07:44 PM by Bob Russell in E-Book General | News

Just because Bill Gates says something is so, doesn't mean it is. But like him or not, when Bill Gates makes a prediction, people listen. This time we get to hear some of his thoughts about e-books. Quillblog refers to a collection of quotes on the topic from a speech, and I think it's quite fair to say he's bullish on e-books.

Here is one example... "Reading is going to go completely online. We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links. The ads in the online reading are completely targeted as opposed to just being run-of-print, where many of the readers will find them completely irrelevant. The ads can be in new and richer formats. In fact the only drawbacks of the digital form are the things associated with the device: how big is it, heavy is it, how many hours of power does it have, how much do I have to spend to buy it? But those are things that once you achieve that threshold, in terms of the convenience and the cost, then you see a dramatic change in behavior. Today, for people who read newspapers and magazines, even the most avid PC user probably still does quite a bit of reading on print. As the device moves down in size and simplicity, that will change, and so somewhere in the next five-year period we'll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today."

In many ways, the hardware is getting very close to being reasonably priced, easy to use and sufficient quality to be wondering how close the tipping point is. But DRM and format wars still continue to drain the life out of the industry. Five years? Maybe. I hope so!

From QuillBlog.

12:43 PM by nekokami in E-Book General | News

Sent to digitalrights@amazon.com:

Dear Amazon,

I have been buying books through Amazon since the website first opened in 1995, and I have always been impressed with Amazon's forward-looking attitude when it comes to using technology to enable good customer service. I particularly like the "recommendations" features that match purchases with other similar books. I've found a number of "new" authors to read that way. I'd like to make a suggestion that I hope could grow into another Amazon innovation:

When I look at books on your website, I see a link that says "Are you the publisher or author? Learn how Amazon can help you make this book an eBook." However, there are still far too many books for which there is no ebook version available. The titles available through Amazon's Mobipocket (or even other vendors) are only a small fraction of the number of books still in print, and the situation is worse with out of print books. Perhaps the publishers really don't understand yet how huge a market this could be, and how it could extend the "long tail," particularly with older titles that would require further investment to reprint.

I suggest that you also create a button that says, "Click here to notify the publisher and author that you would like to buy this book as an ebook!" The clicks could then be tallied by Amazon, and even displayed on the page. And Amazon could then forward that data to the publishers and authors using an automated system, because Amazon already has publisher and author info on file for each book. (The author correspondence could be sent care of the publisher, which would reduce the amount of address/contact data Amazon would need to maintain.) Publishers might specify the threshold level at which they would like to be notified. This could not only help publishers to understand how large the ebook market is, but could also help to direct their efforts toward the most desired ebooks first.

If/when an ebook version becomes available, the customers who "voted" for it while logged into their Amazon account could be notified via email or notices on their next visit to Amazon. As a special incentive, Amazon could offer discounted retroactive ebook conversion -- if a customer bought a book from Amazon, and it later became available as an ebook, Amazon could offer a discount on the ebook version. This could encourage customers to go ahead and buy a paper version of a book from Amazon while they wait for the ebook version to be produced (and of course, those customers might also sell their used paper copies through Amazon, generating even more revenue).

My storage space for paper books has become limited over the years, and ebook reading technology has improved substantially. I'd really like to be able to buy all my new books in ebook format, and I know I'm not alone. But too few of the titles I want are available. I hope a program like this could help change that.

Best regards,

[signature block]

I encourage others to do the same. I considered an online petition via one of the websites for that purpose, but I think a swarm of emails to the digitalrights email address will be more effective.

08:31 AM by Steven Lyle Jordan in E-Book General | News

Calvin Reid's article for Publishers Weekly is a good summation of the International Digital Publishing Forum’s annual e-publishing conference in New York. Notable are Adobe System's Bill McCoy's comments:

"The future is here," said Adobe System’s Bill McCoy, borrowing a phrase of computer book publisher Tim O’Reilly, "but it’s unevenly distributed." McCoy’s point was that all publishers acknowledge the promise of digital distribution—they’re just waiting for the "digital tipping point," a device, new software, or a new standard to push digital distribution to the next level.

Thanks to Rita Toews for pointing me to this article.

07:24 AM by emkay in More E-Book Readers | iRex

Guardian article here: link

Andrew Marr is a newspaper editor, BBC journalist and senior figure in the UK arts establishment.

A positive piece overall, with a quite refreshingly non-techy perspective.

08:10 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Laura Balsam sent us word that Sony and the National Association for Visually Handicapped will be doing a joint presentation held in New York City on May 24th. This meeting gives you a great opportunity if you want to find more about the various types of software and hardware available to increase the accessibility of books for people with visual disabilities, or if you want to have a first hands-on with the Sony Reader. Hosted by a local computer club, it's free and open to the public.

For directions and more information check out this website.

12:47 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Ladies and gentlemen, E Ink is busting out a new version of their electronic ink technology which has me drifting on a heavenly cloud of bliss. It's called Vizplex and its tech specs are way superior to the previous E Ink imaging film technologies we've seen.

• Typical Switch Speed: 740 ms (previous: 1200 ms)
• Peak Switch Speed (monochrome): 260 ms (previous: 500 ms)
• Brightness (reflectance): 40% (previous: 32-35%)
• Greyscale levels: 8 (previous: 4)

According to the press release, PrimeView International will manufacture the TFT modules based on Vizplex with the first displays to come out this summer. Diagonal sizes will include 1.9", 5", 6", 8" and 9.7" (previous: only 6").

Ok, time to place your bets when the first Vizplex e-reader hits the stores.

Thanks to Jason for the tip!

07:20 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Market researcher Displaybank published a report ($$) which aims to predict the market for flexible displays for the next ten years. Basically the market will grow from $280m USD in 2010 to $5.9b USD in 2015, and to $12.2b USD in 2017, according to Tech-On who has a summary of the report.

Moreover, Displaybank predicts that we'll have 50-inch and larger e-paper devices by 2013. Can anyone elaborate if 50-inch would still qualify as hand luggage?

06:06 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book Readers | Sony Reader

Have you ever wondered whether it was possible to change the contrast ratio of your Sony Reader screen? Well, now it seems you can, though the procedure is not for the faint of heart. Igorsk pointed us to this (very interesting) website explaining how you can adjust the screen ratio by changing the position of a specific resistor (yes, in other words, you'd have to disassemble the hardware). Whether the adjustment is for the better or worse, I don't know. Make sure to compare the screenshots.