TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for September, 2007

By David Rothman

Sixteen million copyright records from the U.S. Copyright Office are now available in bulk, thanks to the efforts of Carl Malamud (left), Peter Brantley and others.

No more will the feds charge tens of thousands of dollars for subscriptions to the copyright catalog of of monographs, documents, and serials. Way to go, guys! Nothing like “a bit of a blogospheric brouhaha” to stir things up, eh? Now, here’s the fun part. The government had attracted only two subscribers, given the outrageous fees.

Good beyond public domain community and academia

Washington’s fresh sanity on these matters should be good news not just to the public domain community but also to some people on the commercial side, who, thanks to better resources online, may save time and money as they go about making reproductions or derivative works of items found to be in the PD. From Peter Brantley: (more…)

Popularity: 9% [?]

By David Rothman

E-bookers should watch the IDPF carefully to make certain that neither Adobe nor any other company turns .epub into a proprietary standard through extensions or otherwise. But guess what one of the best countermeasures is? Use of .epub! And noticing suspicious situations and pointing out omissions, which ideally the IDPF can address in time—for example, lack of reliable interbook linking!

Readers and publishers of all kinds, then, not just public domain people but also Random House and little publishers, should thank the open-source-based Feedbooks site where co-founders Hadrien Gardeur and Loïc Roussel are fighting the good fight for genuine compatibility and setting a good example.

Tolstoy and scores of other writers already in .epub

From Tolstoy to Orson Wells and Creative Commons-licensed writer Cory Doctorow, Hadrien and Loïc now offer scores of authors via a beta treatment of the .epub format. Hadrien has invited e-bookers to sample his free wares, and, yes, when I used the easy-to-install OpenBerg plug-in for Firefox, things went smoothly. Page transitions via the space bar were a little sluggish, but that’s very possibly a Firefox thing rather than an OpenBerg problem. I may update this item when I’ve sampled the Feedbook offerings further. Bottom line: the .epub action now indisputably extends beyond dotReader and Adobe Digital Editions and other commercial products. (Update, 5:12 p.m.: I should have mentioned the wonderful FBReader, too, especially since it’s the program  I use on my Nokia 770.)

Congratulations to OpenBerg, of course—see OpenBerg-related threads at MobileRead. Yes, I know. OpenBerg in its present form isn’t the ultimate e-book reader; I don’t know if it plays well with CSS, for example. But it’s a great start, a wonderful way to begin to befriend .epub. I hope that someday Firefox and all other popular browsers can come with native .epub capabilities, or at least that many more .epub add-ons will show up for browsers. (more…)

Popularity: 12% [?]

By David Rothman

Is E or P more valuable for immersing yourself in a good novel or biography? And how about reference tools and scholarly collections where you may hop from item to item? Are the pricing issues different?

Evan Schnittman, an Oxford University Press executive, who handles rights and bizdev issues, offers some thoughtful observations in the never-ending debate on pricing and related matters.

In a nutshell, with my extrapolating and perhaps oversimplifying a bit, he says in a just-posted TeleBlog comment:

–Yes, P is more valuable than E for immersive reading when, for example, you pig out on a good novel for hours at a time. So prices should reflect this? And e-books of King or Mailer should cost less than paper editions? Probably.

–But E offers the most value for “reference or scholarly/scientific publications where discoverability, linkability, and extractive reading is the norm.”

Should prices be higher for reference/scholarly publications in e-format, then? Or simply the same? And under what circumstances? Should they reflect, for example, the number of links involved? Or the time needed to insert them, especially with research factored in? I’d welcome further discussion from him and others on this.

Worth pondering even if you disagree

Keep in mind that Oxford U. Press, yes, is especially heavy on reference and scholarly works—as, in fact, one of the oldest and most respected publishers in the world in these areas. So Evan is hardly writing as a disinterested observer. That said, his comments are well worth pondering even if you disagree.

My big complaint about the publishers reading the TeleBlog is that they don’t speak up enough to provide their own special perspectives, as Evan laudably did. (more…)

Popularity: 9% [?]

By David Rothman

Just a reminder for newbies: Don’t upgrade your iPhone firmware to 1.1.1 if you want to use the Books.App program to read e-books via your phone.

Meanwhile here’s the word directly from Zach Brewster-Geisz, to whom iPhoners should be grateful for his work on the program. “As the author of the main book-reading software for the iPhone,” he tells us, “I’m more than a little teed off. But I’ll say this: I’m not upgrading, and I’m still working on the software.”

“I’m sure the iPhone Dev Team is working on figuring out how to get into the 1.1.1 firmware–but for now, it doesn’t look good,” says his Google Code iPhone page. “I’m waiting just like everyone else–my skillz are limited to programming, not the serious hackery that those guys are all about.” I hope Zach will keep us posted.

If you’re upgrade-minded and would rather relock your phone: Here are tips from Russell Shaw via ZDNet. My hunch is that, as a sophisticated bunch, most TeleBlog readers will just ignore the upgrade and not fret over relocking for now—having decided to use Zach’s program and other Third Party ones.

A lesson for e-publishers: Yes, I know: Many would love for there to be an iPod of e-books from Apple, and they may also look askance at buyers’ attempts to circumvent Apple’s software restrictions.  But this is another example of Apple’s control-miinded nature. Don’t think that Apple, given the chance, will avoid using the same hardball tactics against content-providers—just as it has in the case of iTunes.

Related: iPhone Users Talking Class-Action Lawsuit Over iPhone Locking in the Information Weekly Weblog and Serious Geeks Sour on Apple iPhone in Yahoo Tech. In a small, unscientific TeleBlog poll, more than half the respondents were planning to buy iPhones. In the wake of Apple’s arrogant lockout, however, I doubt the percentage will remain quite so high.

Popularity: 9% [?]

By David Rothman

Google Book Search is looking more bookshelfish than ever—with displays of randomly selected covers. But I’m still waiting for user-optimized displays a la Amazon. Google is already reading my e-mail to choose which ads to display there. Can’t the results show in GBS displays? More at Google Blogscoped and Publishers Weekly.

Popularity: 8% [?]

By David Rothman

Um, as a writer, I’ve got an interest in this little matter. How much should publishers charge for e-books compared to the paper editions?

I maintain that E is in many ways a whole new market, and publishers are stunting its development when they go the $25 route. An e-book sale doesn’t necessarily mean the loss of a p-book one, especially when you consider the global nature of E and the scarcity of bookstores in many countries with growing numbers of Netfolks. Perhaps 40-50 percent of the readers of the TeleBlog live outside the States, and incomes are not always at American levels.

Both here and abroad, $5-6 prices for a typical novel will be more like it, and almost surely, TeleBlog regular Rob Preece would agree. Rcently, DearAuthor.com did a price survey, and Simon & Schuster seemed to be among the more sensible of the big publishers when it came to the action at the retail level. While $25 e-books exist, they’re far less common than in the past, especially in certain genres such as romance.

Publisher’s take

It’s an old debate, and for the latest take on it, beyond this one, see Wiley executive Joe Wikert’s blog. Excerpt:

“So what is the right pricing level for an ebook? Should it be 10% less than the print version? 20%? I don’t have the answer but I’m glad we’re testing out some options. The first test was just launched today: Our entire WROX ebook list (150+ titles) is currently available at 50% off the print book list price. It’s a limited time offer and you need to use the promotional code “EWRXN” to get the discount. We’ll see how this test goes and use the results to determine the parameters for future tests.”

Related: Literary Kicks’ discussion of prices of lit fiction (via MobileRead).

Popularity: 9% [?]

By David Rothman

Know of anyone locked out of an iPhone after tweaking it to run e-book-related software? Don’t you love Apple—so responsive to user needs? People are balking. Such stunts are about as beloved as DRM. Apple should rely on style and features, not anti-consumer gimmicks, to keep up cashflow. I wonder if Apple might share marketing strategists with mobile.washingtonpost.com.

Popularity: 8% [?]

By David Rothman

I hope the marketing brains at the Washington Post are happy.

They’re well on their way to getting me to stop reading a newspaper I’ve been following for decades.

My favorite way to enjoy a newspaper these days is on a mobile computer, a nice break from my desktop. I’m tired of overgrown dead-tree editions invading our household. And my wife fears that she may be allergic, literally, to newspaper ink—just as Carly’s mother already is.

This morning I was 423 words into a book-related story, on Jenna Bush and her new book about a struggling HIV-positive Latin-American teenager, when the 2,050-word article abruptly stopped.

Post-22 strikes again

Yes, if you’ve been following the TeleBlog, you already know what happened. The Posties told me at the end of the 423 words that I’d have to leave the mobile edition and go to the usual Washingtonpost.com for the rest of the story. Media dinos at work, gnawing away? Unlike the cases reported earlier, we’re not just talking about a few stray missing paragraphs, but most of the bleepin’ story.

Nice going, guys. I own a Palm TX, a Nokia 770 and a Windows CE tablet. Every one of them chokes up on the bloated pages at Washingtonpost.com, where, by the way, the tablet also has problems with the Post’s password system. In honor of Catch-22, I’ve got a new name for the logic, or lack of it, at work here. Post-22. (more…)

Popularity: 7% [?]

By David Rothman

The OLPC laptop isn’t the only one with price creep. The Eee PC laptop, based on an Intel/AUSTek design, will reportedly go for $260, not $199, when it appears in mid-October here in the States.

Even so, Phil Shapiro, a Washington, D.C., area activist with an interest in digital divide issues, says he’s buying one.

Ideally the price will fall if enough people follow in Phil’s footsteps and if Intel really is serious about this project rather than simply trying to preempt OLPC.

Keep in mind, however, that the screen probably isn’t as good for e-books as the OLPC laptop, which offers E Ink-range resolution.

Related: Two-timin’ Intel pushes Classmate PC in China while courting OLPC, in Ars Technica, via the unofficial OLPC News. The OLPC gizmo costs $188; the Intel Classmate, $225 (although the screen is not as good).

Also of interest: A Low-Cost Laptop War! OLPC XO-1 vs. ASUS Eee PC and Is Nicholas Negroponte Afraid of Child Bloggers?, in OLPC News.

Popularity: 7% [?]

By David Rothman

The screen’s bigger on the new iPod Nanos, a huge two inches, with 320×240 resolution, and the old e-book related programs should work.

Anyone using ‘em for e-book reading when nothing else is around?

I’m also curious how people feel about the new Nanos as audiobook players.

Speaking of hardware: See Tuscon paper’s overview of e-book devices, which it says are improving (LISNews).

Popularity: 8% [?]

By Paul Biba

Yesterday I attended the Digital Life exhibition in New York for the Palm Addict blog site to cover Palm’s press conference announcing the new Palm Centro smartphone.

While there I happened to get a minute with Ed Colligan, Palm’s CEO. Given Palm’s emphasis on smartphones, I asked Ed if Palm had any plans to discontinue its PDA line, especially the e-book friendly TX. Ed said No! He said that they haven’t paid too much attention to their PDAs recently because of the big opportunity in the phone area, but that Palm was number one in PDAs and he felt that there was a place for both. Good news for a lot of us who still love their TXs for such things as ebooks.

Ed was pretty distracted, what with everything else going on, but I pointed out to him that the Sony Reader is creating quite a splash in the e-book market and that his TX makes a perfect, really portable e-book reader. Further, I told him, the software is already developed, so no investment would be required to position this little machine for a new market. He didn’t say anything, but I hope he remembers our conversation when he gets a quiet moment.

Popularity: 6% [?]

By David Rothman

Like Sophie and dotReader, VitalSource Bookshelf is one app we’re watching because of a focus on shared annotations and other forms of interactivity within e-books. VitalSource already offers shared notes for real world use—by dental students at New York University.

Multimedia capabilities, of special interest to the Sophie folks as well, are another draw. Over the summer VitalSource Technologies released Vital Bookshelf 4.6, which among other things will “support QuickTime audio and video inside textbooks for when our publishing partners roll out media-rich content.”

Letting professors and others blend their own resources with e-books

But what about companion resources—an issue of interest in education and the corporate world, and potentially of interest to e-book-hip public libraries and others in the future?

For example, just how can e-book-related software handle files in PowerPoint, other Office-style apps and additional resources that aren’t in the the original books? They could be just the ticket for professors and others wanting to augment the standard fare. How to store, index, and display the outside add-ons within the e-book reader? VitalSource software now has that capability. This may be small potatoes to tech types. But for ordinary mortals, professors and student included, the integration could be useful. I can also see local libraries using similar approaches someday to augment the usual books with localized content—for example, local World War II-related history to augment The Big Picture in standard works on the war.

Other “companionship”

Of course, I hope that in the future, the companion content will be well-integrated within other software offerings (perhaps the Sophie people would argue that companion capabilities are already possible via the networked book concept). Similarly it wouldn’t hurt for the IDPF to add annotations to its standards specs, as I understand will happen.

Meanwhile, separately, VitalSource has announced that Columbia University will use its format for front-list textbook, and I’ll repro the news release. (more…)

Popularity: 6% [?]