07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

E-books - News

• Sony announced PDF *reflow* support at CES!
• Sony goes DivX - now what about e-books, Sony?
• Breaking: eReader.com changes hands again, acquired by Fictionwise
• Publishers Weekly Article: Trends to Watch in 2008

Mobile Devices - Handhelds and Smartphones

• Handmark to acquire Astraware

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• MobileRead wins Palm Addicts Award 2007
• MobileRead's e-book section reaches 3,000 books!

04:59 PM by eBookNerd in E-Book General | News

The popularity of e-books will increase, with titles formatted for Amazon's Kindle leading the way. Content for the Sony Reader will sell faster than ever, but by this time next year, Kindle-compatible books will be outselling them by more than 2 to 1. And Palm, which has historically been the bestselling format, will have had its best year-on-year increase as well. By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for Kindle; the trick for the other formats will be to make sure they're included, too. And Kindle pricing will drive the market. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market--no more than 2% of sales for most titles--and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers' bottom lines.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/arti....html?nid=3335

Do you think he's correct in predicting that even though Kindle will energize the ebook market.... but -"despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market--no more than 2% of sales for most titles--and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers' bottom lines."

Frankly, I was hoping to see ebooks take off and represent a much larger share of the publishing market!

10:27 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Fictionwise announced today that they have acquired eReader.com, "the world's largest ebook store." Terms of the deal were not disclosed. From the press release:

"eReader.com is one of the crown jewels of the eBook world," commented Steve Pendergrast, co-founder of Fictionwise, Inc. "With this acquisition, Fictionwise breaks into the very top ranks of the eBook retail market. Synergies between our business units will open the door to some very interesting developments for our customers in the coming months."

"Over the years, eReader.com nurtured and grew a loyal following of customers while pioneering methods to help raise the general adoption and consumption of eBooks, " said Chris Chuang, Vice President of Strategic Development for Motricity. "eReader.com is a strong strategic fit with Fictionwise, not only in terms of the additional customer footprint it brings, but also in that Fictionwise is acquiring some of the leading technologies and infrastructure in the eBooks market."

eReader has a long history of changing hands. I am not sure if I'll get it all right, but I try. Once upon a time, there was a small publisher named Peanut Press. Peanut Press got bought by a company called NetLibrary (2000). One year later, Palm acquired Peanut Press from NetLibrary and turned it into Palm Digital Media. Then, in 2003, meanwhile Palm's e-book devision was transferred to PalmSource (a former Palm subsidiary), PalmGear (then already a subsidiary of PowerByHand, today known as Motricity) jumped in and acquired the e-book company. One year later, in 2004, Motricity renamed Palm Digital Media into eReader.com.

Given eReader.com's decade-long history of acquisitions, I think it's time to give this old baby some rest... let's hope it'll find it with Fictionwise!

[via TeleRead]

05:38 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Sony's Pictures Television division knocked us dead today by announcing that their online retailers will soon be able to offer Sony content in DivX format. You know, not until recently DivX was considered the rebel codec (ab)used by licentious pirates for swapping Hollywood movies over P2P networks. But before you're jumping up and down in joy, also consider this:

She [a spokesperson for DivX] also said that all titles would be download-to-own, but that there will be some type of unspecified DRM. Tracking down those DivX Sony movies might be a challenge, though. "We have no announcements with retailers at this time," she told us.

Here we have it again. DivX yes, but afflicted by DRM disease. I understand that there are (perhaps outdated) business models requiring the technical means to prevent people from copying content; however, I pray that Sony will not fall into the trap of introducing yet another DRM mechanism that would require "compatible" players. Or maybe they are eyeing the official DivX DRM. While it might have the power to gain a wider acceptance (with the sale of more DivX-certified devices), I would feel naturally uneasy about using a tool that was co-developed by the MPAA.

Coming back to the question that I raised at the beginning. What are the chances that Sony's e-book devision will switch from their proprietary LRF e-book format to something more open, like, let's say, Adobe ePub? We've heard it many times before that a Sony Reader future upgrade might deliver ePub support, but this doesn't necessarily imply that Sony will abandon LRF as its preferred format for selling e-book. Or does it?

Related Business Week article: Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM

12:09 AM by NatCh in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Can it really be only three months ago that we reached 1,000 uploads in our e-book section?

Indeed it was, and here we are today noting the passing of the 3,000 uploads mark!

To those who have participated in this massive effort, speaking as one who hasn't (and probably for most of the rest of the community too), thank you! Your efforts are appreciated, and will be enjoyed for years to come -- heck, it'll take years to read all those books!

04:42 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

Unfortunately, it's not Adobe DE.

We heard a rumor from from Engadget that Sony announced in their press conference new PDF support for the PRS-505.

What they actually said was:

With Sony's latest Reader, the future of digital books is here.

The Reader continues to win critical praise and for the month of December, it was the number one selling device on SonyStyle.com.

What's more, we're excited to announce enhanced support for Adobe PDFs which improves the reading experience and underscores our commitment to open formats.

When you combine a vast library of reading material with Sony technology that's geared toward ease of use and convenience, well, let's just say that's a best-selling proposition.

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_ro...ase/32858.html

I followed up on it, and this is the email I got:

Hi Nate,
No specific annoucement. We're showing reflowable pdf in booth but no timeframe on availability for prs. We simply reiterated our commitment to working with adobe to improve pdf experience on prs.

Sorry for the late reply. Show is crazy. Hope this helps.

So basically it was filler for the speech. No news. Sorry.

12:21 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Handmark and Astraware have already been selling software on each other's web sites, and have done joint development. So it's not too much of a surprise that they have joined forces. It will surely bring some significant rewards for all the years of hard work.

What you may not know, however, is that Astraware has quite a history including development for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, PCs. From 1998 forward, the focus became PalmOS and Pocket PC.

Currently they are famous for games like Bejeweled, which has often been distributed with Palm devices, and is addictive fun for everyone I know that has tried it. They are one of the companies that have personally won my heart through every aspect of game quality and corporate communications. Howard Tomlinson, the CEO of Astraware was one of the original developers, and has been available to the mobile blog community. They celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and they even have a nice corporate team blog. How can you not like this company?!

Handmark will certainly gain a lot of visibility among PalmOS and Windows Mobile fans with this move. To this point in time, many people probably view them as the company that has Monopoly and Scrabble. I look forward to seeing how the future unfolds, and I think all of us are thankful for the companies who remain faithful to the PalmOS and Windows Mobile platforms in the midst of all the handheld OS turmoil.

03:00 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

What can I say about Palm Addicts other than to assure you that its Editor in Chief, Sammy McLoughlin, has built one of the best Palm sites on the entire Web. And while not directly related to e-books, you'll still find tons of well-researched articles, news, and commentary on reading books on mobile devices.

It is an honor for me to announce that Sammy has chosen MobileRead as his personal favorite website in 2007 for "all things ebooks and epublishing." Thank you, Sam!!