03:37 AM by Taylor514ce in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

One can purchase the Sony Reader from a vending machine at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Swipe your credit card, and it's yours!

My apologies for the poor picture quality.

Related: Sony Vending Machines (Kiosks)

03:25 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

There's nothing like silence to get tongues wagging. The refusal of Amazon to reveal how many Kindles or e-books the company has sold has morphed into a major guessing game. Analysts have taken sides, and this week, Steve Weinstein of Pacific Crest hinted that global e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by the year 2012. PaidContent reports:

To figure this, Weinstein starts with the handiest analogue: iPod and MP3 player sales. He notes that between 2003 and 2008, digital music sales grew from 2 percent of the US market to 33 percent, largely on the back of Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) twin offerings. He doesn’t expect the Kindle/e-books to track as fast, but he does think the market is off to a strong start already, and that the cycle will pick up steam as the Kindle comes down in price (that’s already started) and the ecosystem matures. He also suspects the consumers will be drawn to the instant gratification aspect of Kindle titles, as well as the lower price per book.

Mr. Weinstein's line of reasoning reminds me of the Kindle is the iPod of reading analogy, first coined by Steve Levyin in his widely read Newsweek cover story. But the underlying question really is: Do you believe that the Kindle (or e-books in general) will have the same impact on publishing that Apple's iPod had on the music business?

Related: Amazon Kindle projections overrated?, PVI revenues drop - weakening e-paper orders, E-books are three years behind MP3s

07:52 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Remember Magic Shelf? When Borders introduced this feature last month, we asked ourselves if browsing through a virtual bookshelf could have any advantage over using Amazon's category and ranking system. If you happen to be among those who prefer the virtual brick-and-mortar feeling, without giving up on Amazon, you can now try Zoomii, launched earlier this week. ReadWriteWeb writes:

Built on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), interacting with Zoomii is reminiscent of Google Maps. You can zoom in and out of bookshelves or pan around to navigate the service. The site design feels just like you're browsing a bookshelf at any bookstore except the books are facing cover-forward instead of spine-out. To keep up with the feel of a bookstore, books are organized by author and you can also compare book sizes to get a feel for how big or small a book is.

Official launch report: link

Warning: Firefox 3 users should be aware of some kind of bug in Zoomi slowing your browsing experience down to a crawl. The developers are currently working on a fix.

Related: Amazon and Borders - a match made in heaven?

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

Feast your eyes on some of the discussions from this week at MobileRead...

E-Books - News and Commentary

• How Amazon exercises power with 1-click "Buy Now" button
• Global Reader Going ePub
• Japanese companies jump on mobile e-book bandwagon
• Somatic Digital's eTouchBook
• No magic in the Kindle: Three reasons
• O'Reilly to support multi-format e-books, goes ePub
• Prospective Kindle owners: Watch out July 4th
• E-books are three years behind MP3s

E-Book Devices - Amazon Kindle

• 100+ Things to do with the Kindle reader

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead wireless e-book downloads!

06:18 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Doh! Nate beat me to it and already introduced our latest feature: the Mobipocket Download Guide - to download e-books directly to your connected e-book device. Inspired by the ingenious Feedbooks Kindle Download Guide, we've decided to launch a similar feature allowing everyone with an Amazon Kindle, iRex iLiad or other Mobipocket-compatible e-book reader with access to the Internet to immediately download books prepared and uploaded by our members.

Some notes:

• the Guide is updated every 24 hours to include the latest Mobipocket-compatible books uploaded to MobileRead;
• books not in Mobipocket format are not included in the Guide;
• Kindle users can download the guide through the integrated experimental web browser. You can also use USB or send the Guide to your Kindle e-mail address. Important: it takes some time for the Kindle to fully index the document for searching;
• Windows users can use the Mobipocket Desktop software to browse through the guide and download e-books directly from it.

My special thanks to lovebeta, pshrynk, daffy4u, TallMomof2, pshrynk, RickyMaveety, MoSo, pilotbob, and the entire MobileRead crew for beta testing our new feature!

Suggestions, feedback, recommendations, we love to hear it all, so please join the on-going discussion.

01:08 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Book Business has an article about a presentation given at the London Book Fair. In it they did an interesting comparison between e-books and MP3s.

First, Kent noted that a revolution is occurring:

• Today, more people are reading on screen than on paper (not just books, but all types of reading);
• 10 years ago, $0 was spent on MP3s;
• 2007 e-book sales were greater than 2004 MP3 sales.

Kent noted, “I don’t think things will move as fast in digital books … but we’re really only three years behind in retail [sales].”

There are some other interesting observations on the difficulty of buying e-books the natural evolution from single-purpose e-book devices to multifunction platforms. Kent also says that "DRM that works" is needed. No mention of non-DRM alternatives, but he's right - DRM is a nightmare in its current form.

Check out the entire article for more, including why e-book devices as we know them will not survive long.

03:47 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Completely unsubstantiated, we know, but there is always the possibility that Amazon is going to discount the Kindle device during their annual 4th of July sales. No, we don't have any hard evidence and no industry insider tipped us; but it would make sense for Amazon, given how hard they're trying to push the Kindle. Wouldn't it?

06:08 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Hot on the heels of this week's annoncement of the Global Reader platform adopting the IDPF ePub standard, O'Reilly's Andrew Savikas revealed today that

- "through oreilly.com we will offer a select number of books as a bundle of three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price -- at or below the book's cover price -- starting in early July."

- "these files (like all our PDFs currently for sale) will be released without any DRM, though we are exploring some custom watermarking options."

- "if you buy the PDF now, you'll receive the EPUB and Mobipocket versions as a free update once they're available in early July."

- "O'Reilly has agreed to sell select ebooks for the Kindle through Amazon."

Despite the fact that at least initially, only a few select titles will be available as multi-format e-books, this news must be the most beautiful music for every salivating e-book junkie. O'Reilly, you go!

[via ePub Books]