TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for 2007

By David Rothman

Part of an article in the Springfield (Ohio) News:

Logos Christian Bookstore, 1062 Upper Valley Pike, is closing soon. Owner Jay Weygandt doesn’t blame electronic reading devices, despite Kindle offering 1,735 Christian eBooks—which is exactly why Weygandt loves his own Kindle.

“It never leaves my side,” he said.

He recently downloaded a Bible for $10, which is less than the wholesale price from his distributors, he said. He added that it took less time for him to download his eBible than to get one from the bookshelf.

“This is the future of reading and bookselling,” he said, when the devices are reasonably priced, which might take some time.

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By David Rothman

…follow some advice from Bennett Todd, who already has succeeded: Google around for other Fedora sites offering FBReader since the server might be having problems. Here’s a head start. OK, gang, let me know if this works. My XO is supposedly due Wednesday.

Related: FBReader site and the TeleBlog’s original item on running FBReader on the XO.

Reminder: This is the last day for Give One Get One XO donations.

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By David Rothman

The book Love and Sex with Robots is creating buzz. Now how about novels from robots? Might the right hardware-software combo emulate the late Jacqueline Susann? If compared to the original, could a JacquelineBot passed a customized Turing Test?

Reassuringly, both computer and lit experts are skeptical about the claims of Publishing House Astrel SPb. But you never know about the future.

(Found via Southern Review of Books.)

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By Paul Biba

Now this is really a coincidence. I hadn’t even opened TeleRead yet today when I decided to post this comic. Really!! At any rate, Opus, or at least Berkeley Breathed, doesn’t seem to like ebook readers. Here is the full sized cartoon. I got a Sony 505 for Christmas, and the screen difference between that and my old 500 is amazing. I’ll try to post some comparison pictures before I leave for CES. To me, the difference is well worth the upgrade price.

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By David Rothman

At a party for the Washington elite, a Middle Eastern diplomat’s wife gave out free iPods. Who knows what will be played on them? Maybe even something in violation of the DMCA? It’s the fruit of other gifts, Hollywood campaign donations.

Meanwhile for your holiday viewing pleasure I’m linking to a DMCA-related FoxTrot cartoon by Bill Amend. For copyright reasons—even though many might make a fair use argument—I won’t repro more than a small view.

What do you think? Time to lobby Garry Trudeau to take on the DMCA, the scourge of e-book-lovers in the States (and, though equivalent laws, people in some other countries)? Here’s to balanced copyright law rather than the lobbyist-written variety! For the enlightenment of e-book novices, the DMCA is why it’s illegal to, say, crack a Microsoft Reader file to convert it for the Kindle—even if you don’t share it with others. The good news is that ‘08 is an election year.

Housekeeping: I’ll be away much of the day but hope to post in the afternoon.

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By David Rothman

Oh, the fun of the Tower of eBabel—all those warring e-book formats. I know it’s Christmas, or just after, when some new e-book readers ask: “How can I find books in my format?”

Ready to tour the Tower? Below are just some of the main retail choices. Old-timers can call attention to omissions if they’d like. Also please note that I’m sticking to the most popular of the 20+ formats. The Tower is scary enough during a short tour.

May novices join the fight to popularize the IDPF’s .epub format, the new MP3 of e-books! Then people can just worry about finding e-bookstores, period, based on genre or subject matter, as opposed to those selling titles in the right formats.

Inside the retailer area of the Tower of eBabel

Adobe Reader / PDF: BooksOnBoard, Diesel eBooks, eBooks.com, Fictionwise.

eBookwise: eBookwise.com.

eReader (or Palm): BooksOnBoard, Diesel eBooks, eReader, Fictionwise.

Kindle: Kindle Store (actually shopping is built into the machine).

Microsoft Reader: BooksOnBoard, eBooks.com, Diesel eBooks, Fictionwise.

Mobipocket: Mobipocket.com, Ubibooks.com, and all of the above stores except for the eBookwise, eReader and the Kindle stores.

Sony Reader: Sony eBook Store (built into Sony software), Fictionwise.

For books in French in Adobe, Microsoft or Mobipocket, try NumiLog. For Mobipocket, also consider Ubibooks. I’ll welcome suggestions for Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and other languages. Yet more variables, of course. eBabel is the enemy of a multilingual approach since the emphasis is on computer tongues rather than the human variety.

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By David Rothman

At MobileRead: A discussion of problem getting a PC to recognize the Cybook memory card. Might be a Windows-related prob. Read the posts toward the end.

In author Sandra Schwab’s blog: A mostly positive review with great photos (via DearAuthor).

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By David Rothman

Believe it or not, that’s the idea of a Gather member, a new Kindle user, who at the same time denies he has a huge problem with DRM/eBabel. A little confusing. That said, I wonder if Amazon could actually apply the trade-in concept as a compromise for owners of DRMed Mobi books, which the Kindle disses officially, despite the famous hack. No, this wouldn’t be the best solution. But perhaps it could be an interim one while we’re waiting for Amazon to wise up on .epub.

Here’s what X Tabber wrote on Gather: “I have a number of eBooks in that Adobe DRM format. I would love to be able to translate these into the Kindle format replacing my Adobe formatted versions.

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By David Rothman

The RIAA is NOT suing a music-lover who ripped from legally purchased CDs. Yep, this outfit is Scrooge Central, but the earlier reports were wrong, according to Engadget. I’ll do a second tweak and point to the last paragraphs of a post by Google lawyer William Patry, who says the originals reports mangled the details.

Still, one wonders about an anti-ripping suit in the future, involving personal use. How that would in character! The classic RIAA downloading suit was against a 12-year-old girl in a public housing project, who had to fork over $2K and might have had to pay much more. The RIAA has yet to repent.

Eggnog-delicious news: Bad return on investment from terrorizing consumers

But wait. Could it be that the recording studios have toted up the numbers and discovered that crime—in the form of lawsuits against customers—doesn’t pay? Well, for a little holiday cheer, just check out this eggnog-delicious headline: EMI to cut RIAA funding. Also unhappy with the RIAA suits, both the legal and human kinds, seemingly, are Warner (dismayed that legal bills cut so heavily into profits) and Prince (taking the legal action in-house).

For further details, see Is 2008 to be RIAA’s death knell? (Stan Hodson’s blog, WinExtra) and The RIAA will die in 2008 (Mashable), as well as a Washington Post piece and a Slashdot discussion on the RIAA’s anti-ripping efforts.

The e-book angles

OK, gang. So what do you think? Lessons here for the e-book business? If you gonna have to sue customers by the thousands, isn’t it time to think about new business models? E-book piracy isn’t the biggest of problems now for major publishers, given that e-bookdom is so small, but that could change as the industry grows. Let’s hope books aren’t music redux.

Among the best protections against e-book piracy might be such measures as reasonably priced and flexible subscription plans and, ironically, avoidance of DRM—so as not to alienate legal purchases. No, e-book publishers shouldn’t rule out suits against big commercial pirates. Kill ‘em! But the RIAA’s sue-everyone approach is just plain crazy. People prefer to buy from warm-and-fuzzy companies, especially those without DRM. Perhaps that’s what EMI. Warner, Universal and Amazon’s MP3 store have concluded (now to persuade Amazon’s e-book arms!). PR-deaf, the RIAA has helped make its member studios some of the most hated conglomerates on the planet. No slouch in this department, the RIAA is itself the real champ.

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By Darrell Bain

Moderator’s note: Darrell Bain, one of the best-selling authors of the e-book world and winner of two Eppies, is our newest contributor. See his bio at the end. His sci-fi novel Savage Survival is an e-book, trade paperback and hardback. Welcome, Darrell! - David Rothman

Ten years ago, in 1997, my budding hopes of becoming a successful author came crashing down in ruins as I learned that the so-called agent I had been dealing with for six years was an out and out crook.

Not only had all the manuscripts I submitted to the agent not been sent to publishers, I had been talked into paying a large amount for “reading fees,” “expenses” and “publishing contracts.” I paid some money up front for publication and supposedly was to recover it in sales. But the “publishers” were as fraudulent as the agent.

Broken dreams in the world of P—and jail time for the villains

I was naïve, along with thousands of other writers caught in the same web, and for a time I did nothing but brood over the dollars and years the scam had cost me. The agent and her husband and one of the “publishers” went to prison for mail fraud, but even this did little to assuage my feelings as I thought of all the lies I had believed in my eagerness to reach print.

Eventually, I picked up my broken dreams and went on with my life. I had felt the closeness of becoming published, even if it had been a fraud, and I couldn’t stop trying. But where to turn? At the time I still thought that all of my eight novels had been submitted to real publishers, so I didn’t try them “again.” Where should I next turn? Not any time soon would I trust another agent.

Breaking into E

What happened over the next five years surprised me beyond anything I might have reasonably expected. You see, I knew nothing about e-books at the time.

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By David Rothman

Although PDF Cropper looks interesting, I haven’t tested it. I might do so over the weekend. Share your impressions if you try it out yourself. A solution for PDF-fat Wowio books, among other things?

Now playing at Wowio, so to speak: The Early Works of Dr. Seuss. A gem for new XO owners and their kids? And, yes, folks, I continue to be frustrated that Wowio’s offerings aren’t globally available.

(PDF Cropper discovered via a comment at Dear Author. You might need to scroll up or down to reach the PDF Cropper-related info.)

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By David Rothman

Here’s one thing you can say about the big, thick Sears catalogues of old. They were great sources of toilet paper for outhouses.

Could the Kindle e-book reader be the new Sears catalogue even though it lacks such multi-use capabilities? My belief is that the Kindle is potentially a catalogue for all of Amazon, a way to compare-shop for dishwashers, back-scratchers, you name it. I know this talk of the Kindle as a GPS gizmo is interesting (thanks, Mike), but I suspect there’s a lot more to come.

Why aren’t we hearing about the Kindle as a potential display vehicle for all of Amazon? Or is the news already out? I don’t own a Kindle and will welcome some information here.

If the Kindle won’t let you shop Amazon in general, would you enjoy this capability? And why does the Kindle lack it now, assuming it does? Is Amazon afraid of seeming too crass—preferring to limit the Kindle for the moment to books and what-not? Also, how about the Kindle as a way to shop for music? I don’t see any references in Wikipedia, or on a Kindle-ballyhoo page, to MP3 buying—even though, yes, there is a mention of audio books (the Kindle offers both .MP3 and Audible’s .aa). OK, enlighten me.

Of course, the Kindle’s having Sears-style catalogue features would not be enough by itself to guarantee the machine’s popularity at the same level. In the long run, the real Sears catalogues just might be cellphones instead.

Speaking of Wikipedia and the Kindle: Why does the online encyclopedia say, “Unlike previously existing e-book readers, the Kindle can be used without the need for a computer”? Couldn’t the old Rocket eBooks work without computers, via built-in modems, for example? Shows the amnesia surrounding e-books. It’s too bad that people are also forgetful of the many thousands of dollars that buyers spent to build personal libraries tied to their respective machine. And then many were SOL when the Rockets went kaput.

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