TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for November, 2006

By Chris Meadows

I recently became aware of an interesting new development in the world of podcasting. Called Talkshoe.com, this site combines a conference-calling phone bridge with a chat client, streaming audio, and digital recording to create the first automated call-in podcasting system. If Podcasting and Shoutcasting are the Internet’s broadcast radio, Talkshoe is its call-in talk shows. It’s a fascinating idea, elegant in its simplicity: a host creates a show, guests and listeners phone in, and after the show is recorded, it is then made available for download or RSS syndication.

As a result, I’m doing a call-in show called The Biblio File. The subject matter for the show is books, in general or specific. I’m planning to do an episode centering on E-Books this Saturday, December 2nd, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time (10 a.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Universal Time). I am hoping to have a round-table discussion among several members of the e-book community as to what e-books are, why they haven’t performed as well as some expected, who is managing to get the most out of e-books, and other such topics that might come up. I have asked for guests and received tentative RSVPs from a couple of members of the E-Book Mailing List; however, since they are uncertain they will be able to make it I am hesitant to name names at this point.

Anyone and everyone is welcome—indeed, urged—to call in and be a part of the show. To do so, you need only register at TalkShoe (free), download their free Java-based chat client (requires at least Java 1.5), and phone in to participate. You may also listen and participate via text chat only with just the registration and client, or listen without participating without needing to register.

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By David Rothman

Who cares about textbooks? Now you can watch “a killing spree on a reflective dual mode screen“—via a video of Doom in action on the One Laptop Per Child laptop. So we learn from One Laptop Per Child News.

Less fun is a quarrel between OLPC and the developers of AbiWord. They understandably don’t want their baby reduced to what the decidedly independent OLPC blog calls “a glorified Microsoft Word viewer.” Yep, if Abi survives on the shipped OLPC machine, it may well be just for gazing at e-books and other documents in an unholy format. No creation!

Could there be a little of the soul of Bill Gates in Nicholas Negroponte’s people, or maybe a kind of Outer Limits Syndrome? “Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.” Oh, well, I suppose it’ll all turn out okay in the end if people can easily download a full range of software for the OLPC to add to the Negroponte-blessed collection that the laptop will ship with.

Related: Musings out of OLPC on e-book readers and Wiki as an ebook reader.

Update, 5:50 a.m.: Also see For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate, in this morning’s New York Times. Price of the laptop, now around $140, is to go below $100 by the end of 2008.

By David Rothman

Stephen Cole, owner of eBooks.com, is an old-time bookseller whose academically oriented library branch, EBL, is notable for a variety of e-lending models. It lets libraries allow more than one copy of a book at once to be floating around. Good stuff. eBook.com offers more than 40,000 books.

Now they’ll reach a wider audience through a new pact with YPB Library Services, a Baker & Taylor division that calls itself “the world’s leading provider of materials to academic libraries.” The extra books will be out there in first part of 2007. Congrats to Stephen.

More details from news release, spotted at DearAuthor.com.

By David Rothman

Here, from the Register, via Peter Brantley.

Related: UK music biz might not get copyright terms extended from 50 to 95 years.

By Jon Noring

A few weeks ago on The eBook Community, in three lengthy articles (1, 2, and 3), I outlined some thoughts and requirements for an open standards/open source e-book mastering system intended to be used by smaller ebook publishers. This article is a progress update. We are actually working on the system!

To summarize, the e-book authoring system is envisioned to enable “almost push button” conversion of a single and fairly simple master XML document into most, if not all, ebook formats in use today and tomorrow. Example formats of interest include OpenReader, OEBPS, native dotReader, Mobipocket, LIT, PDF, Plucker, Palm Reader, XHTML, etc.

The master XML document itself would be authorable in applications which smaller publishers and even individual authors will hopefully find comfortable and foolproof to use.

Since that first series of articles, we’ve made great progress on the design of the mastering format — the core of the system — and this blog article is an update of where things currently stand.

Designing this system, notably the “mastering format,” is not a simple matter as noted in the prior articles. Several competing requirements have to be met thus necessitating compromises — as a result it can’t be all things to all people.

Thus, the system will only be able to handle the simpler types of books, such as fiction. However, I believe it will meet the “80-20” or even “90-10” rule for most smaller publishers, who tend to publish mostly fiction and simpler non-fiction, and thus prove useful to them.

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By Jon Noring

I continue to be intrigued by the potential of online 3-D virtual reality. I became interested in it earlier this year after hearing about Second Life from an eye-opening blog article written by Richard Charkin, the CEO of Macmillan UK, who wrote about the potential of 3-D interactivity with digital content. Soon after joining Second Life to see it for myself, I wrote a TeleRead blog article describing the Misadventures of Jon Olmstead, my Second Life personna.

Two news items appeared today relating to 3-D virtual reality that might be of interest to some who follow the TeleRead blog.

Building the 3-D Internet

First item is the article Building the 3D Internet, which mentions, among other things, IBM’s interest in 3-D virtual reality, having just rolled out a $100 million dollar project to develop 3-D technologies.

The article made the point that in the future we may visit many web sites as avatars in a 3-D virtual reality environment, rather than the present 2-D mode. Certainly this will benefit e-book and digital publication publishers, retailers, and even authors by improving the e-book browsing and shopping experience, as well as to provide new ways for readers to interact with the publications, with other readers, and even with authors.

“Heavy Rain” by Quantic Dream

The second news item comes from my friend Ravenelle Zugzwang (her Second Life name), who today posted to her blog an article linking to a wonderful 3-D virtual reality video Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream (a cropped and resized screen capture from this video is reproduced above.)

After watching the video, it made me think about the future of book publishing where 3-D virtual reality videos could be made of the book characters. Maybe instead of static book covers, we’ll have 3-D virtual reality book videos, as well as online 3-D environments where we may visit and experience the book in virtual reality.

By David Rothman

The Sony Reader and I finally met up with each other in meat-space last night.

Human readers of the TeleBlog will recall I owned a predecessor, a Librie, and the low-contrast E Ink screen failed to impress me. Sony, perhaps because we’re so uppity around here, never obliged with a review loaner of the Reader. Meanwhile I’ve been put off by the Reader’s lack of a word-search feature and its exclusive reliance on Sony’s proprietary BBeB format for DRMed books.

So what happened last night? Nothing. CompUSA’s demo unit at the store in Alexandria, Virginia, was a dud—kaput or at least out of juice for the batteries. I’ll be back.

The good news for Sony Reader fans is that DigiTimes is out with a report saying Prime View International, a maker of E Ink displays, is thriving and that the Reader is one reason. See MobileRead’s take.

Elsewhere on the E Ink front, Nick Hampshire, who broke the news of the rumored $50 Amazon Kindle E Ink Machine, tells us that the wireless comm interface “will almost certainly only link to Amazon’s e-book retailing site. This means to buy content for the Kindle you will have to buy it from Amazon.” So what might this mean for public domain books? Will the rumored $50 Kindle work with free content? (more…)

By David Rothman

Even with the dotReader just in early beta, some books in a dR-readable format are now on sale at the DPP Store.

Among the offerings is First to Last, described as “the true story of a soldier’s life through the motorcycles he has owned and the most prominent action events that have occurred on those bikes and during his lifetime. The [book] has an international tone with a heavy accent on Asia, is action oriented during peace and war, and spans the generations in its common appeal to motorcyclists, hobbyists, adventurers and romanticists of all ages. It is a factual, first-hand account of the tale of a biker, a warrior and an incurable romantic.”

Not my kind of book, but I’d be curious what others think. An excerpt on the store site would help people decide.

Of greater interest to me, even if it apparently isn’t an e-book yet: Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand—from forest to concert hall. What great fodder for a dotReader multimedia book, when the technology is ready! You can hear an interview with the author, James Barron, a New York Times reporter.

Related: DPPStore press release on dotReader

By David Rothman

Darren Reid, sci-fi and fantasy author, is releasing free books for the Nintendo Wii and DS. So what other titles are available on games platforms, and does anyone have tips for owners? Talk about offbeat formats. Separately, the tireless Matt McClintock of manybooks.net offers a PSP section of classics and Creative Commons titles.

Related: Opera Web browser cartridge to be sold for Nintendo games machine; e-books next?

By David Rothman

“Pretty much Google is trying to set themselves up as the only place to get to these materials; the only library; the only access. The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare.” – Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, in an Elektrischer Reporter video interview, via Google Blogoscoped and if:book.

Related: Google makes slight improvements to book search interface, from if:book.

By David Rothman

More videos and better blogs are among the recommendations that Steve Outing, a veteran watcher of the online journalism scene, has for online newspapers. He grades them B-.

The e-book angle: How about home page links to e-books for in-depth looks at newsy subjects? Ad-supported, multimedia “newsbooks” just might be a hit. Time for Reuters and the AP to think about doing newsbooks, perhaps in partnership with book publishers? (more…)

By David Rothman

The International Digital Publishing Forum, City Hall for the e-book establishment, has become a little less Tammany-like with the creation of a Web forum for public discussion of e-book standards. Anyone can participate. This is A Good Move. Not many postings from users are on the forum yet, but ideally that will change soon.

I hope people will speak out on the need for a comprehensive standards solution, including standards for DRM (of course, true nirvana would be no DRM). Also, I continue to believe that an OASIS technical committee would be a better, more objective venue for standards-setting than the IDPF. Remember, public discussion of the issues does not by itself guarantee the best outcomes for consumers and publishers.

By David Rothman

From OSoft (edited):

With over 1,000 downloads of the dotReader beta, there have been very few bugs.

For the week of 11-27-06, we are planning on releasing the Mac beta and an online content creation/export tool for the FCKEditor. We will then set up an authoring portal so you can start creating content for the dotReader.

We are also in the process of setting up beta tester and developer mailing lists using the open source program, Mailman. Our goal is to be totally open and encourage user collaboration.

More details

By David Rothman

Will a $50 version of the rumored Amazon Kindle E Ink reader, subsidized by e-book sales, threaten the $350 Sony Reader? MobileRead is carrying a juicy rumor from a somewhat skeptical Nick Hampshire of Afaics? Nick says a “viable analysis indicates that a subsidised retail price of about US$50 is possible.”

I dunno, Nick. That would be some subsidy. And even in the States, where laws are looser than in Europe, I wonder if Sony could fire back with a claim of unfair competition. And what happens on the e-book format and price fronts? Would this mean higher prices paid by people herded into Mobipocket format?

Here’s the exact quote attributed to Nick: (more…)

By David Rothman

You already know how much I like the free PalmFiction program I installed on my Palm TX.

Now Deb, a follower of our Palm E-Book Forum, has kindly sent in some newbie-oriented PalmFiction tips. Go here and here. Sample: “PalmFiction defaults to look for files on the /Palm/ directory on the chip but you can change that through PalmFictions | Global Settings.”

A delighted Deb say of FictionReader: “It imports Word, text, html, and others, and they all look great. Highly recommended.”

By David Rothman

A win for the Sony Reader: It’s on sale at CompUSA stores, at least in some places, for $349.99, with $50 in credit for e-books included through the end of the year. I spotted a Reader ad in a CompUSA supplement in the Washington Post. The Reader also appears in CompUSA’s online catalogue. Hmm. Can people outside the States order a Reader this way even if they can’t take advantage of the Connect store?

A loss: Forbes panned the Reader (reg. required)—in one of a number of negative reviews (via MobileRead). “Unfortunately, the white is nowhere near as bright as most paper,” writes columnist Stephen Manes, “reducing contrast and readability—particularly in dim venues like that airplane seat beneath the perennially misaimed light. And since the screen isn’t as big as even a mass-market paperback page, you get less text at once. Worse, this is the most lethargic electronic device in recent memory, so unresponsive that you often end up turning it off right after you turn it on because nothing has seemed to happen.”

A related question for Mobipocket fans: Are fewer best-selling books available than before for the Mobipocket format. I have no idea—I’m just following up on an item I saw on a Cybook list (membership required to view item). And if there isn’t as much prime content as previously in Mobipocket, could Sony be a factor? I lack time to research this issue now and would be appreciative if others could. If the reason isn’t Sony, could Amazon be phasing out Mobipocket while preparing to make a push for books marketed under its name—especially with the rumored Kindle machine in mind?

(Time stamp changed to move this closer to the top.)

By David Rothman

“…this six-percent royalty for e-books issue is gnawing at our soul. Heck, 10% and maybe even 20% would gnaw.” – Booksquare, via Peter Brantley.

The TeleRead take: I’m in favor of not just authors but also all kinds of publishers flourishing in an e-book world.

Cost-control is the key for the big boys to be able to survive and still pay writers fairly.

Related: Booksquare’s Monday morning royalty rant and eBook Community posts on the economics of publishing and Sony’s terms for publishers.

Photo credit: Buck82 via Creative Commons and Flickr.