TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for October, 2008

By David Rothman

Some months ago Random House, S&S and other major houses said they were buying dedicated e-readers for certain editors, sales reps and others.

Have the new gizmos worked out? Which brand is most popular? And how are publishing people using them?

Sony Reader most popular among publishers

"In general," reports Publishing Trends in the November issue, "e-reader users are happy with the device they currently own." Typically that’s a Sony because of the quantity discounts the company offers, unlike Amazon.

Also, unfairly, as both PT and I see it, some publishing people are worried about people spying on them. I do think the Kindle has privacy risks, but not in this case—I doubt Amazon is taking time to snoop on manuscripts and book proposals, the main app for publishers.

E-books’ other most popular uses

Other popular uses are purchased e-books (40 percent of respondents compared to more than 80 percentage for manuscripts and proposals), newspaper articles (more than 30 percent), magazine articles (20 percent) and memos and other internal documents (about 10 percent).

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By David Rothman

How many e-books exist already with embedded music soundtracks? I’ll guess that some are out there despite a claim by Electric Book Works that Moxyland is the first e-book with one. But I could be wrong.

"The soundtrack was compiled by African Dope Records to suit the mood and feel of the book’s storyline," says Arthur Attwell, EBW’s publishing director.

Futuristic plot

The plot is set "ten years in the future" in Cape Town and brings together such characters as "a roguish slacker living off his mom" and "a brilliant corporate programmer and AIDS baby" who is "just bored enough to risk everything by hacking the system that makes her privileged lifestyle possible." Author is Lauren Beukes.

Less Flash, please

I wish EBW luck, and the writer, too, but meanwhile I hope it will stop relying so heavily on Flash for the promo site for Moxyland. Come on, folks. The cool cyber people adhere to relevant tech standards.

Had it not been for the abominable .SWF, I could have pasted in some character descriptions and picked up the large graphic without resorting to a screen capture.

PDF format for book itself

The format of the book itself is PDF, into which the soundtrack is embedded. I’d be curious to know if the ePub standard—either the present incarnation or an enhanced one—could be eventually be used. Might some of the same technology for the disabled also work for coordinating music and text via ePub? To EBW’s credit, ePub is already among the company’s main formats. I hope the International Digital Publishing Forum will listen to suggestions from EBW and other innovation-minded publishers as the group develops ePub.

Meanwhile if you want to enjoy Moxyland on your Kindle (iffy with converted PDF and lacking native ePUB), forget it. Same for most cellphones, I suspect. The Tower of eBabel still looms high. I wonder if the PDF will serve up music on the Sony Reader PRS-505 and PRS-700, which can handle PDF text reasonably well. Can the Sony machines at least display the words from Moxyland?

Some wrinkles in Moxyland: "Scaleable pages for easy reading, embedded music controllers, suggested tracks, electronic bookmarks, hyperlinks and sticky notes." These features are hardly unique, but interesting.

Fun question: What music would you like embedded into your favorite book (book title?), and why? Or do you hate the idea for file-size reasons or others? Think that text and music should stand by themselves? And what about the royalty issue? The more trimming a book has, the less for writers in most  cases or at least many.

By a TeleBlog Contributor

Bob Stein, founder of the The Institute for the Future of the Book, shared the information below. Best of luck to the Institute with the project!

On November 10th, The Institute kicks off an experiment in close reading.

Seven women, ranging from young novelists to publishing executive Harriet Rubin, will read Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and carry on a conversation in the margins.

The idea for the project arose out of my experience re-reading the novel in the summer of 2007 just before Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Golden Notebook was one of the two or three most influential books of my youth and I decided I wanted to "try it on" again after so many years. It turned out to be one of the most interesting reading experiences of my life. With an interval of thirty-seven years the lens of perception was so different; things that stood out the first-time around were now of lesser importance, and entire themes I missed the first time came front and center.

Eavesdropping on different readers—young and old

When I told my younger colleagues what I was reading, I was surprised that not one of them had read it, not even the ones with degrees in English literature.  It occurred to me that it would be very interesting to eavesdrop on a conversation between two readers, one under thirty, one over fifty or sixty, in which they react to the book and to each other’s reactions. And then of course I realized that we now actually have the technology to do just that.

Thanks to the efforts of Chris Meade, my colleague and director of if:book London, the Arts Council England enthusiastically and generously agreed to fund the project. Chris was also the link to Doris Lessing who through her publisher HarperCollins signed on with the rights to putting the entire text of the novel online.

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By Paul Biba

iLounge is probably the most influential of the iPod/iPhone net publications. It just did an article entitled iPhone Gems, and, laudably, eReader is one of the programs they chose for the honor.

Here is iLounge’s conclusion:

eReader is the best application we’ve seen for reading commercial e-books directly on your iPhone, providing features on the iPhone that rival dedicated e-book readers such as the Kindle. While eReader is obviously geared toward purchased content, the reality is that most avid e-book readers are going to need to purchase their content from somewhere, and eReader and FictionWise form two of the largest general e-book content providers available. Despite this, however, the eReader application does not prevent you from placing your own e-books onto the device, provided that they are in the compatible e-book format. Since this format has been available for about seven years on the Palm platform, a number of tools are available which can handle conversion of text and rich-text documents into the Palm DOC e-book format supported by eReader. The only small issue with using your own content is the requirement to upload your content to a web site before you can download it onto your device; a more direct approach would be useful here for those users who do not have easy access to a web-based service to store their content, however users can also easily sign up for a free eReader.com account and make use of the personal bookshelf feature, so this is not a serious limitation. Overall, if you’re a fan of books, eReader is a great way to get them onto your iPhone or iPod touch for easy reading. iLounge rating: A-.

By Paul Biba

Tor has released another free e-book, Spaceman Blues, which is the first in a series by Brian Francis Slattery.

You can get the book in Mobi, HTML, Sony or PDF format by registering at the Tor site. I must say that registration is really worth it if you are into the type of books that Tor publishes. They actually have a newsletter that is worth reading, and have plenty of free stories to read on the company’s site.

By Garson O'Toole

Color e-paper will debut in a display from Qualcomm reports Technology Review in their November issue. The publication uses a curious definition for “e-paper”. They say it means the display “has no backlighting and thus can be read in direct sunlight.” The display consists of “two layers of a reflective material”. “Some wavelengths of light bounce off the first layer; some pass through and bounce off the second. Interference between the two beams creates the color, and electrostatic forces control the distance between the layers.” So this technology appears to differ from the methods pioneered by E Ink based on this short description. (Update November 2: Qualcomm has a web page titled
“How it Works” about the display technology it calls mirasol.)

The display is small and it is part of an MP3 player and not an e-book. Being waterproof would certainly be a nice property for an e-book reader. Author Margaret Atwood has said that you cannot read an e-book in the bath. Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly has also been dubious about bathtub e-reading. Now that there is waterproof color e-paper display in an MP3 player perhaps an e-book might be next.

Epson is sending out samples this month of a new transflective LCD display for indoor and outdoor use according to Engadget and TechOn. “The new transflective LCDs use a transmissive mode with light provided by a backlight in darker environments, while outdoors and in other well-lit locations their reflective mode harnesses the surrounding light, reducing backlight power consumption” says the Epson press release.

The OLPC is color and it can also be read in direct sunlight; however, the display changes its appearance to black and white when it is reflecting light.

By Joe Wikert

Moderator: So how long until someone uses Arduino-style techniques to develop e-reading hardware—assuming this isn’t happening already? – D.R.

What happens when the open source model is applied to hardware?  You get Arduino.  If you’re not familiar with the Arduino platform you ought to read this excellent article about it in the latest issue of Wired magazine.

This model has the potential to turn the hardware industry on its ear. The phrase “creative destruction” was used in the article and I think it’s an excellent way to describe how the open source approach has affected software, now hardware and even content.  Yes, that’s right…I couldn’t help think about the content world while reading that Wired article.  Simply replace “hardware manufacturers” with “content providers” in this relevant excerpt and you’ll see what I mean:

To thrive in this next wave, hardware manufacturers will have to switch their thinking.  Their job is no longer just to dream up ideas — it’s equally important, maybe even more vital, to seek out innovations from users.

P.S. — On a related note, O’Reilly just published a 128-page book called Getting Started with Arduino.  It sounds like an excellent book for my son, the aerospace engineering student and all-around tinkerer. I’ll have to look into employee discounts since this is my first day on the job!

By a TeleBlog Contributor

( XKCD via LISNews, source of the headline. CC-licensed by Randall Munroe.)

By David Rothman

Publisher often love to draw a connection between money and the quality of a book—and you can bet that includes e-books. I agree. Editing, design, promo and the rest aren’t free, no matter what the medium.

But how about the money-quality connection in the case of writers? Random House, it would appear, is taking at least a small step backwards. And writers and society at large will be the losers. Yes, manuscripts abound. But the smaller the rewards for writers, the less incentive they will have to do their very best. Even literary writers like the late Kurt Vonnegut—follow the just-given link—aren’t impervious to the allures of cash.

So what’s Random House been up to? From E-Reads, via the TOC blog:

A recent Random House contract states that on all copies of a work sold as an electronic book, the royalty will be 25% of the US suggested retail price until the book’s advance has earned out, and 15% of the list price thereafter. Under the current (pre-change) royalty structure, on a book retailing for, say, $10.00, the e-book royalty would be $2.50 per download at 25%, then $1.50 per download when the royalty rate shifts to 15%.

By contrast, the new royalty of 25% of the net receipts [after distributors' cuts] comes to something like $1.25 per sale on a $10.00 book (25% of 50%). So, Random House’s change is definitely a reduction of e-book income for authors.

Just $1.25 for the most important person, the author? So much for the efficiencies of E, huh? Among Random House’s justifications: “…The new rates are very much in line with the e-book and digital audio rates being offered today by our major competitors…”

Detail, from E-Reads: “By way of comparison, and as a matter of full disclosure, E-Reads pays a royalty of 50% of net receipts for e-book sales, and has done so since its founding in 2000. On a $10.00 book, that means a royalty of $2.50. At no point is the royalty rate ever reduced.”

By David Rothman

Animation would be just the ticket to spice up many a nonfiction book—especially textbooks on, say, physics or auto mechanics.

E Ink earlier said this was a goal. And the video to the left demonstrates the advantages of such an approach in the AM300 developer’s kit.

How much better to see tech in action than just read explanations!

Newspaper angle

The newspaper industry and others could also benefit from moving ads and other animations, particularly when color is available. The animation-color combo just might show up in E Ink machines costing less than $200, in the next five-ten years. In fact, we’d really be talking full-motion video—short movies, in other words.

Granted, that’s a mere guess, but plausible; got any opinions of your own on this? And what about other technologies? Or the possibilities for cellphones? Or even low-power laptops and tablets with touch screens? Touch is already a feature of the new Sony Reader PRS-700, which uses E Ink and has a much faster refresh rate than earlier machines using similar technology.

The big challenge will be for newspapers and others to show restraint and not overwhelm the readers with high-tech huckstery, which could lessen the joys of text.

The fiction angle: I’m more excited about animation for nonfiction, but for what it’s worth, here’s information on a fiction-related video experiment at HarperCollins (not involving E Ink). It’s video of an author, not mere animation. But you can imagine animation as well—for, say, manga comics.

Related: YouTube page, Engadget, earlier TeleRead items on E Ink

Housekeeping: Yes, I’m back, but for only limited periods. We urgently need volunteers to do lively, well-informed posts and handle technical matters such as the back-office functions of WordPress. TeleRead reaches tens of thousands of people a month, especially in key fields like the publishing industry, and has been cited by prestigious publications such as the Christian Science Monitor. Meanwhile major thanks to Paul Biba and other community-minded e-book lovers who are already helping. Prospective volunteers can reach Paul at readingelectronically @ gmail.com

By a TeleBlog Contributor

If the gurus are right, Americans voters are about to tell Washington next month: “Enough pimping for special interests!”

So here’s a question. Can this apply to copyright laws, such as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, a bipartisan outrage that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1998?

The Act extended the period that Mickey Mouse’s copyright was protected. Corporations like Disney loved it. But thanks to Bono, you can’t read The Great Gatsby and many other classics for free on the Net. Will the late F. Scott Fitzgerald be that much more creative because the act stretched out Gatsby’s term by 20 years? Hello, Saint Mary’s Cemetery?

At Public Knowledge, in reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the DMCA and Bono, Gigi Sohn has noted:

“Suffice it to say that the Sonny Bono Act was nothing more than corporate welfare for big copyright holders. Even a copyright industry sympathizer like Representative Howard Berman has admitted to me that in hindsight he believed that voting for the extension was a mistake.”

Could this translate into action against the act? What kinds? And might commercial interests like Google step up anti-Bono efforts, now that the company has made peace with many book people on a different front? Given all the commercial opportunities related to the public domain, such as print on demand, the act actually harms more than a few publishers.

By Chris Meadows

Ars Technica has an interesting review of a forthcoming iPhone e-book app called Classics.

Not yet available on the App Store, the gimmick of Classics is that it attempts to replicate the page-turning experience of a “real book” as closely as is possible on the iPhone’s screen. For $2.99, it will launch with a library of 12 public-domain titles, such as Alice in Wonderland or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with the possibility of adding more with later updates.

Without actually trying the app out, I cannot agree or disagree with the specific points Ars makes in its review. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if a nifty page-turning animation will really be sufficient to make readers pay even $2.99 for public-domain books that can be downloaded for eReader or Stanza from Manybooks or Feedbooks for free.

By Paul Biba

Maybe not exactly on topic, but I thought we should be part of the chronicle of the end of an era. The Monitor is 100 years old and is now the first paper to embrace a primarily-internet strategy. I find this fascinating. My daughter, who is 28, has a Masters in Journalism from Medill and has just made the masthead of Wired as a Correspondent. Despite being a professional journalist she, and all of her peers whom I have met, consider print newspapers to be irrelevant. We are seeing this attitude reflect, of course, in the increasing problems all newspapers have with circulation. If I remember correctly, the publisher of the New York Times has stated publicly that he didn’t care whether the print edition of the Times continues or not.

Here is an excerpt from “A note to our subscribers from the managing publisher”: We recently announced, as covered in today’s paper, that in April 2009 the daily print edition of The Christian Science Monitor will shift to a 24/7 daily Web publication. This will be combined with the launch of an attractive new weekly print publication that looks behind the headlines and helps readers understand global issues. Also we will launch a new daily e-news edition, delivered by e-mail.

I was a subscriber to the paper for a number of years. It was a nice change from the “standard fare” of other newspapers.

By Paul Biba

In a step forward for open standards, ECTACO has announced that its jetBook will support EPUB in the first quarter of 2009. Additionally, the jetBook will also support MobiPocket at that time. Fodor’s Travel Guide will also be included as a pre-load on every jetBook. You can find the full press release here.

By Paul Biba

TeleRead is already running first-rate contributions from Ficbot, Joe Wikert, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, Garson O’Toole, Chris Meadows, Richard Herley and other talented writers—but the more the merrier.

Especially while David is recuperating from his open heart surgery, I would welcome additional help.

Let’s grow an interactive community where we all can participate and help spread the word about the pros and cons of e-books.

More than the usual blog

Yes, cons, too. TeleRead is notable for its candor on topics ranging from DRM to eBabel. In the blog word, it is the leading advocate of e-book standards.

Along the way, it also gets picked up by such sites as Techmeme. Just the other day, the Christian Science Monitor quoted us. Here’s a chance for the world to find out about your e-book savvy.

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By Chris Meadows

Wired has an article looking back at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was signed into law ten years ago today. In a touch of hyperbole, the headline calls it “the law that saved the web,” which has drawn ire from many of the people leaving comments below it.

The article itself is a fairly well-balanced retrospective on the DMCA’s first ten years of effectiveness, examining both the good and the bad.

The good is the DMCA’s “Safe Harbor” provision, which gives content hosts immunity from prosecution for copyright violation as long as they act to take down the offending material as soon as they receive a complaint. Although this (like any law) is subject to abuse, it has allowed Web 2.0 sites to flourish without fear of litigation as long as they promptly comply with takedown notices.

The bad is, of course, the anti-circumvention provisions that make it illegal to break the Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy-protection on media, even media that you own. This has caused a great deal of trouble to open-source projects and limited what consumers can legally do with DVDs, e-books, and other media.

Wired is not the only one to notice the anniversary; there are a number of other retrospectives and articles about the law appearing. Seth Finkelstein has rounded up some links here.

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By Chris Meadows

As reported on Slashdot, Google and the Authors Guild have settled their litigation over Google Books nee Print’s unauthorized scanning of copyrighted books.

This appears to be a classic case of a compromise that benefits all sides. If it is approved by the courts, Google will pay $125 million in legal fees, settlement of claims by scanned authors, and to establish a “Book Rights Registry” that will keep track of known rightsholders and work on locating unknown ones.

This could lead to more than just snippets of books being available. One of the press releases breaks it down so:

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