Ebooks and e-publishing

DURING ‘READ AN EBOOK WEEK’ (MARCH 7-13) YOU CAN PAY WHAT YOU LIKE (OR NOTHING AT ALL) FOR UP TO TWENTY-FIVE BEWRITE EBOOKS IN ANY FORMAT HERE AT SMASHWORDS. JUST SCROLL THROUGH THE BB CATALOGUE FOR THE OFFERS. ALL INCOME WILL GO TO THE RED CROSS TO HELP IN HAITI.
– LINK –

Some exciting announcements at CeBit, including – this one – from computer maker Asus.

The DR-900 is 9mm thick, and features a 768 X 1024, touch-sensitive ePaper display. It accepts all popular formats, plays MP3 files, built-in WiFi (and an optional 3.5G connection) and (apparently) lasts up to 2 weeks on a single battery charge. Price and availability to follow.

It looks nice, an alternative to the Kindle DX or the Que.

Link to website: – Ebook week –

And a great list of sources for ebooks: – Ebook week partners –

This time, it’s from a blog I follow called – Psychotactics –, and it’s using the Christmas day Amazon.com stats (the day that ebooks first outstripped tree-books in unit sales terms. This wasn’t in terms of revenue, because as I blogged before, an enormous number of the ebooks downloaded for Kindle were free, or very low cost.

Picture the scene – all across America, gift wrapping was torn asunder, and Kindle boxes were excitedly opened. So the first thing everyone wants to do is to start filling the things up with books. At a price point of $0.00, it’s just so darned tempting to download everything you can see. It’s a bit like an “all-you-can-eat” buffet breakfast.

It’s an interesting blog post though. Have a read through it – HERE –. Like me, they consider the announcement of the – Apple iPad – to be hugely significant, which will propel electronic reading forwards, and maybe even help the uptake of rich media content.

Another interesting post from J A Konrath – HERE –

He discusses ebooks and pricing and piracy.

JK is an ebook convert. He sells lots of them via Amazon in the USA. I think he gets it. He’s one of the few.

Interesting article – HERE –

My response was as follows:

Fascinating article. Thanks for the read.

I agree with you. Although the technically astute are scratching their heads, wondering where the iPad (et al) fits in with their current devices, those who are aware of the psychological impact of this new device (and the fact that it was made by Apple) can foresee a rosy future. Now all we need is for the publishing industry to get on board, and embrace the technology, rather than hide behind protectionist defences like music publishers tried to.

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I think Simon (like many people) is missing the point. For one thing, it’s generational – there are many young people (and not-so-young) growing up staring at screens all day. It’s not a big deal. The screens these days aren’t going to burn your eyes out with radiation, and the quality means that reading black text on a (adjustable) white background is not going to put a strain on your eyes – unlike trying to read small grey text on an off-white page.

For another thing, it’s about ease of use. Who wants to trail up to town to buy a book? Or wait until Amazon and their chosen ‘delivery partner’ get around to dropping the book through your letterbox? When you can press a couple of buttons, and hey presto! The book is there, ready to read.

One thing holding back the groundswell of eBook adoption is price. Most of the stuff people in bulk want to read is expensive. Sometimes more expensive than a hardback book. How is this possible? Publishers and e-tailers need to get their act together pretty soon, or else the internet connections are going to be buzzing with pirated copies of eBooks. It happened with music, and it’ll happen with eBooks too.

Boy, did this thing take an age to come out.

The general concensus is not overly positive. It seems to fall into a gap between the iPhone / iPod Touch and the laptop. As a result, it can’t do phone things, and it’s too darned big to fit into a pocket; and there’s several omissions, which make its use as a laptop replacement questionable at best.

But here’s the thing. It’s an Apple. It’s got the Steve-meister fully behind it. And that means the i-Marketing teams are going to go all out to convince us that this is the product we want to buy. Not because it makes sense by any traditional measure. But because we’ll just want the thing.

It has an iBook store attached to it, which is good. The price of the i/eBooks is going to be $14.99. Which is bad. But this can change, as can the price (although at $499 is a good deal less than many were expecting). As can the specs, which will surely improve.

What remains to be seen is if Steve Jobs and Apple can pull off the marketing coup of the decade – to convince enough people that they want this thing to create a critical mass; once your mates have one, then you’re going to have to have one. And who wouldn’t bet against Apple?

Interesting piece by Rory Cellan-Jones about ebooks, and the upcoming Apple announcement – see LINK

Rory’s makes the point that sharing possessions has always been easier with the written word – books can be lent to friends easily, perhaps far more easily that ebooks can. And he’s right, to a certain extent. But that’s not to say that digital technology can’t do likewise.

Imagine a wireless-enabled e-reader, on which you have the latest blockbuster. You’ve read it, you think it’s great, you tell your book-reading friends. They want to borrow it. Technologically, it’s not difficult to do this, even in the current state of Digital Rights paranoia. And what’s the problem? You read a book, you want to lend it to a friend, you meet: either you physically hand something made from dead trees over, or you bring your readers into close proximity, establish a connection, select “TRANSFER”, and the deed is done. I say again – what’s the problem?

And this is the only quoted reason that Apple won’t be experiencing an iPod moment this Tuesday, apparently.

Well, I’m not so sure. You need to factor in that ‘books’ may well be very different in a couple of years, with the ability to follow links in the book to more information. How great would it be if, having finished our electronic book, we could read all about the author and his inspiration. And for this, you need something more than the current crop of ereaders. Do you need an iSlate? Whether you need one or not, I’m guessing it’s going to be the “must-have” of 2010.

As the title says, really.

CLICK

As with most ereaders, the display latency (from screen press to display update) is not good. But the design is pretty neat.