08:42 PM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

Well, at least according to this article, it is:

Hachette Livre sera prêt pour la sortie en fin d'année du lecteur numérique («e-book») de Sony.

Via Teleread.

Related: Hachette acquiert Numilog, proposera le Sony en France

02:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

Thanks to the anonymous tipster who sent us a link to a few presentation slides (warning: PDF) which enable us to get a brief look at what's coming next from Bookeen.

There isn't a whole lot in the way of details, but we do know now that Bookeen must have been quite impressed by the online connectivity of the Amazon Kindle ("La fonction communicante devient un MUST-HAVE"), so we can assume that the Cybook Gen4 will allow us in some way to download e-books on-the-fly. The presentation also mentions that it will take around two years to develop the next Cybook reader, with a required funding of four to six million Euro. Partners include Le Monde, Thales électronique, and Nemoptic. Nemoptic, we know, makes their own e-paper technology, so it'll be interesting to find out if they're going to replace E Ink.

If you're interested in diving into corporate hoopla, there are some other interesting details revealed:

• The Cybook Gen3 is currently sold in 55 different countries (25% USA, 13% UK, 12% France, 8% Germany, 7% Netherlands, 5% Canada, 5% Spain, 4% Italy, 4% Norway, 17% others)
• There are 14 resellers
• Bookeen estimates a total sales of 10,000 Cybook units for 2008.

There is also an online video with Bookeen's Michaël Dahan. Alas, my French is a bit rusty, so if there is anything else of interest, please share with us!

Related: What would you like in the next gen Cybook (Gen4)

04:16 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Do you remember the ruckus a couple months back about Amazon threatening small publishers? Well, guess what. It looks like Amazon may have broken the law.

BookLocker.com has filed an antitrust suit against Amazon.com.

Plaintiff BookLocker.com, Inc. (“BookLocker” or “Plaintiff”), on its own behalf and on behalf of the class defined herein, brings this antitrust action to obtain injunctive and monetary relief against Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”) with regard to an anticompetitive tying arrangement that violates section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1.

The filing can be found here.

07:36 AM by Alisa in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney, who was originally quite down on the Kindle, is now rather rosy about it's outlook making the projection that the adoption curve will follow the iPod but only be half as much. Here are his projections.

As much as I adore my Kindle, I also think Jobs had a point when he said no one reads anymore. I think a lot of people do read, but not in huge numbers like those that buy music and videos. Maybe with a more multifunction device, something that was great for textbooks, maybe a huge price drop, I could see that. What do we think? Is 50% reasonable? Does Mahaney need to put the pipe down?

Reported by Gizmodo and cNet.

Original article at the Silicon Alley Insider.

07:33 AM by grimo1re in E-Book General | News

Sony plans to exit the Japanese market for the delivery of ebooks to PCs and its dedicated ebook reader. Instead, the company will focus only on delivering content to mobile phones, the Nikkei Business Daily reported this week.

Sony’s wholly owned subsidiary Timebook Town provides ebooks, ecomics and other content for use on PCs and the Librie ebook reader. However, since halting production of the Librie last year, Sony has decided to stop the Timebook service per February 2009 and liquidate the subsidiary.

From then on, Sony will only focus on delivering content to mobile phones. Sony’s Publishing Link, which launched services in December 2007 offering ebooks, ecomics and other mobile content, will be expanded. Sony said that demand for ebook readers remains strong in the US and other overseas markets so it will continue ebook sales for devices and PCs in those markets.

10:24 AM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Over at Palm247, Shaun McGill asks his readers How many eBooks have you purchased?

While the question is certainly biased toward those Palm users who read e-books (the ones that read e-books and especially who buy them are most likely to reply with comments), it still is interesting in several ways:

1) So far, for number of e-books purchased, there are 6 with <100, 4 with <300, one with about 700 and another with more than a thousand. (Wow!)

2) Only one person said they read free e-books and didn't buy e-books.

3) There were several mentions of people who just prefer paper.

The big winners for the massive e-book purchases in this small sample of Palm users? Fictionwise/eReader, Baen and MobiPocket.

06:13 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

It's been only a little over a year since the first e-book was submitted to MobileRead. Today, I am proud to announce, we passed the 5,000th e-book uploaded to our e-book section!

Anyone who has taken a look knows the meticulous care and detailed manual file preparation that has gone into so many of these books. And let's not forget the valuable tools and tips provided by our community members, all the support given by the various people behind the scenes, to make it all possible.

It's an amazing accomplishment, which I believe (not without a sense of pride and excitement) has made a significant contribution to public domain e-book access.

I'd like to thank all of those who have helped us along the way to make MobileRead what it is today. And, of course, to all the readers out there - without you we wouldn't be what we are. Sooo... let's have a feast and celebrate(*).

Some statistics to walk down memory lane:

• May 16, 2008: 5,000 uploads
• Feb 19, 2008: 4,000 uploads
• Jan 08, 2008: 3,000 uploads
• Nov 02, 2007: 2,000 uploads
• Sep 04, 2007: 1,000 uploads
• Mar 27, 2007: First upload

* for instance by downloading a few books for your reading pleasure.

05:44 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

The following is an expansion upon the notes I took during the talk given by Martin Gorner, the President & CEO of Mobipocket.

Mobi Desktop 6.2 can import EPUB, and will auto-convert an EPUB file to Mobi format so you can read it. He demonstrated this during the presentation.

The next version of Mobi Creator and Mobigen will also support EPUB creation.

By the end of the year, Mobipocket will release updated readers for the various platforms, as well as release a new reader for the Apple iPhone.

Mr. Gorner also said that sales of Mobipocket format e-books have doubled since last year, while giving a breakdown of users by device. I wasn't quite fast enough to get all the data, but I can tell you it's 43 percent Windows Mobile, 23 percent Palm, 6% proprietary (iRex iLiad, Pepper-Pad, etc). The number of Palm users is shrinking, both as a percentage and as an absolute number.

---

When Gorner demoed EPUB support, I was under the impression that Mobi Desktop can read EPUB natively. Well, I just tested it, and my copy of 6.2 converted the EPUB file to Mobi before opening it. Either way, it's a nice step forward!