MobileRead Forums - News and Commentary

Vodafone Germany with new eBook-Reader

mtravellerh — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:09:10 GMT

In something of a surprise move, Vodafone Germany, one of the biggest players in the German mobile market, seems to have decided to take the eBook market seriously.
German magazine Wirtschaftswoche announced today that Vodafone might bring to market a new e-ink eBook-Reader with a big screen (A4) in fall. It seems that the new reader is already being tested. The device will not be produced by Vodafone itself, but will be branded. The screen size will probably be 9.7-inch which puts it in the Kindle DX range. There will also be some kind of mobile connectivity. We don't know who the producer of the device will be - for now.
Vodafone is also thinking of selling its device in combination with newspaper or magazine subscriptions.
It seems that Vodafone will not establish its own e-book store but will try to strike a cooperation with an existing German portal.

Thanks to Johannes from lesen.net for bringing this up!

Online Theology Book Club

Gideon — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:26:48 GMT

Wearing one of my other hats in life, some friends and I started a theology book club. We're all over the country, however, so we're going to be doing it online via video and regular text chat. Many others were also interested, so we've gotten a bit bigger than we originally imagined.

We're going to be talking about books on theology and religion that are often rooted in respectable academic work but not so academic that a person with a decent religious education can't appreciate what is going on. The group is not affiliated with any particular group (its founding members were an Episcopalian, Methodist and Presbyterian) but lean towards "progressive religion" in general.

Our first book is going to be John Caputo's On Religion you can see some multimedia content and supplementary material here. We'll be meeting on Thursday, July 16th at 8pm EST. We're discussing our picks for the next book here and here.

We're working off the Emergent Outliers site, but the group itself is not necessarily involved with the Emergent Church movement (though many are in some way or another) - so don't let that put you off it isn't your cup of tea. Everyone who can engage in a civil and interesting conversation with a modicum of religious education is welcome.

Joe Abercrombie on Ebook Pricing

AshW — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:46:04 GMT

I've been waiting for his books to come out for a while. And while they weren't priced higher and usual (for the uk) I thought it was interesting to see a (relatively) high profile author have in interest in this kind of stuff and obviously unhappy with the current situation.

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2009/0...-exciting.html

Quote:

Pleased to note that Best Served Cold, and the First Law Trilogy, are now available on e-book via Waterstones.com:

The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
Last Argument of Kings
Best Served Cold

The prices are a tad disappointing - �10 and change for Best Served Cold when a hardback is selling at �8.50, and around �6 for the First Law books when mass-market paperbacks are available for a mere �4.

My own feeling about e-piracy and so forth is that it's virtually impossible to put a stop to - the more popular you are the more torrents will endlessly spring up, and most of them in places where folks don't respond to a polite email. The only effective way to combat it is to provide people with a higher quality service than pirates do, more easily available and at a price that seems reasonable. Then I think most will be happy to pay.

One problem is that a lot of users somehow think that e-books, since they don't have to be printed, are pure profit for the publisher and should therefore be virtually free whereas, of course, the great majority of the costs that go into making a paper book (commissioning, editing, artwork, marketing, repping, promoting and, erm, paying the author) still apply with an ebook. Champions of a revolutionary future of free-love filesharing where writers and readers will all be liberated from the shackles of publishers tend to forget the vital role they play as gatekeepers and ensurers of a certain level of quality (you may think some books that are published are rubbish but believe me, until you've seen a slush pile you really have no idea).

Even so, selling ebooks at more than the cost of the paper books is going to look just a wee bit like taking the piss to some buyers, I suspect. I'd like to see them retail at most at the same price as the paper equivalents, and ideally somewhat lower. At the moment most publishers and booksellers are still focused on the paper market where heavy discounts are applying more and more widely, making ebooks something of a speciality item and hence relatively more expensive. Hopefully in due course that will change, and I'll certainly be pressing them to lower the price as soon and as much as possible but, hey, it's a start.

Creator vs. reader and the Adobe EPUB monopoly

llasram — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:27:09 GMT

Because some people on MR seemed to find my last e-book-related blog post interesting, I figured I'd go ahead and post here myself that I have a new one up. Discusses some technical issues surrounding the tension between book-creator and book-reader control of formatting and how this interacts with Adobe's de facto monopoly of the EPUB format.

http://platypope.org/blog/2009/7/2/c...-epub-monopoly

Kindle Deleted Ayn Rand Content

purl4peace — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:39:03 GMT

Over on the Kindle forum at Amazon, I found the following post:

If true -- I find it rather chilling and "big-brother-ish"...

Quote:

Amazon owes me a full explanation for deleting, in the dark of night and without prior notice or permission, four titles from my Kindle. Atlas Shrugged, Virtue Of Selfishness, The Fountainhead and Night of January 16th, all by Ayn Rand.

Now that the Company has demonstrated that it not only has the capability, but believes it has the *right*, to delete content from our Kindles at any time at its discretion, Amazon owes Kindle owners a detailed policy statement. I would like to know whether Amazon will set any limits on future use of this blunt instrument, and our rights if we believe the Company has crossed the line.

If Amazon insists on retaining wide discretion, I call for the immediate appointment of (at least a pseudo-independent) Ombudsman to represent the interests of Kindle users going forward.

A reasonable solution for purchasers -- if Amazon genuinely made an error and illegally published and distributed Ayn Rand works in violation of copyrights -- would have been for the Company to purchase, on its own nickle, hard copies of each of the withdrawn works, and shipped them to affected users ASAP Amazon Prime.

I'd have accepted that, together with a written explanation and apology.

What seems to keep happening with the Kindle line is that Amazon Legal panics, and users get the shaft. It happened with TTS, and now it appears to have happened with Ayn Rand content -- regarding which the Company may now fear high-dollar value copyright infringement litigation.

Again, we don't know from any authoritative source that these were unauthorized works -- Amazon said only that there were "problems" with the works. On that basis, or perhaps on no basis at all, the Company has asserted it has the right to withdraw from our Kindles any content it wishes, at any time, for a simple return of fees.

Think about that!

Macmillan Ebook Poll

Nate the great — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:30:06 GMT

I just got an email form Macmillan with a link to a survey. Most of the questions are about ebooks. I'd really appreciate it if everyone would participate. Hopefully if they get enough of a positive response they'll finally get around to selling ebooks. Here is the link:

http://click.mail.macmillan.com/?qs=...785260f923a098

Amazon cancels affiliates

rhadin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:24:59 GMT

It was reported in the past couple of days that Amazon has decided to terminate affiliate agreements with affiliates in Rhode Island and (I think the second was) North Carolina because of the sales tax issue. The same article indicated that Amazon is not accepting affiliates in Hawaii over the same issue and that Amazon has threatened to drop affiliates in additional states if those states require Amazon to collect sales taxes like resident businesses of those states do.

Interestingly, however, Amazon threatened but then changed its mind about dropping affiliates in New York over the same issue.

It's always good to see Amazon doing its best for for those who helped it become so successful. :rolleyes: Makes me want to rush out and buy from Amazon. :rofl:

Iliber ebook

anahid — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:55:41 GMT

I'm not sure if this ebookreader has already been commented here, compared to the readers I have seen here it looks quite promising, it's in spanish but I think most of it will be easy to understand. The reader itself looks much like the Cybook, although there are several characteristics the cybook does not have, such as library/folder support, batterylife shown while reading...

http://www.iliber.com/

I don't know how to put pictures here, but you can see them on the webpage.

iLiber

DESCRIPCI�N: Dispositivo port�til que te permitir� la lectura de tus libros, c�mics y visualizar fotograf�as.

Gran autonomia de la bater�a, 8000 pasadas de p�gina, cuando la pantalla esta est�tica en una p�gina no hay consumo de la bater�a.

CARACTER�STICAS:
- Dispone de memoria interna de 512 MB con posibilidad de expandir con tarjetas de memoria SD
- Soluci�n multimedia para almacenar y reproducir toda clase de libros, c�mics, y fotografias.
- Duraci�n de la bateria 8000 p�ginas
- Men� o interfaz en Ingl�s, Espa�ol, Franc�s, Portugues y Alem�n
- Soporta los formatos de ebook: .pdf, .epub, .txt, .html, .chm
- Soporta los formatos de imagen: .bmp, .jpg y .gif

CARACTER�STICAS T�CNICAS:
- Pantalla: 6� E-Ink Screen (122mm x 99mm)
- Resoluci�n: 800 x 600 pixeles, 170dpi, 8 niveles de grises
- Memoria: 512Mb (*) expandible con SD
- Tama�o: 198mm(H)x 128mm(W) x 9mm(D)
- Peso: 190 gr
- Bater�a: Li-ion 3.7V recargable 1000mAh, duraci�n 8000 p�ginas (**)
- Tiempo de carga de bater�a: 6 horas con cable USB
- SDRAM: 32MB
- Temperatura de trabajo: 0�C a 50�C
- Temperaturas m�ximas: -30�C a 70�C
- USB: v 2.0 (mini USB)

(*) Memoria aproximada utilizable por el usuario 470 Mb
(**) Duraci�n estimada, puede variar en funci�n del uso

Customizable reader called Ditto Book!

chanjay — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:16:04 GMT

Hi all,

I have run accross this website called www.dittobook.com and looks pretty interesting with their customizable ebook reader called Ditto Book reader.

Does anyone has this kind yet?

hc.

Bridgestone set to make major push into e-paper business

kaas — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:25:11 GMT

from endgadget.com:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/01/b...aper-business/

Bridgestone's already showed off some fairly impressive e-paper displays, and gone into mass production with displays for inventory tags and whatnot, but it now looks like the company is now set to make its biggest push into the market yet. According to Tech-On, Bridgestone will be announcing details of its plans in July or August, but it appears that the announcement will concern e-paper displays for e-book readers, at least one of which will be A4 in size. That particular screen was making the rounds of exhibitions back in April, and makes use of the company's proprietary "electron powder and granular material" which, among other things, lets the screen rewrite in just 0.8 seconds. Of course, there's no word on any actual devices using the e-paper just yet, but we're hoping that'll be among the details announced in the next month or so.

the more the merrier, I say :)

cheers,
kaas

Kickstarter: A New Way to Fund Creativity

Moejoe — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:22:54 GMT

In the past we've had many heated debates about how authors will make their living in the digital age. From tip-jars to sponsorship to merchandise, there have been many ideas put forward.

Kickstarter is a new funding initiative from the creators of Spot.us. Creative types set a funding goal for their project and if that funding goal is met by the 'crowd' the work is completed. Will this model be successful? Will the artist, audience relationship be forever changed in the face of crowdsourced payment? Only time will tell.

Quote:

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a new way to fund ideas and endeavors.

We believe that...

* A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
* A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

*My own opinion on this is that this will take off in a serious way for authors with enough of a following who can't seem to get a publishing deal, but still need an income to keep writing on a project. Maybe if this had been around when Ramsey Campbell was struggling, he wouldn't have had to curb his writing to go work in a bookshop.

EDIT: Project Kickstarter is a no-go if you don't happen to be a US Citizen :(

Fictionwise down?

koland — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:43:36 GMT

Is it just me, or has fictionwise's cart system crashed? I was having no problem late lat night, until at midnight I started getting "system error" messages. I haven't been able to get into my cart since.

Borders UK introduces new reader

Elsi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:24:33 GMT

On the last day of June, Borders UK announced a new reader for the UK market. Named "Elonex ebook", the device can be purchased in all of the chain's stores. The price of �189 makes it a cheaper alternative to the Sony Reader, and it supports ePub and Adobe formats -- suitable for the e-books being sold on Borders website.

Peter Newbould, commercial director at Borders, said: "... by launching the Elonex e-book at a retail price of �189, making it available in all of our UK stores and ensuring it is easy to shop the 45,000 titles at www.borders.co.uk, we hope to bring new customers into the market."

Please join the ongoing discussion here --> http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49981

Plucker URL's

errolgreer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:36:56 GMT

I have switched to Plucker as Avantgo dies today ! Is there a list of URLs I can put in for web sites I would like to download. For instance: New York Times, CNN, PCWorld, Computer Active, CNET News.com, The Today Show etc. I already have a few which work, such as PalmInfoCenter - http://www.palminfocenter.com/palm as an example.

Many thanks

Errol Greer

Look at this, Pixel Qi vs kindle & laptop

dodoflying — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:38:25 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawX3wenxNc&eurl