TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for November, 2008

By Chris Meadows

This morning, Slashdot had a link to a blog post pondering the ethics of downloading illicit (”pirated”) e-books of out-of-print books that are not available as legitimate e-books. The post generated a large number of comments, both on the blog post itself and on the Slashdot discussion of it.

[A]ccording to Russell Davis, former chair (and now president of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association) of the SFWA’s Copyright Committee, “electronic infringement is theft”. From a legal perspective, I suppose that is true.   And given that as an Open Source programmer, I depend on Copyright Law to assure that my wishes as an author are upheld, it would be hypocritical for me assume that I should be able to ignore Copyright Law just because it is inconvenient.

The blogger lists several possible alternatives—just buying the dead-tree version, buying it and OCR’ing it himself, buying it and also downloading the illicit version, just downloading the illicit version and sending the author a money order for what it would have cost—and solicits readers’ advice. He gets quite a bit of it, and much of it seems to be tilted toward going ahead and downloading it, whether he buys the dead-tree version or not.

Of course, the entire problem might possibly be avoided when Google Books’s settlement finally comes through and Google is able to sell electronic versions of out-of-print books that they scan. (Although Google’s books would be PDFs, perhaps they could be converted into the blogger’s preferred format of choice.)

Update: The blogger has posted a follow-up entry to his e-book ethics question.

By Ficbot

Most readers of this blog are opposed to DRM. But publishers continue to be enamored of it, and continue to say that if you really are a legitimate customer, doing nothing wrong, you shouldn’t even notice it, so why should you care?

Well, publishers have it wrong. They clearly have no understanding of how the average customer’s computer set-up, and life, works.

My latest headache, from one of the gentler forms of DRM, is proof of this.

eReader system explained

The background: I do not support overly restrictive DRM formats, but I have in the past (and more so recently, since my iPod Touch purchase) tolerated secure eReader files, because it’s the only way to read many new releases. Iit seemed to the least intrusive of the options.

eReader DRM uses a scrambled version of your credit card number as the encryption key—you technically can share the book if you want to, but you’d have to share your credit card number, too, so its use as the unlock code is for nearly all customers an effective deterrent against sharing. The software for the iPod Touch even stores the code for you so you don’t have to reenter it every time you download a new book.

Sounds great, right? Until you have a problem with your credit card.

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By David Rothman

Kindle sellers are aiming for “Buy It Now”  prices as high as $1,495 on eBay.

The $1,494 is hardly typical, but it still reflects the demand, now that customers must wait weeks and weeks for new Kindles to arrive from Amazon itself.

Related: Get a Refurbished Kindle—in Stock Now!, from Bees (Books) on The Knob. Alas, when I checked, the $329 refurbs were sold out, and used units began at $696.

Related: Parts I and II of an e-book-gizmo buying guide from DearAuthor.com. The first part deals with dedicated machines like the Sony Readers, while the second discusses multifunction devices,including Asus-class notebooks. Also see a TeleBlog item on an interesting $350 Asus now on sale.

By David Rothman

If you go by Google’s search reports, interest in the ePub standard has rocketed in recent months. Switzerland, Belgium, Brazil, France and Russia and India are Regions 1-6, with the U.S. coming in at Number 7 and the U.K. at Number 8. Here’s a glimpse into Google Trends’ methodology. ePub usage is just a speck of, say, the popularity of Adobe PDF, but graph shows terrific potential.

ePub could be on its way to becoming a true international, multilingual standard, and I hope that publishers industry will not shoot themselves in the foot by cluttering things up with silly DRM-based regionalization schemes. E-books inherently lend themselves to global marketing. Let’s not hurt them by trying to impose paper-book models on them. While I love the idea of regional editions of international best-sellers, let them compete on merit, as opposed to a DRMish approach.

By David Rothman

The Android incarnation of FBReader, which can handle ePub among other formats, now has “more Androidish scrolling,” according to Freshmeat, which is offering downloads.

Also see the FBReader site for the latest on FBReaderJ, the Android version. “In future releases the list will be extended to support the same formats as the original FBReader. Direct reading from zip, tar and grip archives is supported.”

While cheering on FBReader, I’m also wondering when Stanza will make it to the Android phones.

If I were Lexcycle, Stanza’s developers, I would regard Android development as a at least a partial precaution against possible future moves by Apple to get in on the software action.

By Paul Biba

Whatever you might think of Amazon, you certainly have to admit that it’s are clever. For some time the company had an option called Amazon Upgrade which lets you read the p-books you have bought from them on line. If you pay the extra fee, which varies based on the book, you can:

* Start reading the book online while you wait for your physical copy to arrive
* Add highlights, bookmarks, notes, or tags to any page or section of text
* Print pages, and even copy and paste text from the book
* Read your book from any Internet-connected computer, meaning your book is always with you

This could be quite a useful feature for those who have to lug p-books around for one reason or another. Right now the program seems pretty limited. Of the many books I have bought from Amazon only 3 qualify. Here they are with the Upgrade price:

Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out $8.99
Microsoft XP Professional Administrator’s Pocket Consultant $5.99
Faster Smarter Digital Video $3.99

Thanks to the Amazon Kindle Review for the heads up.

By the way, what’s the relevance of the picture? It’s an Amazon Tree Frog, of course.

By David Rothman

If you don’t want to wait weeks and weeks for a Kindle, the Sony Reader PRS-505 might be just the ticket.

The PRS-505 lacks the Kindle’s wireless features or the built-in backlight of the $400 PRS-700. But the screen is among the more legible, and even newcomers can get the hang of importing books from a desktop machine. Plus, it can read the IDPF’s ePub standard and even encrypted PDF, among other formats. See an Amazon page for more details, including reader reviews.

So how much to pay? Circuit City is advertising the readers for $259.95 by mail—some $100 cheaper than the Kindle. The 505’s list price is about $300.

Other interesting choices for disappointed Kindle shoppers might be the Cybook ($269 from Books on Board) or the $198 jetBook, which, however, has just a five inch LCD screen without a backlight and currently can’t read DRMed books. The Cybook’s screen, in my opinion, is one of the most legible when you use the “embolden” feature, which bolds text and increases perceived contrast.

By Paul Biba

We most often think of e-books as digitized text coupled with a convenient reading medium. But there is a lot more to e-books than that if you use your imagination. Here’s an excerpt of a story from the Australian paper The Age. Take a look at the full text here.

In its current incarnation, Christoph Benda’s first novel requires that you a) be able to read German and b) have an internet connection.

Benda’s work, Senghor on the Rocks, is a geo-referenced electronic novel in which the text is combined with an embedded map mash-up from Google Maps on a website.

The map, which is fixed in the “Satellite View” mode, moves as the location changes in the novel and every page of text is accompanied by a corresponding map.

The geo-novel is an adaption of a book written by Benda, a former advertising copywriter now working at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and is based on his travels in the African nation of Senegal.

“For me, the project always has been related to a map in a certain sense. Only that it wasn’t hi tech, online satellite imagery but the rather worn out paper map I had carried with me throughout all my time in Africa,” says Benda who wrote the book between 2002 and 2005.

By David Rothman

The Oprah Effect works not just for p-books but also for e-book devices, at least if you go by the 11-13 week delays for Kindle shoppers. Say good-bye to next-day delivery.

Will Amazon stop taking orders for the current Kindle and switch to the Kindle 2? ArsTechnica has the details; also see a Techmeme roundup. Ars Technica’s main point is that e-books as a whole are enjoying a popularity surge, and that publishers such as Random House are responding.

Close to home: At Thanksgiving dinner last night in Fairfax Station, VA, one of my nieces for the first time talked about buying a Kindle, saying it looked “cool,” and that Oprah was a factor.

The iPhone question: Will some disappointed Amazon shoppers instead use iPhones or iPod Touches instead to read books? in some cases, definitely. Part of Stanza’s growth might be from many shoppers’ discovery that they already own e-book devices, in effect. But it’s a case-by-case matter. I know my niece has written off the iPhone screen as too small. I just wish she’d try out my Touch, with an LCD the same size. Image shows Stanza 1.6’s new browser in action.

Related: E-books have a future in inTunes., from Wired network blogger Chris Synder.

By Richard Herley

An often overlooked feature of most e-book displays is the ability to change the size of the font. Especially in recent years, I have noticed that the average font-size in p-books has been getting smaller and line-spacing has decreased, making the text harder to read for anyone without good eyesight.

Years ago, I remember searching the Large Print section of our local library, trying to find intelligent reading-matter for an elderly relative who, although suffering from failing vision, had nothing whatever wrong with her mind. It was not easy.

And of course, if even an ebook-display does not permit sufficient enlargement, there is no reason why electronic text should not be magnified as much as required on a high-contrast computer screen.

This is an important something to be added to the P-versus-E debate. P-books don’t need recharging, are easy to flip through, they smell nice, “do furnish a room”, and all that; but do they take up zero space, never need dusting, never fox, and never disintegrate because the publisher has skimped on the binding? And do they allow you, if afflicted with failing sight, to minimize your isolation and go on accessing the pleasure and companionship to be found in reading?

By David Rothman

For e-books to take off, they need to be audio-CD-simple—without today’s Tower of eBabel of clashing formats.

So I was delighted that after writing Why supported formats don’t matter to me (very much), MobileRead’s Bob Russell stressed he was truly serious about the “me” qualification. Also check out RJH’s arguments against eBabel and DRM. As tempting as it is for technical people to learn to tolerate the current format mess, the real future is in more visionary approaches without vendor lock-ins. 

Toward the true public interest

Such approaches will benefit everyone: readers, writers, publishers, software companies and even the e-book enthusiasts who today are proud of their skills as format jockeys. The more popular e-books become, through standards like ePub, the lower will be the prices of dedicated hardware. Furthermore, a standard format like ePub will expedite the development of e-reading programs to run on cellphones and regular computers or interact with non-e-book apps such as Web browsers. On top of that, shouldn’t software houses compete with each other to come up with the best interfaces and other truly valuable features—rather than fritter away money on format wars?

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By Richard Herley

Editor’s note: Here is another posting from Richard Herley’s blog. He poses an interesting question in this one. One I certainly had not thought about before.

I have just received this email from a reader, which I reproduce with his permission:

I have just read The Penal Colony and really enjoyed it.

Usually when I read a book by a new author (to me) and enjoy it I go straight onto Amazon and purchase every single book by that author. But currently I am going through a little bit of a financial problem that is preventing me from buying as many books as I want to. I bought the Sony Reader to allow me to read all the classics that I should have read years ago but never got round to, such as 1984, etc. When I found out about Feedbooks I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I have now downloaded all your books and I am looking forward to reading them over the next couple of days. I felt your ‘fee’ was too low so have doubled it, I would love to have given more but I am not able to just now. However in the future I will continue to purchase your books as quickly as you can write them.

I enjoyed The Penal Colony and would love to know what happened to Routledge.

Anyway, I really hope your endeavour with shareware books is an incredible success and catches on in a big way.

What author could fail to be delighted by such a message? But for me, this is also proof that the shareware model really can work for fiction. It also suggests that, as the recession deepens and people examine their budgets more carefully, the ebook — especially the freely available, non-DRM ebook — will seem an ever more attractive proposition. Ebook displays are still expensive, but give comfortable access to an ocean of free and inexpensive reading. When times are hard, traditional book-buying (unlike cinema attendance) takes a hit. It will be interesting to see what happens to sales of ebook displays.