Tab News - EBooks

Ebook Pioneer Jason Merkoski’s History of, and Predictions for Digital Reading

JTD — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:05:42 GMT

As a former leader for the building of Amazon’s first Kindle, Jason Merkoski brings an insider’s background to the continuing transformation of publishing from print on paper to digital print.

What makes most me impatient to read his book Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading is something he said in a New York Times interview: “When it comes to book recommendations, retailers have the literary sensibilities of a spreadsheet — they’ll just recommend the most popular books to me, or books that other people also bought, but they know nothing of the soul and sparkle of a great book. I hope this changes over time.”

With so much focus on form over content and ideas as readers experience this transformation of reading matter, one of my greatest concerns about the reading life is the loss of the expertise and taste of acquisitions editors.

There’s long been too much volume to use only best-seller lists and book prizes to guide serious readers in choosing books. This is especially true of the daunting morass of children’s and young adult books, where the retailers (Scholastic and Follett) permeate classrooms and school libraries and the quality of award-winning books doesn’t come close to that of Booker, PEN, or Pulitzer winners.

Merkoski appears to be committed to the written word. His MIT education suggests he’s well acquainted with excellence, so I’m looking forward to reading his take on quality.

A Little Loosening in Ebook Library Lending? Simon & Schuster Allows NY Public Library to E-Lend Their Steve Jobs Biography

JTD — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:01:02 GMT

While ebook borrowing has been a welcome development for public library users, the hit-or-miss user experience can be somewhat frustrating for cardholders. Ebooks are subject to number-of-checkout limitations (simultaneous user restrictions) similar to those of print editions (number of copies owned / rented by their library).

As book publishers have struggled with building a sustainable model for pricing ebooks for public library lending, library staff have been on the front lines of public confusion about what is or should be available.

Simon & Schuster’s announcement of a pilot project for lending offerings from their ebook catalog through the New York Public Library may signal a softening of its view of the public library market.

Certainly having library ebook users coming across Simon & Schuster’s titles while browsing their libraries’ ebook offerings will give the publisher some welcome exposure for their titles. Some users are sure to go ahead and buy an e-copy rather than wait to cycle through a waiting list for titles which have hit their max for simultaneous user limits.

Swedish Chef Meets Monty Python in Book Technology Send-Up

JTD — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:31:51 GMT

Why is it that everything is extra funny when delivered in a Scandinavian accent? I wonder if Medieval monks complained about the discontinuity of page breaks. “When you’re used to paper rolls it takes some time to convert to turn the pages . . .”

Graphic Novels Will Seem Like Child’s Play as Authors Experiment with Interactive Storytelling

JTD — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:33:10 GMT

As mainstream authors begin to experiment with digital storytelling, they hope to preserve the inherent literary qualities of a book. For digital offerings to retain their book-ness and not cross into some other form, authors and publishers will need to include interactive features, not just add them as video game style bling.

Both best-selling and prize-nominated authors quoted in a recent Guardian article about experimental ebooks affirmed the essential linearity in writing and reading, even when authors have played around with form.

An example of this new form is an adaptation of John Buchan’s thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. It uses animated character profiles and links to location-oriented episodes within the story. This adaptation appears to be oriented to gamers as much as readers, but it offers authors of ebooks some interesting possibilities for collaboration with producers of digital content.

Amazon and Apple Should Build TV-Type Residuals into Used Ebook Sales

JTD — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 22:20:34 GMT

It seems as though the issues of pricing and compensation are the most significant challenges to overcome as online retailers explore the possibilities in creating marketplaces for the resale of digital content.

Both Amazon and Apple have filed patents that address the technology side of used ebook resale (Amazon received theirs in January). It turns out that the people side continues to cause most of the commotion.

It’s not as though this is uncharted territory. So many of the discussions about the issue compare the sale of used e-books to the sale of used print books. Authors may not appreciate the comparison, but the resale of an ebook more closely resembles how to pay producers and talent for a rerun of Gilligan’s Island than it does the resale of a work of literature. A reader’s experience maybe be richer than a sitcom viewer’s, but it’s a similar act of experiencing an art (that term is used somewhat loosely, independent of the medium).

A look at the history of residuals for screen performances might be helpful in structuring a fair way to compensate publishers for their costs and risks in bringing ebooks to the marketplace and authors for their labor in writing them. The capacity for passing along a digital work is so much greater and immediate than for print products that even if their cuts decline over time, the big resellers should be open to negotiating some amount of compensation beyond that of the first sale.

Spreadsong’s Free Books App – 23K+ Classics from Aristotle to Wodehouse and Beyond

JTD — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:52:34 GMT

Freebook Sifter is great for finding free stuff to put on my KindleTouch for reading on the go, but I find it hard to have a reading experience in which the device has disappeared when it comes to reading concentration-demanding classic literature. I need to turn the page too frequently – even using a small font doesn’t accommodate enough words per page.

For a long time I was stubborn and only read ebooks in e-ink. Now I find that as long as I’m careful about settings, I can read pretty comfortably on an iPad after all. Using a landscape view with two columns on a big screen replicates reading a small paperback pretty closely. Because of this, I find the Kindle app for the iPad works better than the Kindle itself for inducing what Jeff Bezos calls a flow state of reading.

An app I like even better for finding classic literature is Spreadsong’s Free Books. Browsing for books on it is a beautiful thing. This curated collection of books has been selected and organized by humans and it shows. Having a single alphabetized banner of authors and book categories allows for serendipitous finds within sometimes unconventional headings like Epic Epics and American Presidents.

Clicking on an author or category brings you to a well-written background article that includes links to key literary works in the collection. Descriptions of books are conversational and knowledgable. While the app includes many standard features and is Dropbox-compatible, the elegance of it’s browsing and content-oriented focus set it apart from other online book providers.

Cool “Flip” Phone Has Two Displays – One in E-ink

JTD — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:13:33 GMT

I’ve been waiting and waiting for Apple to roll out an iPad that uses the toggle technology they patented several years ago which offers both e-ink and backlit displays on one device. I’d be thrilled to be able to use the same device for easy-on-the-eyes book reading and a backlit display for video. I’d also like to have e-Ink on a bigger screen, something no longer an option since Amazon discontinued the premium-priced 9.7” Kindle DX.

An interesting product that addresses the concept of hybrid display is the soon-to-be-released Yotaphone. Rather than providing both screen types via a single screen that toggles, the phone has two screens. Yota promotes using the devices e-ink side for social media and news updates.

The screen is just too small to be very useful for reading e-books, but it seems like a good prototype for a larger screen content device if the technology is cheaper to produce than Apple’s proposed hybrid.

Lose the phone to keep it affordable (I don’t need to talk on my ereader), make the screen the size of an iPad, and I’ll buy it.

Ebooks by Sainsbury’s – How Grocery Store Books Have Changed

JTD — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:12:16 GMT

It’s hard to believe that it was only in the last ten year that supermarkets were expanding their book offerings in an attempt to introduce the ambiance of a Borders or Barnes and Noble “bookstore café” setting into the big box environment. Because the stores devoted most of the limited shelf space to bestsellers, I never found them appealing.

UK retailer Sainsbury’s has taken a more interesting tack half a year after purchasing the ebook-oriented social networking site anobii.com.

Ebooks by Sainsbury’s is harnessing the reader community on anobii to help push its ebook offerings through booklists created by customers and the keepers of the “Anobii Office Library”. Those clever Brits! The selection certainly is much richer than any previous grocery store offering I’ve seen. It goes far beyond the typical John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark to include award winning literary fiction on the Booker and Costa (formerly Whitbread) shortlists. For titles not available as ebooks, the site (helpfully) links with the Sainsbury’s Entertainment online store.

Sainsbury’s attempt to make ebook purchasing cozy and community themed is interesting – a pretty creative integration of social networking into retailing.

Freebook Sifter a Cool Tool for Finding Free Kindle Ebooks by Subject Area

JTD — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:32:06 GMT

I like free books. It’s not that I’m not willing to pay for content. In fact, I’ve been buying more hard copy books lately than I had been before getting my ereader. But I’ve been reluctant to load my Kindle with too much value in terms of cash spent.

Ebooks strike me as too ephemeral. They’re not conducive to the serendipitous discovery by another person, whether a family member or visiting friend, of a book shelved on my book case. I also don’t want to commit myself to the Kindle when there’s a possibility that Apple might develop a technology that lets a user toggle between an eInk reader and a video-compatible display on a single tablet.

I was happy to try Michael Powell and Jürgen Horn’s Freebook Sifter. Their filter, updated daily, lets users browse for free Amazon ebooks by subject headings and subcategories. The categories are fun to explore, and I’ve come across some delightful lesser-known works by well-known writers (I probably would not have found Twain’s Roughing It without this website).

In addition to category browsing (what fun this is!), Freebook Sifter offers a search box that will search the title and author fields, an email alert function, and an RSS feature.

How Dare Retailers Charge More for Ebooks than for Print ?

JTD — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:42:33 GMT

A U.K. survey of prices of print and ebook versions of bestsellers found that 1/3 of ebook bestsellers are priced higher than their print versions.

As a consumer of both ebooks and bound books, I often go for the print version when pricing is close. Mainly it’s because I don’t spend a lot of money on books I don’t expect to have a shelf life. If I spend more than $5 on a book, I want it to be on the living room bookshelf, easily browsable by the rest of my family. If a book is unlikely to inspire re-reading by me years from now or a first read by a family member, it’s a good candidate for the wait list from the public library.

As a former bookseller, I cannot blame publishers for the lack of deep discounting of ebooks. Especially for new titles, publishers still must recover many non-printing costs. One of these is the costs of acquiring books. Acquisitions editors spend a lot of time reviewing books that ultimately will never make the house a dime. I don’t want them to only look at sure bets.

A reader comment to an article about this survey published in the Daily Mail lists many of the pre-printing costs shared by both ebooks and printed books associated with producing a new title:

"This news story perpetuates the fake (and common) myth that ebooks are free to create. To produce a quality product, the ebook manuscript has to be typeset, just like a printed book, and then converted properly to result in good formatting. Then a front cover has to be designed (one suitable to be displayed as a thumbnail image). Ebooks also cost money to distribute through the official routes. While there are no printing costs involved, ebooks definitely do not 'cost nothing to produce'. Other elements like bibliographic data creation and management are also involved, and cost a lot of money and time."

I can understand why publishers want to distribute these costs over all unit sales, print or electronic.

Kindle Paperwhite. Why Not a 7” Screen Like the Kindle Fire?

JTD — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:57:11 GMT

Wow. The new Paperwhite technology is really tempting. At $119, it would be a great deal – if I hadn’t spent $79 on a Kindle Touch just last year. I wish that Amazon had decided to upgrade the entire reading experience though.

Jeff Bezos used to talk about how he wanted the device to recede in the reading experience. I use a pretty small font on my Kindle, but I still find the number of words per page somewhat unsatifying. On the Kindle, we’re already losing the side-by-side pagination that keeps page turns infrequent; more words per screen could help mitigate what feels like near-constant tapping.

On the Kindle App for the iPad, I prefer portrait to side-by-side pagination anyway. The side-by-side on the iPad doesn’t replicate the side-by-side of a bound book closely enough. When reading a book, moving from the left-hand page to the right-hand page requires a reader to tilt the book a bit. The two pages do not have equal prominence in the reader’s field of vision. On the iPad, I find that the side not being read is too present in my peripheral vision.

My dream reader would be a 7” to 8” Paperwhite e-ink device. If Apple is able to produce an iPad mini with a toggle between a Paperwhite-quality electronic paper display and a video display, I might go for that too. In the meantime, I’ll skip Amazon’s latest upgrade – unless they want to offer some sort of trade-in for gift card offer.

The Lost Art of Reading – Available for Kindle, iPad, Sony eReader, and Nook

JTD — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:45:52 GMT

L.A.Times book critic David Ulin owns a Kindle that, as he said in late 2010, he rarely uses. He’s not exactly a Luddite though. He’s open to the possibilities that technology brings to literature and provides examples of writers who are some of the early adopters of software techniques that expand the engagement of both writer and reader with the world.

Ulin’s view of technology in the craft of writing and the experience of reading fits with his definition of reading as “an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being.”

I urge anyone interested in how technology affects to the reading experience to read (in any of the many available formats) Ulin’s excellent L.A. Times pieces “E-books are Good News for the Literary World” and “The Lost Art of Reading” . The book version of the second essay expands Ulin’s examination of the reading experience and includes a narrative of his attempt to re-read The Great Gatsby at the same time his son is reading it for a high school English class.

Will Children’s Use of Enhanced Ebooks Introduce a Book-Specific Version of Attention Deficit?

JTD — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:42:51 GMT

As the school year begins, some schools and preschools are beginning to experiment with using enhanced ebooks as a way to “engage” students. Let the buyer beware.

A QuickStudy from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (the folks who initially created Sesame Street) suggests that what I’ve suspected for a while about enhanced ebooks for young children is the case: while an enhanced ebooks might initially catch the attention of a young child, ultimately enhanced texts introduce distractions that sabotage the benefits of an adult and child reading together.

Using enhanced ebooks increases the incidence of non-content related interactions:

“When adults prompt children with questions pertaining to the text, label objects, and encourage them to discuss the book contents in terms of their own experiences and curiosities, this elicits increased verbalization by the child and can lead to improved vocabulary and overall language development.” - Chiong, Ree, and Takeuchi | Researchers

When reading with my children when they were young, I quickly came to dislike the reading experience we had when they selected a Jan Brett book at the library. Brett’s elaborate margin illustrations immediately drew the children’s attention away from the text and main story at hand. I predict that enhanced text features will do the same thing, inhibit children in their earliest attempts to comprehend text.

The U.S. Needs Public Lending Rights for eBooks Too

JTD — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:22:18 GMT

Recently the U.K.’s Society of Authors has called for payments to authors made under the national tax-payer funded Public Lending Rights (PLR) program to be expanded to include digital content. Though such an expansion seems unlikely in a time of austerity, the principle of appropriately compensating creators of content is an appropriate extension the concept of intellectual property rights.

Most of the countries of the world that value individuals’ intellectual contributions to society have some model of tracking library usage of authors’ works and compensating them for that usage. Such schemes allow the public greater access to books without undermining writers’ ability to make a living.

Libraries are having trouble keeping up with the demand for ebooks, especially in Kindle format. It’s not unusual for a suburban library to have under 15% of its Kindle ebooks available for checkout on a given day. The popularity of eBook lending in U.S. libraries, dominated by eBook supplier Overdrive, demands greater compensation to content producers if borrowers hope to have access to anything more than a narrow selection of commercialized works.

Macmillan’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Publisher Dropping Digital Rights Encoding

JTD — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:51:05 GMT

Tor Publishing is making its titles Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free in a test run that may give ebook owners better control over the content they purchase. Now buyers of any ebook on the Tor list will be able to move that book from one reader to another without having to go through stripping the DRM.

Market-savvy J.K. Rowling has used her clout to offer her titles DRM-free exclusively through her own website. Perhaps surprisingly, this has not increased the pirating of her books. Tor president and publisher Tom Doherty sees the majority of the sci-fi and fantasy community as a sophisticated group of readers that will benefit from this openess and use it for legitimate purposes not piracy.

If other publishers follow suit, this kind of change certainly would take some of the risk out of building an ebook library for consumers. As much as I enjoy my Kindle, I’m reluctant to sink too much money into content for it. The standard-size Kindle screen isn’t ideal for me, and Amazon has been stubborn about the price-point on the larger Kindle DX.

As I wait for Apple’s hybrid LCD, E-Ink display, I’ll continue to be conservative in purchasing DRM-protected titles.

Amazon and Self-Publishing – Let the Buyer Beware

JTD — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:48:34 GMT

In recent weeks, I’ve been coming across articles about kids who are published authors. One article in the New York Times featured kids with parents who had coordinated what used to be called vanity publishing for their kids. Another was a public school system feel-good press release about a classroom project in which kids had “published” their writing. What treacle.

In all the brouhaha over ebook pricing structures, there are a lot of romantic visions of writers producing bargain-priced, high-quality work once the vulture-like publishers are out of the picture. As someone who is willing to pay for quality but who has been called upon to find cheap non-public domain ebooks for someone else, I can tell you that I’m grateful for the quality control that some publishers provide.

I refer you to the blog posts of Curt Matthews, CEO of Independent Publishers Group / Chicago Review Press (April 11 and April 9) for an illuminating briefing of what goes into getting books, electronic or print to market. I probably will buy some books directly from IPG as well as independents like Gray Wolf and Purple House both because they sell great work and I want to make sure they survive. That doesn't mean I'll stop buying print from Amazon though. A huge part of Amazon's attraction for me has been their quick availability of books that are hard to find in brick and mortar stores. I'll even funnel some purchases from smaller purchases through Amazon -- I don't want Amazon to narrow their selection to popular titles.

Like a lot of e-reader owners, I find myself reading more books since getting a Kindle than I have read in recent years. However, I’ve probably spent more on print titles than on ebooks, for many of the reasons cited in this Pew research report. In fact, some of my reasoning for choosing print over electronic has been my lack of confidence that ebook retailers will serve discriminating readers well in the future. I’m reluctant to invest very much money in a Kindle library.

Ebook Bestseller Hunger Games – Grown-Up Themes at a Reading Level Lower Than Captain Underpants’s

JTD — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:34:31 GMT

This weekend’s release of the film adaptation of The Hunger Games is likely to boost sales for Amazon’s no. 1 bestselling ebook of 2011. Scholastic, Inc.’s marketing juggernaut is the perfect formula for marketing beyond its core audience of children: put grown-up content with heavy-handed allusion to pop culture into books marketed to tweens and teens, but keep the reading level simple enough that readers with low comprehension skills won’t be turned off. Oh, and be sure to make it a series.

According to the Lexile Framework for Reading, The Hunger Games (810L) requires a lower level of reading ability than Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy (850L – a prized piece of literature recommended for second graders).

Talk about dumbed down from the days when teens were expected to read Animal Farm (1370L) and The Scarlet Letter (1420L).

Kindle Owners’ Lending Library – 21st Century Remainders Table

JTD — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:27:58 GMT

As much as I enjoy my Kindle Touch as an ideal device for readers on the go, I’m not always impressed by the offerings of what can be called its “incentive features.” One of these, the Prime membership read-for-free feature called Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, is too much like a street vendor’s remaindered books table. You can spend a lot of time looking before you find anything worth reading.

At $79, I still consider my Kindle to be a bargain. For anyone who wants to kill commuting time or kid-chauffeuring time with something to read, it’s great to have the grab-and-go selection. I’m just not convinced that the Prime read-for-free offerings will prove to be useful without a better way to search for books.

The primary way to access Prime read-for-free titles is by browsing. Neither amazon.com nor the Kindle store on the reader itself support robust filtering or search. Online, you can try a search for a favorite author, then scroll through the results in hope of seeing the Prime icon that identifies read-for-free titles. This works reasonably well if there aren’t many editions of a specific author’s works available in Kindle format. I find, however, that there are few prize-winning or short-listed books. For living authors, it’s more likely that any read-for-free title will be one of their lesser-selling works.

Browsing read-for-free titles on the Kindle itself can be frustrating too. Categories are general and include thousands or tens of thousands of books. Even subcategories are not particularly illuminating. The refine function is underserved by poor indexing. For example, refining through Non-fiction > Education yields many self-help books in addition to books about education policy.

A Prime membership may be worth it to you if you want upgraded shipping or enjoy the video downloads. At this point, I don’t think the Prime membership fee is worth it for the purpose of accessing ebooks.

Paying Less Than $100 for a Kindle is Like Paying $1.29 a Pound for an Fresh Turkey at the Supermarket

JTD — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:21:00 GMT

Once you're in the store, you're sure to see plenty of other stuff you want to buy.

Even more than selling digital content, I think Amazon wants to sell you a Prime Membership. Once you’ve got the Kindle, it’s hard not to want that membership to get access to the Amazon lending library. After all, you’ll get some free reading, plus some free video streaming to your PC or Kindle Fire (if you’ve gone that route) and no per-purchase shipping charges on two-day delivery of physical merchandise.

Andrew Wassreiler at iSuppli has a nice write-up of the materials and manufacturing costs of the Kindle Fire in one of iSuppli's Teardowns. His article goes on to explain the model behind Amazon’s pricing strategy. He compares it to wireless phone companies taking a loss on phone prices in order to win two-year service contracts.

Other articles have estimated the cost of delivering a $79 Kindle to be about $84. No wonder they don’t throw in the power supply for the touch.

At this point, Amazon is giving away the store. Why wouldn’t you want to go to Amazon for your hard copy books (and toasters too) from them instead of schlepping to the local Wal-mart?

Are these deals too good to be true? For the moment, I don’t think so. I plan to enjoy them now, taking care not to replace all of my book buying with Kindle content.

Amazon Ebook Membership – a Vulgar Athenæum for the 21st Century?

JTD — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:51:11 GMT

Vulgar [vuhl-ger] adj. -- of, pertaining to, or constituting the ordinary people in a society: the vulgar masses.

Reportedly, Amazon is pursuing the possibility of providing an ebook lending service as part of its Amazon Prime program. If this program does take off at the current Amazon Prime annual membership fee of $79, it could be a modern version of 19th century athenæum membership (a type of fee-based private library membership). However, at this price point, the electronic version wouldn’t be restricted to Boston Brahmin types as in the old days. It would be accessible to many ordinary people.

With the gutting of public libraries’ materials budgets, the wait to borrow a public library ebook copy of a popular title isn’t likely to continue to satisfy users of a medium that, technologically speaking, can provide instant access to content.

If Amazon Kindle can provide both a rental service and the capability to borrow titles from public libraries via Overdrive, they’re in a great position to fill in some of the gaps left by the decimation of public library materials budgets.

This may be fine for those able to spend a minimum of $114 for an ereader plus a $79 / year borrowing fee. But I’m afraid that this apparent affordability will give budget cutters an excuse to widen the divide between information-haves and information-have-nots. The less-privileged among public library users will be left with discouragingly long waits for access to books in any format.

E Cookbooks in Fits and Starts

JTD — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:37:05 GMT

While there are some real jewels of cookbooks available as ebooks, their publication is so sporadic and their pricing is so inconsistent that they aren’t likely to solve British domestic goddess Nigella Lawson’s storage problem.

After I recently purged a fair number of cookbooks, I thought it might be time to replace some of my favorite print copies with ebooks. I thought that at the least I would begin purchasing any new books in ebook format.

I took a look at what was available in ebook format and was pretty discouraged that many of my favorite classics are not available as ebooks. Neither The Joy of Cooking nor The Good Housekeeping Cookbook is available. However, Mastering the Art of French Cooking is, for a few dollars less than the hardcover.

In general, it seems there are no great bargains to be had in choosing ebook format over print when it comes to cookbooks. For most of the titles I checked, the difference is less than a dollar. I was surprised to find that Martha Stewart’s ebooks were discounted the most heavily – her latest Baking Handbook has a savings of about $6.50 when purchased as an ebook.

No wonder Amazon has a note under most Kindle copy prices indicating that the purchase price has been set by the publisher. I can’t imagine that the cost of producing a back title as an ebook allows much profit for a publisher.

The one real bargain I found in ecookbooks is Cooks Illustrated’s How-to-Cook Library at $9.99. The publisher must have produced it just to play around with the format. He can’t be making much money sales of it.

EReader Generation Gap

JTD — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:38:53 GMT

The dedicated reader device vs. multitasking device debate reminds me of the height of the Mac vs. PC wars. The early adopter / true techno-geek types get really impassioned over this.

I’m not sure that most existing consumers of traditional print content (books, magazines, and newspapers) care all that much about the nitty-gritty of the features. The next generation of readers might, as their young reading lives are so different than previous generations’.

So many of the analysts weighing in on the Kindle-type reader vs. iPad debate are techno-geek types. They tend to have lifestyles that require integrated devices. They live in urban environments and spend a lot of time using public transportation and traveling by air. Of course they don’t want to carry a bag full of electronics.

For eReader users who are readers first, rather than technology users first, there’s a point of diminishing returns on the bells and whistles. For us, the core utility of the reader tends to be having a comfortable reading experience, eliminating the need for physical storage space for books, and being able to carry a variety of reading materials.

Lance Whitney, in CNET News, writes about challengers to Kindle “unveiling cheaper, more versatile e-readers, moving beyond books.” Another observer of eReader trends, a person who waits tables at Logan Airport, sees it differently in her response to a different CNET article:

"I completely disagree. I wait tables at Logan Airport in Boston. I can tell you I see hundreds of people with e-ink readers, primarily the kindle. The people that are using them vary in age and sex. I have served 80 year old women reading off of these. I can tell you they were not 'gadget enthusiasts'. They were/are reader enthusiasts. People who love to read books, and newspapers."

There are many years of print content buying ahead for baby boomers and GenXers. While the next generation is almost sure to demand a different ratio of multimedia vs. print content for entertainment, it’s unclear that there will be enough people willing and able to tolerate the price point of the more sophisticated technology. I expect that Kindle and other eInk device sellers could have another pretty successful holiday season this year, in both devices and content.

eTextbooks – Renter Beware

JTD — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:21:32 GMT

College students budgeting for the upcoming year might be happy to see that Amazon has announced the option to rent textbooks in Kindle format.

While it’s great to see another option coming to the textbook marketplace, early adopters of this method of acquiring textbooks will want to be careful.

Amazon says, ”Kindle Textbook Rental offers the ability to customize rental periods to any length between 30 and 360 days, so students only pay for the specific amount of time they need a book." This isn’t exactly true for every title. I checked rental fees for Kieso’s Intermediate Accounting, 13th edition, and the longest rental period offered by Amazon is $61.31 for 122 days.

The edition offered is another thing to watch. The most current edition of the Kieso text is the 14th. That edition is available in hardcover and a NOOKstudy format (for PC or Mac, not for the NOOK reader). Anyone renting will want to be sure to OK the edition with the professor before any return or trial periods end. Also make sure the professor doesn’t require any CD or other material that comes with the hardcover.

Pricing and availability for etextbooks still is all over the place, both for rental and purchase. For example, the NOOKstudy version of the Kieso book mentioned (newer 14th edition) is available to rent for $122.50 for 360 days. It seems like publishers are rushing to market and don’t have the kinks worked out. While students may find some value and convenience in etextbooks, the decision of what format to rent or buy is best made on a book-by-book basis.

The machine can read! HarperCollins figures get ‘em early, and you’ve got ‘em.

JTD — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:45:45 GMT

HarperCollins has announced the launch of their I CAN READ series in digital format, available at the Apple iBookstore and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Bookstore. Both formats offer full color, so they do make sense for illustrated stories.

The idea, announced on PR Newswire, is to “[take} children through the process of early reading together to advanced reading alone.” I suppose that early reading together will often mean together with the device, rather than together with a parent or teacher. They are marketing the new product with an audio read-along feature.

I imagine the official line from the publisher would be that this new tool is intended to supplement, rather than supplant, the critical roles of parents and teachers in teaching children to read. I used the I CAN READ series with my own children, and I thought it was great. With classics like the Frog and Toad series and the Frances books the I CAN READ books provide terrific stories for cozy enjoyment, not just literacy tools.

I think that providing distracting interactive features takes away, rather than enhances, the imaginative elements of the reading experience for children. I’m pretty sure most young children prefer to hear stories read by their parents, not narrators. The portability and storage benefits of digital books are something I embrace for adults and independent readers. I just don't care for the potential to remove the human element from young children learning to read.

So far, the digital titles are available only through Level 2 of the 4 reading levels in the series. More titles are planned for release by the end of the year.

Microstyle: A Quintessential Offering to Add to Your Ebook

JTD — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:26:42 GMT

Publishing mainstay W.W. Norton is moving further Into ebook era. The Editor-in-Chief at W.W. Norton will shed his larger managerial role to become Editor-at-Large, in part due to his lack of interest in electronic publishing.

I’m glad that he’ll remain to work on acquiring and editing books there. Norton is so much more than college anthologies. It’s one of the few remaining independent publishing houses, and it has a real focus on high quality writing. Norton has brought us Sebastian Junger and Patrick O’Brian, both favorite authors in my house.

I was curious to see what Norton books already are available as ebooks, and came across the intriguing forthcoming book Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson. It's described by the publisher as “a field guide for the age of the incredible shrinking message.”

Johnson has a terrific conversational style and clearly has fun thinking and writing about language. Check out his website, The Name Inspector for some musings on well-know company names including Amazon, Etsy, and Flickr.

Swallows and Amazons Forever!

JTD — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:44:28 GMT

A few months ago, I wrote of my ambivalence about giving kids ereaders. My biggest concern is that a child who gets used to reading on a device will become likely to balk at the idea of reading a print book and will miss out on too much great literature.

The selection of ebooks for kids and teens is heavily skewed toward popular series books of the sort you see at Scholastic book fairs. I don’t mind some fantasy novels here and there, but there is too much dysfunctional “real-life” fiction.

Where is the great narrative fiction that isn’t drowned by the over-use of dialogue? Where are some decent non-fiction books, including biographies, for kids?

I’m interested to see how the market for children’s content will evolve. I’m really happy to see signs that the selection of children’s books might move well beyond the bestsellers to some of the more obscure children's literature. Seeing the Swallows and Amazons series available on the Google ebookstore gives me hope that kids still will be able to get the good stuff, even when they do make the switch to an ereader.

Adieu, Globe Corner Bookstore

JTD — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:28:08 GMT

As much as I love technology and the internet, I’m really sad to learn that the Globe Corner Bookstore in Harvard Square is closing this month. They’ll still be operating online and are negotiating a sale of that part of the business.

I used to love to go to this store during two stints of living in the Boston area. I loved it so much that when people came to visit me, I would make sure to take them there as part of seeing Cambridge. In my early 20s, I felt sophisticated going there and I was excited for the people I cared about to experience the place too. I wasn’t making much money to spend on books or travel those years, but the Globe provided a glimpse of what could be.

In many ways, guidebooks were the least of the store’s treasures to me. Even better was the selection of fantastic travel writing, histories of exploration, and geography-based cookbooks. The staff knew the inventory and clearly had their favorites. I imagined them all working and saving just long enough to fund their next adventure.

Just so you know, the store wasn’t crushed by the internet or ebooks. The owner has some health problems and doesn’t want to keep up the pace of owning the business. Though I wasn’t able to buy a whole lot and haven’t been back in many years, the Globe Corner Bookstore is one of my fondest memories of Boston.

Here are a few summer ebook recommendations based on books I bought at the Globe long ago (don't forget, the Globe Corner Bookstore website carries great maps, atlases, globes and other cool stuff that doesn't lend itself to ebook distribution!):

          Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon
          Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
          Rob Humphries, Rough Guide to London

Looking for an iFriendly Bag

JTD — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:08:18 GMT

So, if you decide to go for an iPad or the Kindle DX (9.7” screen), it might not fit that well in a regular purse. But maybe you don’t want to haul a giant tote bag. If you’re a guy, you might want to have something to put your iPad in when you’re not carrying a briefcase.

The bomber bag pictured at left is from Levengers. They’ve got a whole page of what they call iPad-friendly bags. Many of them are larger messenger-style bags, but they have a few small ones too. I wish they made this bag in black leather though. It looks perfect for carrying an e-reader, a wallet, a phone, and a few other essentials.

Another likely candidate is this Fossil City Bag. It comes in three colors, including black, and is definitely gender-neutral, maybe even masculine. Still, how often are you hauling your e-reader to cocktail parties?

Jetson-Worthy Ebook

JTD — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:26:18 GMT

Whatever your opinion about Al Gore, check out what Mike Matas and the designers at Pushpop Press have done.

This is amazing stuff, and Pushpop aims to make the platform scalable so that costs of publishing truly interactive content in an ebook form are kept manageable.

This isn't about choosing a plot line. This is about embedding video, audio, graphics, and data into an ebook.

I love the access to underlying data in charts and graphs, but what's really fun is how you can sort the data. Then, when you want to return to the text, you just "fold" the graphic in half and put it away.

This is really starting to feel like a space race between Apple and Amazon. When the iPad offers this kind of interactive technology plus the ability to toggle to a simple e-ink option for straightforward text, I think they'll have won.

Andrew Kessler, 'Monobookist'

JTD — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:50:52 GMT

It would be worth a trip to Manhattan just to see this.

Amazon may boast over 900,000 titles, all for one device. Author Andrew Kessler boasts over 3000 copies of one title, and nothing else, all in one storefront in the West Village.

The store is called Ed's Martian Book. Kessler pulled together some life savings and the time and talent of some good-hearted people to help him in his effort to publicize his book, Martian Summer.

Click here to see photos of the store and a access a link to buy the ebook version. I love how the book is categorized under New and Noteworthy and New in Non-fiction and Aliens! It also sounds like a good read by a creative guy.