TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘site information’ Category

By Robert Nagle

A few weeks ago TeleRead asked readers to take a five-question, muti-choice reading survey using the Survey Gizmo service. 161 anonymous respondents took the survey in the first week of March 2008, and the results suggest that many favor SF, award-winning literature, thrillers and public domain classics—in fact, fiction in general.

How many books and e-books have you paid for in the last year?

• 20+ books/ebooks 40%
• 11-20 24%
• 5-10 21%
• 0-4 15%

If you have bought an e-book or digital text before, please indicate which type: (Choose one or more)

• fiction (75%)
• business or job-related topic (21%)
• technical/computer manual (19%)
• n/a; I have never bought an ebook (17%)
• something for a hobby (17%)
• something for research or school (17%)

(more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

By Robert Nagle

You may have noticed a few days ago that we added a sponsored ad on the right from the NAEB Cybook buyer’s club.

Both David and I are familiar with the Cybook family of devices and like the company. Regular readers may know that a buyer’s club loosely affiliated with BAEN has been trying to arrange a mass order of e-book devices for interested buyers.  It’s  a bit cheaper than buying directly from Cybook and includes a few extra accessories as well.

Cybook has indicated a commitment to supporting open standards and maintained a balance between that and supporting one DRM standard (Bobipocket). In addition Cybook (and even the NAEB people) have a much more open product development process than, say, Amazon.  Although Kindle is an interesting device with lots of features, the opaque development process doesn’t inspire confidence and gives the impression that it is not terribly interested in hearing consumer feedback prior to its media blitz.  Also, although the NAEB buying club project took a while to get off the ground, Derek Benner has certainly been accessible and answers a lot of questions on the Cybook section of MobileRead and can do the same in the TeleBlog. The Cybook compares favorably to other Vizplex-enabled devices.

My Cybook hands-on

I’ve handled this  device and played with it quite a bit. It’s lightweight and elegant. But it is not without its warts, and it certainly is not the only device out there to enhance the reading experience. It is a good alternative for readers who don’t wish to be dependent on a single vendor for commercial ebooks.  Given Bookeen’s track record with its previous ebook reader, I’m cautiously optimistic Cybook will offer  .epub support somewhere down the road.

Online buying clubs are  still a new concept in the United States, but they have always been popular  in Asia to help consumers obtain volume discounts/wholesale prices on new items. Time will tell how successful this particular venture will be. Here are FAQ about the NAEB online store  and contact information.  One problem with ebook devices is that frequently devices are marketed only to one region, leaving people outside of that region unhappy. Sony Reader was not really available to Europe, the Iliad hasn’t really been available in the U.S. and the Chinese Hanlin devices haven’t been available in Europe or US.

(more…)

Popularity: 4% [?]

By Robert Nagle

How to keep the TeleBlog sustainable without selling out to advertisers? Until recently, our response has been simple—we haven’t tried to woo them. But both the writing and the behind-the-scenes tech work take time, and if we’re to maintain our quality, we need to get paid. One solution is for us to use TeleBlog material elsewhere, and, in fact, David Rothman is adapting many of his posts here for Publishers Weekly, the bible of the book trade.

But that in itself is not enough. So David and I are experimenting with advertisers. The deal for them will be this. We need to be free to report honestly on the e-book scene, fight for e-book standards, raise questions about DRM and stand up for well-stocked digital libraries. Advertiser hoping to weaken our commitment to such causes are free to go elsewhere. The tone of our posts didn’t change after David began the PW connection, and we don’t intend for it to happen either with advertisers.

The kind of advertiser we especially want

MarketIntellNow, our first advertiser, which is paying us a certain percentage of sales from research reports, should be an especially good fit. The company’s e-book reading survey fell into our lap, and we thought the results were interesting and relevant and timely to TeleRead readers. We couldn’t pass down an opportunity to do an interview with the company while we were at it—it was my idea. I gave them some tough questions which (I hope) challenged them and also allowed the people at MarketIntellNow to expand on their conclusions.

(more…)

Popularity: 3% [?]