TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Reader contribution’ Category

By Paul Biba

I received this email from one of our readers and reprint it in full:

Referring to your post on Brazilian ereader, I have a news which might be also interesting for you. In Poland we will have our own e-publishing platform - eClicto. An e-reading device will be part of it. I’m very excited about this project, as it’s gonna support ePub format. That means ePub will finally break into Poland. So far there are only few dozens of Polish language ePub books available on the web.

Please find below a post on this topic:

Three weeks ago I attended a Warsaw Bookcamp, where all the participants were particularly interested in a presentation of eClicto, a Polish e-publishing platform, which is about to be launched in autumn. The business model includes an e-reading device, e-bookstore, news portal and a support centre. Comparison to Kindle is inevitable and obviously everybody gets excited with a device itself. It has 6-inch E Ink Vizplex screen with 4 grey levels, 600×800 px, 166 dpi. Internal 512MB memory can be extended with an SD card by up to 4GB. It will support epub, ecl, pdf and txt files.

One can say, it’s nothing new. Just recently Cool-er and Elonex were introduced to support similar sales models. But for me eClicto is one of first examples of bringing e-publishing from international (English) to national (non-English) level. And it’s not about the equipment this time, its about the content.

The e-reader is a book with blank pages. There are a few models distributed in Poland, including iLiad and Cybook. The only problem is a lack of Polish language books, available in mobile friendly formats like ePub. eClicto is going to change it. They will have to start with hundreds, or hopefully, thousands of books, among them bestsellers, to lure not only tech nerds but also book lovers. This will accelerate, let’s call it “e-quality change” of a national publishing industry, what in longer time will result in e-books being treated equally to p-books by Polish readers.

The price of the e-reader is claimed to be the lowest on the market. No more details were revealed. As soon as I’ll have some news, I’ll share them. Keeping my fingers crossed, it’s gonna be a big thing!

The post is available at: http://www.nizejpodpisany.com/2009/07/04/first-polish-e-reading-device-to-be-launched-in-autumn/

My blog: http://www.nizejpodpisany.com/about

Best regards,

Piotr Kowalczyk (Nick Name)

By a TeleBlog Contributor

Editor’s Note: In May we published an article about Al Katkowsky and how he successfully promoted his self-published work, turned it into an Iphone app and ended up giving a presentation at one of the New York Apple Stores. Well, I asked Al to write us an article about how he achieved this success and he agreed! The article follows. Thanks, Al! Paul

Book Event at The Apple Store? Seriously, what’s going on here?

I tell everyone that my book, Question Of The Day, is an activity in book form. So when the idea was presented to me to put it into another form (iPhone App), it wasn’t much of a stretch for my imagination. Every book is an idea first. More and more, presenting the idea is about providing convenient access.

I normally don’t spend time explaining to people what I’m doing, or how I did it. By the time I’ve “succeeded”, I’ve switched goals. I mostly try to get on with my work. But I have done a few things right in publicizing my book and negotiating obstacles.

I know what you’re saying, because I’ve said it: “Why do I have to deal with all of this stuff? I’ve poured my creativity into writing a book, that’s plenty of work already. I’m an artist, damnit!” Save it, Shakespeare. Publicizing your book can be fun, and the irony is that what will set your book apart and send it on it’s way are the specific creative actions you take in presenting it to the world.

Self Publishing

You were seduced, weren’t you? Yeah, you were. Can the willing truly be seduced? Another discussion for another time, my friends. I just read an article that said something that bears repeating: self-publishing is harder than they tell you. Yeah, it is. Before you get involved with the hands on work of putting your finished book out, you discover a long line of people who would like to sell you their services, people who tell you what a hero you are (you are, but be wary when someone else tells you this). Frequently, these people present the juicy list of Famous Authors Who Self Published First. We love this list, don’t we? Yeah, we do. This list does not consist of an entirely stable group of folks, but we let that go. We are heroes, after all. Just like them.
So you’re in, and it’s not easy. Paying for the books and services was easy, but now what?

(more…)

By a TeleRead Contributor

Editor’s Note: This submission is from Tracy Falbe, author of The Rys Chronicles epic fantasy series, previewed in video below.  Also see Rich Adin’s comments. - Paul Biba

As a self-published author of four fantasy novels and one nonfiction book, I can wholeheartedly say that the e-book reading medium is making all the difference as I seek recognition, cultivate an audience, and even make a little money. I’ve been selling the paperback versions of my books at Amazon for nearly four years, and I am satisfied as a book vendor in its Advantage sellers program. However, when the opportunity arose to add the digital versions of my books to the Amazon system, I was borderline

insulted by the payment terms. An e-book seller gets a mere 35 percent of the suggested retail price on a sale. And then Amazon drags its feet and takes at least 60 days to send payment. These terms were a terrible turn-off for me because my existing terms as a paper book seller were 45 percent of suggested retail price and payment after 30 days. On principle I had to take a pass on the e-book deal.

Not that I have ever been thrilled with the 45 percent deal on the paperbacks, but I understood that Amazon took on the considerable operating expenses of warehousing the books and, when one is sold, paying an actual human employee to box it up and ship it. Such expenses are greatly reduced for an ebook selling system.

(more…)

By Paul Biba

Cliff Burns

Tamas Simon

Rita Towes

Eugene Woodbury

Yakov Shafranovich

These readers either sent me a link to an interesting story, or sent me an email which I then posted as an article. My apologies, by the way, to those I haven’t listed here.

Feel free to join the crowd by being our eyes and giving us your thoughts. A different perspective is a valuable thing and what you feel is important is something that I might just pass over. My email address in in the sidebar to the right.

By a TeleRead Contributor

Editor’s Note: I received the following email from reader Cliff Burns and found it so interesting I asked him if I could publish it as a Reader contribution.

Paul:

Read your comments in the Christian Science Monitor article with much interest.

The e-book format and digitization of publishing had accorded people like me, an indie writer with a strong distaste for the writing “biz”, a newly created and much cherished sense of freedom.

I’ve been a professional writer for 25 years and in that time–thanks, mainly, to the rise of corporate publishing–I’ve seen literary-quality fiction marginalized in favor of commercial, derivative crap.

I no longer submit my stories or novels anywhere, publish them directly on my site and I’ve never been happier. The sense of control, of preserving my artistic integrity and freedom is essential to my worldview.

Plus I have readers, tens of thousands of them, from around the world. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

At the present time I am following the urgings of a good number of those readers and later this year will be producing print-on-demand versions of my novels.

The gate-keepers of publishing–the agents and editors–have seen their grip weakened, loosened and finally pried off the throats of writers; the humiliation of the submissions process, manuscripts revamped, gutted to meet the marketplace, those days are over.

I’ve written about these matters on my site–hope you’ll pop by for a look.

My best wishes to you–

Cliff Burns, Beautiful Desolation

By Paul Biba

Now here’s an intriguing possibility. TechCrunch is designing their own touch-screen web tablet. Here’s what they say:

The idea is to get a new type of device into people�s hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. It plays Flash video flawlessly so you can watch movies and TV shows on Hulu or Joost or wherever. Or listen to music on MySpace Music. Or use TokBox to have a video chat with your parents. Then check email and call it a day. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, Wikipedia, Google Docs and Gmail are the killer apps for this device.

Because the device skips the resource-sucking parts of the operating system and focuses on one application - the browser - very low end hardware can be used and still give users a desktop-like Internet browsing experience.

The device is running Ubuntu Linux, so maybe FBReader would work. Read the rest of the article, with lots of details, at the link above. I would be very tempted to buy one. Thanks to reader Michael Harris for the link.

In another piece of tech news, Ars Technica is reporting that Jaya Kumar has gotten mobile Firefox running on an e-ink display. Our Linux gurus might want to take a look at the article. Thanks to reader Tamas Simon for the link.

By a TeleRead Contributor

Editor’s note: The following was submitted by Rita Toews, founder of Read an E=Book Week:

World-renowned author, Warren Adler has added his support to Read an E-Book Week. Mr. Adler, author of some 29 books — including War of the Roses which became a movie directed by Danny DeVito, caused a stir in the literary world some years back when he re-acquired the rights to all his novels and short stories. He then converted his complete backlist to e-books.

Mr. Adler’s thoughts on the publishing industry vis-a-vis e-books can be found in an article on the main page of the Read an E-Book Week website http://www.ebookweek.com

ON ANOTHER NOTE: the list of authors (John Grisham being the latest) and publishers converting their print books to e-book is growing rapidly. I’ve heard a suggestion that perhaps it’s time for BEA Book Expo America to have an area for e-books and e-book reading devices at their shows. The suggestion seems valid since I can’t find mention of e-books on the Book Expo website.

By a TeleRead Contributor

Here is a reader contribution from author Eugene Woodbury.

Gonzo versus the pirates

The Anime Almanac reports here and here on how Japanese anime studio Gonzo beat Internet piracy by abandoning DRM. Rather, they responded quickly with a quality product at a reasonable price that was easy to download. This seems painfully obvious, but as Scott VonSchilling points out, getting media execs to grasp the obvious can be painfully difficult.

I’ve long wondered why anime studios didn’t crank out a subtitle/dub script at the same time they finished the Japanese master (what U.S. studios do with closed caption scripts). Even in Japan, it’d be a blip in the budget. Mostly, VonSchilling explains, because the importance of quickly addressing demand in a wired world hadn’t occurred to them.

(more…)

By a TeleRead Contributor

Editor’s Note: I received the following email from Murray C. Park in the UK. Thanks a lot!

I’ve not seen it publicised anywhere and I don’t think I even got an email from them, but for the benefit of your UK readers the WH Smith ebook store at http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/ is currently running a 50% off sale on every ebook and audio book. Usually I make most of my purchases from Fictionwise or Books On Board because their prices and selection are usually much better that the local offerings, but I’ve already snapped up 25 titles in this sale including several I couldn’t find in the US ebook stores. I’ll probably be going back for more.

There’s no end date given for the sale and I just hope it’s not a sign of trouble for the company or their ebook store, but in any case I’m just going to take advantage while it’s available.

Regards,
Murray

By a TeleRead Contributor

Editors Note: Thanks to Jean Kaplansky, author of the essay below. - Paul Biba.

I recently had a friend dare to ask me about eBook hardware.

My response:  "Oh, you had to go there…"

Followed by my spiel:

The choice of eReading hardware depends on what you expect from an ereader, where you are going to use the unit, and how much you want to spend.

I’ve looked longingly at the Sony Reader, but have never been able to justify the cost for what is essentially a single purpose machine. Also, I’m not that impressed by eInk. The fact that you need to use a book light to read in the dark removes one of the benefits of the whole eBook concept.

Yes, the Kindle is ugly. But people who have them seem to get addicted very quickly. I’ve also read that Kindles can be dangerous to your credit card because it’s too easy to say "Yes! I want to read the rest of this book" And poof… Up goes your credit card balance. Yikes.

(more…)

By a TeleBlog Contributor

Personally, after looking into the issues of conflicting e-book formats, how people use e-books and costs, here are some things I’ve concluded.

1. With all the conflicting formats, the key thing is that there’s no consistency in formatting and in fact, you lose the nice formatting of a book. Blah! Why do I want that? I like the precision of a nicely formatted book – after all, it’s taken us hundreds of years to get to the point where these books look so good – why throw that away? Instead, there’s a simple solution: pdf formats. Almost every e-book reader allows for pdf formatted books and almost every digital book provider offers a pdf format.

2. Why buy an e-book reader that costs $500 and limits you to only one format. Often that format is incompatible with other formats, it doesn’t transport easily to other formats (yes, you can transport it to other formats but not easily).

3. I’ve listened to comments from my friends with e-book readers and almost all of them say they like the e-book when they travel. At home, they prefer paper books. From their comments there are two key issues: weight and storage. One e-book reader weighs much less than carrying around several paper books, easier to pack. And for that slight weight, they get storage of multiple books.

4. There’s an alternative that is just as attractive to me, if not more so. A wi-fi netbook, the half-size notebooks that are used only for light computing tasks, email and — for me — reading a digital book. At first, these came mostly with Linux, but they are now available with Windows XP, making them even more attractive to me.

Doesn’t make sense to me to buy an expensive piece of equipment dedicated to reading an e-book. Instead, I could get a netbook with more advantages: Weight, storage AND email AND light computing. All in a light-weight, attractive format.

Of course, the other option being touted today is the iPhone. But I can’t read well on any screen that small. The netbook seems to offer more advantages: pdf formatting instead of take-it-as-it-comes on e-book readers; weight (almost) comparable to e-book readers; plenty of storage for multiple books; wi-fi email; light computing; a screen I can actually read; and, color screens!

Darcy Pattison. As an author and writing teacher, Darcy Pattison is watching closely the development of e-books and wondering where it will take the field of storytelling through words. www.darcypattison.com

By a TeleRead Contributor

Thanks to Mark Coker, head of Smashwords. We welcome other reader contributions. If you have something you’d like to submit, feel free to send it to paulkbiba@gmail.com.

One of my many joys of running Smashwords is working directly with authors every day who share my passion about the promise of e-books. Their feedback, dreams and frustrations are what guide our development.

The biggest challenge these authors face getting their book into e-book form is that they’re held hostage by their previous conceptions regarding how a book should be formatted. Traditional print formatting is very forgiving. If you use space marks or tabs instead of indents, for example, as long as the words are arranged where you want them on screen or in your PDF, the book prints reasonably well and all your bad formatting habits are forgiven.

E-books aren’t so forgiving, because for the most part, formatting is the enemy of good e-book formatting. If my statement sounds circular and nonsensical, allow me to elaborate.
(more…)