TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for January, 2008

By Paul Biba

The Victorians were remarkable people in many ways, and the women most of all.  Isabella L. Bird was one of those lone female travelers who were spawned during this era. She traveled, alone, to Japan in 1878, Tibet, India, Persia, the American West, Hawaii, China, Morocco and more. All the while she wrote journals of her travels, which were widely published. In 1892 she became the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society.

I recently bought the Dover edition of her “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan” (ebooks aside, isn’t Dover one the publishing industry’s great treasures!) and decided to see if any of her works were available in ebook form. Well, Manybooks has five of them, including Japan, in many different reading formats. Since they are Gutenberg editions they don’t have the wonderful illustrations that are in the Dover edition, at least in the Japan book, but otherwise they are now accessible to the ereading public. I’m about half way through the Japan one and I strongly recommend her work to all our ebook readers.

By David Rothman

The Kindle craze goes on—how long until another Sony craze or maybe even a Readius craze replaces it? Or will the K-fixation last and last? Who knows? Of interest:

•  News that the Kindle’s still sold out. Even so, where are the specific numbers? Just how many units sold out of how many in stock? I don’t doubt that the K-machine is a hit among early adopters, and it might be much more of a success, but why is Jeff Bezos so shy about the stats that count? (Mike Cane, Henry Blodget and Peter Kafka.)
• Transcript of Amazon earnings call for Q4 with mention of Kindle, including Jeff’s reference to a K-based Q&A service. Also, do you notice the description of the Web browser as “experimental”? Could much of the “free” be too experimental for consumers’ tastes? Some may hope that WiFi efforts succeed, so users don’t get socked in the future with nasty EVDO-related fees! (Seeking Alpha.)
• Publishers Weekly’s take on Amazon and the Kindle. PW quotes Jeff’s prediction that digital will prevail over physical in the sale of content on Amazon. Oh, and the word is that Jeff wants people to get their Kindles immediately. The issue is, how long until Amazon can reach this goal, given the current shortage of E Ink displays. By the way, the Kindle definitely uses Vizplex, the second-gen  E Ink display tech.
• Disrupt-O-Meter’s indication that the Kindle will shake up the book biz more than will the Sony Reader. That’s no surprise right now, given Amazon’s size and the Kindle’s wireless. But don’t count Sony out. (MobileRead.)
• $300M purchase of Audible by Amazon—a hint that audio books could play a larger role in the Kindle’s future. I wonder if the buy would have happened if the Kindle was a big flop.
• Jerry Pournelle’s new Kindle. (MobileRead.)

By David Rothman

So many Web sites, so many e-books, so little time.

Not surprisingly, Web-based bookmarks can be godsends for busy “read later” types–especially those using multiple machines.

Consider possibilities such as DigitalReading.net, a search-and-bookmarking site run by TeleBlog regular Tamas Simon, who’s partly integrated his service with del.icio.us.

But suppose you want a no-frills approach for your technophobic friends and family members—maybe even a grandma-simple interface.

Up and running in a minute

Then beeline over to the Instapaper site, where, in around a minute, you can download a toolbar icon, then register and happily start bookmarking away.

Remember, you won’t get searching features or fancy organizing ones. Also, can you trust Instapaper for permanent storage of bookmarks, rather than on-the-fly stuff? I’d like to know more about the company, a natural candidate for membership in DataPortability.org.

Still, Instapaper appears off to a great start if you by other people’s preliminary impressions of the service and the guy behind it; and it worked just great when I tested it a moment ago.

Related: Google Bookmarks.

By David Rothman

The most popular gizmos for reading e-books may yet turn out to be cell phones, especially when rollout E Ink screens become good and dirt-cheap.

But meanwhile we optimists might remember Rob Preece’s just-made observation—on the still-limited availability of dedicated e-book gizmos in most countries. Upside galore. While Rob was writing in a different context, that’s what leapt out at me. Both the Sony Reader and the Kindle have yet to go on sale globally, with Sony and Amazon’s marketing engines to push them in local contexts.

If nothing else, imagine all the cultural variants of Sony’s just-announced deal through which your $300 will buy not just a limited edition Sony Reader but also a Cross Your Heart skin and 14 Harlequin novels. Coming—e-romance competition from France and Bookeen, home of the Cybook? Or in Germany, how about an Oktoberfest Reader with a beer-themed skin?

For now, kudos to Sony, the skin people and Harlequin for some imaginative marketing. And by the way, I agree with the MohileRead folks’ hunch that SkinIt might sell its pink skins separately.

Related: Geeksugar on the Sony deal.

By Rochelle Hartman

Moderator’s note: Rochelle is, er, right on the money. Even with cheaper gizmos in use, such as the $200 OLPC XO, a library’s role should be to encourage use of book-friendly hardware—not provide everyone with it! – David Rothman.

(Screeching brakes)  Whoa. Wait a minute. Stepping back from my Kindle krush and putting aside the question of whether or not it’s legal for libraries to loan them, I considered the Kindle issue through the eyes of a public library manager who has to make decisions about how to get the most out of a budget. Duh! It’s a no brainer.

There is no way I could justify deploying Kindles, given the present model. The machine itself is 400 bucks and can hold up to 200 titles. Let’s say that the average price of a Kindle title is 10 bucks. That all adds up to almost $2500 tied up in a resource that can only be used by one person at a time. 

Kindle vs. other purchases 

For that much money, I could buy more than 100 titles for check-out, a few reference sets, a year’s access to a database, a bunch of CDs, audio books, or DVDs,  a couple of display units, some comfy furniture, conference registration plus travel and lodging for a couple staff members, a contract with a coffee vendor, honorarium for program speakers…. 

How does it make any sort of sense for a library to loan out a $2500 resource to be used by one person at a time for 2-4 weeks? That’s the equivalent of allowing only one person at a time access to Ancestry online for two weeks.  Or to check out the entire World Book set. Those ideas sound outrageous. Because they are.  It would demonstrate impeachment-level poor stewardship.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Where’s Dick Cavett when we need him? Oh, the fun days—when Mailer and Vidal might battle it out, or when Cavett would ask probing questions of his guests? Yes, we have Oprah Winfrey here in the States. But it’s not quite the same, and authors just don’t figure that prominently in the grand scheme of things.

Now, however, courtesy the Web, the very medium that in some ways can be the enemy of immersive reading, the entire world will be able to enjoy Titlepage.tv, starting March 3. Presiding over the book chat will be Daniel Menaker, the 55-year-old former executive editor in chief of Random House, who will appear with four authors. Hmm. Could e-books provide a new twist? See the writer on TV and order up the book instantly.

Richard Price among first guests

According to Motoko Rich’s New York Times story, the four author guests on the first show will be “Richard Price, who wrote ‘Clockers’ and the coming ‘Lush Life’; Susan Choi, author of ‘A Person of Interest’; and Charles Bock, whose debut novel, ‘Beautiful Children,’ went on sale last week.

(more…)

By Ficbot

E-books can be a real bargain for us Canadians.

For years, I shied away from anything “American” because I was so terrified of the almighty exchange rate conversion and how it would rip me off. But last year, I came to realize that I was wrong about this. Even when the dollar is not at par, Canadians can still save money because the American list price is typically so much lower in the first place.

$9.99 American, even when converted to Canadian dollars under a less generous exchange rate, was still cheaper than $14.95 Canadian, even back in the not-par days. And now, with our dollar pretty much equivalent, it gets even better. With Amazon.com, I have been coming out even because my discount gets used up by the shipping cost. I can get free shipping off Amazon.ca, but then I have to pay the much higher Canadian list price.

Enter the e-book! Now that I finally have a suitable reader, the eBookwise, I can buy books in e-form and benefit from the American list prices without needing to worry about shipping. A little cost comparison for The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene, my first eBookwise buy:

• Amazon.ca Canadian List Price: $18.89 (shipping free
  with certain orders)
• Amazon.com American List Price: $15.19 (10.20 + $4.99
  shipping)
• eBookwise.com List Price: $7.99

That is a substantial difference! Even the cheaper American print version is just shy of double the e-book list price.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Just how long will the party go on for Kindle owners? Amazon has already said it really would like you to Web-browse within shopping areas and maybe Wikipedia. EVDO isn’t free to Jeff & friends. So might a WiFi hack make sense—getting the Kindle to work with 802.11 wireless via a TiVo WiFi adapter or another? Forward-looking people in a MobileRead forum are already on the case. Here’s rooting for them or others to succeed!

Obstacles remain. As one Kindle fan asks: “Could the store and browser be forced to recognize a different adapter? Is the Kindle’s USB port setup in such a way that it can be used for this type of communication? Are the current Linux drivers” for the TiVo “even usable?” And since Amazon can track how people use the machine, might the company retaliate in some way? But oh how I’m rooting for the hackers to succeed! (Thanks, Kyle.)

Related: Discussion in the jkOnTheRun blog area over the kind of E Ink the Kindle is using—apparently not the second-gen Vizplex variety found on the Sony PRS-505. As noted here earlier, JK is no longer Kindling away due to screen contrast issues. Mike Cane has a few words on the matter, now that JK has visited a Sony store and seen the difference for himself. Even the Sony lacks sufficient contrast between text and background, as I see it, and it’s really time for Sony to addresss this issue via a boldface option. Delay the firmware update, due in the next month or so, if need be. The Cybook Gen3 already offers bolding.

Related: iPhone unlocking explodes despite Apple’s countermeasures (CNet).

By David Rothman

Some links of the day:

• Kindle e-mail tips and others, on sale at K-store—plus some pointers from MobileRead on finding books for the Kindle, beyond the K-store. Also see info on Kindle-driven search traffic and an international rollout of DRMless MP3s, hopefully a sign that Amzon will do the same for the Kindle.
• Bookeen’s assurance that the Cybook Gen3 is back in stock, plus MobileRead’s comments.
• Rapidshare file-sharing service might be shut down (Techmeme roundup). The site is a copyright lawyer’s nightmare or dream, depending which way you look at it.
• The Pirate Bay also facing legal woes (Google roundup)—but demand is strong.
• Cop investigated because MySpace friends link to porn (TechDirt). Could the same silly logic someday harm interactive e-books?
• New Asus rival coming with 7-inch display and WiFi (Yahoo/IDG). So will it have an e-book-fit display? The chip will be from Intel. I wonder if Mary Lou Jepsen, the goddess of low-cost displays, would take an interest. Or would the Intel-OLPC rivalry rule out anything happening since she licensed her technology to OLPC? May Intel and OLPC eventually patch things up! The fighting is costly to both; screen tech could be a major revenue source for OLPC.
• eReader on the Asus Eee, through Wine (Unwired Ben). What’s the latest on Wine for use on the XO? Is this a practical way to get eReader, Mobipocket and other programs going on it, so we can read DRM-infested bestsellers? Screenshot is of Windows version of eReader.
• Peak iPod: Has Apple Reached Its End? (from Mike Cane’s blog).

(Thanks, Mike, for the last three!)

By Ficbot

I have been an e-book reader for years, both on computers and on portable devices such as Palm organizers and my Alphasmart Dana.

For anything longer than a short subway trip, however, or an afternoon coffee break, the Dana won’t cut it for reading—the screen is too reflective and the lighting has to be arranged just so.

Enter the eBookwise, with a long-lasting battery and a screen the size of a real book. Also, eBookwise is owned by the same people who run Fictionwise, where I already had an account and a few books ready to go. So I ordered.

Priced for frugal booklovers

Prices of basic eBookwises start at $110 and shipping, a fraction of the costs of such machines as the Sony Reader ($300) and Amazon Kindle ($400). That’s with 8MB of internal memory and no slide-in card. A machine with a 128MB card will cost $180, allowing you to store far more than 100 typical books.

While the eBookwise lacks the most modern technology, it could delight frugal booklovers, and unlike the displays on E Ink machines, the LCD screen will glow hour after hour in places that would be too dim even for reading off old-fashioned paper.

Part I: Content, and where to get it

As soon as my new eBookwise reached me—I waited three weeks—I bought a test book from the company’s server. Shopping was easy enough for the most part. Browse for the title you want, submit your payment information, and the book will be transferred to your “online bookshelf,” from which you can download to your device.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Moderator’s note: Rochelle Hartman, a librarian in La Crosse, Wis., and author of the lively Tinfoil and Raccoon blog, thinks the Kindle is almost toaster-simple to use. Legal and e-babel issues remain for libraries, but all in all, Rochelle is impressed. – David Rothman

The library’s business manager was very pleased to hand the Kindle to me. I started playing with it immediately, and took raw notes in Google docs and decided that’s how I would report my inaugural Kindle experience. 

I’ll keep updating this post as I continue to poke and play with it.  I should note that I haven’t read any extensive reviews of the Kindle since I wanted to have a new user experience with it. 

First Kindle day—at work

Crap. I was hoping to be able to unbox it, but it’s been unboxed, with books loaded already. (Update: I’ve learned that these books came preloaded and that I was, in fact, the first one to download fresh content.)

Trying to figure it out without looking at user’s manual. Giving it the Toaster Test.  That is, “Is it as easy to use as my 1959 Sunbeam toaster?”

(more…)

By David Rothman

Does the Sony Reader diss millions of vision-impaired Americans? Yes! Here’s a “must” homework assignment for Sony and Adobe, something to read and act on before the release of Digital Editions software for the Reader.

Among other people, I’m thinking of a New York publishing executive with eyesight problems. She’s a speed reader and might not be won over by the current generation of E Ink machines, which take a second or so to change pages. But let’s look ahead. Meanwhile, via a firmware update, the current model PRS-505 could be much friendlier for the vision-impaired. Same for the older 500.

For both Sony and Adobe, I recommend a close reading of a Web post from a visually impaired man who vastly prefers the Kindle even though the Reader “is better looking and has better ergonomics.” That’s why he kept his new Kindle and gave his wife the Sony–yes, I’ll avoid getting into the domestic angle even though he says she’s happy with the arrangement.

Kindle advantage

“One big reason for my using an e-book is my poor vision, requiring large print to read comfortably,” he writes in the MobileRead message, which I’ve edited for readability. “The Kindle lets the owner easily pick any one of six type sizes, the largest being 20 points, which is excellent for me.”

I myself see this as less of a problem for Sony’s BBeB-books than for PDF books, which normally are hell for people who want to the widest range of font sizes. But, in fact, still-larger fonts in BBeB and the forthcoming .epub format on the Sony wouldn’t hurt.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony is a must-read article in the New York Times Magazine by Parag Khanna, a think-tanker as well as author of the forthcoming book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.

So here’s the question of the day. Does a major premise of the book, that American influence is waning, apply to e-books? The technology, the content or both?

In the tech area, consider:

• No popular e-paper machines, as far as I can recall, are produced en masse in the United States—the Amazon Kindle is Chinese-made. I’m eagerly awaiting whatever comes out of eBook Technologies, Inc., based in California. But almost surely production will happen elsewhere. I’ll be interested in the extent to which ETI influences design; will it mostly piggyback on work elsewhere? To give another example, Hewlett-Packard is taking forever to release an e-book reader. Remember when everyone carried an HP calculator? Why is HP so out of it? Another triumph of marketers over engineers—this time at a company once famous for its innovation? Meanwhile Palm stubbornly refuses to do an e-book-optimized version of the TX, which actually could happen through a firmware update.
• The Turkish-sold Walkbook, essentially a rebranded Chinese machine, is an example of e-book tech on the cusp of becoming a global commodity. Just wait until e-paper prices drop.
• Most display production is happening outside the U.S., and that’s probably true of the majority of the parts used in e-readers, as well as nondedicated devices.
• While the U.S.-based E Ink Corporation is an important player in displays, European companies such as Polymer Vision and Nemoptic could be powerful rivals.
• As for the revolutionary OLPC display, yes, Mary Lou Jepsen made it a reality while CTO of the group, and she remains an e-book hero of mine fully worthy of the credit. But let’s not forget the contributions of the Taiwan-based CHIMEI Group.
• The most interesting open source programs for reading e-books are coming out of Europe—for example, FBReader.
• The e-reading format for the Kindle actually comes out of Paris in a sense. It’s basically a tweak of Mobipocket.
• I don’t see the same excitement in the commercial e-book software area, here in the States, that I’ve observed in previous years. Adobe’s Digital Editions so far is less than a sensation. Microsoft Reader and eReader haven’t exactly awed us lately. VitalSource, another U.S. company, an arm of Ingram, is doing interesting things in its niches but has yet to do a breakthrough mainstream product, especially one aimed at PDAs and cellphones. Might the .epub standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum be one way for this to happen? Meanwhile, out of China, we have Jinke’s proprietary .wol standard available via machines such as the Walkbook.

(more…)

By David Rothman

“NAEB is accepting the bailout offers,” reports Pam Gadsden, CEO of the buyer’s club selling the Cybook Gen3 E Ink machine with a 1G memory card and other extras for $375 and shipping. “We are back on track and soon to order our first shipment from Bookeen.” Slightly edited, here’s the lowdown from her:

“We order the readers by end of this week, the beginning of next with 1/2 paid. When Bookeen tells us they’re ready to ship we pay the other 1/2.  We get them and send them on to the buyers. The funds freed will be used to pay back the loan. [A] delay will come as the checks used to replace the PayPal orders clear the bank.  Bookeen will be getting the second shipment of readers later in February.”

Yes, this is the same company advertising in the upper right of the TeleBlog home page, and we want to stay in close touch not just with NAEB but also with customers—feel free to post questions or opinions to the comment area, however you feel about the company or the Cybook Gen3. The club is a genuine grassroots effort started by people fed up with DRM, one reason we solicited NAEB for advertising. Ahead I’ll reproduce the NAEB statement in full.

(more…)

By David Rothman

“If Negroponte wants to convert kids to the global information economy, he might consider the chief virtue of the XO laptop: its lights and sounds. Even Western kids, whose toys flash and squeal, are drawn with primitive wonderment to the peculiar phenomena of this computer—the distinctive hums and blinks that seem like evidence of its soul.”- Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times Magazine, complete with an appropriate allusion to The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The TeleRead take: I’m all for the razzle-dazzle if the schools can also direct the kids to the XO’s awesome e-book capabilities, which, as I see it, are underplayed on the opening screen.

Related: OLPC Birmingham Surprise: Internet and Router Access Needed and Chicago OLPC Community Meetup Success and Give One Got None XO Laptop Per Donor, in OLPC News.

Housekeeping: Once again, we’re heavy on OLPC news, so, unless someone objects, I’m gonna delay the related PDF/Mobi follow-up one more day.

By David Rothman

PDAs could be just the ticket for safely reading naughty books during lunch hour—-with or without goggles. Jokes aside, however, might some e-book publishers rely too heavily on erotica? Jane over at DearAuthor asks the inevitable question.

With mainstream houses breathing heavily down the necks of the small-fry—panting?— maybe it’s time for certain small e-publishers to work harder on developing new markets to augment existing ones. No moralizing here. Just some business questions.

“Of the books listed as bestsellers at Samhain,” Jayne says, “two of the top three feature threesomes or more. At All Romance eBooks, seven of the top ten also feature some form of multiple partner sex.”

By David Rothman

“I used to get library e-books but since my computer crashed and was repaired I can no longer get the PDF library e-books. Something to do with Adobe Digital Editions—they say version 1.5 should be coming out soon, which will fix the problem.” – Linda Pettit, in West Virginia—writing in PalmAddicts.

The TeleRead take: But how long until something else will introduce an incompatibility—such as Linda Pettit’s moving on to a new system. Not to mention all the unknowns of DRM. Will IDPF members be able to agree on an “open” DRM system?

Related: Ficbot’s Public library eBabel redux: Isn’t there a better way than Mobi vs. Adobe e-book Deathmatches and chaotic user menus?