05:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

We've just gotten our hands on a picture showing off the upcoming BeBook 2 e-reader. The reader - which features WiFi and/or 3G connectivity, touchscreen navigation, and ePub support - will be showcased to the world at the CeBIT fair today. If you happen to be there, make sure to snap some juicy photos for us (Berlin room, ground floor of the exhibition center, opposite of hall 6). We'll much appreciated it.

04:39 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

I just received this welcoming e-mail from the guys from Packt Publishing:

Dear Alexander Turcic

I hope you don't mind this unscheduled e-mail; however the following news concerns all PacktPub.com account holders.

In December, we decided to enable the copy and paste feature on our eBooks. Following this announcement, we received a number of suggestions from customers who would like to see the password protection removed from our eBooks as well. With the increasing popularity of reading eBooks on portable devices, the password protection was proving to be an obstacle that prevented users from doing so.

Therefore, we have taken this feedback on board and decided to remove all password protection from our eBooks with immediate effect. If you own a Packt eBook, you can download it again from your account at www.PacktPub.com; this new copy will have no password protection. We would like to thank all customers who took the time to provide us with this feedback and we hope you are pleased with this outcome.

You're probably already aware of the fact that our eBooks are available as immediate downloads and are now more portable than ever. You may have our VirtualDub eBook, which we released as a free download last year. If you haven't yet experienced a Packt eBook then you'll be pleased to hear that you have another opportunity as we can exclusively reveal a second free eBook is being released today. Cameron Cooper's Building Websites with Plone was initially published in 2004 and was regarded as the definitive book on the Zope based Content Management System.

To download your free eBook, visit the book's page at www.PacktPub.com/plone/book and click on the 'Download eBook' button. You will then need to login to your account, where the Building Websites with Plone eBook will be available to download in the 'Free eBook' section. This eBook is available to anyone with a PacktPub.com account, so you're welcome to pass on the news to friends or colleagues.

If the Plone or VirtualDub eBooks aren't to your liking, then you might want to try another one of our eBooks. For the duration of March, we are offering a 30% discount off all eBooks or if you purchase two at the same time, you'll get 40% off both. Just visit www.PacktPub.com for more details.

With best wishes

12:44 PM by zelda_pinwheel in E-Book General | News

Reported this morning by TeleRead and confirmed by a press release and a large banner on the home page of the site, the traditionally brick and mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble have acquired the popular ebook vendor Fictionwise.

Scott Pendergrast of Fictionwise confirms that business will continue as usual for all three of their sites (Fictionwise, eReader and eBookwise), with Fictionwise maintaining its current team and management, and reassures its customers that B&N is fully supportive of Fictionwise's traditional policy of plateform neutrality. It could also be very good news for the industry standard format epub, which Fictionwise supports, with B&N giving new weight to this format through their relationship with publishers.

Speculation about what this could mean for the book shopping experience in particular is rampant. Many of us are hoping that Barnes & Noble will seize the opportunity to more fully integrate digital reading with the brick and mortar browsing experience so dear to many an avid reader, via more visible and thorough integration of the two distribution methods.

For example, imagine browsing the shelves of your favorite bookshop, noting down titles or simply stacking up books, then heading to the in-store ebook kiosk or to the cashier to purchase the digital editions and download them instantly to your device. Even if they don't immediately implement in-store ebook terminals, perhaps they'll emphasize the availability of certain titles as digital editions with special displays, or some kind of visual indication in the shelves : perhaps something as simple as shelf labels saying "This book is available for your digital reader on Fictionwise.com". We can also hope that B&N will be able to negotiate more deals with publishers for digital editions of their books, available via Fictionwise.

How would you like to see this acquisition play out ? What suggestions would you make to B&N and Fictionwise that would make your book-shopping experience richer and more satisfying ?

Join the ongoing discussion in this thread to talk about the implications of this news.

Further reading :
TeleRead article
Press release
Fictionwise Q&A about the acquisition

12:31 AM by Nate the great in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

I'm in the process of getting another certification. One particular review guide was highly recommended, so I looked on Amazon to see how much it cost.

I immediately noticed that the title was available as a Kindle Edition for about $4 less than paper. Given the convenience of the Kindle, I decided to go with the Kindle Edition.

As soon as I bought it I opened it to the index, and paged through it. The ebook has all the sections of the paper book including a description of what was included on the CD. I didn't expect to get the CD, of course. But I thought it was rather funny that the CD contained not just practice tests. It also held a PDF copy of the review guide.

This is for publishers to ask themselves: What is the point of buying a Kindle Edition when I can get paper+PDF for $4 more?

10:28 AM by Nate the great in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

One of MobileRead's more inquisitive members has been fiddling with the sttings on his K2. He reports that he has successfully browsed the web without using the 3G. (Sadly, this won't work on the original Kindle.) If you'd like to try it yourself, he has rather complete instructions on his blog.

How he found it is rather interesting. You may remember that igorsk demonstrated on his blog that the Kindle has a debug mode, and a number of commands that can be run while in that mode. The K2 also has the debug mode, and it has several new commands, including the ones for browsing over USB. If you want to try this yourself, you should go over to his blog. He has a good set of instructions for OS X.

Using a PC is all well and good, but I'd like to see someone get this working with a USB to Wifi (or ethernet) bridge. Or, how about getting it working with a device that has USB host and Wifi? I make this request for the obvious reason. This feature will be most useful when it works with a small device that you can carry with you. If you have a computer next to you, you might as well browse on it, not the Kindle.

http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/h...shell-and.html
http://blog.fsck.com/2009/03/tethering-your-kindle.html

04:17 AM by cerement in E-Book General | News

Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch Now in the iTunes App Store

The app is FREE from the iTunes App Store, but it looks like books need to be purchased from Amazon directly for $9.99, from PC or Mac and transferred over, or directly via Mobile Safari (?!).

Related: Apple entrance into e-book market rumors

09:44 AM by Steven Lyle Jordan in E-Book General | Self-Promotions by Authors and...

Our very own Steve Jordan has finally granted us access to his latest Kestral novel! There was dancing in the streets! there was overjoyed celebration! For some reason, there was at least one llama named Steve Jordan. - - pshrynk

Yes, the crew of the Mary are back, due to popular demand from the readers! And in this story, they're dealing with something more mysterious than viruses and uppity aliens:

Planet Shura Dva, in the process of being terraformed by the Oan Engineers Guild, has recently begun exhibiting strange weather patterns, soil poisonings and quakes that seem to target and deliberately sabotage the Engineers' terraforming work. A local workers' leader claims to be able to "feel" the planet's anger as it takes unilateral action against the Engineers... but the Engineers are positive he's really a terrorist leader somehow orchestrating the strange planetary occurrences.

And in the midst of local labor squabbles and strange planetary phenomena, Carolyn Kestral and her crew, flush after a lucrative cargo run, arrive on Shura Dva to help out a friend in need... and discover that the planet itself may not allow them to leave!

Introducing The Lens, the second story in the popular Kestral Voyages series. Visit SteveJordanBooks.com to get a copy at a great low price, in multiple e-book formats, and--say it with me--No DRM!

Don't forget: During Read an E-Book Week, Berserker, the first Kestral story, will be available for free download! (It is also available at the Stanza Store, also free during Read an E-Book Week!)

06:05 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Eagle-eyed reader tipster Andres came across this interesting article citing Andy Ihnatko, technology journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

"It's absolutely a lock that at some point, Apple will start selling books on the iTunes Store," he said. "That has been the goal for Apple all along – a store where every kind of digital media will be sold. One of their goals has always been to make devices that can play all kinds of different media. It's a win-win for Apple. They make a huge amount of money on software sales, for instance, and they also make a huge mark-up on every device that they sell, so that's exactly what they want to do."

And further, regarding the possible introduction of some kind of large form iPod Touch:

"We don't know exactly what they're doing," Ihnatko said of Apple's plans for the larger touch-screen reader. "As with everything that happens with Apple, you know they've already built something like this, and they've probably built three of them by now. And they're usually waiting for some magical light to come on in Cupertino that says, 'Yes, right now it makes sense for us to put this on the market.' But I've always thought that the device we're looking at would be about half the size of a MacBook screen. So we're talking somewhere around 3" x 5" or 5" x 7", or something around there. Now we don't know exactly when that's going to happen."

So what do we really know? At some point, Apple will release a new device. If may feature a larger screen and have the right power-saving technology to seriously challenge Amazon, Sony, and the likes.

And we know it will be pretty.

Related: Andy Ihnatko - How Apple Could Make E-books Work