06:07 AM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

In several articles about the Sony/Google deal it was mentioned that Sony has sold 400,000 Readers. But just in December they were talking about 300,000.

I'd say it's a pretty impressive bump for four months.

03:24 PM by wallcraft in E-Book Software | Reading and Management

FBReader 0.10.4 was released today for Windows and Linux Desktops and for Nokia Internet Tablets. This is the first 0.10.X release (FBReader 0.10.0 out now) for the Nokia's, and also includes multiple fixes to epub format support.

01:00 AM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Sony and Google announced today the launch of a partnership to bring upwards of 500,000 public domain texts from Google's Book Search collections to Sony's line of electronic Readers at no cost to the user.

This service went live at 9 PM, PST (a bit earlier, actually) today, March 18th. It's accessible through the Sony eBook Library software, on the main eBook Store page, over to the right about halfway down, by way of a link reading "Unearth a Classic."

The books are searchable through a brand new interface by the folks at Google. The interface looks like it includes some downright nifty features to refine the search, including a categorized browsing approach and an "Advanced Search" feature, which presumably somewhat resembles the same named feature on Google's flagship search engine.

The advantages of familiarity for Google users would seem obvious, but there are a couple of extra goodies that seem be there from the preview screen shots. The search results appear to include a synopsis of information about the book, including cover pictures, and allow for downloading or previewing directly from those results.

It's important to note that all of these texts are in the ePub format, making this not only the first deployment of ePub format through Sony's eBook Store, but also most likely the single largest block deployment of ePub to date. Those interested can find fairly detailed information on how Google went about creating these texts as ePub files on Google's blog post on the matter. The post discusses the deployment of Google's mobile version of their Google Books service, but the details clearly apply to this newest endeavor.

This partnership further supports Sony's repeated assertions of great interest in keeping the PRS line open to easily supporting as much content as they can arrange.

“We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible – from our store or others – whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free,” said Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics. “Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store.”

One exciting and less obvious benefit of this partnership is the great quantity of more obscure texts that it will include. Google Book Search has performed a yeoman's task in making available to everyone texts which survive in but a few hard copies.

For example, literature lovers can find and read The Letters of Jane Austen in addition to “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma.” Also included are a number of titles in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.

The ready availability of such texts on Google Books has already proven a boon to literary scholars, the increase in readability by making them so easily available to a device which is handier than the average computer should prove yet another.

“We founded Google Book Search on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture—and not just when they happen to be at a computer,” said Adam Smith, product management director [at Google Book Search, presumably]. “We believe in an open platform for accessing and reading books, and we’re excited to partner with Sony to help bring these public domain books to more people.”

It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on the balance of power (such as it is) in the e-book world.

The full press release should appear on this page shortly.

03:05 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Scott from Diesel eBooks gave us the heads-up that their e-book store is now offering "400 exclusive cyber ebook bundles," of which each can contain up to six e-books of a certain series, author, theme, character or time period. From the press release (attached):

"Diesel has done a great job of responding to the romance community," said Aideen O'Leary-Chung, Manager of Digital Commerce for Harlequin Enterprises, Toronto. "The creation of bundles that cross imprints, or collect fan favorites, is a real innovation for the publishing industry, one that has been made possible by ebooks. Letting romance readers into the mix to create custom bundles is a logical step for e-commerce." L. Scott Redford, Diesel eBooks president, states, "We saw the popularity of the Harlequin Romance production bundles and wanted to extend that capability across our entire inventory." Adds Jane Litte at the popular Romance review site Dear Author (www.dearauthor.com), "ebook buyers are voracious readers. As a result, cost and convenience are critical features. I love the idea of bundles and so do many readers, allowing us to sample authors and build our libraries at a lower cost."

Mobilereaders can enter the code DI-130007 to save 20% at the next checkout (good til end of month).

12:59 PM by el.astrologo in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

I was just checking the Sony Style site to show a friend of mine what the reader looks like (I had forgotten mine at home) when I discover that the actual price went from $399 to $349.

I just thought people should know about this in case they were thinking about buying it but thought it too pricey.

12:43 PM by cerement in E-Book General | News

Yep, Engadget claims Fujitsu's Flepia is finally here, and it's up on Fujitsu's site.

Featuring an 8-inch XGA screen capable of displaying 260,000 colors, along with Bluetooth, WiFi and up to 4GB of storage via SD card, and measuring less than half an inch thick, FLEPia's not just getting by on color alone. Fujitsu promises 40 hours of continuos use, and the unit can be operated by its touchscreen or the assortment of function buttons. ... FLEPia ships on April 20th in Japan for 99,750 Yen (about $1,010 US).

Press release (in English): link.

06:51 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Amazon is being sued by Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, for infringing one of their patents, referred to as "Electronic book security and copyright protection system."

According to Ars Technica:

The majority of the patent's claims involve encrypting and delivering e-book contents, focusing on the storage of keys and secure communications—much of it seems to anticipate the DRM schemes that would be popularized shortly thereafter with digital music distribution... [a]lthough the patent suggests one distribution model that fits well with Discovery's primary business (sending the books down an unused portion of a TV signal), its authors also made sure to cover their bases by including clauses that patented book distribution over the Internet and—bad news for Amazon here—on "a wireless telephone network."

There are more similarities described in the patent that could also be describing Amazon's current system in use for the Kindle. For instance, the patent describes "a portable book-shaped viewer" that "is used for secure viewing of the text" and goes on explaining how it can be used to receive a "created, transmitted list of titles of available electronic books."

You can view the patent in question over here. The complaint is also available online, over here (PDF).

Thanks to Mycropht and Treadstone71 for reporting to us the news!

11:25 PM by Moejoe in E-Book General | Writers' Corner

For all those on the same path as me toward (eventual) publication, the book editors at Harper Collins recently went live with a new site called Authonomy. It' a mixture of social-networking and user voting on new and unpublished works to bring them to the attention of Harper Collins.

It's free to signup and looks very interesting for all us 'unpubs'. I've read over the licensing agreement and it looks like you retain all copyright to your work, so it's more than likely safe to publish, submit and upload your work to other sources.

Here's my blog post about it:http://typewriterhead.blogspot.com/2...direction.html

Direct link to the site:http://www.authonomy.com/