12:59 PM by TadW in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

This one is available for free but only today (normal price tag: $35):

Organize your collection of paper books into an electronic library. Track loaners and locate every book in just seconds. Add books easily without typing full details: All My Books gets information about the book from the Internet automatically.

Group and browse your collection of books by title, author or publisher, or run a quick search by any field. You can even define your own fields to label the books, such as comments or memos, and search them later.

For a full list of features click here.

For the free download click here (note: you have to install it before the Giveaway offer for the software is over)

(via JKotR)

08:59 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

How many Kindles has Amazon sold? Is Sony's Portable Reader still on track? We don't have a clue. Meanwhile analysts and industry experts crawl out of the woodwork providing their own sales estimates. The latest word has Evan Schnittman, Vice President at Oxford University Press, who sees, based on company data published on Digitimes, "the success of Kindle and Reader dramatically expanding next year and growing by a factor of five."

DIGITIMES, a daily news service covering the Taiwanese IT market, reported on April 18th, in a story entitled PVI EDP shipments to grow sharply in 2008, that PVI expects EPD module shipments to reach 120,000 units PER MONTH in the second half of 2008. It further explains that the unit price of the screens are $60-$70 per unit and that the current volume has been 60-80,000 units PER MONTH.

Also intriguing is the article’s claim that 60% of the EPD’s go to Amazon and 40% go to Sony. This is an important factor as it implies that there is a market beyond Kindle – a very, very strong market. Taking the figures at face value, Sony was selling (or at least manufacturing) an average of 28,000 readers per month (I took 70,000 units as the average sold per month and then 40% of that). Using this monthly rate, the annual sales of the Sony Reader are at nearly 350,000 units. Using the same formula, Amazon is ordering an average of 42,000 units per month, which will add up to over 500,000 units sold this year.[...]

With this in mind, I can easily imagine the success of Kindle and Reader dramatically expanding next year and growing by a factor of five. If that happens, then the formula above leads to a completely new ebook economy. Five million devices would mean ebook sales of $1,200,000,000, which, by my estimation, is 1.3% of the current global book market of $90,000,000,000.

Related: PVI to double E Ink panel capacity, 120K E-Ink displays per month in 2H08

[via TeleRead]

05:40 AM by TadW in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

To download, simply click here. You’ll be taken to a checkout page where you can set the price anywhere from $0.00 upwards. You’ll need to enter an email address before you can download it.

ThePiratesDilemma.com

From Publishers Weekly
Music journalist Mason, a former pirate radio and club DJ in London, explores how open source culture is changing the distribution and control of information and harnessing the old system of punk capitalism to new market conditions governing society. According to Mason, this movement's creators operate according to piratical tactics and are changing the very nature of our economy. He charts the rise of the ideas and social experiments behind these latter-day pirates, citing the work of academics, historians and innovators across a multitude of fields. He also explores contributions by visionaries like Andy Warhol, 50 Cent and Dr. Yuref Hamied, who was called a pirate and a thief after producing anti-HIV drugs for Third World countries that cost as little as $1 a day to produce. Pirates, Mason states, sail uncharted waters where traditional rules don't apply. As a result, they offer great ways to service the public's best interests. According to Mason, how people, corporations and governments react to these changes is one of the most important economic and cultural questions of the 21st century. Well-written, entertaining and highly original, Mason offers a fascinating view of the revolutionary forces shaping the world as we know it. (Jan. 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

03:14 PM by TheLongshot in E-Book General | News

The future of e-paper: The Kindle is only the beginning

Overall, there is a feeling of potential about e-paper that's fueled in large part by the size of the current market for publishing on paper. If e-paper grows from its current 0.1% of that market to even just 3% or 4%, said Peruvemba [E Ink's vice president for marketing], "you'll be looking at a $400 billion market."

A good overview of the current state of e-paper technology and where it is going in the near future.

Jason

12:11 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Jonathan Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it" has been recently licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license and is now available as a free PDF download. From the synopsis:

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. [...]

The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”

[via BoingBoing]

05:37 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Hot on the heels of recent rumors stating that Amazon had no plans to introduce the Kindle reader in the UK, the Sunday Times reports that in the very same country, the Kindle is already "rapidly taking on the must-have aura of Apple's iPod." Also:

The new generation of electronic books – ebooks – has fired a revolution even before they go on sale in Britain. Such is the sudden success in the United States of the Amazon Kindle, a reading device capable of storing 200 books, that UK buyers are bidding for them on eBay in the hope of shipping them over. [...]

The Kindle, which is expected to go on sale in the UK later this year, has surprised US publishers and authors by how rapidly it has moved into the mainstream. [...]

Amazon has not decided how much ebooks for the Kindle will cost in Britain, but in America new releases and bestsellers, for example, typically cost $9.99 (£5), compared with £7.50-£10 for traditional volumes bought through the company’s website.

So, the Kindle, now again going on sale in the UK later this year? Ah, the rumor mill -- what a boring life we'd all lead without it.

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

Once again, our weekly roundup of highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Books - News and Commentary

• Kindle - 6% and rising?
• Conspiracy not the cause of TeleRead's temporary outage
• Author dumps money from plane in publicity stunt
• LifeHack Beginner's Guide to E-Books
• Stanza e-book reader for Mac released
• Adobe Acrobat goes online, Reader gets a boost
• NYT: Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair
• Research Libraries Embrace E-Books
• Faux Folders Found for Mobipocket
• Borders revives online shop - gets flashy with Magic Shelf
• Stanford faculty debate the good and bad of e-books
• Flexible computers use displays with any shape
• Next hot cell phone trend: picture books?
• TeleRead is back!
• Guardian: No Kindle for the UK (or anywhere else outside US)
• What's up with HarperCollins? CEO resigns
• Penguin CEO: E-book is the answer to my prayers
• Borders rakes in fresh cash (and says good-bye to Australasia)
• Engst to Pogue: E-Book piracy not a given
• Amazon.com Down? - Yup, Missing in Action

E-Books - Format Conversion

• Mobigen (KindleCreator) for Linux now available

E-Book Devices - iRex iLiad

• No updates for current iLiad MobiPocket Reader

E-Book Devices - Other Portable Devices

• Pocket Tunes now available for Windows Mobile
• HP 360LX: Possible Ebook Reader

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• E-Book Upload section new features

02:18 PM by HaggisMacJedi in E-Book General | News

My Kindle just arrived at the door (in less than 24 hours with the free shipping option no less!), and I can't get on Amazon through my PC or the Kindle. Is Amazon down, or is it me?