03:02 AM by Billi in E-Book General | News

Barbara Mertz (September 29, 1927 – August 8, 2013) died at the age of 85. She wrote under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels.

She was perhaps best known for the Amelia Peabody series, mysteries set in Egypt.

06:13 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

That's right. This week you can save 50% on any e-book purchase from Packt Publishing, one of the leading providers of books for IT developers, admins, and avid users.

From O'Reilly Media, who now appears to be a reseller of Packt books:

We're thrilled to welcome Packt to shop.oreilly.com. Their high-quality, technically relevant ebooks are DRM-free, just like the rest of the O'Reilly catalog. You get lifetime access, multiple file formats, and free updates.

To take advantage of the deal, use the discount code WKPCKT. Promo expires August 15, 2013 at 5:00am PT.

05:21 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Just found this sweet deal via Android Police:

If you're looking for a cheap, mod-worthy tablet with a great screen, look no further. Today eBay Daily Deals has the Nook HD+, with a 9-inch, 1920x1280 screen and built-in access to the Google Play Store for just $119.99. It's a refurbished model, but that's $30 and 20% cheaper than the already-low $150 retail price. The eBay listing has free standard shipping, plus you won't have to pay sales tax outside of New Jersey and New York.

Link to eBay: here

Edit: Alternatively, as MobileReader tubemonkey pointed out, you could also try to take advantage of a 20% off in-store only coupon that would bring the price down to $119 (new unit!). Hurry though, the offer is only good till August 10.

05:10 AM by Jessica Lares in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

Finally!

Downloading now. Will let you know how I like it.

04:48 AM by TadW in E-Book General | News

Stephen Curry @ The Guardian writes:

I have been repeatedly disappointed at the low quality of the texts that I have bought from Amazon's Kindle store. The frequency of typographical errors, sloppy layout and poor image quality, even on my relatively small sample of around twenty titles, has made me wonder if the 'e' in ebook stands for easy money. This seems strange given the care publishers normally take over printed versions — I have only very rarely come across typos or pagination errors — but the evidence from my online purchases is mounting.

My experience has been similar, unfortunately. Who do you think is responsible? If it is the publishers, as the article suggests, then why do they care less about typographical and formatting errors than they did before?

[image by liz west via Flickr]

04:34 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | General Discussions

It's not that we're surprised after hearing of the DOJ's proposed order to prevent Apple from entering new e-book distribution contracts for five years, that publishers are anything but unhappy about the plans. In a court filing (provided by Cnet) yesterday afternoon, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Holtzbrinck, and Penguin Random House argue that the proposal would effectively eliminate the use of the "agency model" for distributing and selling e-books.

[T]he provisions do not impose any limitation on Apple's pricing behavior at all; rather, under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish the settling defendants by prohibiting agreements with Apple using an agency model.

This would, according to the publishers, go directly against what has been agreed on before in separate settlements with the U.S. ahead of the trial.

[T]he Proposed Order directly conflicts with the consent decrees that the Settling Defendants negotiated with Plaintiffs and that were entered as Final Judgments by this Court, which specifically provide that "a Settling Defendant may enter into Agency Agreements with E-book Retailers" with certain enumerated limitations. As a result, the relief sought by Plaintiffs effectively modifies the Settling Defendant's existing Final Judgments and unreasonably and unnecessarily restrains the Settling Defendants' independent business decisions beyond the scope and time provided for their respective consent decrees.

On the other hand, while it's true that the proposed order would restrict publishers from entering into agency agreements with Apple, it would not prevent them from entering into agreements with any other party, as agreed on in the previous settlements.

[via Digital Reader]

03:10 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Listen up, folks. We need your help. As our Facebook presence has increased, so has the need to interact with Facebook members who visit us on Facebook. As a result we're now looking for a long time member who's familiar with us and who would be willing to field questions and respond to Facebook feedback on our behalf, to join the MobileRead Team.

If your fingers itch to update your Facebook status message every few minutes and if you refresh your Facebook page faster than light to see the responses from your friends, then we'd love to hear from you. Please drop us a line by sending an e-mail to alexander@mobileread.com, or by reporting this post and telling us why you'd like to be the Facebook Face of MobileRead.

01:50 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

If you're an avid users of Adobe's Creative Suite, you're probably already familiar with their recent shift to making software available on a subscription basis. Love it or hate it, it seems the dawn of software as a subscription is now upon us. With the release of the Adobe Reader 11 update, iPad and iPhone users can now take advantage of Adobe's CreatePDF and ExportPDF cloud services - but only after making the required in-app purchase.

So what's new in 11?

• Ability to buy Adobe CreatePDF service using In app purchase
• Convert an image to PDF using Adobe’s CreatePDF service
• Create PDF files from a variety of file formats using CreatePDF service
• Ability to buy Adobe ExportPDF service using in app purchase
• Export PDF files to various formats (Word, excel, etc..) for editing using ExportPDF service
• Bug fixes and Security updates

CreatePDF is priced at $19.99 per year, while ExportPDF (which includes CreatePDF) is priced at $89.99 per year. Well... nobody said these services would come cheap.

[via Engadget]