David discusses his proposal for a national digital library system, which he has been calling for since 1992. 

Take a look at his article, and if you feel it has merit, why not send a copy to your Senator or Representative?  With a new Administration, perhaps we can get the ball rolling.

Upon reading the original article, my first reaction was to celebrate the effective demise of Sony’s LRF format; I still think that was the main purpose of the announcement. The Reader’s continued support of LRF always allowed the possibility that Sony could be keeping its own proprietary-format options open. Now the field of supported e-book formats is now officially smaller by one, and that can’t be a bad thing for publishers or consumers.

I understand David’s point about DRM’d ePub not being an open format, but to me it’s not quite that bad. DRM is optional in ePub, it’s a third-party feature that is bolted on, not built in. The format is still "open" in that Adobe does not have a contractual monopoly on providing copy-protection for ePub. Once the numbers rise enough other DRM methods and vendors will step forward, all — like Adobe’s — required to stay outside of the ePub core.

I certainly am on David’s side about the evils of DRM, but a benign NYT article — which helps solidify ePub’s position as the definitive Kindle-alternative format — is not the place to fight this battle. We should be cheering that DRM is optional and about all of the Project Gutenberg (and other) existing ePubs that stay away from it. Advocates should be taking the opportunity to remind the public that the standard ePub spec doesn’t allow the kind of remote-takedown scanario that recently affected many Kindle users.

To me, Adobe DRM is to ePub what Macrovision is to DVDs — a non-excludive tool that is allowed by the spec but clearly outside of it. And a DRM ePub is still ePub — it will still play on all readers that support that particular DRM, and its content is still assembled the same way as DRM-free books. All the ePub format advantages to publishers are still in play when making DRM’d documents.

If Sony wants to sell DRM’d books to Reader owners, they’re welcome to do so. Maybe the titles they sell this way would not be available at all if DRM were not available to the publisher. Here in a standards-based world, a Reader owner has the option of going to any other online bookstores and publishers that might have a different approach to DRM. In the proprietary world that level of choice simply doesn’t exist.

Among other things, I reminded Paula Berinstein, the show’s stellar host and producer, that you can’t own DRMed books for real.

I’m sorry that Amazon unwittingly vindicated us DRM skeptics—she’s one, too—several weeks after we recorded the show.

Just put yourself in the place of students like Justin Gawronski, 17, a high school student in Michigan who lost access to his notes, not just to the Orwell novels that Amazon zapped (1984).

Tom Peters, a trained academic librarian, will interview me for  Online Programming for All Libraries and also accept questions from others. Anyone can participate. See a quick description of the book (obsolete date listed) and how-to details for the chat.

The latest Scandals review is from Brad’s Reader.

If you’d like to mention your own book in the comments section of this post, be my guest. Links welcome, including purchasing info. All I ask is that the book be suitable for public libraries here in the States. Meanwhile, I’ll remind people of SF writings by Steve Jordan, a regular TeleRead contributor. His latest book is The Lens, shown here.

And speaking of Solomons: You can download PDF freebies of Japan in a Nutshell, Coney Island, How to Make the Most of a Flying Saucer Experience and The Book of King Solomon and How to Find Lost Objects, by a Harvard grad who uses Prof. Solomon as a pen name.

But what about Amazon as a threat to publishers?

We already know that Amazon will compete again them to some extent, such as through the AmazonEncore program, which will offer Legacy.

And now, from Bloomberg, comes this analysis on Amazon as a threat to publishers’ margins:

Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, which accelerated the adoption of electronic books, may shrink publishers’ profit margins if the online retailer gets tougher about prices it pays for digital titles.

Publishers typically earn about $2.15 per digital book versus 26 cents for a print copy, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. While publishers see digital books as the future, the market is dominated by the Kindle, leaving them vulnerable to Amazon.com’s bargaining power.

Now, before it’s too bloody late, publishers need to stand up to this goliath before it’s too late. A good start would be to threaten to withdraw e-books unless Amazon agrees to make the Kindle able to read ePub, the industry standard. What’s more, publishers should insist that Amazon not use extensions to turn ePub into a proprietary format. Also, publishers should enjoy the right to opt out of Amazon’s DRM without hassles. So far the small house publishing my novel can’t get rid of the DRMed edition.

I’d also suggest that publishers encourage the U.S. Justice Department to maintain ongoing monitoring of Amazon’s policies and practices. The Bloomberg analysis is yet more indication of the need for vigilance. Remember, Amazon may not only shaft publishers but also consumers as its power keeps growing.

Some hope: Amazon’s openness to nonAmazon formats—well, just so they don’t have nasty proprietary extensions. ePub included? Meanwhile for a different perspective on Amazon, see Joe Esposito’s analysis.

“rise of the ebook session … hopefully this turns out better for us than rise of the terminators”

A full report on the Tools of Change conference will likely have to wait until Paul Biba and David Rothman get back to their computers. But here are a few tidbits I picked up from following #TOC on Twitter:

Andrew Savikas (pictured at left, photo by James Duncan Davidson) revealed that the Bookworm on-line ePub reader is now part of O’Reilly Labs.

According to Tim O’Reilly, an informal audience poll in the Jeff Jarvis panel indicated that about 10% of the audience read on Kindles, but 70% on iPhones.

The Rise of the E-Book

At the “Rise of the E-Book” panel, it was revealed that Buzzword, Adobe’s free on-line word processor, will gain the ability to export in ePub form.

It was also mentioned that, while e-book sales now make up 10% of Amazon’s sales volume for books that are available in both print and Kindle formats, e-book sales are only 1/2 of 1% of the overall book market.

Occasional TeleRead commenter Pablo Defendini tweeted, “E-Ink 2009: next with E Ink:new sizes: smaller and larger; new countries; touch and pen interfaces; flexible displays like PlasticLogic.” Panelist Russell Wilcox from E-Ink also promised that the speed of e-ink was increasing at the rate of Moore’s Law, and that there would be usable color screens in 2010.

Some of the “Rise of E-Books” panel audience looked askance at panelist David Rothman’s use of the term “p-books” to differentiate print books from e-books. The consensus seemed to be that it might look all right on paper, but it sounded silly spoken aloud. (I prefer to say “tree-books,” myself.)

Twitter #TOC

Following the #toc hashtag has been an interesting experience; interspersed among tweets reporting from two or three simultaneous panels have been interesting conversations. jtallent asked how anyone could read on an iPhone, and got back several answers ranging from “very well, thanks” to more serious explanations of their benefits.

From time to time, someone would retweet an earlier comment—reposting it in their own Twitter stream so their followers would see it. One of the most repeated tweets had to do with the representatives from Audible.com supposedly getting up and walking out on Cory Doctorow’s anti-DRM presentation this morning.

[Update: The next day, totai (the originator of the repeated tweet) tweeted, "4 the record, my tweet re: Audible folks walking on day 1 was a joke. Now it's been written about!" and linked back to this article. It certainly proves the power of Twitter to spread the most sensational news fastest. It also reminds us not necessarily to believe the most sensational news we hear (which is why I made sure to include the "supposedly").]

Perhaps most amusing were the tweets I would see from time to time from people who were jumping ship from a boring panel in favor of another whose tweets sounded more interesting. If any demonstration was necessary about how Twitter has changed the nature of technology conferences, this would probably be it. (Ironically, I’m pretty sure that at least one of those came from someone who deserted a panel on “Social Networking”.)

I look forward to seeing David and Paul back behind their keyboards, with more information on what went down at the Tools of Change conference.

While anything that increases the adoption of ePub as an industry standard is a good thing, it should be remembered that OverDrive is the firm that chose to end its partnership to provide books to Fictionwise, leaving many e-book-owning customers high and dry but for Fictionwise’s actions in negotiating with publishers to provide replacements.

(And Hachette, who is listed as a partner, caused some controversy by pulling its titles from distribution as well.)

Leading Publishers Join EPUB eBooks Distribution Channel through OverDrive

Standard eBook format growing rapidly in library and retail markets

Cleveland, OH, February 10, 2009 – OverDrive (www.overdrive.com <http://www.overdrive.com/> ), the leading global distributor of digital books for libraries and retailers, announced today a growing list of leading publishers from around the world who are selling eBooks in the emerging EPUB format through OverDrive.  Publishers include Random House (US and UK), Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette Livre, Harlequin Mills and Boon, Pan MacMillan, Palgrave MacMillan, Penguin (US and UK), Simon and Schuster (UK), Bloomsbury, Pearson Education, Zondervan, HarperCollins (US and UK) and many more.

OverDrive provides digital distribution through its secure, web-based, wholesale distribution service, Content Reserve ( www.overdrive.com/contentreserve).  OverDrive’s Content Reserve enables publishers to sell and deliver eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video to library, school and retail channels worldwide.  Operating continuously since 2000, OverDrive’s Content Reserve currently holds 150,000 titles and serves nearly 1000 publishers with direct links to 8,500 library, school and retail locations in 30 countries.

As an early proponent of EPUB, OverDrive has gained significant experience in the ingestion and distribution of EPUB eBooks.  As a result, OverDrive has identified leading service bureaus that provide a high level of technical proficiency in the conversion and workflow management of EPUB eBooks. These firms can help publishers who need assistance with offering EPUB:

*         Aptara: http://www.techbooks.com <http://www.techbooks.com/>

*         Digital Media Initiatives: http://www.digitalmediainitiatives.com <http://www.digitalmediainitiatives.com/>

*         Innodata-Isogen: http://www.innodata-isogen.com <http://www.innodata-isogen.com/>

*         TexTech: http://www.textech.in <http://www.textech.in/>

"eBooks are poised for accelerated growth with EPUB’s rapid adoption by publishers as well as its compatibility with mobile devices such as the Sony Reader," said David Burleigh, director of marketing for OverDrive.  "As a leader in this market, OverDrive is dedicated to fueling this growth by continuing our efforts to streamline distribution processes, integrate with service bureaus, and provide a seamless link to our growing network of library, school and retail channels around the world."

EPUB eBooks are enhanced for mobile reading with reflowable text to fit any screen size. The standard format for eBooks and other digital publications was developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (www.idpf.org <http://www.idpf.org/> ) and adopted by leading publishers and technology firms as the industry standard for eBooks. OverDrive, an IDPF member company, was an early proponent of the industry standard for eBooks and has developed streamlined systems for distribution of EPUB files in its retail and library channels.

OverDrive provides digital download distribution for Borders.com, eFollett.com, BooksonBoard.com, Waterstone’s (UK), Papyless (Japan), hundreds of college bookstores, and other online retailers.  OverDrive also powers download media catalogs at thousands of libraries worldwide, including institutions in New York, Singapore, Boston, and Toronto. To see if your public library is a member of the OverDrive network, visit http://search.overdrive.com <http://search.overdrive.com/> . OverDrive also operates the Digital Bookmobile (www.digitalbookmobile.com <http://www.digitalbookmobile.com/> ), a high-tech 18-wheeler traveling coast-to-coast to raise awareness about free library downloads.

About OverDrive

OverDrive is a leading full-service digital distributor of eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video. We deliver secure management, DRM protection, and download fulfillment services for hundreds of publishers and thousands of libraries, schools, and retailers serving millions of end users. Founded in 1986, OverDrive is based in Cleveland, OH.  www.overdrive.com <http://www.overdrive.com/>

Contact:

David Burleigh

OverDrive, Inc. 

216-573-6886 x218

dburleigh@overdrive.com

Q. What’s meant by "serve"?

A. LibreDigital’s focus has been to give publishers one platform to distribute their content in any format to all of the digital content stores, eReaders, mobile devices, search engines and social networks that connect content to consumers. LibrieDigital is already doing this for hundreds of book, magazine and newspaper publishers like HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette, The New York Times, USA Today and Simon & Schuster, so they can take advantage of these new distribution opportunities. Designed for publishers of all sizes, the LibreDigital platform serves as a one-stop-shop content warehouse that helps content owners easily control and distribute their content to an ever-expanding number of formats.

Q. What will be the price of the machine? I’ve heard it might be anywhere from $300-$700? Possible now to be more precise?

A. Final pricing will not be available until closer to commercial availability at the start of 2010. Plastic Logic plans to be competitive in the category, taking into consideration its unique value proposition.

Q. Which countries will get the PL machine first? All in early 2010? Latest date?

A. We have not announced specifics of distribution, but expect it to be available worldwide between Plastic Logic’s direct distribution and partners.

Q. What e-readers will run on the PL machine? Can anybody build one for it?

A. Details not yet announced. Open platform on many many document types will enable more content than current eReaders on the market.

Q. Operating system used?

A. Based on Windows CE

Q, Kinds of SDKs offered?

A. Stay tuned, more information to come

Q. Wireless from the start?

A. Yes, wired and wireless from the start

Q.Which stores participating? Can any store do so? How open are these arrangements?

Those details will be announced closer to our official launch date in early 2010. [We do know that Fictionwise is among the retail partners. At the distributor level, Ingram Digital is. - D.R.]

Q. Number of book titles offered when the PL machine debuts?

A. Those details will be announced closer to our official launch date in early 2010.

Q. How soon until Plastic Logic–via LibrieDigital and or otherwise–will catch up with Amazon on the number of titles? What techniques will be used to catch up?

We do not view ourselves in in direct competition with Amazon, which is a bookseller. We are focused on content for business users, ranging from books, newspapers, magazines, other periodicals, and most importantly, business documents.

Q, What if a book publisher doesn’t want to do DRM? Will LibrieDigital let him/her?

A. The choice of DRM or not is the publishers. We can do what they want.

Q. Will LibrieDigital be easy for small book publishers to work with? How will it simplify things for them? Will the process be easier technically and bureaucratically than for Mobipocket and the Kindle? In what ways?

A. Plastic Logic will have a program for small to large publishers—more details to come.

Q. Will Librie work with individual authors? How easy will it be?

A. Plastic Logic intends to provide a dynamic marketplace with content ranging from authors small to large.

Q. What will be Librie’s percentages/fees charged for books? Less than Amazon’s. For newspapers? For magazines?

Pricing for Plastic Logic content will be announced at launch.

Q, Will publishers be able to make Web-style links from one book to another? Same for newspapers and magazines? Links possible between media? In what e-book formats will Web-style links be doable?

Details not announced, are in the Publishing Program.

Q. Any time period in which the PL-LD alliance will last?

A. Details of the relationships terms and conditions are not being announced

Done by the Digital Marketing group at Macmillan it is a must see. Found on boingboing and through the medium of an email sent to me by Michael von Glahn.

Did you know that a book’s editor must read the copy a minimum of 4 times and commit large parts of it to memory? I also learned that the editor often completes every third word of the book and is responsible for choosing all the characters’ names. I sure that David has been through this experience with his Solomon Scandals.

Note: our readers should feel free to send me an email if they find an interesting story – or even write a story themselves and send it to me for publication.

That’ll reward repeat visitors to the Scandals site and help TeleRead stay focused on E, although I intend to be stricter with myself than with others.

If you know of a great book in E and want to review it, for example, that’s cool. Just include format info and other e-specific details.

Among the recent Scandals entries: Deep Throat is dead—and so are the old rules of investigative journalism and ‘The Impotence of Proofreading.’ Photo is of Deep Throat, aka the late Mark Felt of the FBI.

A mix of suspense and satire, Scandals is the only Washington newspaper novel with a bio-enhanced Afghan Hound doing a Harry Truman act at the Cosmos Club, Scandals, inspired by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff’s actual secret investment in a CIA-occupied building, is set mainly in the 1970s. But it includes a foreword and afterword written in the late 21st century by Dr. Rebecca Kitiona-Fenton of the Institute for the Study of Previrtual Media.

I’m putting the final touches on version 1.0 of the Scandals Web site (screenshot), which covers matters ranging from Barack Obama vis-a-vis my fictitious president to the novel’s Internet references. Via email I’ll welcome suggestions for posts on other topics (and typo catches, too—involving either the site or the book). I’m very interested in making the book meaningful to readers outside the U.S., and the right posts could help. The site also includes sample chapters  as well as blurbs from James Fallows, author of Breaking the News ; James Polk, winner of the Pulitzer for Watergate coverage for the Washington Star; and Bettina Gregory, the former ABC News correspondent.

January is the official publication time for Scandals. But I asked Lida Quillen, publisher of Twilight Times Books, to see what she could do to make my book available for TeleReader community members at least in E before Christmas, Hanukkah and other holidays, and she came through beautifully.

Price of the nonDRMed e-book is $5.95, as noted, and the trade paperback is $16.95 plus shipping. Available e-formats right now are HTML and PDF, and Lida will soon add ePub. Other popular formats will follow in time.

Kindle owners can use Mobipocket Desktop 6.0 to convert the HTML into nonDRMed Mobi, which the K machine can read .

iPhone owners can load the HTML file into Stanza Desktop , then use WiFi and the Shared option within Stanza’s Library menu on the iPhone (probably no italics and bold are available at this point within converted HTML in Stanza). Damn the Tower of eBabel ! Why must we bother with such details?

To order by credit card, call the 423-323-0183 number mentioned earlier. If paying by check, please click here for a form to print out. To download now, go here.

At least in the States, you can also order Scandals from your local bookstore. The ISBN is is 978-1-60619-042-5.

Twitter, though, is very high on other people’s, and maybe I can find time if I cut back a little on RSS feed-watching. So now you can follow me via twitter.com/davidrothman—or click on the “Follow David link” near the top of the second column of the TeleBlog home page. I’ll be adding a photo when the Twitter gods permit. The system is currently too busy for that.

My Twitter posts will be a mix of personal odds and ends, TeleRead and news of The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel.

My e-mail address—in case you want to act on the note’s request for feedback: dr at teleread.org.

Detail: To be exact, my doctor graduated me from cardio rehab. Actually the official length was something like 12 weeks or whatever. He and I concluded I was healthy enough so I didn’t need to go through the whole drill. That said, I’d highly rec the program at Inova Alexandria Hospital for people who need it. It’s like a health club, except you get authoritative medical advice and close monitoring so you don’t push yourself past safe levels when you exercise.

But if you’re not as optimistic about your own prospects, here’s some News You Can Use.

The latest craze in funerals is to include an iPod in the casket, so that the e-hip dead can enjoy music or other entertainment in the afterlife.

Does this mean that my family should bury me with my iPod Touch—and the Stanza program displaying The Great Gatsby in ePub?

Nope. When you’re done, you’re done. I say, Just toss some of my ashes off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into the Potomac—not all, since I’m anti-pollution. No gadgets, no fancy ceremonies. But in case you feel otherwise and maybe even want your iPod playing The Grateful Dead’s best, here’s the lowdown from the Inquirer:

Ed Defort, publisher and editorial director for American Funeral Director magazine, said there are cases of a bloke being buried with his Ipod in the hope of being wired to the end. However what is stranger is that they want the gear switched on so that their mates can ring them, at least until the battery wears out.

Pam Vetter said she had seen family members place Ipod earphones on the dead person and play songs as the casket closed. She said that it was comforting to the family to think that “mom’s playing her Ipod… or dad’s still got the mobile phone that was attached to his ear all the time.”

We would have thought making the last journey to the underworld with Coldplay ringing in your ears would be sign of terrible forboding.

One funeral director said that he had seen people leave mobile phones on and tell me they’re going to call their loved one later. They know no one will answer, but they want to have that connection.

So what do you think, gang? Will we soon see Kindle owners eager to enjoy their K machines in the afterlife? Oprah says the Kindle can be a life-changer. Can it be a death-changer, too?

First appearing in the United States, the virus lowered the IQ of American legislators enough so that they passed something called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which makes pretty much everything illegal. Further information about the Act is not available, because the Act is copyrighted and telling our readers anything about it would be a felony. In an action that should have alerted health officials to the oncoming viral surge, the same legislators passed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act which granted Walt Disney Studios extended copyrights on its properties. These copyrights will run until everyone who could possibly see or read any of the copyrighted properties has been dead for over 70 years.

As reported earlier in this journal, the Australian legislature has had a severe attack of the filtering version of the virus. Australian pols have decided to filter out “stuff” from the Internet. “The internet is full of Stuff”, said one Australian pol interviewed by ……., “and we have to keep that Stuff out of the innards of these computer things. If the computer things can’t think for themselves, we will have to think for them.” As a result, from now on the only thing that will be allowed through the giant Australian government filtering complex in Melbourne (where hundreds of tarsiers read each and every page of the Internet twice a day) will be stories on how to polish automobile hubcaps.

In an even more frightening outbreak of stupidity, the British government announced that it would push to extend its current 50 year copyright on musical works to 70 years, despite the recommendation of a high-level commission that this was unnecessary. When asked about this, the head of the British Labour Party said: “Well, if we pass this legislation it means that we can copyright Scotland. We’ve always wanted to copyright Scotland, but have never been able to. Now we can, right?” When your correspondent pointed out that this made no sense the legislator replied: “It’s copyright, why should it make sense.”

Contributors to this report were Paul Biba and ……

Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. The prototype will be launched in November 2008 by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The prototype aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe.

The interface will be multilingual. Initially, this may mean that it is available in French, English and German, but the intention is to develop the number of languages available following the launch.

There is an excellent article about the background leading up to the site in this article in The Guardian, from which the following is taken:

"It is unique," said Jill Cousins, Europeana’s executive director. "A search engine cannot do what we can. For example, a search [on Europeana] for Mozart brings together letters he wrote to his father, musical scores, and film and sound recordings of his music."

She said she was grateful to Google for setting a precedent. "Part of the reason our site exists is because Google Book Search kicked off a debate about the presence of European cultural heritage on the web. That allowed us to mobilise."

One of the people most incensed by Google Book Search was the former French president Jacques Chirac, who started a race with the Anglo-Saxons to digitalise French content led by institutions such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. France accounts for around a half of the content of the Europeana site, followed by Britain and the Netherlands. Other countries will slowly add more content. Currently there are around 2m items available, and the site is expected to reach 10m items by 2010.

However, the site is now down due to its popularity. As stated at the URL in the beginning of this article: We launched the European.eu site on 20 November and huge use – 10 million hits an hour – meant it crashed. We are doing our best to reopen Europeana.eu in a more robust version.