06:45 PM by TadW in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Gizmodo met with various high-profile Sony folks today and managed to squeeze some information out of them, also regarding the Sony Reader information:

The new Sony Reader will get PDF support in January.

The Reader is finding an audience among the military, among companies who want to load up manuals for employees, and among housewives. Educational publishers are still slow to see its value: "They are probably a little old fashioned - probably not the right thing to say - but they are a little slow to adapt," says Glasgow, adding that he thinks they will get on track. Sony welcomes the Amazon reader and any other competition as "publicity for the category."

Link to the full article: here

Now the question is: what do they mean by "will get PDF support"? Obviously, the Sony Reader does already support PDF -- in fact, it did so from the very beginning. But is it possible that those exec's meant to say better PDF support? Something along the lines of Digital Editions, which is rumored to be in the works for the Sony Reader? I am wondering... what do you think?

05:00 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Amazon Kindle

Not long ago, we were pretty jazzed when NY Times editor Brad Stone informed the world that Amazon was going to unveil its highly anticipated Kindle reader sometime in October this year. Although technically still possible, it's highly unlikely that we'll hear anything from Amazon today when everyone is already getting ready for the big Halloween party. Sure there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay, and Mr. Stone has now been told by his publisher friends that it had to do with "technology kinks" and Amazon trying to prepare as many e-titles as possible before the launch.

According to publishing industry executives back then, Amazon had promised delivery of its keyboard-equipped electronic book reader during the second week of October. Now, those same people say that the company has pushed back that date and is aiming for a launch by the end of this year. Take that with a grain of salt. Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, are notoriously persnickety.

At any rate, we still don't know what Amazon is up to and when they are going to lift the curtain. The arduous wait isn't over yet.

04:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

It's Happy Happy Halloween and Fictionwise celebrates the event by reducing the prices on all Horror and Dark Fantasy e-books until end of October for today. Palm Addicts has the details.

Side note: would you mind sharing with us what spooky outfit you'll be wearing tonight?

04:02 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

There hasn't been much attention paid to Adobe Digital Editions lately, but apparently Adobe's engineers have been busy improving the software where improvement was clearly needed: they changed the way it operates on DRM-protected e-books.

What's been unknown to me before, there are actually two ways Adobe allows publishers to protect their content. One way is called "Easy Activiation", enabling the customer to read e-books on a single computer (the book gets essentially "tied" to that machine). The other option for the publisher is to use "Named Activation", which is giving the customer the option to read a purchased e-book on any computer or device. Instead of tieing the book to a computer, it's tied to the purchaser's Adobe ID which contains his personal information (you can compare this mechanism to how other popular e-book formats work, for instance eReader PDB).

So, the great news is, the next incarnation of Digital Edition (1.5) will exclusively support "Named Activiation." What's even better, previously purchased Adobe e-books that were using the overly restrictive "Easy Activation" license can now be converted to be using "Named Activiation", thus allowing you to read them on any computer or device you wish.

Jump over to the Digital Edition blog for more information.

02:44 PM by delphidb96 in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

And it HAS bookmarking, jump to page, the ability to add in other TrueType fonts as well as MP3 support!

Yes, Bookeen created a fully-functional bookmarking interface as well as a way to specify an exact page number for Goto Page! I'll be posting pictures today.

Derek

10:22 AM by igorsk in E-Book General | News

The deal was announced a while ago but now you can actually buy some books. They even have a Baen-style six-book bundle and eARCs.

http://www.webscriptions.net/m-6-sub...ean-press.aspx

I hope this is just a beginning. I've been planning to reread some Orson Scott Card and would love to do that on my Reader.

01:36 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | Bookeen

It's been a long time coming, but the Cybook Gen3 e-reader is finally on sale; and immediately e-book fans started to wonder about Bookeen's dual pricing strategy - dollar versus euro price. TeleRead talked with Michael Dehan of Bookeen who was able to supply us with at least some kind of answer (satisfactory or not, I leave that to you):

Concerning Euro-Dollar, don't forget VAT, taxes and shipment price. If we compare with standard practices in the Consumer Electronics industry, Apple proposes higher model prices in Euro than in US dollars on their Apple store, Sony does the same with the PS3, Archos (a French company) proposes the same model price in Euros and USD for their MPEG4 players.

Michael also explains how you can use the Cybook on an Apple Mac and how warranties in Europe differ from the US.

Jump over to TeleRead for the full article.

And thanks to MobileReader Barcey for the tip!

01:13 PM by Alexander Turcic in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Remember my friendly chat with iRex employee Peter Maas, in which Peter told me that iRex is trying to expand its retail channels? Well, congrats to them for finding the first bookstore company in the Netherlands to sell their e-reader along with e-books in-store! From the iRex Blog:

The Dutch bookstore chain, Selexyz will start with the sales of e-books and the iLiad from November onward. The iLiad will be on display and for sale at the Selexyz bookstores in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. As a promotion the first iLiads will be provided with an e-book edition of Max Westermans new book 'In alle staten'.

In a geek's wildest dream, millions of Dutch people are now going to flood bookstores and fetch an iLiad. Consequently, the price will go down below 200 Euro, thus making the iLiad one of the most affordable and attractive e-reader devices currently out there. Ok stop. Uncontrollable drooling alert.

PS: Dutch TV RTL reported on the iRex-Selexyz deal. Check out this video clip and start at around point 7min.