Sony campaign: Man will live in a store window, reading for 30 days

[Over]

That chair doesn't look comfortable enough to spend 30 days there. This is slavery, and all for an advertizing stunt. Exploring a poor soul with dylexia and ADD... Bastards!

[Alexander Turcic]

I received some additional info, straight from Sony. Basically, one important aspect of the campaign is to demonstrate to schools the availability and benefit of e-books. While most of us are very well aware of e-books in practical terms, some schools are still in need of catching up, facing the phenomenon where students spend a lot of time on PCs (or Macs) but not so much time reading books. The idea is to merge the two and have a win-win situation - for schools and for Sony.

Beside the campaign and the Readers give away, Sony will also be providing the management software; they will teach the schools how they can authorize multiple PCs (in their computer labs, for example), giving them an environment to find the books they want (usually it's the classics that most closely fit with a school's curricula), an environment where they are all formatted the same and are easy to locate and manage. The ultimate goal would be to have the schools move on from there, to learn of other places where they could find free content or even perhaps purchase content from.

[daffy4u]

Alex, did they say what age ranges they were targeting? In my head, I thought it would be Jr. High and High Schools.

I still think the schools that would be most helped by this promotion won't have the equipment to take advantage of it. They should really target the poorer schools for the reader give-a-ways, not just the first 100 to sign up.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Alex, did they say what age ranges they were targeting? In my head, I thought it would be Jr. High and High Schools.

I still think the schools that would be most helped by this promotion won't have the equipment to take advantage of it. They should really target the poorer schools for the reader give-a-ways, not just the first 100 to sign up.

Certainly 5 eBook readers is only a sampling anyway. I think it is more likely that schools with those eBooks would use them in conjunction with the eBook Library software which is a free download anyway and will work with the existing computers in the schools labs. It contains a very good software reader for these books. It has been my experience that these computers are often under utilized because the teachers do not have the expertise to integrate them into the curriculum. This could be part of the solution to this problem.

Dale

[daffy4u]

I'm not thinking about schools that have computers. I used to volunteer for a non-profit that gathered and donated books to schools. There are many poorer schools that have more students than they have books in their libraries. These are the schools that wouldn't have computers. These are types of schools that could benefit from the readers and a few computers.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

I'm not thinking about schools that have computers. I used to volunteer for a non-profit that gathered and donated books to schools. There are many poorer schools that have more students than they have books in their libraries. These are the schools that wouldn't have computers. These are types of schools that could benefit from the readers and a few computers.

There are those of course. However if they don't have a computer to use the eBook readers would be of little use. No way to maintain them or load eBooks on to them. Sony did not indicate that they are giving away any computers.

Dale

[Patricia]

If they give away Sony Classics then they will put children off for a long time. Most of them are poorly-formatted and will cause children to get bored with them very quickly, so that they won't pay much attention to the content.
Now if they had managed to give away legal Harry Potter ebooks then there would be a really good news story, which might have got young people interested in the Sony Reader.

And I also hope that they don't make the speed-reading man read his way through those Sony Classics.

[stustaff]

These comments are the sorts of things that make me wonder why anyone bothers doing anything charitable!

yes I know they are doing it for their own benefit etc but still they are giving something to schools for free which is great!

I havent seen anyone on Mobileread starting a fund to post a DVD full of all of the books available for free on mobileread to each school.

now Theres a thought! or like someone said why not create a education page with all of the relevant books in and email every school in the english speaking world with a link(and try getting some press for doing it).

[mazzeltjes]

Why not send a mail with this adress

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_P...545a618a944422

to every school in america?
At least they won't end up with drm'ed books and have a choice of formats.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

How may I apply for this job?

Argh! You beat me to it, that's just the job I'd like to do.
But I guess my presence there in jammies would kill any chance of a sale for Sony!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by stustaff

I havent seen anyone on Mobileread starting a fund to post a DVD full of all of the books available for free on mobileread to each school.

If I thought it would help... I would commit to buying a ream of 1000 CDs, cutting then full of PD ebooks and mailing them to 1000 schools. Would cost about $500 I estimate. But, there is no reason to do this. Pretty much any school has access to this. They can skip buying 1 book for their library and spend that $10 downloading PD ebooks.

BOb

[nesagwa]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

If I thought it would help... I would commit to buying a ream of 1000 CDs, cutting then full of PD ebooks and mailing them to 1000 schools. Would cost about $500 I estimate. But, there is no reason to do this. Pretty much any school has access to this. They can skip buying 1 book for their library and spend that $10 downloading PD ebooks.

BOb

I think youre putting to much faith into free and cheap book sources for ebooks. A lot of project Gutenburg books arent formatted in any readable format (text files are incredibly hard to read) and is fairly hard to navigate.

If a project like that was to get off the ground (and Id be all for it, Ive been very interested in eBook technology since I was in middle school and think once the readers drop in price dramatically or get subsidized it would be an amazing step up) it would need to be both easy to navigate - via a software frontend - and well formatted in two or three different file formats (say, html, lrf and mobi) with extensive proof reading and editing to ensure that they were 100% as good as any print version. It would need to be just as easy as physically checking out a paper book is. Idiot proof. An 8 year old would need to be able to get a book from the library to his reader on his own. So far there really isnt anything that fills that gap.

The problem I see with a product like the Sony Reader in a school right now is even if every student in the school has a reader to carry with them, there is no software (on the device itself or in the Sony Library program) that would lend itself well to checking out books from a single source easily and on multiple platforms (mac and linux support, schools use them.) If I were running a school's library there would be no way I would install Sony's software on the PCs.

Their heart is in the right place, but if they really wanted to support the education sector they should have planned for this years ago.

[Faenad]

Originally Posted by nesagwa

I think youre putting to much faith into free and cheap book sources for ebooks. A lot of project Gutenburg books arent formatted in any readable format (text files are incredibly hard to read) and is fairly hard to navigate.

It's true, but on the other hand the Sony ebookstore classics Books are far from perfect.
I read the first pages of Pride and Prejudice yesterday, and noticed some formatting errors like line break in the middle of a sentence

Perhaps we should instead send to that schools this adress : https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebo...&sort=dateline
-Along with the many website offering decently formatted ebooks like Feedbooks, ebooksgratuits.com, etc.-

[nesagwa]

Originally Posted by Faenad

It's true, but on the other hand the Sony ebookstore classics Books are far from perfect.
I read the first pages of Pride and Prejudice yesterday, and noticed some formatting errors like line break in the middle of a sentence

Perhaps we should instead send to that schools this adress : https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebo...&sort=dateline
-Along with the many website offering decently formatted ebooks like Feedbooks, ebooksgratuits.com, etc.-

Feedbooks and here are great resources, but they arent without their faults either. Lots of errors in both sources too. I think what needs to happen is something similar to Project Gutenberg but mix it with Feedbooks and MobileRead. It would need to have all of these public domain works but also make it more like a Wiki. Errors would be corrected by a bigger group of people in a transparent, open arena and formatting would be standardized among all books. It would need to be moderated and possibly even screening members before joining to avoid vandals obviously.

In short it would need to be run like a digital publishing company working to convert these works to a real finished product and then find a way to distribute in an easy to use interface.

A massive undertaking really, but its the only obvious next step I can see happening with this massive amount of text floating around.

[DaleDe]

There is a wiki already for classic books. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page. It is in the list of free books on our wiki.