10:58 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

From the press release:

With applications in development for Windows 7, Android and additional operating systems, Kobo, Inc. today announced that the service will be available for various tablet and slate computers in February 2010. Kobo (www.kobobooks.com) is a global eReading service that offers mobile applications on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Palm Pre, as well as support for netbooks and dedicated eReaders, like the Sony eReader.

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I would hope this means new versions of the Kobo Reader that are touch screen friendly. But this also strikes me as the standard non-announcement announcement which was released because they're justifiably panicked over the Apple event next week.

10:30 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

from the blog post:

During the past 18 months we've seen a dramatic shift in customer preference from print to digital when looking at sales from oreilly.com, which is a substantial sales channel for us. And looking across all of our sales channels for individual ebooks -- including mobile apps -- 2009 ebook revenue was up a staggering 104% on 2008 (which was more than 50% above 2007):

Overall, printed books are still the biggest sellers for us (though Safari Books Online is our second-largest individual sales channel), but with the market for printed computer books declining at a double-digit rate, digital sales will overtake print much sooner than most people realize.

08:13 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

A usually reliably source, MobRead, is reporting that Lenovo is getting into e-readers. The Lenovo DNT IBook EB-605 has a projected retail of 2000 yuan, and based on the format support I would say it that it uses FBReader.

If you look at the picture, you should be able to see the obvious resemblance to the Oaxis reader developed by Gajah. Good for them. The mainland China market has the potential of being bigger than even the USA.

05:31 PM by jaxx6166 in E-Book General | News

Over in the writing forum we're tossing around a new idea. It's an anthology of short stories inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. All members of the forum and their friends (and whoever else) are allowed to submit for consideration in the anthology. Ideally, I'd like to include 22 short stories in the book. It will be posted for free on the upload page and probably linked as a free/creative commons work in other ebook distributors.

If this takes off and people like it, I'd love to do other ones featuring public domain works in our library here. Don't write but can make pretty pictures? The same guidelines apply!

Submissions will close March 1, 2010. Hopefully it will be put out to the masses by the end of March. Full guidelines appear below.

Here's a list of MR Authors that have already decided to play with us!

Jaxx6166
MoeJoe
Ficbot
Montsnmags
Elfwreck

Maybe a mod can make this more visible?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Who may submit works: Anybody and everybody.

For purpose of this anthology, all works will be licensed under creative commons/non-commercial

Length: 1500 - 6000 words
Genre: Any, as long as it's inspired by Poe.

Submissions will close March 1, 2010 at midnight EST.

Payment: None.

Please, no gratuitous sex and violence that has no bearing on the story. No racist or other bigoted stories. No child, animal, or inanimate object sex (consensual or not)

In short, use common sense.

Please email or PM all submissions in either RTF or DOC format. Include MR Anthology in the header.

In your submission please include pen name(or user name), acknowledgements, and whatever contact information you want (Got a new book out? Link to it. A blog? Same deal.)

Email address to send correspondence is my username at yahoo.

03:09 PM by anurag in E-Book General | News

Edit: It appears that we were all fooled by our optimism. No DRM was always the default; this change was more of an 'opt-in to DRM'. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01...m_drm_changes/

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Amazon quietly made a major change to its Digital Text Platform last week that went largely unnoticed: small publishers and individual authors who use the Digital Text Platform can now opt out of the Kindle's digital rights management (DRM) program. While this change only affects a relatively small number of publishers and authors for now, this move could hint at a larger change in Amazon's DRM policy. Right now, Amazon's DRM policy means that its customers can't transfer their books to a non-Kindle e-reader.

...

From http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...ors_opt_ou.php

Here is the relevant Amazon post:

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.co...earchPage=true

12:39 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

As you might know, the Irex DR800S was released to the market earlier this week. I saw it at CES, and I wasn't impressed. Several MR members have ordered one; one has already received it and started posting first impressions. You can find that discussion over here.

I hope to bring you more first hand impressions about this reader, but given the price (500 euros) that's going to be rather hard.

12:22 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

This is a follow up report for the hands on video posted on ARMDevices.net a few days ago.

The My Internet Device was developed by Astri, a Hong Kong based research firm funded by the HK government. The unit present at CES was not a prototype; it's a finished product and Astri is looking for retail and distribution partners.

The MyID is actually their second generation design. The previous version was deployed in Hong Kong elementary schools. Based on the news clippings sent to me I'd say it was a netbook with similar dimensions as the MyID. I don't have much more information on the hardware, but I can confirm Bluetooth, Wifi, a browser, and Flash support.

I'm attaching the product brochure I was sent. Be sure to mention my name when you contact Astri.

10:05 AM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

I was reading an article on PC Week's website about the Kindle development quote and right at the beginning of the article we find:

"The success of the Amazon Kindle has legitimized the concept of an electronic book-reading gadget and led to an explosion of competing devices like the Barnes and Noble Nook, and the Sony Reader."

I'm sorry, but the Sony Reader came out will before the Kindle. After reading a sentence like this I have to question anything else said in the article.

Does anyone fact check this stuff any more?

BTW: Here is the link to the article: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...n_gadgets.html

BOb