07:26 AM by ebookreaders in E-Book General | News

The first official information on Google Editions has been put online by Google.

Some excerpts from the Getting started with Google Editions page:

Google Editions is an upcoming paid access product that will allow consumers to easily purchase and read digital editions of books. Consumers will be able to preview a book, as they do today in Google Books, and will also have the option to purchase its Google Edition. After purchase, the book will live in the consumer's online bookshelf, available to be accessed and read on most devices with internet access and a web browser; as well as on supported partner devices (to be announced during our public launch).

Google Editions will be offered through the Google Books program. Existing partners (publishers) will be able to sell access to their uploaded books.

Interestingly, Google will offer the Adobe content server 4 drm scheme. Publishers can also choose not to apply drm. No words about ebook formats, but I assume that the service is based on the pdf files that are already stored in the Google Books database (no ePub can be uploaded as far as I know).

Google Editions will be made available for online reading online, as can be understood from the security page:

Each consumer's Google Edition has a unique coding that caches the book when it is accessed through a browser (as opposed to a digital download; see more information on file protection here). This means that the Google Edition is broken down into fragments and temporarily stored in - and accessed through - the browser window. The Google Editions web experience, therefore, is not that of a file download - it is an experience that is optimized for reading in the browser. This allows Google to detect and protect against abuse of each Google Edition.

The publishers can set the retail price for each publication (but it should not exceed 100% of the print price). Publishers can also offer bundles; so that readers can get access to the digital edition when buying a print copy.

Copy-paste and printing limitations can also be set by the publisher:

You can also choose to allow buyers to copy, paste and print your Google Editions without restriction. By default, consumers will only be able to copy and paste up to 20% of a book's content over a sixty day period. Additionally, consumers by default can print 100% of their purchased Google Editions but are limited to printing 20 pages per single print command.

Google Editions will be launched somewhere in 2010. It is not clear yet whether only U.S. based publishers can participate, or that Editions will also be open to publishers worldwide.

It will be interesting to see how publishers, readers and booksellers will react to Google Editions. I think that the platform agnostic approach is a very clever move from Google. But since there are no details yet on how Google Editions can be read on dedicated ereaders or smartphones, it is difficult to speculate on how Editions will influence the market share of Amazon, B&N etc.

(via Uitgever 2.0)

01:02 PM by Wetdogeared in E-Book General | News

A few news snippets from MediaBistro's eBook Summit. More publishers bashing Amazon, with profitability for publishers being threatened. Plus, adverts may be coming to an eBook near you.

Amazon's $9.99 eBook Price Point Attacked as "Predatory Pricing" From: mediabistro.com (blog)

Bob Livolski, founder, Books on Board:
"It's an attack on literature so Amazon can control the industry."

@ eBook Summit: Advertising Is Coming To E-Books From: paidContent.org

- the $9.99 standard price for a digitized title—as established by the space’s leader, Amazon —is not enough to support content creation and distribution.

Fuchsberg, the president of Skiff:
“If e-books are where more consumers are spending their time, ads will inevitably follow."

Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event From: DM News - Dianna Dilworth

To address this issue, Amazon has tried to push consumer adoption by setting the industry's competitive price point for e-books at $9.99 each. But publishers are concerned that this cost is not profitable and runs the risk of hurting the choice of books that will be able to be published.

12:42 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

MobileRead's resident Hanlin dev community (his name is Leo) just released a second application for the Hanlin V3 and clones. It's a reader program (and the required data files) for Wikipedia. You can fid screenshots and more information here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65834

In case you're interested, his first program for the Hanlin V3 is a star map. You can find it here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...262#post624262

If you want to find other programs he's released, his home page is here:
http://www.leobueno.net/

12:27 PM by mtravellerh in E-Book Readers | PocketBook

Our member SciFiFan again managed to create a marvelous little custom version of FBReader. The existing version of FBreader on the Pocketbook 360 is a couple generations out of date, and this custom version adds a few tweaks that improve usability. Not only does it feature page breaks before chapter beginnings (in ePub), but it also uses the motion sensor as a trigger for page turns. I don't know how he does that exactly, but he has created a mode where the automatic 360° mode is reduced to 180° up or down, right or left and a wrist movement turns pages, where a turn to the right turns a page back, while a wrist movement to the left moves a page forward! It works fine!

You should be aware that the pagebreak before the chapter counts as one paragraph. This leads to the fact that jumping back to your original reading place might be slightly erroneous the first time (you might have to move a page forward in later chapters)

It's here

http://code.google.com/p/fbreader-po...76_fbreader180

Just paste it in your system/bin! If you don't like it, just remove it from there! Don't forget to give SFF some HUGE K!

NB: I changed the link to a new version featuring a more sensible g-sensor and allowing to export external links!

12:06 PM by advocate2 in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

From Today's Wall Street Journal:

Sony announced Thursday morning that it will sell subscriptions to the digital edition of the Journal as well as a daily summary of news events available only to owners of the Sony device. In addition, users will be able to subscribe to a daily summary of news stories and columns from MarketWatch.com, which like the Journal is owned by Dow Jones & Co.

The Journal summary will cost $5 a month on top of the $14.99 monthly charge for the digital edition of the paper, while a subscription to the MarketWatch product will cost $10.99 a month.

The article is very interesting, but I don't know if you can read it without a subscription.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._LEFTWhatsNews

09:41 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

A friend of mine just sent me an email he got from Amazon. He wanted to remain anonymous, so I can't tell you who. But I will vouch for him. He isn't sure how many ebooks he's returned, but he estimated the total to be around 30. I hope that's not true; in absolute terms that's a pretty low number. A fair number of people are going to be getting this email at some point.

Here is the text of the email:

Hello from Amazon.com.

We're writing regarding your request of Refunds.

Unfortunately, the number of issues you have sustained with your Kindle Store orders has led us to believe that there might be a larger issue. Since it appears that many of your orders have been accidentally purchased, we ask that you contact Customer Service for troubleshooting in an effort to avoid these issues in the future.

Effective immediately, we are unable to compensate you for any additional issues with your Kindle Store orders.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,

Account Specialist
Amazon.com

05:16 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Borders just announced a partnership with Kobo Books (formerly Shortcovers) to open a Borders branded ebook store.

Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE: BGP) today announced a strategic investment and commercial partnership with Kobo, Inc., a global eReading service that is the newly named spin-off of Toronto-based Indigo Books & Music Inc.'s Shortcovers digital reading initiative. Through the partnership, Borders will launch a new eBook store integrated into Borders.com and powered by Kobo. In addition, Kobo will power a Borders-branded eBook store for multiple mobile devices. Sales through these Borders-branded eBook stores will be booked by Borders. Kobo's mobile applications are device neutral, which will enable consumers to purchase eBooks from Borders on popular smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Android, as well as other devices. Borders and Kobo plan to launch these new services within the second quarter of 2010.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....ews&id=1366236

********

Amazon-0, everyone not Amazon +1

Okay, that's a bit simplistic, but I'm pleased to see the one, the ebook market is getting crowded; and two, most all the new stores only sell Epub. Each new store is 1 more blow against vendor lock in, and 1 more blow in favor of universal compatibility.

05:08 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Ta-ta-ta-taaaaaa..... and the winners are.....

We are very happy to hereby announce the winners of MobileRead’s winter contest 2009. We have received 138 valid entries, among which we selected three main winners and 15 follow-up winners in a random drawing.

Congrats to the winners of our main prize – poshm, FlorenceArt and gustav011 – who now each have the choice between a shiny new Pocketbook 360° or a PocketBook 301+ Comfort. We’re absolutely convinced that you’ll have a fantastic time reading fun stories on your new devices! Please let us know how you like them.

Congrats also to our 15 follow-up winners. Oliver Twist brings each of you a $30 eBook voucher!

The e-book vouchers got to: LazyScot, Jellby, Svenni, BlueMonkey, shortncuddlyam, der-Matt, Latinandgreek, Acolsandra, Toertchn, Gfhuertac, maggie*, Mosherix, Max, WDE, Gaurnim.

We would like to send a big thank you to all contestants! You were restlessly searching for letters, never too tired to find new and “interesting” ways to make your searches more efficient. In other words: We never underestimated your creativity and you kept us real busy!

Thanks also to the sponsor of our main prizes: PocketBook!

PS: If you are not amongst the winners today - please don’t be disappointed! We’ll have plenty of more contests in the future, so stick close.