TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Tom Peters + his library events’ Category

By David Rothman

P has it all over E for book signings, Rob Preece says. And no one can accuse Rob of being anti-E—he’s a TeleBlog regular and the guy behind BooksForABuck.com.

That said, Rob, are you sure authors couldn’t sign E in a satisfying way—and I don’t just mean scrawls on CDs?

Space for an image file

One of the advantages of the nonDRMed approach is that it might be easier to include a “space” in an e-book for an image file containing a writer’s handwritten inscription to an individual reader. Tthat would be one way to justify somewhat higher prices for customers with a special loyalty to a writer like, say John Scalzi. And if nothing else, it would be the ultimate form of Social DRM. Someone with an inscribed version, I suspect, is much less likely to turn pirate. Besides, for most Long Tail books, as many have noted, the real problem is obscurity, not piracy. At any rate, autographed E might be a nice rev stream for Long Tail authors with passionate followers.

Authentic sigs and bragging rights in the Real World

For good measure, incidentally, there could still be some kind of digital watermarking, registration, whatever, to assure that a signed copy was indeed authentic. Perhaps ways could even exist for customers to display the inscriptions in their blogs or print them out for display in the real world. Imagine a Neal Gaiman signature with his photo and personal inscription appearing  in the frame resting on the fireplace mantel shown here.

I may or may not be the first to propose the basic idea of signing E, probably not. Tom Peters, an E-hip librarian, once talked about the possibility of e-book fairs, and he might very well have had virtual inscriptions in mind—my guess is that he did. What’s more, I suspect Tom wouldn’t have been the first, either.

Does anyone out there in TeleBlog Land know of some existing autographed e-books? Any sites to point to? Now, if I can only do something about my horrid handwriting.

Related: John Scalz’s thoughts on Kindles and Owning Your eBooks—plus an earlier TeleBlog item on the same issue.

Image: CC-licensed from Icelight, via Flickr.

By David Rothman

The Sony Reader gets yet another look in BusinessWeek. The September 3 issue tells how Sony intends to address shortcomings such as an inability to read DRMed books except in a proprietary Sony format.

The next model’s Adobe software, as we know, will handle encrypted PDF and the IDPF format.

Break ahead for public library patrons

With the new Reader able to read DRMed PDF, perhaps it will be handy for downloading public libraries’ OverDrive books, which, in their Mobipocket incarnations, can be tricky to use, at least on older CE machines.

Let’s just hope that Sony will allow existing Readers to be upgraded via firmware. Anyone have definite answers? BW talks about Sony’s plans to “adopt e-book software from Adobe systems,” but just how inclusive is the term?

Still just a niche product

So far, as BW notes, the present Reader hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, although Sony for now seems committed to the product and has broadened distribution to include Best Buy and CompUSA, while at the same time running a targeted campaign aimed at frequent travelers. Sony refuses to release sales figures.

Ironically, one of the more helpful boosts may come from the independent Fictionwise, which has begun to offer some books in a nonencrypted Sony format.

Little Fictionwise may well end up with a greater number of Reader titles, at least for now, than Sony’s Connect store, which, according to BW, offers fewer than a tenth the number at an average Borders or Barnes & Noble. Price drops on Connect books would help as well. So would friendlier treatment of small publishers.

Too late for TigerDirect bargain, alas

Meanwhile, over at Engadget, dozens of readers are answering the question raised in the headline, How would you change the Sony Reader? Price, display and format issues are among the common complaints. Too bad the Engadget folks didn’t catch up with the TigerDirect sale last month. At $99 the Reader suddenly became more attractive to me, shortcomings aside.

And of course we know that a forthcoming model will use E Ink’s VizPlex technology, which, with greater effective contrast between text and background and a faster refresh rate, will address display issues. Let’s just hope Sony can drop the usual price from the current $300.

By David Rothman

News from OPAL: with links added

David Weinberger will be discussing his new book, Everything is Miscellaneous at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today.

The book explores how the new principles of disorder are remaking society, culture, education, business, media, politics, and—perhaps most importantly—libraries.

This is the book that Karen Schneider described in the ALA TechSource Blog as “…dangerous. [It] takes all the precious ideas we are taught as librarians and throws them out the window.”

The dedication of the book, by the way, is “To the librarians.” Weinberger, one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and holds a doctorate in philosophy.

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Moderator will be Tom Peters. To participate, get the safe software and click on the link you’ll see for the OPAL Auditorium. If you miss the chatcast, you can hear the audio later today if David Weinberger consents.

By a TeleBlog Contributor

“If the feds decide to take on Google, it would be the largest corporate domestic war since the Teddy Roosevelt era. Is Hillary or Barack up to such a challenge?” - Librarian Tom Peters, who isn’t necessarily advocating this but who has lots of questions about libraries outsourcing digitization work and other tasks to Google.

By Jon Noring

Links of the day:

–Bookpac, a German company planning to enter the e-book reader market and use an E Ink display. Take a user survey. A German version is here. More details later in this post. Feel free to share your survey responses via our comment box.

–Kerouac bookchat tomorrow—plus OPAL’s other forthcoming events, including discussions of works of Illinois authors such as Ray Bradbury (topic of a new interview in Publishers Weekly). The featured Kerouac book is On the Road. Coming Friday: A chatcast on Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada.

–Korea eyes nurturing digital libraries, in LISNews. See Korea Times story.

–iPods at war, in Slashdot. Pickup of Ars Technica.

(more…)

By David Rothman

I love the use of snippets and videos and similar attention-grabbers to promote books.

HarperCollins and others have it right. The trick is to avoid inflicting videos and the rest on the unappreciative, whether they be readers or retailers. HarperCollins is making the snippets available and letting retail partners do as they choose. That’s just plain smart. While Amazon will be able use the content, so will some smaller retailers and, yes, authors, too.

Baffled

So I’m a little baffled to read Tom Peters, one of my favorite librarians, attacking the snippet concept. The irony is that Peters’ Complaint happened in the ultimate stronghold of snippetry, the blogosphere. Granted, Tom was writing “Mammoth Mammonistic Snippets” for an ALA blog, but in so doing he’s made himself fodder for snippeting. (more…)

By David Rothman

Do you feel a little Long Tailed out? Apologies, then, for the links that follow.

The Long Tail Wags the Dog

Writing in the ALA’s Tech Source blog, Tom Peters notes that “Libraries were into long tails before long tails were cool.” He also says: “If the long-tail phenomenon is here to stay, perhaps the 80/20 rule (that 20 percent of the collection accounts for 80 percent of the use) will become increasingly suspect.”

Now Tom is wondering if libraries should be so focused on their OPACs, if they truly want to give people the widest possible section of offerings–whether p-books e-books, audio books or other kinds. Hey, Tom, this choice businesss hits home. I’ve got a big problem with audio books competing with e-books at a local library. I’m all in favor of whatever libraries can do to expand options for readers, er, patrons!

The Long Tail (or the end of the Hard to Find)

Publishers, listen up. Dear Author’s Jane, focused primarily on romance novels, has a bone to pick with you over the scarcity of midlist titles getting into e-book format. That’s just one of the truths in this spot-on post.

“The Long Tail is all about the misses,” Jane observes. “The mainstream media is all about the hits. The hit driven market that is run by the New York publishers may lose prominence with the rise of digital age. (more…)

By David Rothman

Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of the novel The Matzo Ball Heiress will be in a chatcast Friday evening. Details here from OPAL.

This particular chatcast is sponsored by the library system in Johnson County, Kansas.

Correction, July 1: Tom Peters, the frequent chatcast moderator, couldn’t attend because of attending the ALA convention in New Orleans–not because of National Guard duty. Sorry about that mistake, Tom. Hey, we don’t want someone to see you in beautiful downtown Blue Springs, Missouri, and think you’re AWOL.