eBooks.com goes Sony Reader

[Alexander Turcic]

The good news for all Sony Reader (PRS-505) aficionados, straight from the source:

eBooks.com, the web's leading ebookstore, announced today that it has amassed a huge collection of published ebooks ready for downloading to Sony's ebook PRS-505 device. Until now, owners of a Sony Reader Digital Book have been confined to the collection of titles available direct from Sony's own ebookstore, or from Borders.com. On Thursday, Sony released a software upgrade that enables users to download ebooks in the ubiquitous Adobe format.

"We've assembled the world's biggest range of commercially published books suitable for the Sony Reader," said Stephen Cole, CEO of eBooks.com. "The vast majority of ebooks available from eBooks.com are from major commercial publishing houses. We're keen to enable self-published authors to upload their books to boost the number of titles in our repository -- as some sites do -- but we haven't built that capability yet. The result is that our collection of ebooks is almost entirely made up of books published by the world's leading book publishers."

Academic and Professional Books

In addition to its acclaimed range of popular fiction and non-fiction ebooks, eBooks.com's collection of Sony-compatible titles includes a substantial choice of academic and professional texts from publishers such as Wiley, Springer and Elsevier.

[TadW]

Looks like PRS-500 users are left out. ;(

[Jack B Nimble]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

ubiquitous Adobe format

Does that indicate they are sticking with PDF, or do they think Adobe encrypted ePub is ubiquitous? I went to the site, but they call it simply Adobe format there as well. I am guessing it's PDF.

Jack

[acidzebra]

Until now, owners of a Sony Reader Digital Book have been confined to the collection of titles available direct from Sony's own ebookstore, or from Borders.com.

Or MobileRead, or Gutenberg, or....

Ah well, I am happy they are jumping on the bandwagon. The more the merrier.

[jerryleejr]

I am really glad to hear this. My major concern with the 505 was the inability to buy elsewhere.

JJ

[Jack B Nimble]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

Or MobileRead, or Gutenberg, or....

And don't forget commercial, if unprotected, books from Fictionwise, Baen, Steve Jordan...

Jack

[rhadin]

I went to eBooks.com and am unlikely to go back unless they improve their search engine. I searched for the author David Weber and received hundreds, if not thousands, of books -- any book whose title, author, or description had either David or Weber in it.

I then searched for a recent history release called Bitterly Divided. I first went to the history section and then asked eBooks to search the History section. Again hundreds of books were returned -- any book that had Bitterly or Divided in its title or description. Not a very good search engine.

[stgben]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I went to eBooks.com and am unlikely to go back unless they improve their search engine. I searched for the author David Weber and received hundreds, if not thousands, of books -- any book whose title, author, or description had either David or Weber in it.

I then searched for a recent history release called Bitterly Divided. I first went to the history section and then asked eBooks to search the History section. Again hundreds of books were returned -- any book that had Bitterly or Divided in its title or description. Not a very good search engine.

If you place it in quotes you'll significantly reduce the results. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have either of the books you just described.

[Jim Lester]

Originally Posted by stgben

If you place it in quotes you'll significantly reduce the results. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have either of the books you just described.

You could also go to the "Advanced Search" page http://www.ebooks.com/search/advancedsearch.asp and put in David Weber (with or without quotes) in the Author field and find that they are not carrying any of his books yet.

[AprilHare]

This sounds just like the very thing I need - shame the PRS 500 doesn't have the firmware update we need - where are you Sony when we need you!?

[grimo1re]

I was all happy after reading the title. Now I'm depressed. I need a 505.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Jim Lester

You could also go to the "Advanced Search" page http://www.ebooks.com/search/advancedsearch.asp and put in David Weber (with or without quotes) in the Author field and find that they are not carrying any of his books yet.

I tried the advance search and faired no better. What they really need is to let you select search parameters such as exact/loose match, exclude/include descriptions, title only, etc. They say they have more than 100,000 titles; with that number of ebooks, the search engine has to be more flexible so that one can narrow the parameters.

[JSWolf]

I didn't know ebooks.com was located in Boston. That's neat.

Anyway, I've send a message to corporate asking if the Digital Editions eBooks are ePub or PDF. I'll see what sort of answer I get if I get one.

[Jim Lester]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I tried the advance search and faired no better. What they really need is to let you select search parameters such as exact/loose match, exclude/include descriptions, title only, etc. They say they have more than 100,000 titles; with that number of ebooks, the search engine has to be more flexible so that one can narrow the parameters.

The author search seems okay. The advanced search with David Weber in the author field, and came up with no matches (missing the one book they have by David J. Weber). Entering Weber, David picked up that book. I then tried the advanced search with Elizabeth Moon in the author field and came with 7 matches all by her. (No quotes either time, BTW).

But I agree that the advanced keyword search leaves a lot to be desired. Entering "David Weber" in quotes came up with the result you described earlier of anything with either David or Weber in the metadata. However putting it in quotes in the quick search, yielded the two books that mention David Weber in the description (pretty bad when the advanced search is better than the "dumb search").

I also agree that it would be nice to be able to specify the metadata field you are searching and be able to do exact (with quotes) matches

I'll also add these to Digital Editions feature list, so when I finally get to do search (instead of just find in a book) people will have less cause to complain as well

[Hadrien]

I wouldn't call letter-sized PDF with DRM "Sony Reader support". The reflow is useful when you need to view a document unavailable in another format, but what sites such as ebooks.com should focus on, is providing thousands of ePub files.