10:04 PM by Wetdogeared in E-Book General | News

Sony teams up with Music/bookseller Archambault, a Québecor Média Inc. subsidiary, to create www.Jelis.ca, an online store for French eBooks.

Sony has now started selling their eBook readers in Québec. eBooks at www.Jelis.ca are initially expected to have the same prices as pBooks.

Reported in the by Roberto Rocha, Canwest News Service

http://nbbusinessjournal.canadaeast....article/783724

Jelis.ca boasts being the first francophone e-book store in North America. France-based retailer Fnac has been selling e-books for nearly a year, also in partnership with the Sony Reader.

04:10 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

For new book readers, one of the trickiest aspects of book reading can be deciding what to read. Especially if you like fiction. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what's a great book, so recommendations often don't work at all. Many of my favorite books are not the best, they're just fun to read. Maybe even formula-based books, but with a formula that works for me. For example, I don't miss a single new release of Vince Flynn or Brad Thor. But other similar popular writers aren't worth my time because they just aren't fun for me to read.

Even worse, you can't tell if you are going to like a book by the first page, first paragraph, first chapter or whatever. I know that many people think you can tell, but I don't believe it. I really don't enjoy the first pages of Dickens books, but once I've invested enough into the book to get a feel for the main characters I'm absolutely hooked. Other books are really fun for the first chapter or so, like Pride and Prejudice, and then I can't make myself finish the book because it just goes on and on when I wish it would get to something interesting again. When it never seems to become fun again, I put it aside, frustrated about the time I wasted being bored. Or maybe I get lost in the details and it gets to be too much work to follow along. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be any great way to tell if I'm going to like a book or not, even with the recommendations of other honest and helpful readers.

But if you combine various recommendations that tell you what readers liked and disliked about the book and what other types of books they like, read a couple of reviews and book descriptions, and read a sample chapter or two, the odds of picking a good book really go up. You get a little bit of detail that helps you decide if the real characteristics of the book are what you like, or what turn you off.

That reminds me a whole lot of a personalized music streaming service called Pandora. They aim to play just the music you like, while keeping some variety and helping you to discover new artists along the way. If you like music, I'd highly recommend it.

What's most interesting is that they use an analysis of the relevant characteristics of music to match you to the music you like.

Since we started back in 2000, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country

My thought for today is that something similar should work great for books as well. Study what makes books worth reading and fun or valuable. Ask people what books they like and don't like, and why. Provide a catalog of book qualities and use it to provide a personalized stream of book recommendations that can be evolved with your additional input about books you've read. In other words, do something a little deeper than Netflix or the standard social book recommendation sites. It's all the more important for books than songs - you can waste a lot more time and effort on a bad book than a bad song.

We need a better way to get book recommendations. Sure, Pandora messes up sometimes as well. But even when they recommend something I don't like, at least I can see why they recommended it, and start to learn for myself what I don't like. It's a recommendation method that gets into the details that matter, and shares the "thinking" with me. In my opinion, that's just what we need in the e-book world.

Note: In the comments, Erik (aka eaderigt) has supplied a link to the BookLamp service, which seems to be very much along these lines. They are just trying to get off the ground, but it seems promising..

11:01 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

Thanks to our member Charbax for bringing us this video coverage of the PocketBook 360 at IFA 2009.

This is a 5inch eInk based eBook reader device that, according to the video was just released to the public for sale at around $300 USD. The device is ergonomically shaped and has an accelerometer that allows you to turn it 360 degrees, hence the name I assume, to view follow this link:

http://techvideoblog.com/ifa/5-pocke...-e-ink-reader/

There is also some bonus footage of the Pocketbook 302 which the video claims will be out around October with a touch screen, WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity. Their target price for this is around $400 USD.

Finally there is also a shot of a prototype of an 8inch screen sized reader they also have in the works.

There are certainly some exciting devices coming from Pocketbook this year.

Please join the discussion on this video and device already in progress at: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=582027

BOb

04:04 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Do you remember the Kindle clone we covered a few weeks back? Well, I now have a second hand report that the Story will be sold in Germany in October. It is supposed to be sold by Hugendubel.

I can't find an official announcement, so let's take this with a grain of salt.

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

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for our weekly roundup of what's new and interesting in the world of e-books.

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Sony Reader first hand reports
• Disney to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion US... Will Spiderman get therapy?
• Astak EZ Reader Pocket Pro is now shipping
• How big is that e-book anyway?
• iRiver's new e-book reader 'Story'
• California digital textbooks - update
• iPhone readers QUADRUPLED from April to July
• EB20 online reader - review
• Amazon gives book back, or coupon
• Amazon expands the $30 credit

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• September 2009 Mobile Read Book Club Vote

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Forum section for new Sony Reader devices

08:37 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Back in January of this year someone posted illegal copies of Harry Potter ebooks on Amazon. I bought one in order to check its legitimacy. I later reported the ebook and asked for a refund, which I received.

A few minutes ago I got the email we'd been hearing about all day. Amazon just offered me the $30 credit, and I hadn't bought 1984. The one small difference is that Amaozn couldn't offer me the ebook. I'm deeply surprised. This was a smart move, I must say.

Discussion continued over here.

05:38 PM by pshrynk in E-Book General | News

Thanks go out to Poohbear_NC for catching this. Amazon has decided to give back 1984 with all notes attached or a coupon for $30 if you were caught up in the deletion episode a few weeks back.

You can read the thread about it by clicking the link below:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55571

07:15 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

One of the books I need this semester is Decisions for War, which is published by Cambridge University Press. It is available as an ebook, but only as an ADE protected PDF, and only from www.ebooks.com. Normally I avoid PDFs like a politician avoids responsibility, but I decided to make an exception becuase this site has its own browser based reader that I had been wanting to try, and this title is compatible.

MR first covered the eb20 back in December 2007. Rather than repeat that announcement, I recommend that you should go read it directly.

I've been using eb20 for the last couple days. I also used Netlibrary to read the book in order to provide a contrast. Both readers were displaying not just the same title but the exact same PDF. I have to saw that I am deeply impressed with the eb20.

Netlibrary has an online reader like the eb20, but it comes in a distant second place. The NetLibrary reader opens in a standard browser window, which is not good for PDFs becuase about 2 vertical inches are lost to the menu bars. eb20, on the other hand, opens in a separate window without the menu bars. It has an extra vertical inch of screen real estate. This is a big deal on a 12" laptop screen.

The reading experience is similar, in that both readers let you copy, highlight, annotate, bookmark, etc. But one way that eb20 is significantly better than NetLibrary is page turns. NetLibrary only lets you see one page at a time, and to turn the page you have to use your mouse to press the next page button. The eb20, on the other hand, turns the page with the left and right arrow keys and it scrolls the pages with the vertical arrow keys. The load time of a new page was about the same, but scrolling the page was actually faster.

One interesting difference I noticed is that eb20 automatically crops the margins. This looks to be about a half inch removed from each side. I know it doesn't sound like much, but when I am looking at part of 2 pages it's very nice not to have an inch of wasted space in the middle.

My Recommendation: The eb20 is not enough to make me want to get a PDF, but on the rare occasion that I am forced to buy one, I will check www.ebooks.com first.