01:37 PM by Steven Lyle Jordan in E-Book General | News

TeleRead reports on a campaign to spread the "drmfree" tag in Amazon.com's Kindle store.

Both Steve (Windwalker) and I (David Rothman) urge other writers to tag their DRMless e-books the same way, in the wake of his TeleRead post calling for this. Then they’ll show up when people type drmfree into Amazon’s tag search engine. Tagging is easy, and you can do it in a flash.

The point is simple: Let consumers see what is DRM-encumbered, and what is DRM-free in the Kindle strore, and vote with their wallets. Their hope is that eventually, Amazon will get the message and dump DRM from the Kindle store altogether, or at least wherever possible.

They also advocate independent sellers using the tag. I've already added it to my website's keywords, since all of my novels are sold DRM-free. I encourage any othr authors of DRM-free material (and sites like MobileRead) to do the same where applicable.

03:34 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

The CIA maintains a reference manual called the World Factbook. They used to release a new edition each year; recently they decided to only maintain the online edition. I found it to be an excellent source of information, and wanted to make an off line copy.

The result is what I call the World Fact eBook. It is currently only available in Mobipocket. I decided to focus on Mobipocket because the format has certain specialized html tags. This ebook has a search index for article title, keyword, country name, and flag. It can also be used as a dictionary by most versions of Mobipocket Reader. This means that if you are reading news on, for example the Kindle, you can look up a country name to learn more information.

The current version, 0.7, can be downloaded here. Epub, IMP, and Sony LRF will be available soon.

P.S. This was my first large project. The source material consisted of over 500 html files, and close to 800 pictures. Most of the content on the web pages had to be removed. I wrote a fair amount of code to automate the cleanup. I am looking for a new project where I can repeat the process. If you would like some other website converted into an ebook, please let me know. (Please consider the copyright situation before you ask.)

10:44 AM by zelda_pinwheel in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Crikey ! It's already mid-April, and that means the next MobileRead meetup in Paris is NEXT SATURDAY ! That's right ! Don't miss this friendly evening of ebook love, for the opportunity to discuss with fellow ebook readers and try out a variety of different devices ! We'll be meeting in the great Sicilian restaurant La Trottinette like last time for drinks and a delicious dinner for those who want to stay.

As usual, please let us know you'll be coming and whether you plan to come only for the apéro, or stay for dinner by leaving a message in the meetup thread here in french or here in english ; the chef needs to know how many people he will be cooking for when he does his shopping !

When : Saturday, 18 April 2009

Boudi ! Nous sommes déjà à la mi-avril, ce qui veut dire que le prochain apéro MobileRead à Paris est SAMEDI PROCHAIN ! Hé oui ! Ne ratez pas cette occasion de parler ebooks entre passionnés et de voir une panoplie de liseuses en personne ! Nous nous retrouverons à la Trottinette encore pour papoter autour d'un verre, suivi d'un délicieux repas sicilien pour ceux qui voudraient rester.

Comme d'habitude, merci de nous confirmer votre présence et signaler si vous resterez dîner ou non en laissant un message dans le fil en français ou en anglais car le cuisinier doit savoir pour combien il cuisine quand il fera son marché !

Quand : Samedi, le 18 avril 2009

08:54 AM by Moejoe in E-Book General | News

Adobe and Lexcycle, the company behind the popular Stanza eBook application, announced today that they are working together with the Internet Archive on turning the Stanza online catalog system into an open standard for distributing free and commercial eBooks. This new standard, the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS), will be built on top of Atom, and aims to create an open standard for distributed online catalogs for electronic books.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...k_standard.php

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

There's been a whole heck of a lot of stuff happening this week. Purvey the below for your pleasure.

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Kindlers Boycott $10+ ebooks
• Stanza interface for Baen Webscriptions

Miscellaneous - Lounge

• French ‘Loi Hadopi’ anti-filesharing law passed

07:55 PM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

Arnold has been busy.

I'm working on an interface for Stanza to WebScriptions. It's not finished yet but you can play with the current effort at:
http://www.webscription.net/stanza.aspx
In the Stanza app go to the OnLine catalog and at the bottom click the "+" sign and addthis URl to your catalogs.

You can download free books any time and books that you purchased if you login.

10:50 AM by wallcraft in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide by Joshua Tallent is available DRM-free on the Kindle and also as a paperback and a DRMed MOBI. From its web page:

This book details the process of formatting a Kindle eBook from beginning to end. It includes tips on getting the contents of your file into HTML, explanations of HTML and CSS coding practices, a complete description of all of the HTML and CSS that is supported on the Kindle, examples of common formatting situations, and detailed information on creating a Mobipocket file from your final source that will give your book some additional features and give you additional sales opportunities.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the details of the Kindle's AZW format. Even if you just want an overview, this may still be the book for you because it is very readable and could be skimmed and dipped into as needed. As a tutorial on how to edit ebooks it may (or may not) be over emphasizing direct editing of the HTML, but that is what makes it useful for reference. A lot of the information is also applicable to MOBI ebooks in general, although there is no discussion of any device specific issues except for the Kindles (not even Kindle ebooks on the iPhone).

Things I found out from this ebook:

• The PRE tag and CSS font-family: monospace do not work, use CODE (or TT or SAMP or KBD) tags instead.
• Maximum in-lined image sizes are different on the K1 and K2.
• Blockquotes indent by 1/2" on the K1 but 1/4" on the K2. This makes nested blockquotes useless on the K1.
• How to include navigational waypoints on the K2.

I actually read the ebook on my PC using Desktop MobiPocket Reader. I never do this for fiction, but a larger screen does help for technical books. It is readable on my K1 though, and would be better still on a K2.

06:17 PM by rhadin in E-Book General | News

Galley Cat reports that nearly 250 Kindlers have joined an informal boycott of Kindle ebooks costing more than $9.99. They even have a boycott tag.

Granted that 250 Kindlers isn't a large number -- yet! -- but if it spreads this could bode badly for Amazon unless it can coerce publishers into lowering the price. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Are there any MR Kindlers who are members of the boycott or who have insider knowledge of its success/failure?