TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for 2008

By David Rothman

Matt Sumell, a short story writer, is the first “Featured Contemporary Author” on the home page of the BookGlutton site. BG is a Web community through which you can annotate others’ works—publicly or privately—or publish your own. You can even do ePub conversions from HTML.

“We’ll be highlighting contemporary authors that have uploaded original work or excerpts of published material in a section on the homepage,” says Travis Alber, BookGlutton co-founder. “Although we continue to bring in public domain and Creative Commons work, we have now begun to expand our catalog to new copyrighted material; we’re excited to provide a space for new and contemporary authors to showcase their writing. We’ll be rotating the featured authors frequently.
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By Joe Wikert, a VP in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons

I love it when a company takes action on a community-generated product idea.  Three short months ago I wrote this blog post about an opportunity for someone to build a new content delivery model around the Wikipedia.  That “someone” turned out to be DailyLit, an organization that already had the infrastructure in place to deliver the content model I described.

Earlier today, DailyLit President & CEO Susan Danzinger announced the new Wikipedia Tours service.  They’re launching with 10 different subjects including Wonders of the World, Famous Inventors and one I already signed up for, Presidents of the United States.  All of the products are currently free, but as I mentioned in that earlier post, I think they could eventually monetize some (if not all) of them.

Kudos to Susan and her team for quickly adding this service to the DailyLit product line!

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By David Rothman

Via e-mail you can now keep up with TeleBlog comments from a specific discussion—whether or not you’re participating.

Richard Crocker of Planet eBook was kind enough to call our attention to a WordPress plug-in called Subscribe to Comments. I installed it last night, and so far, it’s apparently working fine. STC’s use here is still experimental, though. To use STC, just scroll down to the area under the comment form and check the box or fill in other information. You can also keep up with comments via RSS for individual posts (see instructions below any post that you click on) and for the blog as a whole (here’s the URL). Feedback welcome!

Ads

On another matter, what suggestions do you have as far as ads we should be running (the idea being to make this site sustainable for the long term)? Just what products do you want to see advertised? What would you be most likely to buy via advertisements here? Hardware? Software? Books? Other thoughts to share with us?

E-mail question

Anyone having problems getting through to me at drNOSPAMteleread.org? Michael Harris did. No other reports of trouble so far, but if there is a problem, I’m at 703-370-6540 in Alexandria, VA.

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By David Rothman

Moderator: Bookeen’s latest Cybook Gen3 can hold 1,000 books—probably more than any other e-book reader’s internal memory. Price is still US$350-$450. Slightly edited news release follows. - D.R.

…The Cybook New Edition offers three major improvements:

1. More internal memory: The Cybook internal memory reaches 512MB now. 480MB is available for storage which corresponds to an average 1,000 books storage capacity. It is the largest internal memory size for an e-book reader available on the market.

2. New firmware: The device has been preloaded with the brand new firmware recently released by Bookeen. Offers more stability, a longer battery lifetime and a more reactive button interface (faster and buffered key detection). This new firmware is also available for all our customers and can be downloaded and installed. Please see more information ahead.

3. Revised housing: The navigation button offers a pleasant and soft hand feeling with a good tactile feedback which enhances definitely the digital reading experience.

This new edition remains at the same price in its standard and Deluxe versions. Please note that the Cybook Gen3 new edition is currently in stock and the average delay between order and shipment is 12 business days.

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By David Rothman

Who doesn’t like the idea of shareware books? Download ‘em for free. Pay up only if a writer gives you a good read.

A gifted U.K. novelist named Richard Herley—and, yes I’ve read The Penal Colony and can vouch for his talent—bravely tried such an experiment. You bet I cheered him on. I wanted my skepticism toward shareware books to be wrong, and I gave Richard ample exposure. Manybooks.net and Feedbooks did the same.

11K downloads but just 25 payers

So what are the results of the experiment after three months? Despite 11,000 downloads of The Penal Colony and other titles, Richard got paid by a mere 25 people for 89 books. I’m sure that some writers may thrive with shareware, but I wonder how many. Yes, as I keep noting, there often can be a relationship between the quality of literature and whether and how much people get paid. Rob Preece, by the way, the owner of BooksForABuck.com, also found that shareware just didn’t pay off.

Now pondering “the logic of writing fiction”

As for Richard, he tells me the sorry results have “made me ponder the logic of writing fiction at all. Writing is hard and lonely work, and is, by and large, poorly remunerated.”

Perhaps an author will write the first novel in a burst of inspiration, but sooner or later, as has been pointed out on the eBook Community list, the, er, content provider’s family will demand an accounting of his or her time. Furthermore, as I see it, shareware programs can be more easily converted into commercial products than can novels.

No shareware/POD nirvana

Also, let me note that print-on-demand novels are the longest of shots, and I just don’t see a shareware/POD mix as a viable business model in most cases for fiction. Marion Gropen, an expert on the business side of publishing, would almost surely agree. So do self-publish POD fiction for satisfaction, but not for money. Richard’s novels were not available POD, as far as I know, but I wonder if it really would have been worth the trouble, financially. Feel free to speak up to the contrary!

In Richard’s own words

Verbatim, here’s what Richard wrote me: “I’m sorry not to have been in touch for so long, but I have lost my enthusiasm for e-publishing and indeed publishing in general. You may be interested to hear the results of my experiment. My site opened in mid February, and since then, in conjunction with Feedbooks and Manybooks, at least 11,000 ebooks have been downloaded. An unknown quantity has also been distributed via newsgroups and bit torrents.

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By David Rothman

Luddites will love this hilarious Kindle-related video parody from the Cracked site, where the guy insists he is must carry Shakespeare, Richard Dawkins, the Torah, the Qur’an, you name it, to read at all times.

While the named target is the Kindle, the parody really targets all e-book gizmos and their users. This Luddeo gets a special dispensation from me because it’s such a hoot.

A reply—not as witty but oh so true

Responding in the YouTube comment area, an e-book fan says the video is funny “unless you’re a student who has to carry eight books around each day, or you have a problem with the daily tons of paper waste from newspapers, or you’re someone who doesn’t want to travel 10 miles to a bookstore to get the texts they need, or you’re a publisher interested in lowering costs of production and distribution. Then I guess it just makes sense.”

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By David Rothman

ePub, the IDPF’s e-book standard, got a nice boost when BookGlutton announced in the TeleBlog that it had come up with a “simple” HTML-to-epub conversion tool. Rob Preece, publisher at BooksForABook, sees possiblities.

And now Keith Fahlgren, writing in the O’Reilly Tools of Change blog, says he likes the free converter as proof of concept. “It’s time for the ‘regular’ folks to step out of the woodwork and give this EPUB thing a try!” he says in a post including some how-to tips for use with the BookGlutton conversion form.

Caveats: No image and CSS support

Keep in mind that the BookGlutton effort is very much in beta. Keith says the beta lacks image and CSS support, and he says a file he produced failed an ePubCheck vetting. But this is still an important start.

The Sony Reader and Adobe angles: The IDPF’s Digital Book 2008 conference could be the setting for some ePub-related announcements and a demo of the Sony Reader’s new Adobe-supplied readerware, which will have ePub capabilities among others. Adobe’s InDesign CSS3 software can give you ePub output. But there isn’t any direct competition with BookBlutton’s approach, which is really more for cash-strapped small publishers and self-publishers and is Web based. (more…)

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By David Rothman

The Wind in the Willows—a great children’s lit classic, also appealing to many adults and packed with lovable, humanlike animals—appeared in 1908 without illustrations.

Over the years many have taken a stab at accompanying art, and here’s a new freebie from Wowio with Colin Throm’s amazing work. Yes, he is very much alive strikes me as well worth the attention of other publishers, E and P.

More wrinkles 

Wowio’s new edition of Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece also “incorporates updates in punctuation (e.g., changing arm-chair to armchair) and converting words that utilized British spelling into their American counterpart (e.g., humour to humor).

“Additionally, editor’s notes are incorporated to help clarify certain areas of the text. The editor’s notes are placed between brackets.”

Related: Manybooks.net editon—without all the extras but in more formats than PDF.

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By David Rothman

The Rolls (US$699) and the BMW (US$599) of E Ink machines both come from iRex Technologies—one of my favorite e-book hardware companies because it isn’t pulling any stunts to lock people into proprietary formats.

No, the iLiad 2nd Edition and the less expensive iLiad Book Edition aren’t as easy for novices to buy and download books with as the wireless Kindle is. But within E Inkdom, nothing for sale today beats those eight-inch screens.

Friendly suggestions for iRex—and Borders UK

With the above in mind, I hope iRex will pay attention to an item in The Bookseller, headlined BA: iLiad ‘not iPod moment for books.’ That tough-love-ish pronouncement is coming from none other than the chair of Borders, U.K.—iRex’s partners in Great Britain. And I see merit in his words, which can’t just be shrugged off as coming from someone with a vested interest in paper books. That said, Borders UK may be part of the problem. Why isn’t Borders UK, currently not even bothering to promote the iLiad on its home page—a rather bizarre omission? Should it really be waiting for the launch of borders.co.uk? Meanwhile—from The Bookseller:

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By David Rothman

New BlackBerry models from RIM offer 480×320 screen resolution, double the previous stat. Hello, iPhone? RIM doesn’t just want to roll over dead. No touch screens, though. And the screen size isn’t optimal for e-reading.

But this is the era of multiuse devides, and besides, BlackBerry smart phones can run Mobipocket e-bookware, giving you legal access to DRM-infested bestsellers. Try that, Steve Jobs—well, assuming you think books are worth the trouble, which of course you will when you have the right apps and/or hardware out there.

E-reads apps ahead, helped by $150M venture fund?

Meanwhile I’ll be curious what e-book-related apps if any will result from the creation of a $150M fund that RIM, The Royal Bank of Canada and Thomson Reuters are creating for BlackBerries and other mobile devices.

In RIM’s shoes, I’d rush to join the International Digital Publishing Forum and lobby for open source e-reading apps that used the ePub standard; exec director Michael Smith is himself Canadian.

Consistent with companies’ biz goals

Remember, the main businesses of RIM and Thomson Reuters—hardware, services and content. Good e-read apps, free or at least cheap, would open up new opportunities consistent with the companies’ business goals.

Related: Joe Wikert’s post full of BlackBerry love in an e-book context—plus his just-made one advocating multiuse devices.

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By David Rothman

The independent Harvard Book Store moves its share of textbooks and other academic works. But how about U.S. textbook publishers’ sales in, say, Rome or Melbourne?

With overseas markets in mind, American textbook publishers may have one more reason to go electronic with content that local professors can customize. Harry Clarke, an Australian professor of economics, writes: “Greedy publishing houses who charge monopoly prices for overrated, poorly-written US-style textbooks that have limited resale value are creating incentives for their own destruction.” Now consider the customization issues—not just topic-related but geographical.

Gracefully localizing

To come up with one situation, just relevant would an environmental text be if full of U.S. examples with related legal observations that could be peculiar to the States? Might the legal angles be localized more gracefully through E rather than P? I’d love to know what textbook publishers are doing in this regard—and also hear their side. Are any doing core textbooks in E and organizing wikis that local professors can help fill in, maybe for pay?

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By Joe Wikert, a VP in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons

Or so says the New York Times. This article contrasts pocket-sized gadgets with laptop-sized gadgets, then asks whether there’s room for a third size, like the Kindle. Having recently played around with an Asus Eee PC I can honestly say it’s probably closer to the right e-book form factor than the Kindle.

Even though Asus didn’t intend for this to be the case, core laptop functionality might just be more important than E-Ink displays. Yes, that’s sacrilegious, I know, particularly since E-Ink is what Amazon and Sony have built their readers around.

But the more I read a Mobipocket book on my Blackberry the more I realize E-Ink is overrated. Put it this way: If I have to choose between E-Ink and laptop functionality (e.g., color screen, full suite of other apps, larger keyboard, WiFi, etc.), I’ll always take the latter. Always.

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