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.

All this just to save a few hardback sales? And because he lives in the UK instead of elsewhere? Most e-book readers I know don’t buy hardback novels anyway, so it’s not quite the same market.

I would love to get an educated take from publishers. My bottom line on this is, I think the time has come for them to stop explaining why things are the way they are. Instead publishers should tell what their timeline is for fixing this mess, what steps will be involved, and to whom we as readers (and customers!) might address our emails to get things moving along.

We need to show the ones in charge how much we care about this and how much money the publishing industry stands to lose here.

Like most e-book fans, I read the news with interest. Following the not unexpected but still disappointing news that neither the international Kindle nor the B&N Nook would be made available to Canadians soon, I started wondering about people who shop based on features and people who shop based on brand loyalty.

I always thought I was a tough customer who researched every purchase carefully and shopped on the features. But as I read the details about these spiffy new products—available to everyone but YOU, Ficbot, you CANADIAN, you—I looked at my Sony in a new light.

Canada love from Sony

Sony loves Canada. They want me to buy their readers. I got mine in a store, even! Retail! From a clerk who even was properly trained and knew his stuff! Sony has given me the Mac software. They have given me the Google Books access.

The Sony Reader is my only hardware besides a proper computer on which I can read library books—and my local library system seems to loves the Sony just as much as the Sony loves them, because they have about 200 novels, as recent as the new Dan Brown best-seller, available in ePub and PDF via Overdrive.  Add in the non-fiction and young adult categories, and there are about 300 books I can download for free, from home, and read on the go. And what does it say on the Overdrive FAQ about the Amazon Kindle? No library books for you! Take that, America!

All kidding aside, my takeaway from all this is an important one. The PR war may be as important, at least in some markets, as the actual product features. Sony has been in the game long enough to prove that they are committed to their e-book customers. I read Project Gutenberg books on a 1st gen Clie when I was living overseas where I had limited access to books. I have progressed since then to other gizmos, including my beloved 505 from Sony. When Amazon offered wireless, Sony matched it. When ePub became an emerging standard, Sony heartily approved. Lesson number one: the features aren’t so important. If I wait long enough, Sony will match them eventually.

And lesson number two: given the choice, I would prefer Sony to, because for the first time in my techie life, I am feeling brand loyal. I buy Macs because they work better for me, not from any particular love of Apple. if someone else made something cheaper that worked just as well, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. But the Sony…nobody else has cared about the Canadian market, and there was Sony going, “Hi, Canada! Amazon locked you out, but WE have a Canadian store! With Mac support! And Google Books.” There was every e-tailer slapping on the geographical restrictions, and a month later, half those books are available through Overdrive at my public library for free. Readable only on…The Sony.

So, if anyone from Sony is reading this, I have a message for you. Sony, you have won the PR war, at least as far as this reader goes. You have earned my loyalty.

I can’t promise I won’t be tempted by a snazzy new feature or two (hint: some people want to use dictionary lookups with languages other than English…) And I can’t promise an Apple Tablet won’t woo me to the dark side. But I appreciate that you’ve been plugging away at the Canadian market when everyone else is shunning us so unjustly. I’ll keep an eye on you, and prefer your products should they do the job for me.

Just how can publishers get e-shoppers to click on the Buy button more often—and also make e-books less of a hassle for them?

I’m not CEO of Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and I won’t vouch that all ideas here are feasible. But maybe they can help. I’d love to get responses from publishers. Perhaps they’ll have their own twists to add.

Idea #1: Settle on a format, commit to it and reduce barriers to its usage and adoption.

Reading as a hobby is on the decline, overall. Publishers can’t afford to alienate any potential readers. Especially among the younger set, we are seeing a rise toward multiuse devices. Publishers need to adjust.

There will always be dedicated readers like me who buy devices like the Sony Reader, but the vast majority of future readers will be sneaking in book breaks on cell phones and netbooks (photo) while waiting for the subway.

So your ticket to profit is going to be in volume—you want to get those books onto as many devices as possible. And that’s where a common format, if presented well on different devices, could help.

One possibility—not the only one—is the ePub standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum. While publishers are moving in this direction, perhaps they can accelerate their efforts if they like ePub. eBabel muddles are the enemy of sales.

Dropping proprietary DRM, of course, would make ePub more of a true standard. Adobe-DRMed ePub will not be compatible with the eReader-DRMed ePub on the way.

Besides, does DRM really reduce piracy enough to justify the hassles for consumers, many of whom want to read the same books on different devices?  iTunes ditched the DRM for music, and it worked. eMusic, the second-place digital music seller, never had DRM in the first place. DRM inhibits people from buying. Even Amazon has set up an MP3 store without DRM.

Publishers also need to re-think the use of DRM to reinforce geographical restrictions. I have written to half a dozen authors myself when restrictions prevented me from buying books. When I explained to them how I sat there at the computer, credit card in hand, ready to buy their book—only not—trust me, they were all very concerned!

Idea #2: Study some models that work, and copy them

Amazon has a great feature called “People who bought this book also bought…” Perhaps publishers should try this too. Let’s say the book you are browsing has won an award. How about a link to other books that also won it? Along with an iTunes-style “Click here to buy the whole list” button?

The reality is, there are so many books, people don’t always know what to read and browsing a very large catalogue (like the Google Books catalogue) can be daunting.

Make it easy, in ways that only a limitless, computer-based system can. Remember, you don’t need to worry about stocking copies of everybody’s backlist. It’s all right there on-line.

This technique can be especially beneficial for lesser-known authors. My public library has a series of leaflets for various popular authors which suggest lesser-known alternatives for readers who have exhausted that author’s catalogue already.

Are you a Stephen King fan? The leaflet can suggest several other horror authors you might enjoy. Better yet, include the leaflet as a clickable HTML file at the end of every King novel—and don’t forget the ‘click here to buy the whole list’ button!

Idea #3: Standardize your prices, and consider adding value to the higher-ticket items

This is another “It works for iTunes” idea: standardized or almost-standardized prices.

At least one Web site lets people compare the e-book price at several different stores. Even a loyal patron of Sony, Fictionwise or Books on Board can be tempted to jump ship for lower prices. Special sales and promotions differ at every venue, so it pays to comparison-shop.

Publishers, you can eliminate this time-killer for the customer (because honestly, wouldn’t you rather they spend the time reading, so they can come back and buy more books?) by standardizing prices.

Amazon has done very well with its $9.99 price point, and iTunes has done well with its no-brainer $0.99 songs. The trick is making the price point low enough to snag impulse buyers.

I have heard the argument that e-books really are not that much cheaper to produce than print books. You’re battling public perception on this, regardless of whether it’s true or not, and you’ve got to accept that if you want to move forward with a good plan here.

People simply won’t pay a hardback price for a digital file, especially one for a book for which most of the work in editing, designing. etc. was already done anyway for the print version.

Are you hell-bent on $9.99 being too low? Or do you have an older book for which there is no print edition ready to quickly convert from? As a customer, I would hesitate to buy your item at the wrong price. I can often get a print copy for free at the library. But if it’s something I want to own, and the price is higher, I would consider it if there were some value-added reason to.

Book club guide? Interviews with the author? Critical essays? A special backgrounder section with some of the author’s research? A password-only blog or Web site which requires a code from the e-book in order to be accessed? Think about people who buy or rent DVDs of movies they’ve already seen. They want to see the extra features.

Idea #4: Strategic partnerships can be your friend

The Sony/Google Books collaboration has been interesting, but it’s been hampered in part by poor quality control on Google’s side.

But what about a vetted collection? A smart bookstore could pick some popular titles, do a little proofing (perhaps using some sort of automated system where users can sign up for an account and submit their own corrections?) and sell the resulting e-books for a small sum—for example, $2.

People are willing to pay a small amount for something they know is error-free. The bookstore and Google can split the money between them, and, voila, turn extra profits.

There are other ways to use strategic partnerships to one’s marketing advantage. For example, I read a mystery series where the main character was a pharmacist. How about advertising those books in a drugstore chain? Or perhaps offering a promotion in those stores where customers who spend a certain sum get a discount code they can use on the e-book? Or even get the e-book for free if they buy a certain product or spend a certain sum?

Idea #5: Consider integrating a print-on-demand infrastructure into your e-book empire

How about this? People can browse your e-book Web site, order the e-book on the spot, and send it to their nearest bookstore for printing and subsequent pick-up.

Or they can browse in-store and do it all on the spot. Or they can buy the latest series novel by a popular author, and not have to worry about whether Book 1 is in stock or not for them to get caught up on.

All they have to do is take the new book to the print-on-demand machine, scan it in, and have the option to get the other books immediately, in print or in e-book version (or both, in a bundle!). If you integrate your e-book storefront into this, any content they buy in-store will be ready for download once they get home, via their regular account. Or they can view the recommendations for “People who enjoyed this book also bought…” and see if there’s anything else they might like to read with the book.

Or how about this? They buy Book 1 in the store, finish it at home at midnight, and decide they want book 2. Buy it now, on the Web site. Or use the POD integration to send it to the bookstore for pick-up tomorrow. When it’s this easy, who wouldn’t buy books?

It’s all about making it easy for customers to find, buy and read books of all types. The more you sell, the happier everyone will be. Your customers can find and enjoy your product, and you can remain profitable in this changing—but growing—market

Image: Creative Common-licensed art from edkohler.

But meanwhile here’s a post for shoppers. How are you looking for specific e-book titles and comparing prices? Just what search engines are the most helpful? Other techniques?

One possibility, noted by Frode Aleksandersen, is eBookPrice.info. Have you tried it? How helpful is it for locating titles—and the best prices? In the U.S., the site covers amazon.com, booksonboard.com, cyberread.com, diesel-ebooks.com, ebooks.com, ereadable.com, fictionwise.com, powells.com, sony.com and textbooks.com. In the U.K., it compares waterstones.co.uk and borders.co.uk.

Needless to say, a major question arises here. How about well-run e-bookstores that don’t offer the best prices but have well organized sites and exemplary services?

If price is the only major factor, will we be giving away the game to Amazon? And I’m not just talking about online. How about indie bookstores in the real world, offline? Here in the D.C. area, the wonderful Trover Shop just closed its Capitol Hill store, partly due to Internet discounters.

The recent posts from Martin Taylor, and my dialogue with him about the non-existent state of New Zealand e-book publishing, had me thinking about my own country.

Not enough Canadian titles are buyable as e-books.

Canada may not be the United States, but it’s hardly the jungle hinterlands, and many of our best authors are popular both here and in the U.S,. and elsewhere. Three of the authors I discuss below are winners of the Man Booker Prize, such as Margaret Atwood (photo); one is a Pulitzer winner; and two have been featured in Oprah’s Book Club. If you think that should make the books popular enough to merit e-book versions, though, you would be sadly mistaken.

I made a list of twenty Canadian authors whose works I have enjoyed and who I felt were reasonably popular enough to have at least some name recognition, certainly in Canada and in most cases, abroad as well. And then I went to Fictionwise to see what was available. My results were mixed.

One author has nearly all her catalogue up there—Kelley Armstrong, a sci-fi/romance author. A few others had a handful of recent titles, but nothing from their back catalogues, and not the books for which they were best known and/or for which they had won major awards. Quite a few authors had nothing at all available.

I know e-books are still considered a bit of a niche market. It didn’t surprise me that the genre author had all her stuff up there, and the literary authors were less represented. But here is a thought I would dearly like the publishers to consider. Will you sell a lot of e-books by literary authors? Maybe not. But will you sell any if you fail to make them even available? Absolutely not! You have to play the game if you want to score a point or two!

I’ll post my prescription for ‘domestic’ publishers, be they from New Zealand or from Canada or from wherever, in a separate post. But to start things off in this important dialogue, here are my Canadian top twenty, and the results of my search for their work in ebook form.

Twenty Canadian authors and their e-offerings

• Kelley Armstrong – This popular fantasy writer known for her ‘Women of the Underworld’ series seems fairly well-represented. She has 14 e-titles listed at Fictionwise.
• Margaret Atwood – A Canadian legend, a seven-time finalist for the Governor-General’s Award and a Booker winner. How many e-books? Only four.
• George Elliott Clarke- Another multi-talented award-winner. Another zero-e-book author. Sigh.
• Douglas Coupland – Only one e-book, and it isn’t even one of his popular ones. No ‘Generation X’? No ‘Microserfs’? Really?
• Robertson Davies – Mo e-books for him either
• Cory Doctorow – That rarest of rare things, a Canadian pioneer. Only four ebooks at Fictionwise, all of them saddled with DRM. But he puts everything on the Web for free.
• Will Ferguson – Why I Hate Canadians is perhaps a little too niche, but he did write a Dummies book too. Alas, it is not available, nor is anything else by this guy.
• Timothy Findley – Two of his recent ones are available, but none of his older stuff (including ‘Not Wanted on the Voyage, my personal favorite).
• Wayne Johnston – Two e-books available. Not the two historical novels that made him famous, but oh well. At least we’re starting somewhere…
• Joy Kogawa – Obasan is a Canadian classic, widely read in schools. No e-version though…
• Anne-Marie McDonald- Nothing. Not even the one Oprah picked.
• Stuart McLean – This guy has a large collection of books based on his radio show. None are available as e-books. I did find one item at Fictionwise by “Stuart Mclean.” but I can’t be sure it’s
  the same guy
• Yann Martel – Nothing. Not even Life of Pi, which won the Booker Prize.
• Rohinton Mistry – He’s won the Booker, and like McDonald, been recommended by Oprah. You’d think that would make him popular enough to merit an e-version or two. Apparently not. Nothing at Fictionwise…
• Alice Munro – Four books available. She’s written 16. And she’s also won the Booker, among other things…
• Michael Ondaatje – Four books. Like others here, they seem to be starting with the most recent, so good luck getting ‘The English Patient’ which is not among the offerings…
• Nino Ricci – Nothing in e-book by this Governer General’s Award two-time winner. And just for fun, I looked up his wife, who is also a novelist and from whom I took a creative writing course once. Nothing by her either.
• David Adams Richards – None of his dozen-odd novels have made it to e-book yet. Not even the ones which won prizes.
• Mordecai Richler – Nothing by this Canadian legend, but I did find his daughter Emma’s debut novel—not its sequel, mind you. Just the first one. But we have to start somewhere, right?
• Carol Shields- Nothing. Not even ‘The Stone Diaries’ which won the Pulitzer.

Anyone still having trouble with already-downloaded books? Of course any fix still won’t solve the basic issue—the continued existence of geo-restrictions, period. Hello, publishers and literary agents? When are you going to fix that?

Related: Fictionwise forced to impose geo-restrictions on ALREADY-bought book? Lit agents unwittingly promoting piracy? and Fictionwise backing down a bit on geo-ban—for some customers’ already-bought books?

How to organize your recipe? Use index cards? A database online?

 Lifehacker drew 193 comments when it asked those questions.  Cooking is more of a passion than ever, given the high cost of eating out.

Eat at home. Save money, save the planet!

But how do you manage all those great recipe finds? Why is this so difficult for many?

Click on the above screenshot for a detailed view showing what I’ve been up to, with the wonderful Calibre program. More on it—and other solutions—will follow after the basics.

Why recipes are hard to manage and organize

Three main reasons:

• The recipe information is not centrally organized in one place. Many of us get new recipes from a mix of books (some of which might belong to the library or to other people), newspapers, magazines, Web sites and friends. It’s not like buying a copy of a novel (it’s all right there, and you read it and you’re done).

• The information is not always in an easy-to-reach place. For example, it might be stored on your computer, or in a bulky book that does not lie flat or is not portable if you wish to cook in someone else’s kitchen. And if you are at the store doing your shopping, are you going to lug The Joy of Cooking with you? Probably not.
• Computer-based solutions often rely on database engines, which can make it time-consuming and difficult to get your recipes inputted. For example, you can’t just type “3 cups tomato juice” in some programs because 3 is an amount, cups is a unit and tomato juice is an ingredient, so these all have to entered into separate fields. And once you do have it in there, you need to have a way to take it with you, which  leaves you with one more thing to organize.

Simple needs, but not simple solutions

My own needs were simple. I wanted to be able to sit down during a break at work, browse my recipes, see what ingredients they needed, and make a shopping list so I could stop on my way home. Then I wanted to go into the kitchen and have something to refer to as I cooked. You wouldn’t think this would be so difficult!

I was a step ahead of the game, too, because I already had most of my frequently used recipes on the computer. I occasionally track my eating for a few days, both as a check-up to make sure that I am not overdoing the calories, and because I have to watch my nutrition a little since some restrictions due to food allergies make iron and calcium an issue. So I gradually built up a little collection in Spark Recipes. This Web site automatically calculates the nutritional information for any recipes you enter, and is linked with Spark People, the website I use when I’m tracking. I can open up a recipe on Spark Recipes, click a button and add it to my log for the day.

Once you have the recipes in there, it’s easy to use, and a helpful tool for those who need to track their eating. But how to take it with me? At work, I have Internet access, so I can prepare my meal plan and shopping list. But once I am in the kitchen, I need a printout. I don’t have a full desk in my current home. What a hassle to drag out the printer from the closet every time I want to make noodle soup! I was resorting to post-it note crib sheets. Surely there was a better way?

The e-book answer

I looked into some iPod Touch apps, but found them lacking. I did not relish the thought of re-typing the recipes into something again when they were already on Spark Recipes. I especially did not relish the thought of doing it on the Touch’s tiny virtual keyboard! And the iPod shuts itself off after a minute or so—-not exactly practical when one is trying to follow a recipe in real-time!

Then I thought of compiling them all into an e-book. But adding any sort of manageable browsing features such as an index or table of contents is time-consuming, and the thought of having to edit and then re-convert the whole thing every time I added a new recipe was a turn-off. If only each recipe could be its OWN book—-wait, why couldn’t it be?

I opened up Spark Recipes, clicked on a recipe, opened up the ‘print’ window and copied everything. Then I pasted it into KompoZer, my Web page program. Bingo! The whole recipe was there, including the nutritional calculation, all in about two clicks. At that point, all I had to do was get the recipe collection onto the Sony in a way that didn’t clutter up the book collection part.

Calibre to the rescue…again

I use Calibre to manage my Sony Reader. It uses tags to allocate items to collections, which are grouped together on the Reader in neat little sub-sets for easy browsing and selecting.

This is an ideal set-up for recipes. I could easily group them into sub-types and use the collections to browse only the desired category. Looking for a dinner recipe, but only a soup? Or, on a summer’s day, anything but a soup? Just set the tags accordingly and browse away. And ‘books’ can be part of more than one collection. I don’t tend to go overboard with the tags (I have only four collections for the recipes) but if you want to be that specific, go nuts. The collections list sorts alphabetically, so they’ll all wind up in the same general area when you’re looking for them.

I saved each recipe as an HTML file, imported them into Calibre, used the built-in converter to make Sony-friendly RTF files, then tagged them into four collections:

• Recipes: Entrees
• Recipes: Other
• Recipes: Snacks
• Recipes: Soups

The alphabetical auto-sort is handy—I don’t need to go hunting all over the reader, and they don’t get in the way of my various fiction collections. And when I want to add a new recipe, I don’t need to worry about editing a massive master file, or adding entries to an index, or filing pieces of paper in some sort of binder or book and remembering to bring it with me when I shop, plan or cook. I just copy the recipe, save it, and throw it into Calibre. Tag it, load it, and off we go.

Easier to cook and shop

It’s so easy to plan meals now. A few times a week, I’ll go out, or I’ll eat something simple and quick that can be made with pantry staples. About twice a week, I’ll cook a ‘proper’ recipe and freeze the leftovers. Now that I have my e-cookbook, all I need to do is decide ‘will I be cooking a soup, or will I be cooking an entree?’ Then I just open up the relevant collection, browse for something interesting, and two button-clicks later, I have the full instructions, with nutrition information and ingredient listings, ready for study.

Too lazy to go even as far as I did? Don’t worry about cookbooks, or magazines or Spark Recipes. Just cut and paste directly from your favorite recipe website. I like Recipe Zaar, but here are some other popular ones:

• All Recipes.
• Epicurious.
• Cooks.com.
• The Food Network.

There are blogs and message boards aplenty. Find something interesting, copy and paste it into a word processor, save it as whatever file type and load it up. Calibre handles HTML files very nicely and can convert them into many file formats, and some readers like the Sony can accept RTF, Word or PDF files without further converting.

This is by far the best recipe solution I’ve ever found. I love having everything right there to browse and use!

My Sony Reader is a teacher’s pet. Mine. I’m the teacher, and it’s a valuable classroom tool.

How? Well, I don’t just use my Reader for “reading” in the traditional sense. It’s also as a way to take long or important files with me for reading on the go.

My instruction manuals, recipes message board threads, magazine articles and anything text-based—I can easily save them all in HTML. Then I can import the files into Calibre and tag them to group into collections, which I can then load into my Sony.

Please note that the Sony isn’t the only reader useful for taking along professional materials and personal documents. You might be able to do the same thing with your Kindle, for example, or Cybook, iLiad or Be Book. If the material isn’t in digital form, perhaps you can scan and OCR it.

One recent use I have found for my Reader is managing my unit plans for teaching. I live in Canada and teach primary school French, and the program we use is music-and-drama based. I haven’t loaded any of the stories onto my Reader—I use paper ones, as the children do, so I can model it for them—but the Sony is already a helpful place to store my lessons.

A teaching guide

Each unit is based around a play, and it comes with all the material one needs for the children, as well as a massive spiral-bound teaching guide with step-by step teaching activities. The activities are sequential, meant to be done in order. They are very well-planned and include a lot of detail. Here is an example of a typical 1-2 page activity from the teaching guide:

Note: Scripted text is in French; translated to English here for illustration. Words in ALL CAPS are new vocabulary from the lesson’s word list

ACTIVITY 43: Targeted Gesture Teaching and ReviewMultiple intelligences: verbal-linguistic, interpersonal, kinesthetic, spatial
Language skills: speaking, listening

As you can see, there is a lot of superfluous information. It’s important to read the manual once through so that one understands the language skills being used, and the multiple intelligences at play in the program. But when teaching subsequently, it’s self-explanatory. It’s obvious that the children will be speaking and listening. It’s obvious that if you tell the children, “This is a DVD,” you should then show it to them. It’s obvious that if a student gives you the correct answer, you should praise them. And it’s obvious too why each manual is about 400 pages!

Hassle to drag in the actual paper books

That said, I’ve found in the past that I have been hampered by being too lazy to bring the book with me. Sometimes, I plan to do one activity, and actually get through it faster than I thought. If I rely on post-it note cheat sheets, I may not have information about the next activity ready and available when and where I want it.

But carrying the books around with me is not an option either. Most French teachers, myself included, don’t have dedicated classrooms. I share a resource cupboard in another classroom with the gym teacher and carry around my things in a tote while I travel around from class to class.

My typical load: a calendar for the entry routine, a folder with my schedule and memos, puppets for the JK/SK classes, a ball to use for filler games, oversize ‘big books’ for reading the play with the kids, any photocopies I need of work for the children to complete with me, a netbook with all my MP3s and Power Points on music days—the list goes on and on.

I have two grade levels doing this program, so that’s two unit guides, with all their accoutrements, and about half of it duplicated content anyway—the first hundred-odd pages are all about the philosophy of the program, charts showing how it meets the provincial curriculum requirements etc. and are the same in every unit guide. And as we have seen, the actual lesson parts are not brief.

Organizing challenges

Thankfully, the unit guides have an appendix with all the word lists in order. For awhile, I was working off of a photocopy of these, accompanied by a checklist of rough lesson descriptions. Every time I did a lesson with the kids, I would refer to the checklist for a hint of what we were meant to be doing, then flip back to the word list and keep that out while I was teaching.

It wasn’t the best system because I didn’t have the space on the word list page for any notes or reminders, so I’d often find myself rooting in my bag during a lesson for a page I didn’t have out with me. And two of my three older classes are doing the same play, so I had double the paper cluttering up my bag, which made it harder to find things, and harder to ensure that when I did find it, I had the one for the group I was with.

The complete book

What I really needed was to have the bulky teacher book in front of me, only less bulky and with all the superfluous information edited out. A summary of the activity, the words needed for it, and a brief line or two of any mnemonic notes would suffice. I needed more than random sticky notes, but less than a 400-page teaching manual.

I finally had the brainstorm to put it all on my Reader. I had about 100 lessons per unit to go through.

For each, I wrote a brief description and then plugged in the word list. It was about a 2-3 hour investment for each play, but it was worth it because now I am set for the year. Instead of having a bulky teacher’s guide in front of me, I have my reader. It’s small and convenient. I can easily turn the page when we’re finished and have the next activity ready to go at any time.

Used to Ms. Gizmo

The kids are so used to seeing me with gadgets that they hardly notice the Reader. When I start my lesson, I can just open up their file, and there I am, just where I left off the last time. The Sony remembers my place. Best of all, being a computer file, it’s easy to copy.

My two Grade 1 classes do the same play, but because they only have French four days a week, and sometimes not on the same days, they aren’t always at the same point in the unit work. I can have two copies of my little guidebook, one for each of them, and pick up my lesson exactly where I need to for each different group.

Here is the above two-page lesson, in its entirely, following the edits I did:

ACTIVITY 43: Gesture Teaching/ReviewWord list:
taille
casse
problème
par accident
désolé
apporte

E-book version not full replacement for teaching guide

I am not saying my ebook version can replace a well-written teaching guide completely, of course. As a teacher, I need to know my stuff, and the philosophy, teaching tips, curriculum guidelines and other details are important. But they are not so important that I need to carry around 2-3 versions of them in my poor, over-loaded tote and have them in front of me for the moment I am teaching. I can keep those on the cupboard for review during planning, and use my little ebook version for the quick and dirty ‘teach this now’ part of my day.

I love having the word list and lesson description in front of me in the same place. I love that if we finish something early, the next activity is always ready to go. I love that I can keep separate versions of the teaching guide for each class, and let the Reader remember for me where I left off with each of them. And I love that I can keep my entire school-wide curriculum in my hands at any moment, at home, when planning, and in front of my eyes when I teach. I can’t believe I didn’t think to put this all on my Reader sooner!

I am sick and tired of endless blog commentary regarding Amazon’s “dominance” in the “e-book market.”

Amazon is not dominating the “e-book market” because it is not participating in the “e-book market.” It is participating in the American market, and according to stats posted earlier in this very blog, it only has 45 percent even there.

That sounds like a lot, but the flipside of 45 percent is the 55 percent Amazon is not occupying—and nearly all of that chunk is filled by Sony, which “dominates” the market elsewhere by default, since Amazon won’t play outside the USA.

Why an Apple Tablet could crush the Kindle

My prediction? The rumored Apple Tablet will be an oversizef, Kindle-sized iPod Touch. It will run all existing iPod Touch/iPhone apps, including Stanza and eReader, which will mean that its adopters can read not just the Internet freebies but also encrypted ePub (the rising standard) and the secure eReader favored by e-book giant Fictionwise/Barnes and Noble.

It will work with WiFi just like the Touch, so it’ll be available here in the non-3G hinterlands of Canada. And it will kill the Kindle dead, dead, dead.

I am not saying Amazon isn’t “dominating” the hype war for the moment. But to say that it is dominating the “e-book market” when it is a USA-focused company—and not even at 50 percent of the market there—is quickly becoming offensive to the rest of us. There are dozens of other English-speaking countries out there where Amazon won’t play ball. And there are many dozens of other countries where expat Americans and other English speakers are a growing e-book market.

Say that Amazon is “dominating” the American market if you want to. It’s not quite true, but 45 percent is an impressive market share. And say that they are “dominating” the hype war, too. But dominating the “e-book market?” Not so much. And as soon as a major global player like Apple gets its act together, my prediction is going to be “not at all.”

Editor’s note: See the Wiktionary defintion of “dominance.” What do people think of the first def as applied to the Kindle? “1. The state of being dominant; of prime importance; supremacy.” – D.R.

I can’t speak for all buyers, but if you want to know why I buy or don’t buy from various sites—well, here’s the lowdown. No ESP needed. I hope this is useful to retailers and aspiring self-publishers of e-books, although most of the sites named here don’t accept titles from the latter group.

Self-publishers face a daunting learning curve these days. So many stores, so many formats, what to do? Many novices begin with Amazon—Amazon makes it easy, and enjoys a large market share. But the company’s Kindle side officially focuses just on the United States, leaving out me and many other voracious readers (I’m Canadian). Sorry, Amazon. Here’s where I am buying e-books.

Stop One: Fictionwise

Fictionwise (screenshot), which normally does not deal with the self-published, is my preferred e-book store, for several reasons. Firstly, the Fictionwise site is the most pleasant of the big storefronts to navigate. I have checked out its main competitor, Books on Board, and can never seem to find things there when I just browse; I need to have a certain title in mind.

I also have time/effort/resources already expended on the Fictionwise Buywise Club for frequent buyers. This makes Fictionwise often the cheapest source for me because I get a member discount. I also get rebates from them when I buy certain books and I can use these rebates to keep buying more. I have an incentive to shop there because I get money back to spend on other things.

Additionally, Fictionwise has the largest selection of DRM-free multiformat books. I have switched devices several times during my patronage and appreciate that each time I do, I can go back and re-download my past purchases in the format I need for my new device. It is very important to me that my purchases are readable in the future because it is, to me, the great benefit of e-books over print books. I have had to give up print books in the past due to lack of space to store them. With that not being an issue with e-books, I like the idea that I can keep them forever. I would not want to buy an e-book that was so infested with restrictive DRM that its future usability on a device of my choosing would ever be in question.

I also appreciate that Fictionwise offers e-magazine subscriptions as part of its inventory. Again, for me, this has been a space issue in the print world. I like that I can subscribe to a magazine, be able to download it in the format of my choosing, and keep it forever just like a book. I have been reading Asimovs this year and might change to Alfred Hitchcock next year. It’s been a treat for me to get a new issue added to my bookshelf every month.

Finally, I appreciate the one-stop shopping aspect. I like having a record of all my purchases in one spot, and I like being able to log in at any time and have all my past purchases right there for reference and re-download. It’s so much easier than having to back up individual files myself from any of a dozen different solo author websites!

Stop Two: eReader.com

I have not bought from eReader.com (owned by Fictionwise and also closed to self-publishers) yet, but its recent price-matching of Amazon’s $9.99 for new releases and best-sellers, has put eReader on my radar, and it offers different promotions from Fictionwise which might make one book or the other a better buy from eReader at any given moment.

Unfortunately the DRM-locked eReader format is not readable on my Sony. If it’s a real bargain price and an author I love, I may go for it since I can easily read it on my iPod Touch. But I prefer to do the bulk of my leisure reading on the Sony; and if a book cannot be easily and quickly used with that device, I hesitate to buy it. I can say without hesitation that the $1,000 and change I have spent on e-books so far would be at least double if DRM were not an issue and I did not have to worry about such things. Publishers and authors have absolutely lost real, legitimate sales from this!

Stop Three: Smashwords

This is another Web site which has recently entered my radar but from which I have not yet purchased. I love that in nearly every case, you can sample part of the book for free to make sure you’ll like it. Plus, Smashwords is friendly to independent writers and offers many self-published titles that other sites don’t carry.

I have already bought one e-book based on a sample; a prior Fictionwise read of mine had the first chapter of the author’s other book included as a bonus, and I liked it enough to buy the second book. Also, if I do read a book and I enjoy it enough to recommend it to friends, the sample allows them to check out my recommendation without a big commitment of time and money. They can read the free sample and make their own decision.

The only problem I have had with Smashwords so far is that I am unfamiliar with nearly all the authors. I have a lot of backlog in my To Read pile right now, so I have not had a lot of time to go exploring. But an author adept at self-marketing who gets on my radar could absolutely convert me into a Smashwords customer. That Web site is absolutely built on a model I could get behind!

Stop Four: Baen Books

As a reader, I love Baen Books’ business model (the company tends to give away the first book for free in hopes of hooking you into the series) and love that Baen offers a range of formats in a DRM-free approach similar to the Fictionwise multiformat offerings. The only reason I am not a more avid customer: I don’t read a ton of conventional sci-fi. If someone recommends something to me, I will absolutely check it out and see what it’s about. But as with Smashwords, I need someone to get me there first. Unfortunately Baen isn’t for self-published writers.

Now, where don’t I shop, and why not?

• Amazon, for the obvious reasons (no Sony support, and more importantly, no Canada support).
• Scribd (okay for browsing short documents, but every long document I have ever downloaded from Scribd has been an absolutely horrifically messy PDF with no proper line breaks and has looked terrible on my Sony, although I understand that Scribd is working to phase in ePub for many titles).
• Bookstores with restrictive DRM and onerous usage limits (for example, a previous device I had where all books could only be read on the device which bought them, and even if you changed devices to another device from them, that was that)

As for author web sites, I addressed that a little above—I tend to favor store sties. But I will say that an author who puts together a good package may yet convince me. One author who has caught my eye has all 30-odd books available in a bundle from his Web site at a substantial discount over buying them separately. Once my to-read pile is under control, that author may get a sale from me. But for the most part, I do prefer to one-stop-shop when I can.

So if it’s available in e-book, I am chucking it, secure in the knowledge that I can buy it later if it begs to be re-read.

Magazines a tougher decluttering target

Magazines, on the other hand, are a tougher thing to get rid of. Most of the ones I buy are cooking or fitness related, and those are much less fun to read in plain-vanilla text on a screen. My modus operandi for the fitness ones in the past when I have done such purges has been to gently tear out the articles I plan to refer to again, slide them into plastic page protectors, stick them in a binder I keep for this purpose, and be on my way.

So I started wondering if e-clipping might be the way to go, at least for articles from magazines which have less need to be pretty.

I get a professional trade journal four times a year that often has wonderful articles, but also is packed with filler—one issue recently involved board elections, and almost a quarter of the issue was filler relating to these elections, candidate profiles and summaries of the issues etc. And any disciplinary action taken by the body against members has to be reported in the magazine as well. Depending on the month, that can occupy a good chunk of real estate. It simply does not make sense to keep the whole magazine just for the one or two good articles one might refer to again. I suppose I could clip the better articles like I do for my fitness magazines, but unlike an article about yoga, for example, where you have to see the pictures, this kind of magazine has no real need to be graphical.

The plusses of e-clips

The advantages of e-clipping over paper clipping are staggering. Paper clipping would reduce the clutter some, but I’d still need a physical system to store the clippings I do save, and the last thing I need is another binder full of stuff! Also, by having them in e-form, I can do the following:

• Sort and filter them using the tags in Calibre. I set up a tag for “articles” and can group them all as a collection on my Reader. This way, I can keep tem separate from my fiction and other reading. I also get a handily generated table of contents every time I do a keyword filter: a nice, tidy list of every article that’s there. In print, I would have to manually flip through pages, or create such an index myself.
• Load them onto my Sony Reader or iPod for reading on the go. This will be especially handy when a new issue arrives. I can go straight to their website, download a new article and have it on my reader in five minutes! Then I can take it on the subway, read it on the go and not need to worry about carrying around the magazine.
• Cut and paste into a Word document. I have been saving the ones I’ve “clipped” so far as HTML files, and while I was sorting them, I found one which will be relevant to a project I am working on for a course. It will be a snap to just type its title into my computer’s search bar, pull up the article and snip the quote or two I plan to use.
• Make use of the Sony’s bookmarks feature to highlight the parts I especially want to refer to later. Again, if I am taking a course and plan to cite an article from this magazine in my coursework, this will be a huge help. These are far from novel-length epics, but 7-8 magazine pages is about 12-15 Sony screens, so the articles are long enough that this feature will be handy. And I can do it all one-handed, on the subway! Such are the delights or research in the e-age.

I was prepared to borrow a scanner, or type the articles manually if need be, but to my delight, I found that the magazine posts full text of each issue’s main feature and regular departments. I spent a happy hour or so opening up the articles I wanted, then cutting and pasting them into Kompozer to get nice, clean HTML. I can convert this in Calibre to the format of my choosing and have all my articles ready to go. There’s one more shelf I’ve cleared off before my move!

I supervise an informal after-school program a few times a week, and had my Sony Reader PRS-505 out while the kids were at play.

My gadgets are a familiar sight to them—I use a netbook and iPod, among other things, in some of my actual teaching lessons—and the older children are fond of playing trivia games with me on the iPod from time to time. The other day, they were busy with their lego building and I thought I could finish off The Hound of the Baskervilles at last on my Sony Reader. I should know better than to try and use my own toys around inquisitive kids!

Their initial reactions to the Reader were quite favorable. I had a pretty cloth cover on mine, and it made the girls in the group especially interested. Kids this age do not have any preconceptions about gender and technology, thank goodness, and they’ll grow up knowing how to do these things. The girls were quite comfortable with the idea of a book reader once they figured it out, and the advantages of such a device (for example, being able to carry around more than one book) were readily apparent to them with no prompting from me. I got lots of wows and oohs over my pretty toy!

From a software standpoint, they were able with help to sort out the file system and use the categories to find the handful of kiddie titles I had on there. And they had no trouble at all figuring out the buttons and using them to choose a book and advance the screens as they explored. I think some of them were more interested in pressing the buttons than in doing actual reading, but of course depending on the age and reading level of the child, your mileage will vary on that one. One precocious little reader was interested in doing some actual work with me, so as the others wandered back to their toys, I got her started on some actual reading.

First pick: Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses

My first pick was Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. I have a beautiful free version from MobileRead, complete with illustrations, and it hit the spot for reading like this. Each poem was short, geared to children and could fit on one screen. So there was a nice sense of accomplishment when we got to the end of the page because we’d actually finished doing something! I can see a child getting a bit lost on a longer work if they don’t have the tactile feedback of physical pages to work with. If we ever get to the point where we have readers specifically designed for children, a more obvious page indicator—either tactile, or more prominent graphically—would definitely be a feature worth considering.

I switched us over to a Project Gutenberg version of Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book when she wanted an actual story. No pictures here, and it showed in her attention span, which waned shortly thereafter. I bought a few more minutes by showing her how to make the font bigger, but that was the end of the five-year-old and the Sony for now.

A few kid-related issues with the Sony

There are a few issues I would take away from this if I were buying a reader specifically to use with kids:

1) It’s not too hard for them to use. These kids had no trouble at all picking up the basics fairly easily. Of course, children this young would need an adult to obtain the content and load it onto the device for them, but the actual day to day operation was simple enough for even five year olds, and they would certainly be able to use the reader independently. This is a huge discovery for me because I have found that at times with kids this age, any benefit you might have from using technology with them can be lessened by an increased need to supervise. How many times has a really great computer lesson been ruined by a kid whose feet dangle at just the height of the tower’s power button? No matter how great the software or the website or the lesson, your constant vigilance on their feet so they don’t kick the darned thing off can put a real damper on things. A useful device they can actually use on their own may well be a worthwhile investment, even for  kids this young!

2) As with many audiences, a lot will depend on what suitable content is available, either through freebie channels or other sources. There are little kid books at Project Gutenberg, such as Lang’s fairy books, but as these are in the public domain, some feature antiquated language which might not appeal to today’s very young children (although of course, they could grow into them as one might with any classic!) As for the commercial stores, I’ve seen young adult stuff at Fictionwise, but I am not sure how much there is for smaller kids, or what the quality of any ancillary items like pictures might be. I saw how quickly my young audience lost interest when I switched to a book with no pictures. If you can’t get enough suitable texts for a younger child, it might not be worth it to invest in a reader for them until they are past the picture phase.

3) You may need to look more carefully at extra features. A bare bones reader might be less expensive—and less painful to you should they break it—then a fancier one. But if you don’t have support for larger fonts, pictures, layout control, and some ability to customize—for example, the ability to add a more obvious visual cue to measure progress in absence of physical pages—you might find the reader not as useful for a younger child.

4) A stylus-based reader might be a better fit for younger children. This particular child is quite advanced for 5, but even she kept reaching out her finger to point at the words as she read. If I were letting a child use the Sony for any length of time, I would steal a stylus from my old Palm device so they can point at the words without smudging up my screen with their fingers. But I would worry about letting them play with a touchscreen-based reader where they might keep turning pages—or exiting the book altogether—every time they touch a word while trying to read it.

My little reader enjoyed her experience with the Sony Reader. I asked her what she liked best about it, and she said ’so many books!’ And she also complimented the pictures. I asked her to give the Reader a score between 1 and 10, with 1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest. She said ‘100!’ I also asked her what name she would like to be called when I sent the story to my friend with the magazine. ‘Princess Jasmine!’

So there you have it, straight from the mouth of the princess herself. The Sony Reader is a hit!

These posts carefully outline why the current model is the way it is, and what steps publishers are, or should be taking to get readers on board with the way they perceive things to be going. They are also completely missing the point.

Here is a new way of looking at things. Instead of deciding what you want to sell and at what price, then endeavoring to convince people why you have made these choices and what a good idea it is, why not ask them what they want, and find a way to offer them that instead?

For example:

You want a higher price point and the reader wants a lower one. Instead of explaining to them why the price point is where it is, why not lower your costs through cutting out some middlemen or doing some other restructuring to improve efficiency?

Instead of wasting money on trying to increase perceived value through “multimedia” content or other needless additions, how about spending on get your back catalogues out at bargain prices to sell more e-books and stimulate new interest in authors already in your stable?

Instead of complaining that e-books are cost-prohibitive because you need to establish an infrastructure, how about relinquishing some of the control and letting an on-line vendor like Fictionwise or Books on Board handle the back end?

Instead of lamenting that e-books represent too small a market to be worth the bother, how about doing away with outmoded concepts such as geographical restrictions which prevent existing, paying customers from buying your stuff?
Instead of devising cumbersome DRM schemes to “protect” your content, why not focus on making it so easy and affordable for people to get it for real that the average person won’t need to think about where to get their stuff?

I know there are reasons why in the past, things have been done a certain way. But customers are not thinking about that now, and publishers should not be either. The average customer is using plain and simple logic; they don’t care about the fancy reasons. They just need someone to come up with a solution that meets their needs. I as a reader have written to an author many times to ask why I cannot buy the book, or why I can’t but it in the format I choose. The authors always say there is nothing they can do about it. I have written to tech support addresses at on-line vendors I shop at. They too say it is not their fault.

So, to the publishers, here is my question: which would you rather invest—your outdated business model, or your actual, paying customers who are waiting for you to meet their needs?

Ease of Use

My Sony may not have the Kindle’s wireless function, but it’s a snap to just pop in the USB cable and zap stuff over. When I compare it to the laborious upload method for my old eBookwise—convert documents to correct format, transfer or upload them to to your on-line bookshelf via clunky web form which requires two separate log-ins, plug in the cable, navigate to the bookshelf, transfer your files one at a time, log back into your server on-line, delete them, etc., etc., etc.—this is just a breeze. Open Calibre, choose a file, click send and voila.

How the Sony changed my reading choices

I have been enjoying the wealth of free public domain books for the Sony at MobileRead, Feedbooks, Manybooks and elsewhere. But I do like buying more contemporary e-books too. Using the Sony has really changed my e-book purchasing habits because it cannot read "secure" eReader, which is what I have bought for my previous Palm and iPod Touch devices. The bottom line is that it is easier—and I get a much more presentable reading experience—when I stick to the non-DRM "multiformat" choices at Fictionwise. They are just ready to go on any device you might have, right out of the box. Once you own the title, you own it and can download it at will in any of the offered formats you choose.

So I have found that since I bought the Sony, I have been much more reluctant to buy the secure DRM’d titles because I know I can only use them on the iPod whereas if I spend the same money on a "multiformat" title, I can use it on both machines with almost no fuss or effort. It just works! Score one for eBabel in costing authors actual sales yet again! In the future, I will probably only buy a "secure" title if it’s one I desperately want to read, and it’s being offered at 100 percent rebate. I could read it on my iPod Touch and then spend the rebate on multiformat books which are a better value to me.

I have also been discovering the world of e-magazines. When Fictionwise had a science fiction sale and I was narrowing my browsing to only multiformat choices, I found that several well-known literary periodicals are available in e-form as multiformat offerings. I picked up a year’s subscription to Asimov’s for less than $20, and am eyeing some of the mystery ones, which I may pick up if they go on sale at some future date.

Calibre is also capable of downloading RSS feeds and making them into customized e-books for you. There are many on-line newspapers and other sites already pre-configured by the program, including one for the TeleBlog! You can set it up to automatically download a feed for you at specified times, or you can manually download them when you choose. You can also create your own custom ones, but this is not always a straightforward business. I wanted to create one for my local free commuter newspaper and had trouble getting it working on my own. Thankfully, the wizards over at MobileRead have a thread set up where one can ask for help with "custom recipes" and one of the other posters was able to help me get the feed working. Now, I can download a fresh feed while I am in the shower, then pop it onto the Sony and read it on my way in to work!

Using the Reader

Using the Reader is easy. It takes a big file a minute or so to load if it’s the first time you’re running it, but once you’re reading, it’s easy to get lost in the book. After a week of use, I still find the cover a little uncomfortable. I have ordered a cloth sleeve off Etsy, and it is adorable and will make my reading a little more comfortable.

There are two display issues which continue to irk me. Firstly, the Sony seems to use different font sizes for long titles and short titles. I would prefer that they be a uniform size. And secondly, the manual claims to sort books by title, but I have not always found this to be so and I wish there were more flexible options for how your items get sorted.

Finally, I find that the one feature I am really missing is a search function. Sometimes, I will start reading on the subway on my iPod Touch, and then later want to continue reading on the Sony (as I mentioned in my other review, it is not always seemly to read at school on the iPod—people think you are playing games, even if you’re not! One of the benefits of the Sony is its resemblance to a real book. I won’t have to be embarrassed or shy about reading in front of other people!) In the absence of a search function, it’s hard to conveniently jump to a new place and resume my reading. I suppose I’ll have to just keep some books in progress only on the iPod and keep others in progress only on the Sony.

So overall, how happy am I? Very happy. The reader is a joy to use, Calibre gives me flexible options for organizing, converting and archiving my ebook collection, and I am reading up a storm. I am reading poetry again. I am reading magazines again. I can download my daily newspaper and read it on my way to work. With my new Sony Reader, (reading) life is good!

About the images: This is a file shot and does not show Ficbot’s machine.