10:36 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

IBS Bookmaster surveyed 158 publishers at the London Book Fair. You can find the source here. The survey had 7 questions on ebooks. I'm not going to quote the last 3 becuase the poll respondents are asked to make guesses about the future.

Here is the data:

Have you put arrangements in place to sell your book titles in digital form?
Yes – 53% / No – 43% / DK - 4%

If so, how:
40% Directly through your web site?
21% Via a digital library managed by a third party?
6% Other?
33% Don't Know

Have you made any plans to digitise your backlist titles?
Yes – 40% / No 45% / DK - 15%

Where do you store your digital content?
36% In your own digital repository?
28% In a third party digital store?
7% Via Google Book Search?
29% Don't Know

If you look at the data, you'll see that only 84 out 158 respondents have plans for ebooks. The number is disappointing, I agree. But there is a silver lining, and that is the 68 respondents who answered no. These are publishers whom we don't have to convince to drop DRM. With luck, we might get them to go directly into DRM free distribution.

09:19 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

I don't know if this is real or an elaborate hoax, but it's interesting enough that I decided to share it anyway.

As you may know, ebook distributor Endless Ideas has been dropping hints about a new ebook reader on Twitter. They've suggested it will have a 5" screen, and hinted that they will be breaking the the $200 barrier.

Well, one of our forum members found this page. It's in Chinese, so if you need a translation, look at the English language page here. It might nor be the same device, and it might even be a hoax. But it's worth having a look.

The V5 is basically the mini version of the V3. Here are the specs:

Availability: May 2009

Dimensions：Size: 151.2mm (length) × 105mm (width) × 10mm (H)
Main screen: 5-inch electronic paper display (E-Ink technology), 8 gray

Memory: SDRAM: 512MB, built-in 2MB NOR FLASH

Weight: about 160g

Power: built-in Li-ion 1000 mAh

Communications: A. headphones C. SD card slot interface B.USB1.1

Expansion: the largest 16G SD Card

Operating temperature: 0 ℃ ~ 40 ℃

Storage Temperature: -20 ℃ ~ 55 ℃ (non-rechargeable batteries)

Supported formats: txt, pdf, doc, chm, wol, rar, zip, jpg, bmp, tiff, fb2, djvu, gif (static), epub, html, htm, ppt, prc, mbi, pdb, MP3, etc.

CPU：Samsung Arm9 200Mhz CPU: Samsung Arm9 200Mhz

Operating System: Linux OS

Accessories: charger, data cable, SIM card, headphones, lanyard, a battery, 1G SD card

08:05 AM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

A treasure of french litterature and the original annotated manuscripts are now available to all online.

According to the article on Télérama (in french) :

"The entire manuscript of "Madam Bovary", scanned and transcribed digitally, is available since last wednesday on internet. The result of 10 years of work led by the University and the Municipal Library of the city of Rouen, revealing all Flaubert's attention to detail.

On the site www.bovary.fr, the entire novel is available with a two-part navigation : on one side, the scanned original manuscript ; on the other side, the digital transcription, with all the corrections and notes of the author. One hundred thirty volunteers from a dozen countries, of all ages and professions, were recruted for the transcription which took two and a half years, between 2003 and 2005. Each page represents the equivalent of half a day to a full day of study, Flaubert's handwriting being difficult to read and sown with barred text."

This is a brilliant initiative, opening up vast new possibilities for students, scholars, and interested readers everywhere. Let's hope many more will follow this example.

12:31 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

The IDPF just updated the sales figures for February. Ebooks sales at the wholesale level are up 131% over February of last year. I know that sounds great, but the January increase was 173%. I think we might be seeing the effect of the recession.

http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm

05:26 PM by wallcraft in E-Book Formats | Workshop

In an attempt to answer the question "is there a best format" for recent ebooks from a mainstream publisher, I have made screenshots of Tolkein's The Hobbit from Harper Collins in six ebook formats on a Desktop PC. There are already a few screenshots and other comments on formatting in Lord of the Rings Now Available! KINDLE, EPUB, PDF, LIT, and MOBI but that thread is too long to concentrate of formatting. Since all versions are presumably made from the same "master" copy, it isn't all that surprising that there is relatively little difference.

The six images are MOBI, LIT, eReader, ePub, LRX, and PDF. They are all from the 1st page of the 1st chapter. I can post other screenshots if anyone has other pages they would like to see. The readers have not been made consistent, for example I have not always chosen the same font or font size where this is under user control. I bought both a FictionWise and a BoB (OverDrive) MOBI, but these seem to be identical so only one is shown here. I assume the Kindle version is the same (it is the same filesize).

I was surprised that many of the illustrations are in landscape mode. This isn't too bad for a handheld device, but does not work well on a desktop.

The eReader and MOBI versions are about 1MB, the ePub, LIT and PDF versions are about 4MB and the LRX a bit larger still. This might imply that eReader and MOBI versions have smaller image files.

EDIT: FictionWise has released a "quick" fix of the eReader version. The final version is due May 1st. I have added its screenshot as a 7th image (original is image 3). This is more similar to the other versions.

04:01 PM by Daithi in E-Book General | News

I want an ereader that can display a full page PDF.

It's great having an ereader that can display the text of a novel, but I would like something that can display PDFs of full sized pages. Some books just can't be appreciated on the same level without things like the illustrations. For example, a book like Alice in Wonderland is simply far better as a PDF than as reflowing text. Even when the illustrations are included in the ebook the PDF version would still be far better. In the PDF version the text flows around the images that are in the book, and in one section of Alice in Wonderland the text is written in such a way that it looks like a mouse's tail. It curves around the page and it uses a font that gets smaller and smaller. Ereaders like the Kindle can try imitating this mouse tail effect but they do a poor job of duplicating it without displaying the text as an image.

Another example is the Kelmscott Chaucer. This is arguably the greatest printed book ever produced. It is absolutely beautiful. It contains a ton of illustrations; many of the pages contain elaborate borders; the drop caps are all individually designed with some being outright exquisite. Even the font used for displaying the normal text was designed by William Morris and it is very fancy. This font is an important aspect of the book and any recreation that didn’t use this font would be pointless. A book like the Kelmscott Chaucer simply can't be duplicated on an ereader like the Kindle or Sony.

Another version of Chaucer that some people might want to have is William Caxton's version. Caxton was the first printer in England and if you want a copy of Caxton's Chaucer or his version of Aesop's Fables then you don't just want a reflowable computer text version. You want to see the minute variations in the letters on the printed page. You want to see all the woodblock images from the original Caxton's Aesop Fables. You want to see something that looks like a photo of the original page.

Likewise, historical scientific books like Newton's Principia or Boyle's Sceptical Chymist are far better as PDFs than simply reflowable computer text. If you want to know a synopsis of the ideas of historical science then a reader like the Kindle or Sony is fine. But, if you want to see the original text of what these authors wrote then there is nothing like viewing the originals. Computer generated text of books like these just loses something. Also, keep in mind that just because a book is a PDF doesn't mean that the text is unavailable for features like searching and annotating.

Illustrated works are really where PDF versions shine. It is possible to produce illustrated versions on current ereaders, but the illustrations are often not as large as the originals, and it takes a lot of work to produce illustrated versions so in many cases the task is never performed. When given the choice of an illustrated classic and a non-illustrated version which one would you choose? I much prefer to have versions of Charles Dickens works with all of the original illustrations. I want Jane Austen’s work with the illustrations by Hugh Thomson. If I’m going to have one version of Shakespeare then I want it to be The Pictorial Shakespeare by Charles Knight with over 1,000 images. If I have one version of the Bible then I want either the 1846 Harper's Illuminated Bible with over 1,600 engravings or a Bible with Gustave Dore's illustrations which are outright masterpieces. In fact, I want all the books Dore illustrated – Cervante's Don Quixote, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Pardise Lost, Poe’s The Raven, Perrault’s Fairytales – these are all masterpieces. I want Dumas' The Three Musketeers with all 250 illustrations by Maurice Leloir. I want Hugo's Les Misérables with all of Emile Bayard’s the illustrations.

Some books absolutely require the illustrations to get the full impact of the book. This is especially true of children’s books, but it also applies to some adult books as well. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is inseparable from the illustrations provided by Hammatt Billings. The original 1852 edition only contained 7 images but the next year an illustrated version was produced with well over a hundred images by Billings, and these images had as much to do with changing people’s perception of slavery as did the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The same can be said to a slightly lesser extent about the images that appeared in other books like Huckleberry Finn and the engravings found in Jules Verne’s books (he wrote a little over 50 books and these books contain over 4,000 images in total). Most of these illustrated books are already available in PDF form, and I’ve only touched on a few illustrated treasures – there are lots more that I didn’t mention.

Lastly, there are some books that aren't even illustrated and that don't contain fancy or historical fonts that are still better in a PDF form than they are in a reflowable computer text form. If you read a book like Frankenstein or Dracula then you may find the PDF version more enjoyable. In the reflowable computer text form the book’s fonts and each line of text is absolutely uniform and completely straight. In the books original printed version this is not the case. The process of printing with ink and paper causes slight variations were the ink bleeds through paper, or were the color of the paper manages to break through the ink, or where type setting causes minute shifts of height to a line of text. These subtle variations add character and help to convey the age of the material being read. They add to the atmosphere and help provide for a more enjoyable reading experience – even when the book isn’t a horror book like Dracula. For any book written prior to 1850 I’d prefer to have a PDF version.

This isn’t a knock on current ereaders. If I have trouble seeing then I want the ability to resize the text. On a PDF this may cause the page to become larger than the display area, so the current ereaders are better if you want to resize text. A small ereader that is easily carried also has its benefits in portability and comfort. An ereader capable of displaying PDFs with full sized pages would be rather large. Ultimately, I want both, but since I already have the smaller ereader I am really jonesing for the big ereader that can display PDFs.

Anyway, I just had to get this off my chest.

03:42 PM by ebookreaders in E-Book General | News

Endless Ideas, the Netherlands-based company behind the BeBook ereader, announced a 5" mini-BeBook with SD card slot today. The company made this announcement through their Twitter account. Unfortunately, no further details have been disclosed yet.

The 5" ereader could be a 'little brother' of the 6" BeBook 2, that was announced earlier this year. It is not clear whether the 5" model will feature an eInk screen - like the BeBook 2 - or if the mini-Bebook will be equiped with 3G support and/or wifi.

04:37 PM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

E-book readers have long been touted as a great help to people with poor vision thanks to their ability to enlarge the font size.

Now Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo and Jin-Sun Park have gone one step further to create an electronic reading device which can display... braille.

According to the article on Yanko Design :

Visually challenged people require braille books in order to read. However, not many books are available in braille due to cost and inefficiency. Translating a 500 page book into braille nearly doubles the thickness. EAP is a technology that can dynamically change the surface pattern by way of an electromagnetic signal - simulating braille text. Not exactly a new idea but a nice executive nonetheless.

This device could open whole new worlds of books to the blind. Let's hope this prototype makes it into production soon.

Thanks to MR member Alisa for the scoop ! Please join the discussion here.

via Gizmodo.