03:42 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | General Discussions

As an e-book reader, have you ever looked at the number of titles available for free on the web, or available conveniently for purchase, and felt lost? Maybe you have downloaded a huge collection, and feel lost in the mass of titles. (For some, huge might mean 50 e-books, but for others it might mean 100,000 e-books in this digital age of wider accessibility!) You might even feel like there are so many books out there for you, that reading has become almost a job as you try to get through your reading list faster and faster. Instead of just enjoying books, you feel like you are trying to become more and more efficient as you can't wait to get to that next book.

While I've been thinking about this dilemma/paradox a lot recently, I couldn't help but write out a thought or two today because of the intriguing article at TeleRead by Alejandro Sanchez, Starving in a bountiful harvest: how ebooks are making my life more stressful. Sure, individuals deal differently with information overload, so you may not feel this at all. But I bet you at least know someone else that does. As Alejandro puts it,

Books in their dead-tree form, make me feel as if each one has created an intimate relationship with me, that I am beginning to lose with the works that makeup my ever expanding collection: at last count its well over a thousand e-books. Don’t get me wrong, I do have vivid memories of working a late shift and tearing through “War and Peace” or the sense of connection that I established with Hugo’s “Les Miserable”: both being free e-books from feedbooks.com. But, everything in between, I am beginning to view with a bid of dread. I know that I can form an emotional attachment to a writer’s thoughts but am beginning to realize that a writer’s work may need to be even more powerful than before to excite me.

My own feeling is that I usually approach my choice of the next book to read based on a type of book. I might have a series that I follow by a favorite author, and decide to read the latest book. Or I might choose a technical book, based on the subject I am trying to learn about. Or I might have a lot of energy and decide to tackle a classic that I've been wanting to read, such as War and Peace. Maybe I want a civil war book, or a top business title, or something significant from history, etc. In the old days, all I really had to choose was my book source. I'd wander into the library or bookstore and browse until I found the right book (or three or ten!) at the right price. I didn't worry very much about picking just the right book because I was just happy to find a few that I was excited about. I didn't really have to keep track of which books I was currently reading, because they were all there on my desk or table.

But now that's all changed. I had pretty much stopped reading for fun until MobileRead and PDAs and e-books came onto the scene, as well as the enthusiasm for reading I found from everyone at MobileRead. Now, I have files on various computers and phones as well as a dedicated e-book device. I actually have to make a list of the 5-10 books I'm reading, or trying to get to, or else I lose track. And yes, in the process, every book does indeed probably become less special.

In addition, there are so many source of e-books of every type and quality. Check out this list in the MobileRead Wiki with sites for free downloadable e-books. I'm pretty sure that this easily exceeds the available libraries of the richest men on earth throughout all of human history before the digital age. When I want a book now, I can randomly pick one of those sites, and maybe feel guilty about the 14 other types of books I'm trying to read, or feel like I'm missing out on the latest novel. As I don't usually read through books very fast, I have to admit feeling all the more jealous of all the people here at MobileRead that seem to finish a book a week or even a book a day.

So now I definitely feel a bit more stress about which books to read. The world's collective library is at my fingertips, so covering the most important books has become a lot more important to me. Life is short, and my interests are wide, so I know I can only sample what's out there.

How do I pick the right books, and manage my reading list? And it's also quite frustrating not getting to read the first part of the book for free before purchasing - I tend to shy away from buying e-books now unless I have a way of knowing for sure that I will like them, or unless the prices are too good to pass up. For SciFi reading, for example, Steve Jordan Books has became a favorite of mine. Others gravitate to Baen books for similar reasons. Both offer DRM-free books. Many other authors I follow have been because of a paperback novel that I bought first based on a recommendation, or was given as a gift. You get the idea. But what about new types of books? There are so many to choose from.

It must be a little bit how people feel when they suddenly come into large amounts of wealth - ecstatic until they realize the responsibility of properly handling the money. You have to have the right financial manager, and you have to make sure that he won't steal it all, or that it's somewhat protected from lawsuits and taxes and market fluctuations. You have to make sure you don't get caught short by ignoring the taxes owed. You have to take care of anything that you acquire, such as a home or a boat or a company or whatever. And maybe the most important of all, you probably want to invest in other people's lives and improving the world. So making the most of your money is not as easy as it sounds. I've heard that the burden of all this can make people wish they never received all that money. Personally, I'd really like to give it a try, but as for most of you, I'm much more likely to be a part of the daily grind to earn a living with an average job and living in modest circumstances.

With this sudden abundance of wealth in the form of e-books, are we really prepared to take advantage? True, one can just turn a blind eye and simply pick a book based on the mood of the moment and ignore everything else. But for some of us, reading is so important and valuable, we want to read the best stuff, and we almost anguish when we compare the number of books we can read with the number of books we'd like to read. For his honesty about longing for some of the innocence and simplicity of the old days with paper books, is accused of secretly being a paper book lover. But I appreciate his comments, and I think that there is commonly a definite sense of being overwhelmed with the choices. An e-book version of information overload.

Clearly, we have some work to do as a reading community and industry to figure out how to deal with the embarrassment of riches we have with e-books today. We're the trendsetters and the first generation of e-book enthusiasts, and in many ways this generation will set the paradigm for e-book readers that will last a long time.

So what are the ways people can simply and comfortably find the right books to read. How to best sort through their libraries or online libraries and maybe even keep a "to-read" list? How to keep track of what books they've read and what they liked or learned from them? How to know what books you might like based on the kinds of books you liked/disliked in the past? Or how much of these concerns should just be thrown out the window in order to bring back those carefree days of picking the next book to read like we used to do.... "Wow, that book looks interesting. I think I'll read it."

I'm pretty sure this will connect with someone here, unless the multitude of e-books is just pure joy and benefit for all, with no downsides? Let us know what you think with your comments and thoughts!

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Have something interesting to say about e-books or mobile computing? Join our forums and share your view on topics like the ones discussed at MobileRead this past week...

E-Book General - News

• Plastic Logic preparing Color epaper launch for 2012
• Call for comments: OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft (open catalog standard ebooks)
• Spring Design Alex just got a firmware update

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead's Win an iPad - E-Reader Survey

09:40 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

crossposted from The Digital Reader

Spring Design is pushing out a firmware update for the Alex. It's not available on their website; you have to wait for your Alex to check for for it. I'm told it checks once a day.

I've just heard back from Spring Design with the details. Here is what they told me:

• updated the user manual and replaced the PDF with Epub (it nowhas all the Epub reading features like font sizes)
• the Alex now automatically shows up as a USB drive (like other Android devices, it had to be manually mounted before)
• repartitioned the internal memory to support the upcoming Android 1.6 OS (coming later this month)
• fixed a System Hang bug

09:12 AM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

Keith Falgren has announced that the 0.9 draft of the open catalog standard, OPDS, is now ready for review, and they are looking for comments and feedback. OPDS is an open standard format for book distribution; it's the equivalent of epub for book catalogs. It allows people to easily create their own catalogs of books based on any criteria pertinent to them, and easily share those catalogs with anyone.

OPDS is already being used by sites and applications like the Internet Archive, feedbooks, InkMesh, Smashwords, Aldiko, Stanza, LibraryThing, Goodreads, our own dpierron's calibre2opds...

Here is the email :

Subject: [openpub] Call for comments: OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft, an Atom-based standard for ebook distribution

Hi,

The OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft at
http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/CatalogSpecDraft is now ready
for your review and we'd love to get your feedback and comments.
Please submit any and all critiques or comments to the openpub mailing
list (http://groups.google.com/group/openpub) or add an issue
(http://code.google.com/p/openpub/issues/entry) by 19 May 2010.

What are OPDS Catalogs?

OPDS stands for "Open Publication Distribution System" and OPDS
Catalogs enable the aggregation, distribution, and discovery of books,
journals, and other digital content by any user, from any source, in
any electronic format, on any device. The OPDS Catalogs specification
is based on the Atom syndication format and prioritizes simplicity and
speed.

Is this vaporware?

Nope. The OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft is based on a lot of existing,
in-production software and collaboration between ebook reading
systems, publishers, and distributors. Feedbooks, for example, already
distributes more than 2 million ebooks every month using its OPDS
Catalogs (http://feedbooks.com/catalog.atom) and ebook readers like
Aldiko, Stanza, QuickReader, FBReader, Ibis Reader, and others already
support the evolving specification. Publishers and libraries have been
early adopters of the OPDS Catalogs as the specification has evolved
toward 0.9 as well. Some highlights:

* Internet Archive (1.8 million free books,
http://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/)
* O'Reilly Media (hundreds of technical ebooks,
http://catalog.oreilly.com/aldiko/main.xml)
* PragPub Magazine, from The Pragmatic Programmers
(http://pragprog.com/magazines.opds)
* Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/atom)

OPDS Catalogs are the first component in the Internet Archive’s
BookServer Project (http://www.archive.org/bookserver).

Thanks for your feedback,
Keith Fahlgren & the openpub community

Related :
The Book Server project on the Internet Archive
"Powered by OPDS" on the feedbooks blog
dpierron's calibre2opds, a system for generating an opds catalog from calibre which works with Stanza
Adobe Teams Up With Stanza to Create Open EBook Catalog Standard

06:56 PM by Dulin's Books in E-Book General | News

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Art...-next-year.htm

Plastic Logic aims to have a manufacturable colour display by the end of 2011 and to move it into volume production in 2012, according to Achim Neu, Director SCM, at Plastic Logic, speaking to the International Electronics Forum 2010 in Dresden today.

"We have built a colour display and it is working at our Cambridge laboratory", Neu told the conference.

"aims" being the important word. This along with their news about the speed of their new plastic electronic arrays (switch fast enough to drive video) makes me believe that Q2 will be a nice upgrade.

01:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Hey, you! Want a shiny new Apple iPad? Sure you do! We're giving one away! But we are making you work for it. All you need to do is go fill out the following survey, which should only take 30 seconds or so. Once you've completed it, you will be automatically included in the drawing.

If you are browsing as a guest (now is always a good time to join us), please include your e-mail so that we can notify the winner. No personal information, including e-mails, will be given out to any third parties.

Please only submit once, if you are found to be cheating we will force you to buy us an iPad (there are a few of you already trying to cheat us by entering multiple times - we will be expecting our iPads soon).

The survey will close at 11:59pm EDT Friday, May 21st, and one winner will be chosen at random. Thanks and good luck all!

Link to the survey: https://www.mobileread.com/survey2010

Prize restriction: Subject to the availability of the Apple iPad in your country. Sorry guys!

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Just in case you've missed anything, here is the list of our frontpage news this week.

E-Book Readers - More E-Book Readers

• Review: Spring Design Alex

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead Spring Contest – E-book readers and vouchers

07:43 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

With the sound of birds chirping and the Saturday morning rumble of our neighbor's lawn mower, we can say with almost absolute certainty that spring is upon us (*). Now – think beach chair, poolside or just a nice cool spot under a tree. Think spring reading. Think brand new e-book reader!

That's right folks, we thought we'd celebrate spring with you, our devoted readers, by launching our spring contest! The following prizes are up for grabs:

Two (2) PocketBook 302 devices
Win an e-book device from PocketBook, featuring a 6-inch E Ink-based touchscreen, 1 GB internal memory, enough battery to flip through thousands of pages, with bluetooth connectivity, and support for notes taking, dictionaries and MP3s.

Two (2) Astak EZ Pocket PRO devices
Win an e-book device from Astak, featuring a 5-inch E Ink display. It's compatible with a plethora of e-book formats, offers eight levels of greyscale, text-to-speech functionality, and a handy scroll wheel for smooth page-turning and PDF reflow. The device comes in winner’s choice of 6 colors, and includes the case and ear buds for the MP3 function.

Twenty (20) E-Book vouchers from Directebooks.com
Win an e-book voucher from Directebooks with a value of US $20. Directebooks offers over 170.000 titles with money back on every purchase!

Could you be one of the winners? Of course! Just keep reading...

How it works

Take a bit of an Agatha Christie mystery and combine it with your analytical uber-skills. The crime scene: a cold-blooded murder in the moderator suite. Your job: find out who the murderer is.

Super star detective Rock Lobster (principally unconventional, always broke) is going to present chapters of the crime story in this thread. Each day he'll add one chapter, for the following nine days. The first two chapters will be posted today, after the announcement. If you vigilantly follow his story to the end, you shall be able to identify the murderer. Get the murderer's name and mail it to us to springcontest@mobileread.com by May 16th. Make sure to also tell us your username!

Down to the details:

• You may enter only once.
• The contest begins today, May 3rd 2010, and ends on May 16th 2010, at 11:59 PM EDT.
• Deadline to send us the solution (name of the murderer) is May 16th 2010, at 11:59 PM EDT.
• You must send the solution including your username to springcontest@mobileread.com. Submissions to other mail addresses, and/or submissions by private message or visitor message can not be considered.
• Amongst the eligible entries four winners will be randomly drawn for the grand prizes (e-book reader devices) and 20 winners will be randomly drawn for a US $20 e-book voucher each
• If you are chosen, you will be notified via private message. Winners must respond within four days after being notified. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.

Huge thanks to the great folks at PocketBook, Astak and Directebooks for providing the contest prizes!

Good luck everyone!

(As always, we're grateful if you link to us or tweet about this contest!!)

(*) For all of you living in the Southern Hemisphere, feel free to save this part for October reading.

MobileRead team members are not eligible to participate