09:12 PM by Seabound in E-Book General | News

I visited the US Penguin site and saw a banner on their front page announcing Penguin 2.0, with the subtitle "What's next in text." (Please excuse me if this has been posted in MR; I searched and didn't find any reference.) Here's a screen shot of the site:

From their about page:

Penguin 2.0 is a new suite of digital and print-based services that offer readers a new way to engage with and discover Penguin content. These collected services will encompass the entire spectrum of a Web 2.0 world by including aspects of customization, personalization, delivery to mobile phones, as well as eBooks and e-only content. In addition, later phases of Penguin 2.0 will offer community functionality and social networking. The Penguin US website will be the focus and hub for the program.

Individual services, such as Penguin Mobile and Penguin Personalized, are launching in December 2008. Additional Penguin 2.0 features and programs will be rolled out in 2009, with the entire suite of services being phased in over the next 12 months.

Go beyond the printed page, and find out what's next in text.

The Penguin Mobile link says:

The iPhone app also includes excerpts that can be read on- or offline.

Overall, I think it portends well for the near future of eBooks. I think Penguin is treating digital books seriously.

03:34 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

If you happen to be staying at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, you can borrow a Kindle for your reading fix. The Hotel amenities web page says "Kindle available, loaded with your favorite audio book, in keeping with our literary tradition. However, it might still be a while until you see Kindles at your local Best Western.

According to HotelChatter, "The Algonquin has launched an 'eBooks on Demand' program which offers Kindles pre-loaded with 'a variety of best-sellers, modern classics' and even a few books written by the members of the hotels legendary Round Table (Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber, Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley). And if you request a book that isn't loaded on there, the hotel can add it for you.The devices are loaned on a first come, first serve basis at no charge, and can be used in the lobby or in your guestroom."

Via The Kindle Chronicles.

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

Here are the highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Sony Talks Sales Numbers

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Refurbished Kindle $329 and (Sometimes) In Stock

11:00 AM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

The Wall Street Journal has an article on PRS Sales numbers. Sales numbers have been a hot topic of discussion around here, but scarce as hen's teeth to actually come by, so with no further ado:

This week, though, Sony for the first time disclosed that it sold 300,000 units of its Reader Digital Book globally since the device launched in October 2006.

Steve Haber, senior vice president of personal mobile and imaging division for Sony, says the unit growth is above Sony’s expectations.

[snip]

In addition, Sony said over three million e-books have been downloaded to the devices in that time.

“[That number is] strictly books, not to be confused with newspapers or blogs,” Haber says, implicitly referring to Sony rival, Amazon.com’s Kindle, which can wirelessly download newspapers and periodicals.

[snip]

The company is also boosting the number of books it sells through its online e-book store to 100,000 by the end of the year from 57,000 currently.

Apparently the time-line for boosting the booklist has slipped a bit from what they were expecting to do last month.

The rest of the article is mostly a re-hash of what is, to us, old news (doubtless for the uninitiated amongst the WSJ's readership) and includes a quick primer on how the PRS is different from the Kindle.

But buried in the second to last paragraph is this tidbit: "... Sony says it plans to launch a wireless e-book device, though it won’t specify when." That's a public repetition of what they told us in a conference call just before the PRS700 released, so I think we can take it as a good sign for those longing for a wireless PRS.

So, what are your thoughts on the sales numbers? Higher than you expected? Lower? About what you thought?

Anyone care to venture an opinion as to what it might mean for the future of the PRS line, and e-reading devices in general?

03:32 PM by koland in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

As those who have tried to order a Kindle (Amazon's Wireless Reading Device) lately are aware, the backorder time is now up to approximately 3 months for a new Kindle. Used Kindles are being sold for roughly two times retail ($700-$850) at Amazon and on Ebay. But, there is still a way to get a "new" Kindle for Christmas and it costs LESS than $359. Amazon is selling their refurbished Kindles for $329. They are currently in stock and you can easily have one in had next week, giving you plenty of time to test it out and load it up with free books before Christmas arrives.

RefurbKindle

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

Just in case you've missed anything, here is the list of our frontpage news this week.

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Random House to digitize thousands of books
• Kindle 2.0 new rumored release date: Q1 2009
• Why supported formats don't matter to me (very much)

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Ectaco JetBook - $199 from Newegg.com
• One day only: Free e-book cover creation software

Portable Devices - Other Devices

• New Garnet (PalmOS 5) VM out for Nokia's Internet Tablets

06:50 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Today's software from GiveawayOfTheDay is eCover Engineer v5.5, which helps you create professional looking covers for e-books, CDs, etc.

I haven't tried the program, so I can't tell you how good it is, but the product page says the following...

Description

The first impression is very important for potential customers. And the first thing that they encounter when they meet your product is the box shot. That's right! . And for many of them, this is the moment they decide to proceed or to search for another product. If you have a beautiful ebook cover or software box, they are half convinced. But there is another problem. A professional cover for software costs a lot of money. Some of them need to be updated. Why spend so much money on something that you can do for free with ecover generator and cover creator software like eCover Engineer? Why waste precious time on something that you can do in a few minutes with an ecover generator product. Design ebook covers, CD covers, DVD covers and software box covers with minimum costs. Use our free templates to create amazing covers for your products.

Benefits

* Create covers for standard box, e-book, thin box, wide box, custom box, spiral notebook, wide spiral notebook, boxes with 2 books, Boxes with 3 books, Boxes with 4 books, magazines
* With our cover creator software you can design ebook covers, CD covers and DVD covers.
* Benefit from real-time 3D Editing and Rendering
* Take advantage high image quality. Export your work as BMP, JPG or PNG
* Import and use for your work a wide variety of picture files like BMP, JPG files, PSD files and almost any type of image
* Resize the width, height and depth of the Cover. Create custom shape boxes.
* Rotate, roll and resize the designed object.
* See your work from any angle. Use camera rotation / movement options. You can rotate the camera along its X, Y and Z axis relative to the center of the Cover
* Change light color.
* Use shadow effect and see your work reflected
* Specify floor's texture and background color.
* Use our product on less powerful computers. Find a balance between speed and quality.
* Save your work as templates so you can reuse it later.
* Send templates and output images by email
* Use our product in a lot of languages. Multi language support: English, French, German, Brazilian, Russian, Romanian, Japanese
* Use award winning graphics editor Paint.NET to modify our templates or design new images for your products.

At that price, it might be worth the download. But be sure to activate it today (by doing the full install), or it probably won't be any more than the trial version. All the Giveaways have the same day activation requirement to take advantage of free registration.

Also note that the conditions say that it's for non-commercial use only, and you won't get support or upgrades with it.

01:16 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

When we think about comparing e-book devices, we care mostly about some basics:
* Screen quality
* Battery life
* Size and ease of use
* Supported e-book formats

Sure, there are many other features like screen lights that people care about. And the price certainly matters when deciding whether or not to purchase. But I think this pretty much covers the basics. (I'm sure that if I left out something obvious, we'll see it pop up immediately in the comments!)

Okay. Now let's focus for a moment on the issue of supported formats. First of all, I am going to surprise you by saying that I don't care what format the reader supports natively. As long as there is a way to easily and accurately create that native format (on Linux and Windows), it's okay.

So you might think that lots of formats are very important, but I only care about the following two things:
1) The ability to convert HTML and PDF files for use on the device.
2) Support for my favorite DRM'd format

The only reason I include #2 is obvious - there are always books out there that are only available in DRM'd formats, and I want to be able to purchase and read them. Conversion programs aren't going to do the job unless they strip out the DRM, which is a whole other discussion.

So why don't I care about native text support, for example? Or any of the many other formats? It's simple. Because e-books represent a significant amount of time investment as I read them, I don't mind spending a little bit of time doing a format conversion beforehand. I rarely need to read something particular "by surprise" so I can plan ahead. As long as it's a popular non-DRM'd format, I feel confident that there will be simple ways to convert most files into a simple universal format like HTML, and then from there is can be converted to use on the device.

The only reason I include PDF conversion in the picture is because there are documents that are not-text based, or require special layout. HTML isn't very good for that. Plus, one can grab a free PDF print driver and create a PDF file out of anything that is printable.

There is one huge caveat, however. The software that puts HTML or PDF files on the device must actually work. All the time on every "reasonable" file without problems. It must come out looking good. And the software must be available and continue to be updated for a period of time, and support all popular platforms. Already, that is reason enough for some people to say "I must have native PDF/HTML format support, or the equivalent".

Some people will also object because they don't want to have to do a conversion step at all. They want to pop in an SD card with an RTF file and just start reading. I agree. That is also a nice feature. For me, though, it's not essential. Just nice.

And, finally, I should add one more comment with respect to the e-book format wars. You might think I don't care. Not true. Even though I don't care too much personally about formatting beyond what HTML gives us, there are two huge reasons I care a lot about a universal reflowable e-book format. Number one, I want to eliminate every concern about conversions entirely. If, for example, everyone creates and supports all e-books in ePub, then we all win in terms of reduced complexity and improved compatibility. Ideally, it would be like .txt or .html files, but with more features. Just the way HTML improves on text files, but retains the universality, so might a standard format like ePub if everyone uses it.

And number two, formats matter because there is a feint hope for the holy grail of a common DRM scheme. Imagine every protected e-book using the same interchangeable protection scheme and the same interchangeable key mechanisms. Any e-book reader could read any DRM'd book if you have the right to read it. If you buy a new device, you can still read the same books that you bought. If a company goes out of business, it doesn't stop you from keeping usage of the books. I don't have a lot of hope due to the various disincentives for book sellers and publishers, the need to have a community DRM key server of some type, plus fears of a single DRM-breaking program making everything available to pirates. But we don't know the future, and who knows what can be achieved if people are forced to work together.

I'm sure I've ruffled a few feathers by saying format support is of secondary importance to me in an e-book reader. So let me have it. Why do you agree or disagree?