’s post asked. “It seems it will be one of the main commercial readers.”

Well, Henry, I can kinda answer your question. Apabi software is owned by Beijing Founder Electronics, a big maker of PCs in China, among many other activities. Could there be hardware-related connections with the Dutch iRex Technologies or its partners Guangzhou KingSun Software? Is Founder the manufacturer of the Chinese equalivalent of the iLiad, via an outfit called Foundertech? Whatever the answer, Beijing Founder is into more–much more.

130,000+ e-books in Chinese in Apabi format

By last November, according to a Computing Services page from the University of Edinburgh, there were already “130,000 Chinese e-books” from 400 publishers in the Apabi format–with the number of books “growing by several thousand each month. A search in Google for ‘Apabi’ indicates that there are at least a hundred libraries using the database.” The Apabi reader is for the Chinese language, but I’d be surprised if localized versions for Westerners didn’t end up on the iLiad. And now some other tidbits from Edinburgh: (more…)

By Quinn Anya Carey

As a member of a university community, I’m always interested in what publishing industry people have to say about e-books in academia. A couple weeks ago, there was a post linking to a speech by Mike Shatzkin, which discussed the topic. He suggests that the natural grouping of interests present in a university setting has caused “college and professional publishing [to live] in the new digital world far more than trade or consumer publishing.” He also mentions that Abebooks.com found 49% of 5,000 students polled “‘were not prepared’ to use digital texts at all”, but is unclear “whether the students or the professors are the main barriers to switching over to electronic media.” He also wonders why e-books haven’t caught on.

While I can’t speak for every university, I work in a computer lab, am the go-to person in my department for webpages, have coordinated multiple digitization projects, and have a pretty decent sense for how people are interacting with technology at the present moment. This is my attempt, as an “insider”, to address some of the interesting points he has raised.

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By David Rothman

“I suspect the high prices of e-books are deliberate. Publishers are afraid that they cannibalize sales of paper books if e-books became ready for mainstream. So they are going to keep their artificially inflated prices, and I am afraid adding supply, as Bill McCoy suggested, won’t make a difference here.” – Alex at MobileRead, commenting on Bill McCoy’s post on book pricing.

Possible example: Cell, the Stephen King novel, costs $9.99 (excluding shipping) as a paperback at Amazon and $9.74 in e-book form. And actually the $9.74 is a bargain compared to many e-books.

Related: Slasher story for publishers: The Tor lady’s right about costs–but here’s how to cut expenses and boost profits from both e- and p-books, my earlier thoughts.

By Branko Collin

Part of the slow adoption of e-books may lie in the fact that comfortable reading devices are not yet available, part of it because not many popular books are sold in digital form, and part of it may be caused by the fact that one would have to purchase popular books all over again. The iPod became popular amongst other reasons because it allowed the owner to take their existing music collection along.

If it were easy to digitize your p-book collection, would you do it? And how easy would it have to be?

[Poll=10]

By David Rothman

Thanks to Angel Ancin at iRex Technologies, who’s the source of the candid statement below:

We are delayed. The new date is expected throughout May.

Main reason for delay is e-commerce problems (technical delays in the webshop itself) and inclusion of additional software goodies to be announced. (Unfortunately, I can not disclose yet)

Most likely around May 10th, we will (finally) start actively using our website for communication.

We will confirm the list of countries and launch dates soon in that environment.

Please check regularly www.irextechnologies.com from the first week of May onwards.

We have good news for Italian users.

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Meanwhile a tidbit from Little Talker: “By the way, the Italian article seems to mention a feature that I don’t remember reading elsewhere: seems the USB plug might be able to connect the iLiad to a printer.”

Read on for a Google translation of the article–apparently about a 300-reader experiment with the Republic newspaper starting in July. Here is what caught my eye: “contrast better than that one of the normal paper from daily paper.” If true, that would make me vastly more excited about the iLiad than the lower-contrast Librie that I formerly owned. (more…)

By David Rothman

From iRex Technologies’ home page, via the much-appreciated Roland Rohde:

OPENING WEB SHOP DELAYED!

As the implementation of our Web Shop caused some unforeseen technical problems the opening has been postponed from April to May 2006.

Please, leave your e-mail address and you will be notified as soon as the Web Shop opens

Thanks, Roland!

By David Rothman

The Cybook and Sony Reader are compared in EContent Magazine.

Different creatures, actually, and the reviewer did not try out the Reader (an E Ink gizmo), relying instead on specs. Even so, it was good to see the Cybook (LCD tech), the Rodney Dangerfield of e-book readers, get a respectful hands-on. I still have, and enjoy, a long-term loaner unit. So, Bookeen, what’s new? When will we see the final version PDF reader and other wrinkles? I’ll query the company.

Related: Nope, nothing from iRex Technologies–no e-mail in reply to my query about the date of release of the iLiad. I’d urged the company to tell us the situation. For now, my opinion has shifted from, “Will come out in April or May,” to “Who knows?” From afar, the iLiad still looks like a much better bet than the Sony despite a higher price. The Sony, incidentally, has been apparently been delayed by several months.

By David Rothman

Here, from LISNews. Related: Chicago Tribune story (reg. required).