TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for February, 2009

By Chris Meadows

The FTC has added more comments to the comments page on its March 25th Digital Rights Management town hall meeting since the original batch of 700. The total is now up to 840, including some that were submitted in the very last few days of the submission period.

As Ars Technica observed, it is common practice for industry advocacy groups and other heavy-hitters to hold off on their comments until the very end of the submission process, so they can see what others have written and not give anyone time to respond to their own submissions. For the FTC meeting, a number of industry groups and websites did just that.

As far as the industry groups are concerned, the sentiment seems a bit more evenly divided than the 690 vs. 7 against trend noted by L’Ombre de l’Olivier—there seem to be about an equal number for and against DRM. Today I’ve looked at a few from both sides. We’ll start with the pro-DRM comments.

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By Paul Biba

Thanks to Michael Pastore of EPublishers Weekly for letting me quote this. The original is here. I agree completely. The hyphen is just s-t-u-p-i-d:

Email is now officially spelled with or without the hyphen: why not ebooks?

The ebook world has plenty of technology; we can use a bit of humor and a dash of art. Here is a poetic parody that gripes about the ludricrous hyphen in the word “e-book”. Written by a man who is unafraid to put his name at the bottom of a beautiful heap of nonsense.

Why the Ex-Perts Call Them E-Books

“You say e-books, and I say ebooks! Let’s call the hyphen off.”
— George and Ira Gershwin

A travesty against our race!
Of every creed and sex —
The adding of the hyphen
By the pompous scholar ex-
Perts, for no other reason
Than to obfuscate the poor
And humble e-book
Which requires nothing more.

“But why not?” ask the ex-
Perts as they while away the hours
Sipping fresh-frapped Capp-
Uccinos in the slippery ivory towers.
“All these lexographic capers
Add a dash of cold romance,
Makes for more grad-student papers,
And more fedly-funded grants.”

See the superfluous hyphen
As it separates the “e” —
From the book’s beloved wife an’
Paper-viewing family.
As we who love this brave new place,
Cannot but stop and think:
O, what a waste of precious space!
O what a waste of ink!

Somewhere in the thankless cold,
A poet longs to e-
At night when all his tales are told
To deaf posterity.
With every lovely line I write —
From heart, and hope, and mind,
The “e” stands all alone at right —
The book is left behind.

—- Michael Pastore

By Paul Biba

Newsarama has two recent articles on the interaction between e-readers and cartoons.

The first, Could Kindle Kill Comics?, by Vaneta Rogers: “[Comic books are] a business that is very low margin and very low print run, so if 10 percent of the readers migrate to an e-device, that is going to throw off the economics for 60 percent of the books that are published in this country, and that’s probably a low guess,” said John Cunningham, DC Comics VP, Advertising. “So it doesn’t have to become everybody in the room raising their hands having one to have that have a long-term impact on how the business goes.”

and the second, Can the iPhone Save Comic Books, also by Vaneta: As strange as that may sound to a generation who grew up reading paper comics, the next generation of comic book fans could be getting their fix by downloading motion comics on iTunes. And for small press publishers who are already struggling to compete, the distribution opportunity of the iPhone offers an enticing alternative to paper.

By Paul Biba

Here is the text of a fascinating email that Paul Lyons sent us. I went over to the site and for any lover of diaries it is a marvelous resource. Paul hopes we find them well-written, original and interesting. Indeed I do. I find them all of that and more. Onto my RSS reader his site goes!

Hi

It’s now nine months I’ve now been writing two or three articles a week on historical and literary diaries/diarists for the Diary Junction Blog. There’s an archive of over 120 substantial stories, all of them full of useful links, and most of them with extracts from original texts.

Here is a selection of the latest articles – take a look. I hope you find them well-written, original, and interesting.

If so, please do advise your own readers/website visitors about the
The Diary Junction Blog and/or
The Diary Junction.

Saturday, February 14, 2009
Lincoln and Fanny Seward
To mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln, the University of Rochester has put online a selection of diary entries written by Fanny, the daughter of Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Among these diary entries is an eye-witness description of the attempted murder of her father by a Confederate spy and associate of the man who succeeded in assassinating Lincoln that very same day. . .

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Darwin and his diaries
Charles Darwin, one of the greatest and most important scientists that ever lived, was born two centuries ago today. It is well known that his discoveries regarding evolution were first seeded while travelling round the world on HMS Beagle. During that journey, he wrote a detailed diary which has been published many times; but he also kept another diary throughout his life – unfortunately it’s very brief. Darwin’s wife, Emma, kept a diary too, also very brief (which seems to ignore her husband’s birthday!). All three diaries are freely available on the internet thanks to the wonderful Darwin Online website. . . .

Monday, February 2, 2009
We saw a light ashore
Three hundred years ago today a Scottish sailor called Alexander Selkirk was rescued from a South Pacific Island, having been marooned there for four years, by an English sailor called Woodes Rogers. Selkirk’s ordeal is said to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s now famous character and book, Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, extracts from Rogers’ journal at the time he found Selkirk are included at the back of an 1801 edition of Robinson Crusoe (and this is freely available online). . (more…)

By David Rothman

If:book was right on the mark about the advantages of hyphenation in justified text—see Paul Biba’s item. My own justification tastes very. But often I’ll pick ragged right, partly because of the gaping holes in some justified texts without hyphenation. That can be a special problem when screens are small and the text isn’t wide.

Now here’s another suggestion—one I’ve made before in an E Ink context. E-reading software should let you boldface all text if you want. The Cybook E Ink machine in the photo has a handy "embolden" command in Mobipocket-related software, and FBReader offers an equivalent option, at least for the version on my Nokia 770 handheld. Now I’d love to see iPhone programs like Stanza follow.

Even for LCD machines

Granted, LCDs such as the iPhone’s have more contrast than E Ink. But with many fonts, including most Times-style ones, the letters just aren’t strong enough when you reduce the brightness to save batteries or to be more comfortable. In fact, on a small screen, I myself might prefer bold letters even when the brightness is normal. Why can’t the software give me that option? Ideally you could even vary the "weight" rather than settling for a standard bolding level.

Hello, Stanza/Lexycle? Hello, eReader? Hello, Adobe? Hello, others? Can you oblige?

Back to hyphenation: Stanza, the most popular reader for the iPhone, does have a multilingual hypen option within the preferences.

By Paul Biba

This is a really interesting article by Dan Visel. However, for the article to really work you need to see his illustrations, so go on over and take a look:

There have been a raft of reviews of the new Kindle and the various iPhone reading applications lately. In general, reviewers are more positive about the experience of reading from a screen than they have been in the past. However, I’ve noticed that one enormous factor in reading tends to get passed by; maybe it’s not something that people notice if they don’t think about book design. See if you can identify it from these screenshots, which you can click to enlarge.

Why don’t these reading devices hyphenate their lines if they fully justify them? This isn’t, for what it’s worth, a problem that affects more than just these devices; plenty of text on the web is fully justified and has no hyphenation. The problem is that hyphenation is trickier than it might initially appear. To properly hyphenate a paragraph, the hyphenator needs to understand at least something about how the language that the paragraph of text is written in works.

By Paul Biba

Here are some excerpts from Martin Taylor’s review of the service:

I checked Shortcovers out using its iPhone/iPod Touch reader app which works pretty well. Part of the Shortcovers proposition is its emphasis on lots of short content – under 5000 words – that you can easily read on your mobile phone. Most prominent among this is a great selection of first chapters that you can read for free so even if you don’t buy anything online it’s likely to be a worthwhile resource just for browsers.

You’ll need to be online to access them. These chapters are not downloadable as far as I can tell. A nice feature is that Smartcovers, like the online ebook reader Bookworm, keeps track of your place in the book even when you access it from a different device. You can start reading on your phone and pick up later from your PC’s web browser with Smartcovers remembering where you were in your book. …

The reading experience on the iPhone was OK but it wasn’t a match for Stanza or eReader. The main annoyance was its requirement to scroll down as you read, eventually getting to the bottom of the “page” when you’d flip to the next page. With Stanza and eReader, you don’t scroll, you just tap the right edge of the screen to move forward or left to go back. I’m not sure why Smartcovers has done this unless it’s too keep the concept of a “page” in sync with the printed edition or to accommodate larger screens that might show all the text on one screen. Certainly it’s not very smartphone-friendly.

By Paul Biba

A former associate of mine from PalmAddict has been writing for Treo Central. Jennifer has just written an excellent article on her reading experiences with a Centro, iPhone and Kindle 2. The article is well worth reading as she has always had a good “touch” about gadget writing.

From her article: When I got my first Palm PDA, I was really shocked to learn that I could put a whole book on the device. I remember thinking, “No Way!”. And imagine my shock when I discovered that I could put an entire library of books on the thing! That was my favorite thing to do with my Palm PDA; read eBooks. I still bought real books too though because I collect them and want my book shelves crammed as full as I can get them. Books are my treasures.

Jennifer’s article is also one of the best commentaries on the Kindle 2 that I have seen so far. The pictures are first rate.

By David Rothman

Strange, isn’t it? Publishers don’t want Amazon to boss ‘em around on such issues as price—and yet they’re letting Amazon use DRM to lock in customers.

This is hardly news to TeleRead readers. But it’s good to see Techdirt, itself no stranger to this issue, note the paradox.

Related: Techmeme roundup here. Angry Slashdot post here. Thanks to Joseph Gray and Jon Noring.

By Michael Cairns, former President, Bowker

No one believes Amazon’s text-to-speech retreat has anything to do with Audible?

So Amazon’s people gear up to fight the legal battle that will let the company do T-T-S on the Kindle. And then they find that they’ve has cut out one of the key foundations for a business just bought for $300 million? Perhaps the Audible people were as surprised as all of the industry and have only just been able to navigate though the booming laughter to make their points. I’m very skeptical that Amazon is doing this in the interests of the publishing community. It’s a stupid battle to fight, and made more so by Amazon’s ownership of a large audio book "publisher."

I am sad since I was all set to go into the neoprene armband business so people could strap these puppies to their arms and use them biking or on the treadmill—just like an IPod. Dammit!

(Slightly edited version of a post Michael made to the Reading 2.0 list. Reproduced with permission.)

Related: Chris Meadows’ commentary. Also see Engadget’s interview with Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild.

By Chris Meadows

According to Brad Stone in the New York Times “Bits” blog, Amazon has announced that it will leave up to the publisher the decision of whether a book can be read aloud by the Kindle’s speech synthesizer. In their statement, they continue to insist that the feature is completely legal—”Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.”

(This reminds me of the flap caused by Adobe back in 2000 when the company released a PDF of Alice in Wonderland through Glassbook whose description included the line, “This book cannot be read aloud.” Some fraction of the Internet got up in arms over this, given that Alice in Wonderland was in the public domain—but it turned out to be a misunderstanding based on Adobe disabling use of a speech synthesizer function of Adobe Reader on that particular file.)

From one perspective, it is highly disappointing that publishers will be able to turn off a really handy feature that should be entirely legally permissible and is in no way a threat to professionally-produced audiobook recordings. But it is understandable that Amazon might not want to alienate publishers at this point. Hopefully the majority of publishers will take the sensible position that authors such as Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman have put forward—that the read-aloud feature is neither an infringement nor a threat.

Of course, if the stricture against reading aloud is enforced by DRM, all that a Kindle customer would need to do is offload the Kindle book onto his computer and use the tools that already exist for cracking Mobipocket DRM to get around that. (At least for the Kindle books that use the Mobipocket format.)

Regardless, the Pandora’s box of text-to-speech has been opened, and I would not be surprised if other e-book reader manufacturers included it in their machines as well. There is no guarantee those other manufacturers, or even Amazon, will be willing to listen to the Authors Guild forever.

By Chris Meadows

Japan has gained a reputation as the land of the cell phone. The adoption and use of cells in Japan seems to be several years ahead of phone use in the west, and it has become an integral part of their culture.

For example, one season of the long-running Kamen (Masked) Rider series, Kamen Rider 555 (pictured at left) used special cell phones to transform ordinary teenagers into armored warriors—and the cell phone pen-pal relationship unknowingly carried on between two other characters was an important dramatic element of the series.

In that light, it seems strange that the iPhone—one of the most advanced smartphones America has to offer—is so unpopular in Japan that the cell phone company is literally having to give it away with phone plans. But Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog makes sense of it: by Japanese standards, the iPhone is not advanced enough.

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By David Rothman

"Short Covers is a great little solution to the problem of finding new books online. Even if you don’t use the service to buy anything, it’s still a great way to browse for free, and ideal for those idle moments waiting in line at the grocery store." – Charlie Sorrel.

Some negatives: The screen is somewhat cluttered and instead of flipping pages horizontally like iPhone e-reader Stanza or the Kindle, the software opts for a hybrid, although mostly you’ll be scrolling down, web browser style. It’s fine for excerpts, but reading a whole book would be very tiresome."

A network-related positive: "Not only can you bookmark your own choices, you can share them via almost every still-relevant social network. On the website, a staggering amount of options is available. In the iPhone app, I only have the option of Twitter, which very nicely opens up my Twitter client of choice, Tweetie."

I myself use and like Tweetie on my iPod Touch.

By David Rothman

"Laura Bush says her husband is meeting the neighbors, making trips to the hardware store, and catching up on some reading via a Kindle. His latest read is a novel given to him for Christmas by former Vice President Dick Cheney." – CNN.

The TeleRead take: So when is President Obama, the high-tech and literacy guy, going to try e-books on his cellphone? Why not be a role model and encourage teenagers to do the same? If nothing else, it’s time for Obama to officially recognize "Read an E-Book Week."

By Paul Biba

From a press release by the Frankfurt Book Fair. These are excerpts selected from a survey the organizers did of over 1000 industry professionals from 30 different countries.

As the much-hyped e-readers hit the stores, and digitization continues to revolutionize all aspects of the book trade, this year over 70 per cent of respondents revealed that they feel ready for the digital challenge. The survey also reveals that current opinion is divided on the future of the e-books and digital content versus the printed word. 40 per cent of respondents expect e-content to overtake traditional book sales as early as 2018—whereas a third predict that this will never happen.

Perhaps more surprisingly still, almost 60 per cent of respondents do not currently use e-books and e-readers at all, and 66 per cent of industry professionals still expect traditional books to dominate the market in five years time, with very few expecting e-books (seven per cent) or e-readers (two per cent) to be the main sources of revenue by 2013.

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By Chris Meadows

Think printed books are on the way out? Don’t tell it to these people. After an Amazon supplier in Bristol, England went out of business, it opened its still second-hand-book-full warehouse to the general public and exhorted them to carry out as many as they could grab.

And they did. These weren’t just trash books like the ones you find on most “free books” tables, either, but titles from such well-known authors as Danielle Steel, James Herriot, and others.

The librarian blood I inherited from both my parents makes me cringe at the sight of all those books on the floor. But at least many of them will be going to good homes.

(Story brought to my attention by my good friend Sandy Clark.)

By Paul Biba

Fortune is reporting that Hearst will be launching its own e-reader this year.  Hearst has evidently “developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year.” … What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own branding and payment models.

I wonder if the hardware might be coming from Plastic Logic.  One of the goals of their new machine, to be released later this year, is to allow for the comfortable reading of newspapers.