TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Kindle for iPhone’ Category

By Roger Sperberg

The iPhone/iPod Touch have had the advantage of being the sole handheld devices with an e-reader that could access Amazon’s e-list.

That will soon change. The Windows UMPC will be able to run the Kindle e-reader. Also, Amazon will move the software to new Android and Maemo devices with significantly higher resolution than the iPair’s 480×320. The Motorola Droid 3.7" screen has a resolution of 854×480, and the slightly smaller Nokia N900 has 800×480. Both yield 267 pixels-per-inch compared to the Apple devices’ 163 ppi.

With nearly three times as many pixels per square inch, the typography on the new devices is wonderfully crisp and readable at far smaller point sizes than you would imagine. I write from personal experience of both the N900 display and Coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses.

Whatever the effect on sales that some experts see from waning novelty and growing choices, I predict it will be outweighed by huge new numbers of e-book buyers entering the market and expecting to split their reading among more than one device.

(Adapted with permission from a Reading 2.0 post. Screenshot shows the Kindle app.)

By Chris Meadows

Om Malik has just noticed that the iPhone is good for reading e-books, and calls it “the next hot e-reader”. He reports that, in September, book-related apps overtook games as a percentage of app store-released apps.

From August 2008 to August 2009, games was the category with the biggest number of releases, causing a drop in Nintendo’s revenues as people migrated to the iPhone and iPod Touch as a portable gaming platform. Now Malik thinks that the iPhone will also give the Kindle a run for its money. (Though I think he’s a little late in noticing this, given how it already has been for the last few years.)

Nonetheless, even after observing this swing from games to e-books, Malik thinks that dedicated e-readers will stick around “mostly because it is impossible to read large amounts of text on a smaller screen.” The fact that, as Malik himself reported, e-book apps are now the biggest category of app would seem to suggest not everyone agrees.

By Paul Biba

To those who are contemplating giving an ereader for the holidays, the choices must be a bit bewildering. The market has suddenly become flooded with possibilities. I thought I might give you my own personal recommendation based on units I’ve seen or handled.

I would go for the Kindle 2. I’ve used a number of the Sony units, a Kindle 1 and 2, have seen the Nook close up and played with the Astak 5" before I sent it over to Chris Meadows for review. Plus, I handled a number of other units at BookExpo America earlier this year. Here are my reasons for choosing the Kindle:

1. Wireless: once you become accustomed to the free wireless on the Kindle you may very well find it becomes indispensable. It is just so convenient. For example, when I went into the Nook press conference I was sitting on the ferry going across the Hudson and saw someone reading a book I was interested in. I fired up my Kindle and downloaded the book before I reached the other side. Once you can do this you will be amazed at how many books you end up buying. Of course the Nook has wireless too, but for reasons mentioned below I prefer the Kindle implementation.

2. Browser: the Kindle has a built in browser. It’s not very good, but it is important because it enables the Kindle to be a far more open platform than its wireless Nook rival. With the browser you can download from the vast catalog of Gutenberg and also get books from MobileRead, Manybooks, and Feedbooks, among others. At the beach and want to read Dickens? You can on the Kindle. I have even used the Kindle to send email when I’ve been stuck in areas with no AT&T service. The Nook will only connect to the B&N store and this is too limiting for me. I wish Sony had released its wireless unit in time for this little article but no luck so far.

(more…)

By David Rothman

ePub and the group behind it can vex me—a lot. I agree with Paul on such matters as the long-delayed ePub logo. Look, IDPF, where’s the logo contest you promised to announce at Frankfurt? Furthermore, I hate the way proprietary DRM de-standardizes ePub or any other format. What a laugh when Sony brags about “open ePub” or whatever, but feels compelled to use Adobe DRM on bestsellers in the ePub format. Can’t Sony try harder to coax publishers to at least experiment with social DRM (embedding customers names and addresses in e-book files)?

Even so, I remain a gung-ho ePub backer. Publishers such as Hachette will tell you of the economies that ePub has achieved as a distribution format. And if consumers care more about books than about brand names, then they’ll go for ePub, which will increase the number of reading choices. The new Sony wireless reader will eventually let you download from a whole bunch of e-stores. And standards will make that possible. Already many more books exist in the ePub format than the Kindle format, especially with public domain titles included. Just recently, as chronicled by Fran Toolan and picked up by if:book, the Internet Archive announced that all of its 1.6 million books were available in ePub format—ready to be read on anything from a Sony Reader to an iPhone. That’s a proud Brewster Kahle, archive founder, in the photo. At the same time, Google, the archive’s big rival in the public domain area, continues to offer ePub, not just PDF.

(more…)

By Paul Biba

Important news for Mac users.  Previously we reported that the Kindle software will soon be released for the PC.  Well, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that Amazon has said it will be available for the Mac as well.  Hooray!

By David Rothman

“Kindle for PC features Amazon’s Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. Whether you read Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, you can always have your reading with you and never lose your place. With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most popular books app in the Apple App Store.” – News release.

Ahead I’ll reproduce the full release, for convenience’s sake. Download page is here. It isn’t ready yet, alas, but you can sign up for notification. Your thoughts? Hey, didn’t I write earlier this morning that I expected a PC Kindle app—part of Amazon’s efforts to steal some thunder from the Nook?

Unfortunately I don’t see a mention of the ePub standard. Are you or aren’t you doing it, Jeff? Or are you simply trying to get your proprietary format readable on many devices—so you can use the “everywhere” excuse? I’m dlelighted to see the PC version. But don’t stop there. Standards, please!

(more…)

By David Rothman

Lickety-split, Amazon has released an improved Kindle iPhone app to steal a little thunder from B&N’s just-unveiled Nook, which offers synching capabilities with other devices.

A message in Kindle for iPhone 1.2, also for Apple’s iPod Touch, says:

“With Kindle for iPhone 1.2, you can now tap and hold a word to create a note or highlight. Whispersync will back up and synchronize annotations with your Kindle device.”

The update also will recall, from session to session, whether you last used the iPhone app in  landscape or portrait mode.

By David Rothman

“With BookServer, the Internet Archive is hoping that for the first time, consumers everywhere will be able to buy or borrow any text they want while leaving control over pricing and terms of such distribution in the hands of the content owners.” – CNET.

The TeleRead take: BookServer, from Archive founder Brewster Kahle (photo) and colleagues, is a worthy project. I don’t want any company, Amazon or Google, to dominate book distribution.

Even so, the Archive will have to work hard to equal Amazon’s interface and its rich collection of customer-written reviews. Here’s an example of the issues at hand. Will BookServer capabilities be built into hardware e-readers, so to speak, the way the Amazon catalogue is part of the Kindle? Update, 12:32 p.m.: The existence of an RSS-style spec (draft here) is a good start, but that’s still not a full solution.

Might an Archive collaboration be possible with OpenInkpot—which provides software for users to install on dedicated e-reading devices? Imagine manufacturers including OpenInkpot from the start. Jeez, Brewster, you need to think more about the user experience—whether the device is an E Ink tablet, a commercial netbook, an OLPC laptop or regular desktop. This could mean anything from OpenInkpot to browser-plug-ins to dedicated apps.

(more…)

By David Rothman

Reason #999,667,322 to show healthy skepticism toward the mainstream media:

“On Monday, the Kindle 2 will become the first e-reader available globally. The only other events as important to the history of the book are the birth of print and the shift from the scroll to bound pages. The e-reader, now widely available, will likely change our thinking and our being as profoundly as the two previous pre-digital manifestations of text.”

So writes Esquire’s pop critic, Stephen Marche, in the Wall Street Journal. This isn’t satire, but rather his serious opinion.

In real life, Kindle owners like Affiliate, seen in the Creative Commons photo above, would probably express enthusiasm but show far more commonsense and restraint. Here’s my own take on the Kindle 2. It comes away a number of negatives: onerous Digital Rights Management, focus on a proprietary format, high price, less than perfect contrast between text and the screen background. I myself took great pleasure in knocking the original Kindle (right photo below) for its adding-machine looks and ergonomic challenges such as hair-trigger page controls. What’s more, Amazon needs to treat writers and publishers better—much better.

That said, I’m pleased to give the Kindle 2 (left) its due. The positives:

1. The hair-trigger problem is gone and page turning controls are mostly just where I’d want them—in fact, better positioned than those on various Sony Reader models. While my fingers are over the controls, I feel as if the 10-ounce weight is distributed well. I like the controls off to the side rather than on the the bottom (or present in the form of minuscule buttons). One improvement for me would be to put both the previous-page and next-page controls on the same side.

(more…)

By David Rothman

The guy in the picture is reading from a Kindle “in the shadow of the great New York Public Library.”

But “old-fashioned library books still reign supreme” there.

Could that change? Maybe if librarians will take time to learn the technology, and about specific machine. They’re stretched thin, many of them. But maybe a new Kindle library wiki will help, as a way for librarians to share tips and save time.

The Kindle Library Home is a joint project of Duke Medical Center Library and Texas A&M Medical Library. Medicine and med-ed are priorities. there. But ideally the Wiki will also enlighten public librarians and those in many other areas. Give it a chance and help out.

The project’s FAQ presently is sparse but already takes a stab at such basic questions as, “How can I make sure that patrons cannot purchase books on the library account?” It would be wonderful if a copyright lawyer could jump in with advice since Amazon’s terms of service are rather problematic for libraries.

Library e-book list

Latecomers might also want to catch up with a separate e-mail list for librarians dealing with ebooks. This covers all brands of machines, not just Kindles. I mentioned the list before, but this bears repeating.

In other Kindle news…

If you extrapolate from a survey, Kindle ownership could reach 10M units in 12 months. Get the details, gang, and tell me what you think of the numbers and the logic (via Jon Noring and Paul Allen). I’m skeptical, given all the competition Amazon will face, not just from other e-reader makers but rival form factors such as netbooks. But who knows?

Image: CC-licensed photo by Ed Yourdon.

By David Rothman

Jobs might be lost if I’m not careful.

So I won’t even say which book chain it was—just that this little chat happened recently at a store in a liberal city in the D.C. area.

Employees were gracious and apologetic in saying why they probably couldn’t carry even a few copies of my Washington novel.

The trade paperback wasn’t on The List from the headquarters of their chain. Why? My very legitimate publisher had used print-on-demand-technology, and apparently I was up against the hoary old returns issue.

Praised by the same newspaper distributed in the store—but still shut out by the MBAs

Here’s the big kicker. The Washington City Paper had recommended my debut novel in March, even working in the holy names of Chandler and Hammett. Imagine: the same newspaper given away for free in the chain store.

Meanwhile a stand at the front was loaded with copies of books by Glenn Beck, the conservative broadcaster—this in a hugely Democratic city of Volvos and Obama bumper stickers!

Sorry to use a personal example in the TeleBlog for a second time today, but I can’t resist, given all it says about the lunacy of certain people in the book trade. Oh, to think of the thousands of good local writers whom the bookstore chains are dissing. I’m hardly the sole victim. Are chains outside the U.S. as obtuse as in the States? I’d love to hear from TeleRead community members in Canada, the EU countries, Australia, Japan and elsewhere.

(more…)

By David Rothman

New York Times reporter Brad Stone’s take on sales figures for the e-book version of The Lost Symbol—versus the numbers for the p-book—inspired lots and lots of skepticism from E boosters.

And I’m still waiting for him to write on social DRM and certain nuances of e-book standards that he and the Times have yet to explore, despite some progress in a recent article.

But Stone is right on the mark in highlighting another Kindle issue. And that’s the ticklish little matter of opening up the Kindle to third-party developers. Look at all the apps for the iPhone, such as the one shown here for Facebook.

Even with the the slow refresh rate of the Kindle’s E Ink, notes Stone, “there are still some interesting possibilities. Companies like Facebook or Goodreaders could add social features to the Kindle; game developers like Zynga could create nongraphics-intensive games like poker or chess for the device. There could also be educational games, or programs that take advantage of that rarely used keyboard and Kindle’s ‘experimental’ Web browser.”

(more…)

By David Rothman

“The sledgehammer promotion for the book is more noteworthy than its content. I got an e-mail the night before the book’s release, advising me to turn my Kindle on so I could receive a download while I slept. Maybe if I put my Kindle under my pillow it could have been downloaded into my brain instead. Yikes! Has any mass communication medium been free of marketing messages for The Lost Symbol?” – Jtkerwin in Michael Dirda’s Reading Room forum in the Washington Post.

The irony: Mea culpa, sorta. I’m not a Brown fan but—despite the free publicity for him—can’t resist the above quote.

(more…)

By martinkochanski

I can’t see the point of e-books. They are slower to flick through than real books, you can’t lend them or borrow them or give them away, and if you leave them on the train they cost hundreds of dollars to replace. Nevertheless, some people seem to like them, and as a publisher it’s my job to offer people what they might want. Here is my first look, as a publisher and a citizen of the real world (see above) at what my distribution options are.

(more…)

By David Rothman

ePub is “probably the publishers’ best defense against Amazon and the Kindle.”

I’ve said similar things for a long time, and these days Mike Shatzkin, the publishing guru, is aboard. Way to go!

Now, Mike, how about convincing Random House and the other biggies to pay for accelerated development of this IPDF standard? It isn’t enough to talk up ePub. The standard really does need to be good and ready for the future.

The long-overdue creation of an ePub logo—ideally just for nonDRMed and social-DRMed books at first, so as to promote genuine compatibility—wouldn’t hurt either. Oh, and, please, IDPF: say “ePub,” not “EPUB,” which is a noisy atrocity that aesthetically minded publishers will hate.

(more…)

By Roger Sperberg

Nokia officially announced its fifth Internet Tablet today, the N900. (For full details, see maemo.org and nokia.com.)

With its flat surface, iPhone-like dimensions, camera, video, and phone capabilities, the N900 aims to fit into the same fits-in-your-pocket-and-does-way-more-than-your-phone category as Apple’s iPhone while still retaining its web-while-you’re-walking-around emphasis.

The N900’s 3.5″ full-color display has a 267 pixel-per-inch resolution (compared to the iPhone’s same-size 163ppi screen) measuring 800 x 480 pixels. This makes for dazzlingly sharp text. The device also includes Flash 9.4 and reads PDF files natively. This, along with the newly added 3.5G wireless capability, would appear to position the N900 as an ideal platform for a synching Kindle e-reader.

Amazon advises publishers to implement color, motion, and interactivity into e-books, despites its Kindle devices’ lacking support of these features. Clearly the bookseller needs more than just Apple’s iPhone and iPod to deliver these electronic essentials lest more entertaining products snatch its current format and pipeline dominance. (more…)

By David Rothman

Of U.S. dedicated e-reader sales of a bit more than a million a year, Kindles make up 45 percent, according to the Cleantech Group. Sony is 30 percent, while rivals are just 25 percent.

And, yes, as you’d expect from the name Cleantech, the same study mentions environmental impact: “…on the average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use.” Big win over paper!

Related: 29 million dedicated e-book readers predicted to ship in 2013: Hype or credible forecast?  I wonder if the study mentioned there, by In-Stat, is the real source of the market share stats. In the past Sony has given us the impression that its sales are closer to the Kindle’s than these numbers suggest. But I don’t know what the situation is now.

(CleanTech via MobileRead.)