12:57 AM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

When words are not enough to provide the facts. Check for yourself:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/...ts-way-to-bgr/

Ah, the rumor mill -- what a boring life we'd all lead without it.

10:20 PM by DMcCunney in E-Book General | News

Last night, Sony held a PR event in New York City to publicize the launch of the Sony PRS-700 reader. In a neat bit of symbolism, the launch was held at the Library Hotel, a "boutique" hotel in midtown Manhattan. (Room numbers use the Dewey Decimal system.) Sony's event took place in Bookmarks, a 14th floor rooftop bar. MR staffer Nate The Great was originally scheduled to cover the event, but ran into a last minute problem that required him to cancel. Alex Turcic remembered that I lived in NYC, and asked if I could substitute as MR's reporter at the event. Sure. I live in walking distance...

The presentation was given by Steve Haber, who is the head of the effort that produces the reader. The audience included Sony and E Ink representatives, members of the press, and representatives from publishers including Random House, Ballantine Books, Hachette Filipacchi, and HarperCollins. The actual presentation took about 20 minutes. The rest of the event was socializing with a Sony catered open bar. Technical details about the reader beyond what were presented in the Sony press release Nate already wrote about were scarce, but those will doubtless be forthcoming.

The most significant point for me about the event was that it occurred at all. One of the questions about the dedicated reader market was whether it was big enough for someone like Sony to address profitably. Sony is a very large corporation, and senior management has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to invest corporate funds where they will get the best return. A company like Sony needs big numbers to justify an investment. Is the market for dedicated readers large enough for Sony to profitably address? It would appear that Sony thinks so.

Steve Haber, the event's host, is President of the Digital Reading Business Division. This is a newly created unit of Sony, who combined three other operations to create the unit. They also moved the operation from Japan to San Diego, so reader operations are now headquartered in the United States. Fujiyo Naguchi, who had run the Japanese operation, relocated to San Diego to work for Steve.

Steve spent most of his time talking about Sony's commitment to the effort, and the steps they were taking to nurture and grow the reader market. An assortment of things were revealed.

First, Sony does plan to introduce wireless capability in in a future model. But as he put it "It's all about being open!" The capability, when available, will not be tied to a particular provider or service. Sony seems to want reader owners to be able to get content from a variety of sources, and not be limited only to the Sony store. However, the Sony Connect site is getting an upgrade. By the end of the month, there should be a new design with better appearance, and an improved search function to help buyers find what they are looking for.

Second, Sony is aware that content is king. Steve stated that Sony had about 50,000 titles in the Sony store now, but "My people are all going to have heart attacks when I say this..." they are pushing hard to have 100,000 titles available for the reader by the holiday season.

Sony has also mounted several marketing initiatives to broaden the reader market.

They had already launched the reader in the US, then in the UK and Canada. Next month, as previously reported, they will launch in France.

In an interesting contrast with Amazon, Sony is partnering with brick and mortar retailers. Sony is already partnered with Borders and Target here in the US, and Waterstones in Britain. This year, they have 7,000 retail outlets. Next year, they hope to increase that to 30,000. One of the outstanding questions on eBooks is "where do they leave the retailer?" The book retailing industry is under immense pressure. There are increasingly few independent bookstores, as large chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders expand into new areas, offering pricing the independents can't match. And those chains are in turn under pressure from discount "warehouse" retailers like CostCo and Sam's Club (who also sell books, and are an important factor in the industry.) People normally buy eBooks over the web. As demand shifts to eBooks, booksellers in brick and mortar establishments get increasingly squeezed. They aren't the ones making the sale. By partnering with existing retailers, Sony gives them a stake in the process, and broadens the distribution channel for the reader.

To go along with this, Sony is launching a campaign called Reader Revolution. Representatives will be visiting retailers with demonstration units, to give customers hands-on experience with the reader. Steve commented that the majority of the market wasn't familiar with eBooks and readers, and the response to them was likely to be "Huh?". But put a reader in their hands, and show them, and recognition would set in. "Oh, yeah! That's pretty cool!"

Sony has a month long promotional effort taking place in NYC called ReadIn. A man named David Farrow will spend a month in a window at 39th and 5th Avenue. He'll have food and drink and and a Sony Reader, and will spend a month eating, drinking, sleeping, and reading on a Reader under the public eye. When he has to do things like go to the bathroom, he won't have to do that in public. Volunteers will sit in for him while he is otherwise engaged. Sony will donate eBooks to schools based on page turns and books read in their reader.

Sony is also reaching out to schools to be an eBook supplier, offering eBooks and eBook library management software. The first 100 schools to sign up for the Sony program will get five free Sony Readers as part of the offer.

There were ten demo units in the hands of Reader Revolution representatives. I played with one briefly. Screen refresh was pleasantly fast, taking about a quarter of a second for a page turn. The rep indicated that had been a focus of development efforts on the 700. The touch screen capabilities worked well, and you could turn pages by swiping the screen. What direction you swiped to move backward or forward was configurable, and you could chose left to right/right to left or bottom to top/top to bottom to page in the desired direction. You can also swipe and hold to page forward or backward more than one page at a time.

The reader offers front lighting on the screen border, to handle the case where you wish to read in a dark room at night.

And what may be the most significant upgrade from my viewpoint was a note taking utility. You could highlight a range of text with your finger or included stylus, and attach a note to it using an on-screen keyboard, or you could attach a note to a bookmark. At the moment, notes are tied to text selections of bookmarks, and aren't available independently. The touch screen also means another reader complaint is addressed. Other readers let you highlight a word and get a dictionary definition. With onscreen highlighting by finger or stylus, it now becomes possible to have a dictionary look up function on the PRS-700. (I don't know at the moment if dictionaries that can be used that way are available.)

The fact that the Notes capability exists leaves room for expansion down the road. It wasn't mentioned in the presentation, but an onscreen keyboard coupled with wifi has obvious possibilities.

I had a chance to talk a bit with Steve after the presentation. One question I asked was about color support. He indicated it was being looked at, but would not be a near term happening. I also asked about actual unit sales. Steve said he didn't know exact numbers, which I could believe. Sony is selling through retailers as well as direct, and shipments to retailers are not the same thing as sales to consumers. He did state they were seeing significant interest and demand. He talked about unit sales in vague terms. I hope to get more details from him in the near future, plus answers to a couple of questions I didn't think to ask at the time. He's traveling back to San Diego as we speak, but mentioned a possible call on Monday to clarify things we talked about and answer questions.

I also spent some time talking to Christian Smythe. Chris is Director of eBooks Merchandising for Sony Software and Media Services, and the man responsible for getting content for the reader. Chris made it clear Sony is well aware that more content is required to compete with the Kindle, and they are pushing hard to get it. He is also ware that pricing is a concern, and talked about their general $11.99 price on titles. We chatted a bit about pricing strategies, and my observation that most folks didn't see why a an ebook should cost more than a comparable mass market paperback. Chris asked me to follow up with him in email. so we'll be talking some more. I hope to do a formal interview with him for MobileRead about his job and Sony's efforts in the market.

The other contact of the evening was Sriram Peruvemba, VP of Marketing for E Ink. Sriram got involved when I asked Steve about the supply chain, and whether there were constraints on reader growth due to limitations in the supply of E Ink screens. Steve and Sriram told me that PVI is no longer the sole source for eInk displays. Other manufacturers, like LG, have licensed the technology and are gearing up to produce displays. Steve said "I have a lot of worries, but supply of eInk displays isn't one of them!" Sriram mentioned a manufacturer who had bought the production facilities of another which had gone Chapter 11, and confirmed that plenty of production capacity existed. I'll be contacting him shortly to get more information on E Ink's partners and future plans.

As I mentioned, the most important fact to emerge from the presentation was Sony's ongoing commitment to the Reader. They see a large market, and are moving aggressively to serve it. Their moves thus far are evidence of a strong commitment.

I've attached reduced size photos from the event to this post. Folks interested in the full size versions can look at the set on Flickr
______
Dennis

04:18 PM by rhadin in E-Book General | News

According to a report on Ars Technica, Sony's vice president of digital reading, Steve Haber, stated that:

Sony plans to have 100,000 titles available by the holidays (although that's still just about half the Kindle's content) and its trained sales teams should be in the stores by then.

If true, that will be a significant jump in available content.

04:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Tomorrow we're having our MobileRead Reader Meetup at the Panera Bread in The Woodlands. Don't forget to bring your shiny gadgets with you. Free Wi-Fi is provided.

The event is open to the public and is all-ages.

Details:

Saturday, October 4th
5pm

Panera Bread
1201 Lake Woodlands Drive
The Woodlands, TX 77382
(281) 363-1056

Google Map

More details here.

06:01 PM by NatCh in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

First Things First:

• What: Sony PRS700 -- a higher-end model with some fancier features and a sleek new look.
• When: “End of October/beginning of November.”
• Where: SonyStyle.com, “more than 40 SonyStyle stores nationwide and at authorized retailers across the country.”
• How Much: $400.

What about the 505? Sony is saying they’re not replacing the 505, but rather adding a higher-end model to the PRS line. Buyers can go with the 505, or shell out the extra cash if the 700's extras are worth it to them. The 700's specs (what we have of them so far) are pretty close to what the 505’s specs are: same display size, same overall dimensions, same format supports. The differences are mainly in fancier touches.

For example: touch screen control.

The 700 has dispensed with the 0 through 9 buttons in favor of a direct touch screen selection of menu options. It also has text highlighting and annotation, via an on-screen virtual keyboard. That keyboard is also used to support searching within text -- no word yet on whether it will search across texts or not.

Pages can be turned with a finger swipe on the screen -- and the swipe direction is configurable! The 700 will include a stylus for those who have larger fingers, or just hate having fingerprints on the screen. For the old-school types, it still has hardware page change buttons.

Some other nice incidentals include a reportedly much snappier page change speed, bigger page block jumping (i.e. 20 or 30 pages as well as the 10 pages -- the "go to page" feature is still intact, again via the virtual keyboard), but in my view the biggest new feature after the touch screen is easily the built in frontlight.

Let me say that again: Built. In. Frontlight.

Answering the question of how exactly that will play out with the touch screen will have to wait until we get first-hand looks at the device itself, but the picture we have of it already is enough to start me slavering.

Other new features include five font sizes and what seems to be a totally new zoom feature.

There’s still no wireless (they say they’re looking at it for future devices), the battery still isn't user replaceable, and there's no true digital ink capability, it's all handled through virtual keyboard/menu interaction. Sony expects a firmware update at some point in the future to allow exporting text annotations from the device, which could be handy for students. The other noticeable lack is geographic: it's U.S. only for now. The explanation for that had to do with the markedly insular nature of the various Sony divisions (i.e. Sony USA compared to Sony Europe), but I really think they should have worked that out, perhaps they will do so quickly.

But wait! That's not all! Along with this launch, Sony will be launching a new version of their eBook Store. It is supposed to have easier searching and navigation, as well as a "streamlined checkout process." Personally, I'm most hoping they get rid of the frames within frames thing, and make it easier to find things like the wishlist and books already bought. Making purchased books easier to download in bulk would be a nice touch too.

Even as I post this, our pinch-hitter reporter is attending the "Event" and will have first-hand impressions to share with us as soon as he can, so stay tuned!

The press release is here, and the SonyStyle Reader Page should have full specs shortly.

Okay, folks, no shoving now. The line forms right here (yes, yes, that's right: right there behind me ) -- so who's ready to queue up?

08:43 AM by ebookreaders in E-Book General | News

According to the BeBook website, the BeBook (which recently added Mobipocket support) will be introduced to the UK through a number of retailers soon:

This is of course good news for ebook acceptance in general. In addition, the BeBook got some new reviews as well, like this one from TechRadar.

I wish Endless Ideas good luck with the introduction of their BeBook in the UK.

05:33 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I was just contacted by Paul Biba that David of TeleRead has suffered a heart attack last Thursday night. From Paul's blog post:

I would suggest that anyone who wants to send their regards to David do so by adding a comment to this post so that David just has to look in one place. If this post gets pushed down by other articles I’ll put it back up at the top again.

For all those who have permission to post on this blog, let’s try to keep things going while David is under the weather.

For those who don’t have permission to post, if you want to send me a post by email, I will put it up with due credit to you. Keeping the blog running is the best thing we can do for David at this point. You can send me any postings at paulkbiba at gmail.com

I'd like to wish my friend David a speedy recovery and I pray that he and his family stay strong through this tough time.

12:52 PM by ebookreaders in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

According to the Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf, the Sony Reader will be introduced in the Netherlands early next year.

No details were given yet. The Sony Reader will probably be sold through one major retailer. A Sony spokesman told the newspaper that the introduction will be 'a big event' -- with lots of marketing power.

Related: Sony Reader conquers Europe - Germany is next, Sony Reader on pre-order at the Fnac (France)