* Crain’s New York Business has a short piece on September 2009 e-book sales at Random House seeing a dramatic 700 perent increase over the same period in 2008—largely due to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Just imagine how much sales might go up if they actually sold their e-books at reasonable prices!

* PC World Magazine has a review of the bebook Mini e-book reader. They like it, on the whole, but note it has some interface issues.

* Buzzmachine writes about Rupert Murdoch’s nose-cutting face-spiting decision to start blocking Google. A German research group has analyzed how much damage Google would take from such publisher search-blocking, and come to about the same conclusion as the bulldozer operator from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: almost none at all.

* While this is not related directly to e-books, Wired has a piece looking at a “copyright time bomb” that will soon be giving the music industry more headaches. A 1976 copyright law had provisions that will allow recording artists to reclaim the copyright to their works from the record labels that currently hold them.

The article claims that this applies to all forms of copyrighted material, not just music, but does not go into any details as to how this could apply to non-musical works.

Given the earlier KPMG survey that says that about 4% of 1,000 British consumers surveyed have read an ebook in the past month, it makes sense for the independents to get into this market.

You can read more at The Bookseller.

Don’t you love the way DRM enhances the quality of life? To hell with the future. Let’s treat books like driftwood.

At least in the past and perhaps even now, Mobipocket has frowned on competing DRM-capable readers being simultaneously present on the same devices that display holy Mobi. Nothing like the benevolence of Amazon lawyers. Amazon, of course, owns Mobipocket and, perhaps to help the Kindle, won’t even release a reader for the iPhone/Touch that can display Mobi.

With so many people excited about the spread of Adobe firmware—despite the accompanying proprietary DRM—it can’t hurt to remind consumers of the perils of “protection” no matter which companies are involved. There’s always a gotcha. Best for publishers and others either to drop DRM, my choice, or if need rely on social DRM.

Related: Random House, other pubs miserly toward IDPF/ePub, but new e-readers and Sigil editor show there’s hope.

Hey Paul,

Johannes

And for around $30, you’ll be able to buy a wireless add-on. Kindle-level ease ahead for other e-book-shoppers?

Scroll down for these and other BEA posts from Paul.

Speaking of E Ink: Check out Chris Meadows’ continuing series on his Sony PRS-700 review unit.

The first is the BE Book 2. It is a standard size reader, but it has a touch screen and wireless that will work anywhere in the world. It will read all the standard BE Book formats including EPUB. This is the first direct competitor to the Kindle. It can do everything the Kindle can do, but is not restricted to a proprietary format. It will use the same type of data model as the Kindle, that is the user will not pay anything to download his books. It betters the Kindle in that news feeds will be free, not a premium as on the Kindle. Here are a couple of shots taken on the show floor:

It will be cheaper than the Kindle and will be available sometime at the end of September.

The also have another product that we’re announcing for the first time. This is a small 5″ reader that can fit in your pocket. The exciting thing about this is that it should retail for about $199. In addition the reader will have an SD card slot and a wireless SD card will be available for it and be priced at about $30. Here’s a shot and then another shot of all three together:

Things are getting more and more exciting in the ereader space! The guys had to go and I’ll try to get some more details later.

The company mentions it has “easily” sold more than 25,000 units of the Bebook, and that the countries it sells the most units in are the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Introducing the ‘mini’ BeBook (5″)

The BeBook mini, all the features of the large version and more, but a slightly smaller screen (1″ / 2,5cm smaller). Perfect for travelling, this reader fits in any pocket. Full specs and a very competitave price level will follow shortly.

What does this dismal economy mean for you and your e-book reading? Are you buying fewer books? Settling for less than the ideal e-reader or book-capable cellphone for your needs?

I won’t take anything for granted. One small publisher tells me that sales are actually up. Could people be turning to e-books for escape, especially with prices less than for paper books?

We’re a global blog, so comment no matter what your location, which perhaps you can provide.

Speaking of affordability of e-book gizmos: BeBook has announced a “temporary” price reduction from $349 to $280 (via MobileRead). Might the R Word be a factor?

The Reading Experience / Conclusion

As the BeBook uses the super bright Vizplex E-Ink screen, the reading experience is naturally very good. When I place it next to my PRS-500, it’s like night and day. Navigation is very straight forward and the folder/sub folder catalogue system makes storing and navigating through many books very easy.

I’m still amazed at how many file formats are supported. Being able to load up a Windows .CHM help file is very cool and MOBI support will be a huge plus to many users who have already spent considerable money on eBooks already. The usability and support of PDF is very good, which is especially useful if you, like me, download a lot of those PDF manuals from the internet – Now I can read those TEI Guidelines without having to convert.

The BeBook is by no means perfect. Support for some of the eBook formats is not yet complete. For example; ePub books are supported but at this time they don’t seem to implement any CSS formatting. Not a real problem and hopefully they will implement more of the ePub specifications soon.

On the whole I am very impressed with the BeBook. Support for Mobipocket DRM and a multitude of other files format will make this a great option for many people.

According to the news report you can get the BeBook reader here:

Buy the BeBook eBook Reader from the Official site

myBeBook.com available for €329.95 EURO.
Where to Buy the BeBook eBook Reader Online in the UK

Amazon.co.uk available for £229.99
Pixmania.co.uk available for £249