TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

iRex to sell iLiad through Dymocks, a major Australian retailer—in line with our speculation

By David Rothman

Last month’s fun rumor was of an almost-signed deal between iRex Technologies and a major bookstore.

Now Dymocks, the 84-store Australian book chain, says it will sell iRex’s iLiad, complete with that spiffy 8.1-inch, 1024X768-pixel screen. You’ll be able to buy not just online but also, for $899 Aus, at a Sydney store.

Some MobileReaders have a few words of advice for bargain-hunters. Turns out that iRex’s online store might be cheaper. It’s a shopper-by-shopper decision. Some may feel more confident buying from Dymocks’ George Street Store in Sydney or the chain’s Web site (the two Australian choices for Dymocks shoppers right now) rather than looking abroad.

Online, Dymocks offers more than 23,000 e-books in Mobipocket, a format that the iLiad can read in DRMed form. That’s just a fraction of the 90,000 books that Amazon sells for the Kindle, but then again even Amazon’s e-numbers pale before its p-numbers—in the millions. Time to raze the Tower of eBabel to simplify the mass digitization of books? Meanwhile I know that iRex would love for the iLiad to be able to read a bunch of “protected” formats, which I think is good—given the need to help shoppers cope with all the current eBabel. Hello, Amazon? Care to follow iRex’s example or at least standardize on .epub, the industry standard.

Detail: Yes, as the photo shows, you can use the iLiad for jotting notes or for drawing.

An inevitable question: So when will iRex do a big deal here in the States—either with a chain or with a publisher, as part of a bundling arrangement for newspaper? or magazine subscribers? I hope iRex and others will hang in there. When technology lowers the price and improves display quality, E Ink gizmos may finally take off, big.

Related: Mention of Dymocks’ use of the eb20 browsing tool, itself originated Down Under.

The full announcement: OK, gang, the Dymocks release follows in full.

Dymocks makes further inroads into e-book retailing announcing for sale the first eReader to be sold in the Australian market

Having just announced a major foray into electronic books earlier this month, Dymocks Booksellers will now be the first in Australia to sell the iLiad eBook reader, with plans to have it on sale both in George Street, Sydney store and online from Wednesday 12th December, 2007.

Dymocks CEO, Don Grover launched the iLiad from iRex, the inventors of the electronic paper technology, saying, “We are thrilled to be the first to retail this extraordinary device and further establish ourselves as the retailer for both eBooks and hardware. After months of extensive product research, we are particularly excited to launch with the iLiad as we believe it is an exceptional product with many unique selling features not being offered by other brands.

“In terms of viewing electronic books the iLiad device works best with the Mobipocket format, Dymocks online offers over 23,000 books in the Mobipocket format available for immediate download.”

The iLiad is a portable electronic device that lets you read and write as you do on paper – everywhere you go. Everything that you can read, including books, newspapers and documents can now be transported onto a device as small and light as a single book. Even in bright sunlight the display of the iLiad offers you perfect readability. You can also send, receive and share documents with family, friends or business colleagues.

Just as with normal paper, you’re able to make notes and annotate existing documents, but unlike paper your annotated documents and notes can easily be transferred to a PC, either when connected by cable or wireless (through WIFI).

The paper-like display of the iLiad produces a stable image, unlike a flickering PC screen. So the reading experience with the iLiad is much more comfortable, enabling you to go on for hours without tiring your eyes.

The iLiad also behaves like a memory stick, and when connected to your PC, folders can be created and documents can be copied, moved or deleted using Windows Explorer. The touch screen facility and stylus makes text input and easy navigation possible as part of a very natural user interface. The iLiad supports content formats such as PRC (mobipocket), non-encrypted PDF files, HTML and TXT.

Memory capacity can be increased simply by inserting a Compact Flash or MMC card, just as with a digital camera. You can even insert your USB-stick into the iLiad to quickly read content.
Unlike the Sony eReader which was launched 18 months ago and Amazon’s Kindle which was recently released, the iLiad is able to download digital content from various bookshops or online stores that sell digital books in the Mobipocket format – whereas only Amazon content can be downloaded onto Kindle and Sony content downloaded to the Sony eReader.

The iLiad eBook Reader is available from Dymocks George Street store for $899.