09:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | General Discussions

Oh yes, what would we do without the lovely revolving door? The Software Alliance (BSA, aka the "world's premier anti-piracy organization") announced this week that it has named Victoria Espinel to be its President and CEO. Until recently, Espinel was the White House's intellectual property coordinator - a position also dubbed "IP czar" or "copyright czar" - who fought against all kinds of infringement in a world full of nasty infringers and counterfeiters.

"We are thrilled to have Victoria leading BSA forward in an important phase of growth and evolution for the software industry," said BSA Board Chairman Pascal Di Fronzo, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Autodesk, Inc. "Victoria brings an extraordinary wealth of expertise on key issues at the intersection of trade policy, market access and IP protection. [...]

BSA President and CEO-designate Victoria Espinel said, "I am looking forward to working closely with BSA's member companies to ensure markets around the world provide the enabling environments necessary for technology innovation to continue flourishing. Software drives growth and productivity in all sectors of the global economy, and it enriches modern life. BSA will continue to be a forceful and effective advocate on issues central to the next phase of the industry's growth as rapid changes in the digital landscape create new opportunities and policy priorities."

Related: E-book customer sharing with anti-piracy group BREIN faces political backlash, Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers

[via Wired]

06:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

The buzz is now too loud to ignore. Sony is most likely going to unveil their upcoming PRS-T3 e-book reader in Berlin on September 4, two days ahead of the official opening of the IFA conference. This suggests that our earlier estimated release date of September 19 could be pretty close.

Meanwhile, we've received some more specs (in bold), in addition to what's been leaked before:

• 6-inch E Ink screen with "Clear Touch" IR, 1024x758, 16 grey levels
• WLAN (802.11b/g/n)
• RAM: 2 GB, expandable to up to 32 GB (microSD)
• 8 font sizes, 6 different fonts
• Fast-charging battery (three minutes), not sure for how much of a charge
• Browser included (said to be unblocked, so we assume any website can be visited)
• Direct shop access via browser and WiFi
• Support for PDF text reflow
• Support for Evernote Clearly und Facebook API
• 15 dictionaries included (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch)
• Support for word lookups via Wikipedia and Google
• Full-text search, marking and annotation features
• Three non-free e-books included
• Supported file formats: EPUB (with and without DRM), PDF (with and without DRM), TXT, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Cover with automatic start/sleep function, integrated into the device
• Optional: Cover with integrated light
• Dimensions: 160x109x11.3mm
• Weight: 200g
• Available in the colors black (PRST3BC), red (PRST3RC), and white (PRST3WC)

Thanks to Mobilereader dieterpops for the heads-up!

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Ok kids, time for the weekly roundup of what we've covered this week:

E-Book General - News

• E-book customer sharing with anti-piracy group BREIN faces political backlash
• Kobo revs up its line of e-readers, unveils Kobo Arc 10 HD tablet
• calibre V1.1 released, with plenty of bug fixes
• NOOK for Android 3.4.1.20 out, adds accessibility feature
• Amazon Kindle, Bienvenido a Mexico!
• 84 percent of top 1,000 titles available as accessible e-books, study finds

E-Book General - General Discussions

• How important is text-to-speech capability to you?
• How annoying is the lack of quotation marks to you?

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources (No Self-Promotion)

• O'Reilly: 50% off all eBooks & Videos (valid until Sep 10, 2013)

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• September Book Club Vote
• The Book Club's Anniversary is upon us! Has it really been FIVE years?

E-Book Readers - Android Devices

• Aldiko Book Reader Premium V2.2.3 released (Android)

E-Book Readers - Barnes & Noble NOOK

• B&N Retail CEO sells stock

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Welcome Marvin e-book app to our forums!

05:29 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Although not all authors and publishers are keen to allow things that would make e-books more available, like electronic text-to-speech, overall e-books have been a blessing to visually impaired blind and partially sighted people, according to a new report by the UK-based Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Over the past four years, the charity looked at what they consider the 1,000 most popular books and determined the proportion of those that were available as an accessible e-book.

In 2012, 84 per cent of the top 1,000 titles were available in braille, audio and large print, formats using eBooks.

In comparison, in 2011 it was 73%; in 2011 it was 45%; and in 2009 it was none, according to the study.

Other key findings:

• By genre, 99% of the Adult fiction, and 77% of the Adult non-fiction titles included were available as fully accessible e-books in 2012. These figures compare to 93% of Adult fiction and 62% of Adult non-fiction in 2011.
• 43% of Children's titles were available as accessible e-books in 2012, compared to 30 per cent in 2011.
• 49% of the top 1,000 titles of 2012 were available as audio books, compared to 42% in 2011.
• 25% of the most popular 450 Adult non-fiction titles were available as unabridged downloadable audio books, compared to 43% of children's titles, and 75% fiction titles in 2012.
• 81% of the most popular General and literary fiction titles were available as unabridged human speech audio books, compared to 40% of Saga and romance titles in 2012.

Related: How important is text-to-speech capability to you?, Amazon, Kobo and Sony request e-readers be exempt from accessibility laws

[via booktrade.info]

03:21 PM by usuallee in E-Book General | General Discussions

I just read Louise Erdrich's The Round House. Pretty good book. But no quotation marks were used to denote dialogue. As far as I can determine, Cormac McCarthy started doing this and now lots of literary authors are mimicking the trend.

To me, there is no stylistic reason to omit quotation marks, except to self-consciously announce an author's intention that This Is A Literary Work. I find it utterly pretentious. Your thoughts....

[image: Tsahi Levent-Levi / flickr]

10:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Clearly, Amazon wants to think global. Just when we learned about Amazon's plans to expand their Kindle operations to Russian, Indian and Chinese markets, the company announced this week the launch of its Mexico Kindle Store. Also, e-book fans in Mexico can now buy the Kindle and the Kindle Paperwhite locally at Gandhi for 1399 Mexican pesos ($105) and 2399 pesos (~$180) respectively.

“The vast majority of Mexicans do not have access to a bookstore in their town, so we’re happy to launch the Mexico Kindle Store today and bring a huge bookstore with over 2 million titles to anyone with an Internet connection,” said Pedro Huerta, Director of Kindle Content, Latin America. “We are also excited to bring Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite to Mexico at Gandhi stores. Kindle Paperwhite offers an unparalleled reading experience, with a display that reads like real paper, an innovative built-in front light, a small and light-weight design and 8 weeks of battery life so customers can easily dive into their favorite books.”

Quite consequently the Kindle Direct Publishing platform is now available to Mexican authors and publishers as well.

“Mexican authors and publishers can now self-publish their books in the new Mexico Kindle Store with KDP, making their books available to customers in Mexico and all over the world,” said Pedro Huerta, Director of Kindle Content, Latin America. “KDP is a powerful, self-service platform that allows authors to boldly experiment and fulfill their dreams of publishing. We’ve already seen many Spanish-language authors experience great success using the platform, and, in fact, there are many KDP titles in the Mexico Kindle Store already.”

[via Teleread]

[image: arvind grover / flickr]

04:51 AM by sun surfer in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

I was having a look at some past selections on the list and happened to notice that this book club will be reaching its fifth anniversary in October!

At first I thought it'd be November from the list, but then out of curiosity I went to find the oldest thread to have a look at where it all began and found that the book club was actually started in the beginning of October 2008 by the mysterious PsyDocJoanne (and pilotbob was also right there from the start), with the initial book given a month to read first so was considered the November selection.

So congrats to the book club for chugging along for almost five years now and for those that've made it possible! I've certainly enjoyed it since I came on board here. We should celebrate with punch and pie.

04:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

While Barnes and Noble is still working on restoring investor confidence, its official Android app continues to evolve. The latest update brings the following changes:

• Changed Night Theme back to black per user feedback
• Fixed empty My Files filter when two or more sideloaded items are duplicates
• Popular Time Inc. magazines now available
• Enlarge book illustrations for more detailed imagery
• Now accessible to blind & low vision users leveraging Android assistive technology, including screen magnification (OS 4.2 or higher) & TalkBack (OS 4.1 or higher)
• Bug fixes
• Some users may need to Sign Out then Sign In again to complete the upgrade

You can download NOOK for Android for free via the Google Play store.