Would Gary Price—the founding info-maven of ResourceShelf—buy The Case for Books in an electronic or paper edition?

TeleRead promised an answer, and directly from Gary himself, here it is. – D.R.

The winner? The e-book version, which I’ve been reading on Kindle for iPhone. A few of the reasons why:

1. In all of the last-minute stuff I needed to do before a trip, I didn’t have time to go to the bookstore.
2. I purchased the book the night before my trip. I could have even bought the book in the taxi on the way to the airport or while I waited to board at the gate.
3. Like it or not, Price. It was about one-half the cost of the print edition. By the way, some/all of the essays are likely available for free via New York Review of Books.
4. It seems I’m always losing things so this way I had nothing to lose (except my iPhone, which I would be taking with me anyway) and one fewer item to place in my already-overflowing carry-on bag.

Have I read any of the books on my actual Kindle device (1st gen) since I returned home? No, I continue with my iPhone.

I still have issues with low-light reading. An Amazon rep suggested I could buy a book light and attach it to the Kindle cover. Well, I have a book light and have attached it to the cover. It’s a mediocre experience at best.

Alas, Project Gutenberg and most other public domain sites aren’t optimized right now for devices with small screens and slow browsers.

And free Kindle download guides—with links to public domain books—are not as easy and convenient to use as they could be in my opinion (TeleRead Co-Editor Paul Biba offers his thoughts later in this post).

What’s more, free editions of more than a few public domain books are AWOL in the Kindle’s bookstore. To my surprise, I couldn’t dig up one for A Journey to the Center of the Earth, the Jules Verne classic.

The glories of FreeKindleBooks.org

Enter FreeKindleBooks.org.

It will take you to thousands of Kindle books organized by author. I don’t know the exact title count, but the site at least passes the Upton Sinclair Test, as I’ll call it: I could find 21 of his books such as a The Money Changers.

Jules Verne (right photo) showed up with 34 titles. including Journey.

59 Dickens works, 49 by Twain and 7 by Austen

Fifty-nine works by Dickens (left photo), 49 by Mark Twain and seven by Jane Austen (less prolific than the other two) appear on FreeKindleBooks.org. Simply put, for people who like major public domain authors, this is more than just a vexingly abbreviated collection.

On top of that, you can use the site’s “experimental” mode and locate books by PG number—apparently all of the catalogue. Just go to the real PG and search for the title and accompanying number, then return to FreeKindleBooks.org’s experimental mode to download the actual book. If a desktop or laptop is handy, that might be a faster way to look up the PG numbers.

FreeKindleBooks.org, granted, has flaws. For one thing, there’s a lot of verbiage at the top, rather than the lists of writers (leading to title lists). But just keep scrolling down and you’ll find the lists.

How Kindle owners can use the Web browser with FreeKindle.org

Don’t be scared if you’ve never used the Kindle’s Web browser before or don’t mess with it often.

From the Home menu, just hit the Menu key, scroll down to Experimental, press joystick-style button, then go to Basic Web Browser if you’re not there already, which you should be. Press the joystick button again.

If the enter-Web-address rectangle is cluttered with a previously made entry, hit Menu again and choose Enter URL, using the joystick. Type in FreeKindleBooks.org and hit the return button (under the DEL on your keyboard).

Other possibilities for free easy Kindle downloads…

• Mnybks.net: Unfortunately I found it harder to use for direct Kindle downloads than FreeKindlebooks.Net was.
• Feedbooks.com: Yet another. Use http://feedbooks.com/?format=mobile. Neither it nor Mnybks.net will give you as many selections as FreeKindleBooks.net will with the “experimental’ feature in use. But Feedbooks does offer some of the best-formatted books online.

…Plus a reminder that you can copy books directly from your desktop machine to the Kindle…if the desktop is handy

With the above methods, you don’t need to have a desktop machine handy.

But with a PC, Mac or Linux machine, you can use your Firefox or other browser and download a book directly to your Kindle’s solid-state storage via a USB connection.

The Kindle comes with a USB cable. Plug it in between your Kindle and your desktop. Then do the download from your desktop browser after specifying that you want the file copied to the e-reader (a Documents subfolder) rather than the desktop.

The e-reader might show up as something like Drive K. Whatever is a drive you normally don’t see!

If you use a laptop instead of a desktop, just substitute the word “laptop” for desktop.

Additional thoughts—from Paul Biba: He favors download guides over a FreeKindle.org approach

After this post appeared in its original form, Paul kindly shared his own thoughts:

“There are two Kindle catalogs that I, personally, find more convenient to use than the web browser method that David mentions above.  These are actual catalogs of the holdings of MobileRead and Feedbooks.  You download them to your Kindle, either by using the browser or by downloading them to your desktop and then adding them as a book, and then you can open them and use the search function of the Kindle to find what you want.

“Both catalogs are updated frequently, I think weekly, so you can re-download them whenever you want and keep up to date.  They are especially easy to update because both of them have links on their front page which will automatically fire up the Kindle browser and download the latest catalog to your Kindle.  The only thing you have to do, then, is to delete the old catalog as the new one does not overwrite it.

Needed: Easy downloads off the Gutenberg site

I would strongly urge Project Gutenberg to build a mobile site for Kindle-style machines, if that isn’t already planned—yes, more than just for the Kindle itself. PG seems to be moving in that direction. While cellphones are important, Gutenberg shouldn’t forget owners of Kindles and similar devices. Ideally the post I’m making now will soon be obsolete.

Granted, Sony and other vendors have Google Books ties, but PG is special because volunteers can choose which books to digitize (a plus that I wish Gutenberg would play up more often).

The ePub issue: I would vastly prefer that the existing FreeKindleBooks.org use the ePub standard. But meanwhile TeleRead will continue to serve the here-and-now needs of Kindle owners.

My discussion of The Money Changers: Here, on my Solomon Scandals site. Upton Sinclair’s expose of the financial industry is still terrifyingly timely.

(Updated 10:28 a.m. EST to include Paul’s thoughts.)

(1) “Price of devices,” (2) “price of e-books,” (3) “Smartphones,” (4) “Apple’s rumored tablet computer,” (5) popular authors’ ambiguity over e-books, (6) digital rights complexities, (7) standards issues and (8) librarians’ fears about their jobs.

So, gang, what’s your take? I myself don’t think in terms of either one kind of e-gizmo or another—or even P vs. E. For a long time, there’ll be many choices, even in the latter area. Cellphones aren’t going to kill the Kindle, or vice versa.

Related: eWeek piece arguing against e-readers and other single-use devices.

“I don’t have any info on the new store plans. This was very recently announced at a management meeting and I think it’s safe to say that it is not imminent. In the Reader group, we’re focusing very much on the near term—getting the Daily Edition out and flipping the store over to ePub. I know you are aware of our offer to update all the PRS-500s in the field. We’re working on this as well in anticipation of the store changeover in just a few short weeks. All that said, I really couldn’t say anything about what the store Sir Howard refers to will look like.”

Thanks, Val, and keep us posted—especially on hardware matters and DRM issues involving the current and planned stores.

Apparently. Fron the Kindle Facebook page:

“Kindle Customers, We have heard from many of you that you would like to have a better way to organize your growing Kindle libraries. We are currently working on a solution that will allow you to organize your Kindle libraries. We will be releasing this functionality as an over-the-air software update as soon as it is ready, in the first half of next year. – The Kindle Team.”

(Thanks to John Hagewood for the link)

But now comes word from BusinessWeek that Sony will also sell e-books elsewhere—in the new Sony Online Store, the current name.

This one will sell music, movies and downloadable apps, too. The feeling among Sony watchers is that the new Sony store will use an iTune-ish approach.No startup date has been announced. 

I’m curious if or how the new Sony store may works with the existing eBook Library software. What’s more, might the current eBookStore vanish? I don’t think so, but who knows?

Is Sony in time going to do the e-book-capable multimedia table that Apple is supposed to offer us? That certainly would jibe well with Sony’s history as a hardware company and the store’s multimedia approach. I’m just extrapolating and guessing. But if you work for a publisher and need to anticipate future possibilities, add this one to the brew.

Also, what e-book format will the new Sony store use? ePub? And what about the DRM situation? Will Adobe-DRMed ePub be the norm? And what if publishers don’t want DRM? Will Sony in fact offer publishers a choice, as I believe it’s indicated?

Apple has backed off from DRM in the real iTunes Store, at least when it comes to music (it is selling “protected” books in the ScrollMotion format). Sony should do the same with e-books.

Perhaps social DRM could be a compromise. I’ll query Sony to see if it has any word on the DRM and format issues and other book-specific details.

Related: Techmeme roundup and Google News roundup.

“Do I really have to answer? I’m not sure,” Friedman told New York University publishing students after someone asked about Open’s position on DRM. “Initially, I was very against the idea of no-DRM. But now I’m not sure."

DRM as the Lysenkoism of big publishing

Ideally she soon will be sure—of the negatives of DRM for consumer trade publishing. Among big New York publishers, the DRM ideology is a little like the old Soviet genetics. If you were a geneticist and wanted to get ahead in the Stalin years, you toed the party line and favored Trofim Lysenko’s brilliance over the shaky, unproven theories of Mendel (sarcasm alert).

Like Lysenkoism, DRM is a laugh—since it’s so easy to scan paper editions of bestsellers and put them on P2P networks; and as for typical books, publisher Tim O’Reilly is right on the mark when he says obscurity is more of an obstacle than piracy. If you want to discourage pirates, the embedding of readers’ names in e-books would be far, far more effective than the usual DRM.

Will the top people in book publishing ever wake up, given the Depression—yes, the D word, not the R word—that book publishers and other communications-related companies have been in? DRM isn’t merely an inconvenience for legitimate buyers of e-books. It just might be a job-killer—as a reducer of books’ value as a medium.

On top of everything else, DRM is a tax on readers and publishers. The technology tends to be proprietary and DRM providers need to charge for their services. In addition, DRM adds to the cost of publishers’ infrastructure and increases the compatibility challenges of the e-book industry. For now at least, reader gizmos from Amazon, Sony and B&N can’t read each other’s “protected” books. Sony and B&N hope to be able to play with each other soon, but then there are scads of other brands out there—not just dedicated e-readers but many other devices such as cellphones.

Smartly, Harlequin’s new digital-only imprint, Carina Press, tells writers that its contracts will not cover use of DRM. And O’Reilly, one of the most tech-hip of publishers, is shunning the technology in line with the wishes of the company’s founder.

For more information on Jane Friedman and Open Read: Read Sarah Weinman’s AOL Daily Finance article, source of the Friedman quotes on DRM.

In the DRM area: See The Pirates of Publishing: A view from the crow’s nest, by William Johnson, a Masters Candidate in the NYU publishing program.

The newest entrant in this product-and-service category is eGen, from Aptara, which claims eGen “produces eBook-ready content faster and at a far lower cost than other available methods.” Press release here. Data sheet here. FAQ here.

According to the latter, "eGen automatically converts illustrations and graphics, in place of the manual Photoshop intervention typically required for eBook conversion." It also "automatically converts MathML to SVG."

Supposedly it can automatically convert tables and figures. "Though there can be exceptions, based on the quality and complexity of the input. eGen identifies upfront any elements which may require manual intervention, including complex tables, large figures and large equations, and pricing details for the manual task(s) are provided accordingly."

The ePub format is of special significance since many devices like the Sony Reader use it directly. Stores associated with other e-readers, such as the Kindle, which relies mainly on proprietary format, can convert from ePub. Of course, the best solution would be the universal use of ePub at the consumer level. Imagine all the money the industry would save, as opposed to the use of proprietary approaches such as Amazon’s and ScrollMotion’s.

Meanwhile, remember that the statements in the Aptara material are from—Aptara. I’d welcome independent perspectives. Can eGen really do as good a job with charts as it claims? How to the actual costs compare with other solutions? Anyhone have any pet alternatives to mention?

A prep school in Massachusetts created an uproar by saying e-books would replace paper books in its library.

Now a private high school in Toronto says it is tossing out p-textbooks in favor of Sony e-book readers. The school has deployed at least 110 readers already and is ordering hundreds more.

“Our student survey shows that they are twice as likely to read a book available in an e-book format as in hard copy form," says Sam Blyth, chair at Blyth Academy.

Catnip for students raised on tech

There has been a growing emphasis among schools to engage student interest through technology, and this initiative appears to be, in part, a response to that. A comment from Sam Blyth is of special interest:

"When they were told they would be able to download books free, we asked them ‘Would you be more likely to read outside of school?’ they came back with a yes, and that clinched it."

As a teacher, I have long agreed with the growing chorus of e-book fans who say that the problem is not print versus e-book versus whatever, but that fewer people read for pleasure. Might not e-book readers help popularize recreational reading among the growing number of young people raised on technology?

Textbook access is just one benefit. Schools are using the readers to download other documents such as schedules to keep with them at all times

A back-saver

Meanwhile children are spared the burden of carrying traditionally bulky textbooks to and from school with them. In my work, I have seen students struggle with rolling backpacks full of binders, lunch items, school supplies and books on top of that. A slim little e-book reader would certainly remove a dozen pounds or more from the typical student load.

Granted, e-book readers might not be a perfect solution. Pearson Educational Media is providing content, and I wrote in the summer about my not very positive university-level experience with Pearson. I hope the company is offering more junior users a better vetted and more useful experience. And a future user community seems to not be available yet.

Netbooks a possibility, too—for both reading and writing

School board members in the public school system appear to be waiting for integrated virtual assessment tools and other trimmings. But some already are tech-boosters. One trustee quoted by parentcentral.ca visited a school in Littleton, Colorado, using netbooks with great success. “It was amazing to watch how involved every single kid was in what they were doing.” See a related blog item from the Littleton on the success students have achieved in writing with netbooks—which might also be used in reading.

While we don’t yet have the tools for a perfect system, Blyth is still to be praised for trying to innovate—and for taking advantage of the opportunity to try and hook students into pleasure reading while they are at it, too. There is great potential in the e-market, both for pleasure reading and for environments such as a school. I just wish publishers would realize that there are so many great things which can happen, and that the best way for them to survive and thrive in the digital age is to embrace it, rather than fight to keep the status quo forever.

Editor’s note For a different perspective, read about disabled student Robert Kingett’s reservations about the Kindle and also E-textbooks not ready for college students yet? Likewise of interest would be the New York Times series on the future of reading, including the issue of whether the Internet has helped or hurt—in addition to various viewpoints on e-books and the brain. For research findings and other observations on e-books in K-12, check out our past items on the work of Dr. Richard Bellever at Ball State University. In addition, see—from the Huffington Post—the latest version of my proposal for a well-stocked national digital library system for K-12 users and others. – D.R.

Update, 12:55 p.m.: New links: E-books go to college, but books still rule the campus, not Kindle in AOL Daily Finance and Sony Reader follows Kindle to the Great White North in Engadget. Also see Google news roundup.

Will this affect your own plans? One more Nook or Kindle sale? Or are you not interested in the Daily Edition Reader in the first place? And what do you think might be the reasons for delays?

The wireless reader is now available for preorders at least.

Or, all right, your wish list on whatever shopping site you like to use. (But let’s face it, Amazon’s marketing machine is good enough that “Amazon” and “wish list” have pretty much become synonymous over the last few years.)

But this year, Amazon has something new cooking, that may entice you away from other sites’ wish lists: the “universal” wish list button. This is a great idea for everybody who has “wishes” from multiple e-tailer websites—especially those who buy e-books elsewhere (such as Webscriptions) but use Amazon’s wish list for their Amazon purchases.

I can’t remember exactly when Amazon announced this new innovation, though I get the feeling it was recently. It works through the use of a “bookmarklet” tool that you drag to your browser’s bookmark bar.

When you find an item that you would like to add to your Amazon wish list, just click the bookmarklet, then enter the price of the item and a description. When you are done, the item appears on your Amazon Wish List, with a button to redirect the wish list viewer to the origin site for shopping purposes.

This is a very clever innovation indeed. Given that Amazon is already the “go-to” site for wish lists, this provides a way that wishers can combine their wishes from all their favorite sites in one convenient place. Even if I strongly dislike some of Amazon’s business practices (with regard to the Kindle versus Mobipocket formats, for instance), I have to tip my hat to—and make use of—such a darned useful feature.

I have already added a couple of Baen Webscription months to my Amazon wish list, as well as a BluRay DVD drive from NewEgg. I can’t wait to see what I might wish for next!

Update, 9:08 a.m.: The NYT is featuring the above headline on the Extra Home Page. Good for the Times! Ahead I’ll reproduce a screen shot of the head from Extra. Now if only the paper will retain the blog headline option! – D.R.

The New York Times is mysteriously killing the wonderful “Extra” option, which, if you turn it on, will turbo-charge the home page with blog headlines blended in with news stories. December 1 is when the option will vanish. Without offering an explanation, a home-page notice directs readers to the  Blogrunner aggregation service, which, for now, has a lower Alexa “reach” score than TeleRead.

I’m baffled why Extra option is disappearing and will ask the Times for an answer. “Extra” is one reason why I spend far more time with the Times than the Washington Post even though I live in the D.C. area.  Is  “Extra” not bringing in enough readers to justify the bother of having it? Is the Times worried that outside blogs are enjoying too much exposure? Or does it want to protect Blogrunner? In the Times place, I’d worry more about the total number of eyeballs and less about Blogrunner individually.

And speaking of the Times: Story shows how the Times still doesn’t get e-books

The smartphone-vs.-dedicated-reader debate, long familiar to TeleRead community members, is the topic of a feature called Library in a pocket.

The most interesting stat is from the Codex Group—predicting that there might be four million owners of Kindles and other dedicated devices after the holidays, far more than the current estimate of 1.7 million. There are 84 million smart phones and similar, at least 50 million of which, being iPhones and iPod Touches, can run e-book software like Stanza and a Kindle app.

Sure enough, as required by law, the Gray Lady ends the feature with a story of a father who keeps paper books around for his kid. Hmm. Does this mean that parents should do likewise with paper newspapers? Just as oddly, the Times does the future-of-books act with too much of either-or-approach. An e-book-hip reader responds with, “Does the future of transportation lie in airplanes, or cars?” As someone who goes back and forth between an iPod, a laptop and E Ink devices and a desktop, I’m hardly alone; and stories like this annoy the hell out of me.

Update, 9:08 a.m.: What this post’s headline looks like on the home page of the NYT’s Extra Home Page

To the New York Times’ credit, it is now featuring the above headline on the Extra Home Page. This is how it looks—a kind of virtual hall of mirrors.

Reminder/Disclosure

We’re a news-and-views outfit, and it’s always possible we may have dealings with the Times—or other media. That said, as you can see from the above, we’ll not let business issues get in the way of our coverage.

But if you use a Linux desktop and are sufficiently adventuresome, yes, you can use the Wine Windows simulator to run Kindle for PC.

Details at Lifehacker. Anyone care to tell how the tip there works out?

“More than 90 top newspapers and magazines are available in the Kindle Store for single purchase or subscription. Available for the first time on Kindle is the National Post. Additionally, all of Canwest’s major daily newspapers will be available on Kindle. They join top papers such as Le Monde (France), the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph (U.K.) and the Washington Post.

The Canadian-targeted Kindle is said to let you choose from 300,000 books although blogs and Web browsing apparently are not available (thanks, eBook Reader).

Big thanks to Steve Windwalker, TeleRead contributor and editor of Kindle Nation Daily, our original tip source in this case! That’s Steve shown on the Kindle screen.

Some Sony hardware news today: Wireless Sony e-reader apparently ready for preorder now—and meanwhile the Sony PRS-500 firmware update is out.

Press release…

National Post welcomes Kindle to Canada

Further to today’s announcement by Amazon.com, National Post, and soon all of Canwest’s big city daily newspapers, will be available on Kindle devices.

“Whether in print, online, or on-the-go on mobile devices and smartphones, our quality journalism is accessible to Canadians where when and how they want it, throughout their day,” said Dennis Skulsky President and CEO Canwest Publishing. “Amazon’s Kindle is another exciting step and whatever comes next, we’ll be there too. We’re excited to be celebrating Kindle’s arrival today and I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to explore and develop innovations in multi media publishing and outlets for our unparalleled content.”

“This is great news for National Post fans who can now subscribe to the full edition and have it “delivered” daily, wherever they are in the world,” said Gordon Fisher, Publisher National Post.

This is also great news for Canadians who already use Kindle devices “down south”. According to the Canadian Snowbird Association there are in excess of 100,000 Snowbirds that flee the harsh Canadian winter and head to all parts South every year. For those who enjoy using their Amazon Kindle while in the US, for the first time this season, they will be able to subscribe to their favourite Canadian hometown or national newspaper too.

Kindle devices and newspaper subscriptions are available exclusively at The Kindle Store www.amazon.com/kindlestore.

About Canwest Global Communications Corp.

Canwest Global Communications Corp. (www.canwest.com) is Canada’s largest media company. In addition to owning the Global Television Network, operating 18 industry-leading specialty channels and having ownership in 5 specialty channels, Canwest is Canada’s largest publisher of English language paid daily newspapers and owns and operates more than 80 online properties.

Go here, and let us know if there’s a problem preordering the PRS-900.

Nov. 18 had been mentioned earlier as the starting preorder date by TechFlash in Eric Engleman’s Q&A with Steve Haber, president of the Sony digital reading division.

The Daily Edition will actually begin shipping on or around December 18 if information from a TeleRead community member is correct (thanks, eBook Reader!).

December is also the month when Sony is to reveal the newspapers and magazines that will be available for the device. I just hope the presentation of news content is more efficient than the Kindle’s. I can’t get to the stories lickety-split the way I can reading the New York Times mobile edition on my little iPod Touch.

So who’s carrying Sony Readers right now, or about to? “Wal-mart, Best Buy, Target, Staples, Borders,” Haber has told TechFlash. “Last season was about 3,500 outlets. This year it’s 9,000. Best Buy, this is the first time they have it in stores. It was just online last year. This is a significant push for them. Wal-mart will be more stores than last year. And Staples is all new. Toys R Us.”

Meanwhile, if you own the original Sony PRS-500, you can either update your firmware or trade in the 500 for a new ePub-capable model and get a $50-$75 discount (via MobileRead). You’ll have to send in the 500 for an update—your can’t do it at home.

(Updated at 9:30 a.m.)

Related: Sony, B&N better on DRM than Amazon—but still a long way from perfection.