TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘international’ Category

By David Rothman

Cellphones, already used by some for enjoying e-books, will grow more and more useful for reading as displays improve—with, for example, rollout or pop-out capabilities for E Ink screens. This could be where the real e-book market will be eventually, or at least an important part of it. Check out David Ajao’s post that we published from Africa, on mobile phones as a book-spreader.

And so I’m reading with interest a long New York Times Magazine piece on cellphone use in developing countries. Costs can be as little as $20 or $25, with the hope of prices dropping to $5 a phone someday. Remember when cellphones cost hundreds or thousands? The title of Sara Corbett’s article is “Can Cellphones Help End Global Poverty?” We follow around a U.K. man with the intriguing name of Jan Chipchase (his real one?), who works for Nokia as a human behavior researcher. Perhaps I need to catch up with Chipchase and see if he can’t start asking e-book-related questions as this Johnny Appleseed of a cell evangelist wanders around the Third World. Actually he’s better than an evangelist, in that he’s studying what the market is likely to adopt on its own, as opposed to doing a hardsell.

A panacea not, but a little hope just the same

No, cellphones and OLPC-style computers won’t magically end illiteracy by themselves—we’ll still need teachers and librarians. But the technology will provide a handy platform for books and other printed items and increase the breadth and power of words.

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By Paul Biba

Over at ZDNet, Matthew Miller has a posting from Barcelona about the new Readius phone/ereader with a folding screen. He even has a video of it in operation. This is exciting news for the future or ebook portability and convergence. The very, very unexciting news, however, is that the phone is only tri-band which makes it almost useless here in the United States.

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By Ficbot

The Vancouver Sun ran a great editorial yesterday about the current ‘Fair Copyright’ debate in Canada right now.

Our minister of culture, under pressure from American big business, was due to introduce a disastrous and very restrictive new copyright amendment prepared without input or discussion from voters. Under the leadership of the fabulous Michael Geist, however, the blogosphere caught wind. Activists organized. Minister Prentice was visited by several dozen constituents during his holiday Open House, and a rapidly growing Facebook group currently stands at almost 40,000 members, with local branches springing up for more targeted activism around the issue. Now, major papers like the Vancouver Sun are bringing the issue to the attention of the public at large.

Buddy Holly book project: Legal risks galore

I had been wanting to write about this for the TeleBlog for days, ever since I read about a woman whose life apparently inspired the song “Peggy Sue Got Married” (a partial inspiration for the movie shown in the poster). Due to legal pressure from Buddy Holly’s widow, the woman can’t publish a book, titled Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue? about a claimed friendship with the late rock star without the risk of being sued. It’s already being advertised online as “in stock.” Fingers crossed.

This story, to me, summed up everything wrong about copyright law. Does a person have special protections as far as creative works go? In some cases, yes. I am not permitted to write false or untrue things about another person. If I did, they could sue me for libel or slander. Additionally, I might be governed by a confidentiality agreement in certain circumstances. For example, celebrities often ask their employees to sign such agreements prohibiting them from writing a tell-all story. But is a friendship with a VIP by definition protectable? If I were to, for example, be walking down the street and I should happen to run into Angelina Jolie, should I need her permission to write an article about it? Should she be entitled to royalties if my article becomes the hit of the blogosphere? If this woman wants to write a book about her life as the Peggy Sue of the song, should his widow be able to stop it because she ‘owns the rights’ to the mere existence of a very public figure?

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By Karina Descartin

Moderator’s note: Please welcome Dr. Karina Descartin as the newest contributor to the TeleBlog—see her bio at the end of this post. Check out her own blog, The story of healing. - DR

I’ve been reading e-books for years, almost as soon as PDAs came out, even if I haven’t always been wild about them.

No, I didn’t need the biggest, sharpest screen, just the right information in my textbooks when I was a medical student in the Philippines. I felt secure. In my pocket I could carry hundreds of thousands of words of medical advice—well beyond what I could hold in my head—and maybe use this wisdom someday to save a life.

E still key

Today e-books remain very much a part of my life as I prepare for my U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, needed to practice here in the United States. When I travel, I can’t tote a portable library of paper books. So instead I carry a MacBook, which contains seven medical review books, among others, and can play video lectures, too. My first-generation iPod Nano stores audio (MP3) lectures.

What’s more, e-books are part of my husband’s life, too—he’s a Web designer for the Wowio e-book service.

Beyond just exploring

No, I’m not the ultimate fan, just an explorer, but I’m excited by the possibilities of e-books as a way to squeeze more out of education budgets in developing countries while increasing the number of enthusiastic readers.

In fact, maybe reading TeleRead has already made me more than just an explorer. Today e-books are not a necessary evil for me; rather, just a necessity.

More on my reading material and hardware

Just what was I reading in my PDA days in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Well, I carried around two volumes of Harrison’s Principles of Medicine and two volumes of Schwartz’ Textbook of Surgery—plus a whole gamut of other books, which I read through the magic of the iSilo reader.

Back then, I was using the Compaq Ipaq 3760. Sweet! But eventually, we had to part ways; the Compaq was so thick, it kept ripping the seams off the pocket of my smocks, and the battery life was pathetic, an hour to an hour and a half at the most. But it served a purpose during that time, with 64Mb of RAM, a Flash memory slot, and the ability to work with a Targus Portable Keyboard. I’m nostalgic about the keyboard and the student days, but not the iPaq’s specs.

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By Paul Biba

Actually, you probably have - but you haven’t. The One Thousand and One Nights is, perhaps, the most famous book ever to come out of the Arab literary tradition. The reason you haven’t read it is that the translations of the work available are generally highly abridged and heavily bowdlerized.

Now, thanks to the magic of ebooks, the full version of this classic from the Caliphate era is available again.

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 - 1890) was one of the most fascinating personalities of the Victorian era. Without going into detail about his incredible life and exploits, Burton was an Arabist par excellence. His knowledge of colloquial arabic was so good that it actually enabled him to dress up in arab garb and sneak into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (which he then proceeded to write about in an absolutely compelling narrative). His works have been long out of print, except for some volumes still published by that wonderful house Dover Publications.

Using his incredible knowledge of Arabic, Burton published a translation of the full version of Nights. I am lucky enough to have it in hard copy, in an edition privately printed by the now defunct Burton Society, and it runs to 16 volumes. The little “abridgments” most people have read don’t even begin to scratch the surface of this phenomenal work. The Nights is actually quite racy and is full of sexual and pederastic passages. Burton managed to publish it only by bringing it out in a private edition, or it would have otherwise violated the obscenity laws of the time.

The full translation of Nights is available from Gutenberg, and I have also downloaded it from ManyBooks, where it is available in Sony Reader format, among others. I notice that Fictionwise is also selling the volumes, but I don’t know if they have done anything to the original text that makes paying for an otherwise free book worthwhile.

While you are at it, download Burton’s Narrative of a Pilgramage to Al-Medinah and Meccah for one of the great explorer stories of all time.

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By Robert Nagle

I am not a lawyer. But every time I reach a point in my understanding of copyright law where I feel as though I finally understand it, something comes up that makes it clear I don’t know nuthing.

When did this feeling of helpless incomprehensibility first come about? It was probably when I realized that Americans will be traveling in space elevators before they can legally post an mp3 of Andrew Sister’s Bei Mir Bist du Schon (1937) on a website. (Current estimates are that we may even have space elevators before it will be legal to sing the 1893 song Happy Birthday in public). I guess we will have to consult Lawrence Lessig or William Patry about the legality of singing the Warner-Chappell song inside a U.S. built space elevator.

But another legal can of worms involves the use of images for Wikipedia (and its sister projects). It has implications that reach far beyond U.S. borders. (more…)

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By David Rothman

“Knocklofty is a new independent publisher in Hobart, Tasmania. It is working to hasten the transition between conventional print publishing and the new world of electronic books, with several titles in preparation to be published as both short-run printed books and as eBooks. These include new translations of two plays by Albert Camus, a range of practical guides to growing herbs and several novels by emerging writers. For authors who want to self-publish, we offer a complete service from editing your raw manuscript through book design, printing, conversion to eBook and website design to help with sales.” - Knocklofty site.

The TeleRead take: Knocklofty, publisher of the free 16-page PDF shown here, doesn’t say what the ratio will be between self-published books and others. Also, the Lulu parallel is hardly exact in other ways—Knocklofty apparently goes far behind the basics. Whatever the case, the WordPress-based site is well-done, making me eager to learn more. The TeleBlog loves to do the Schwab’s drugstore act and discover new stars. In fact, we were among the first sites to cover Scott Sigler in depth.

But back to Knocklofty (named after a hill in Hobart?). Among the other enticements: Part I of a free e-novel called The Brasenose Bequest. (more…)

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By David Rothman

The issues with Google range far and wide. As this screenshot shows, Google is a constant fixation of publishers and librarians.

Whether the question is E-Book Museums or the usability of the texts online or book-related accessibility for other search engines, the TeleBlog and others have raised questions about Google’s book-digitization efforts.

Misleading PR from Do No Evil Land?

Now James Bridle, an editorial-and-tech guy for a small U.K. publisher, has weighed in with his own useful critique while making clear, like me, that he’s not anti-digitization. Excerpt:

“…Google Book Search isn’t the same as Google Web Search, and Google, if not actually, intentionally lying, is certainly willfully misleading publishers about its intentions.

“Google is going round telling everyone—and by everyone, I mean largely publishers, and publishers who don’t, by and large, have the firmest grip on the technological details of the enterprise—that Google Book Search is just like Google Web Search. It’s just an index. It’s about ‘discoverability.’ It’s about total public access to knowledge, and Google is just the facilitator.

“This is misleading. (more…)

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By David Rothman

Pity the publisher trying to promote an e-book. How to alert prospective buyers? How many e-books have you seen piled up at Barnes & Noble? And has Oprah touted an e-book original lately? Oh, and forget about newspaper book supplements, which can’t even do justice to p-books and are dying or being folded into other sections.

What to do? Could a formula be found through which publishers could spread glad tidings about e-fiction and e-nonfiction alike?

Search engines: Important—but just one kind of tool

Publishers talk about the use of Amazon and search engines as ways for consumers to find books, and in fact, Evan Schnittman, a bizdev-and-rights VP for the U.S. end of the venerable Oxford University Press, has nicely laid out the benefits of services such as Google Book Search and Windows Live. See parts I and II of his essay. The goal is to make 100 percent of a book searchable through the engines—to weave it into the skein of the Internet.

Turbocharged searching alone, however, won’t be enough to spread word about books of interest to buyers. What about a personal touch, too? Can a search engine alone create a best-seller, for example, or help the world discover a promising new novelist? Might there still be room left for human- rather than just Google-powered initiatives? (more…)

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By David Rothman

If e-publishers want to build gobal business models around U.S. copyright law, they should beware. The rest of the world just isn’t as fond of the Hollywoodcentric approach as American solons would like to believe. Canadian professor Michael Geist has analyzed reaction to a new U.S. copyright report (via Slashdot discussion).

One little prob for Hollywood: What if a country is a net importer of intellectual property—as Canada is? All kinds of ramifications arise. To make other countries friendlier to Hollywood, is D.C. selling out other industries by way of free trade agreements?

Related: Mr. DMCA wants another approach instead—really (no joke).

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By David Rothman

E-books are mostly for business rather than pleasure right now, says a writer for the DPA press agency—commenting especially on the German e-book scene.

But better screens and a new generation of readers could change this quickly, says Dirk Averesch in a wire article in the China Post. The iLiad is the only E Ink device on sale in Germany, according to him. Too bad. Sony has stupidly kept the Reader out of European stores, but it would be great if other brands were available from local retailers there—such as the Jinke machines.

Germans, as might be expected, must deal with a Tower of eBabel—Mobipocket and PDF and the rest. And now here’s an interesting tidbit on which Roland, Alexander or another European-based reader of the TeleBlog might want to comment: (more…)

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By David Rothman

While some UK educators are experimenting with blackboard alternatives, an electronic blackboard initiative from Mexico seems to be boosting kids’ achievements, if the projects’ supporters are right. Now, ideally, to augment this approach with an e-book one! Remember, students should get comfortable with solo learning, not just the group variety. Meanwhile the BBC reports:

Some five million 10- and 11-year-olds now receive ALL their education through the screens. It is believed to be the most ambitious project of its kind in the world.

From maths to music, from geography to geometry, black and white boards have given way to electronic screens.

“I really like it,” says one six-year-old at the John F Kennedy Primary school in Mexico City.

Also see Slashdot discussion and a Hughes press release. (more…)

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