Oct 25

MORE TWISTED LOGIC from THE PUBLISHERS

The direct quote below from a story at the DallasNews.com about investigations into Book Price Wars could not bare paraphrasing. Honestly, does this mean what I think it means? Do they think we’re stupid?

Here’s the quote:  ‘The letter also noted that while some may say lower prices will encourage more reading, “the reality is quite the opposite,” the ABA said. In the letter, the group quoted author John Grisham’s agent, David Gernert: “If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King’s new novel or John Grisham’s Ford County for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best-sellers take the consumer’s attention away from emerging writers.”’

Stick a sock in it Gernert! How about putting a fair price on both established and new authors’ books? Wouldn’t that encourage people to buy both? (And frankly, “publishing as we know it” should be over. It was beaten into the ground by amateurs and businessmen focused on profit and saleability over content.)

Jorgen stopped in with a link to a letter at FutureoftheBook.org sent from the Board of Directors of the  American Booksellers Association to the U.S. Justice Department.

This A.B.A. sponsored investigation will only encourage piracy and file sharing. I am amazed that they don’t understand this.

Profiteering encourages Piracy.

Oct 24

E Ink teams with Freescale for Integrated Processor Development

Thanks to Jorgen for stopping in with this link. The writing’s a trifle technical, but it promises enormous potential for designers in the way of innovation for product development. As the release explains: “Collaboration between [these] market leaders [will] speed eBook evolution and enable new product categories.” Read the full release here.

It’s that product category creation that is exciting, with the ‘collaboration’ speeding the development of “eNewspapers, tablet PCs, laptop secondary displays, eNotebooks and eDictionaries.”‘

The hope is that this teaming’s development of System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions (an integration of Freescale’s i.MX processor technology with E Ink’s Vizplex® display controller) will create and shape new devices while bringing the overall cost of that machinery down.

Things are just exploding if you look at E Ink’s numbers shipping displays for one million units in 2008 expected to leap to 75 million units by 2018–in a market valued at approximately $3.8 billion.

We’ll see if their predictions hold true, or if the eBook Revolution continues to leap past all expectations, yah?

Oct 23

Careful, Mr. King, your publisher is out of touch!

In an effort to lose hearts and insult fans, Stephen King’s publisher, Scribner is trying to blatantly manipulate his “constant readers” by withholding the release of the digital version of his new novel. The move is supposed to force sales of the hardcover version (and profits…). Oh, and here’s the dumbest part of their plan: the digital version will cost the same as the hardcover.

$35 for an eBook! 

It’s surprising that King would be associated with this kind of outright banditry. After all, he’s been a driving force of eBooks since The Plant and unofficial spokes-scribe of Amazon’s Kindle with Ur. (I read Ur. An incredibly well written sales job, short on scares.)

Read the full story about King’s new 1,000-page-plus mega-work: Under the Dome at The Huffington Post. It’s just proof that fan loyalty and customer service are secondary considerations to quarterly profits.

Now for the backlash from fans and boost in eBook Piracy…

Oct 22

The NOOK continued…

It’s only fair to keep talking about Barnes and Noble‘s new eBook Reader, the Nook. We burned up a lot of net time on the Kindle, after all.

This link from Jorgen (thanks) that takes us to an excellent display set at engaget.com.  Lots of pictures, even video. Well worth a look.

All this excitement, and we’re still waiting for Apple’s Tablet to appear. Wild times ahead, yah?

Oct 21

Introducing Barnes and Noble’s “Nook”

The Barnes and Noble eBook Reader the “Nook” was launched yesterday at a 4 p.m news conference in Manhattan. Read the play by play on The New York Times Technology page here.

At $259 it’s priced to compete with Kindle, also priced at $259. (That’s a missed opportunity… $239 would have sold a million of them and made an indelible mark on the eBook marketplace.)

I guess the name will grow on me, yah? I like the look of the Nook. Off we go, another machine for your reading pleasure.

Oct 20

Global Kindle Finally Out of the Gates!

Amazon is shaking off those dreams of market monopoly, smelling the coffee and realizing there are some real world-class competitors coming into the game with the same grand ambitions.

Yesterday Amazon started shipping a souped-up Kindle for U.S. and International adopters. Read here at Channel Web for a story about the global Kindle’s migration to one hundred countries with AT&T’s wireless network attached. With a new price of $279, the device promises to deliver an eBook to you wirelessly in 60 seconds in any one of those hundred countries.

I’m glad they’re doing it. (Even if Canada is not yet one of the hundred countries being served…)

But ubiquity doesn’t just depend on access… the price has to be right, and in a market with $199 eBook Readers, the Kindle’s $279 price tag still makes it an expensive adoption, yah?

Oct 19

Que, the ProReader coming January 7, 2010

News at SoftSailor.com seems to confirm the rumors that have been bandied about forever regarding the Plastic Logic eBook reader. Read about it here. Called Que, the proReader, this device features an 8.5 x 11-inch capacitive touchscreen. Soft Sailor’s got pictures, or for more specifics you can take the link here to Que’s homepage at Plastic Logic.

This should be a hit with the business class, and perhaps students. The price will decide that, but we’ll have to wait for them to fill us in January 7.

Sweet looking ride, yah?

Oct 18

European Union Gets into the Act

Watch out Google Books, looks like the EU is going to push back with the launch of the EU Bookshop’s digital library. Announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the library contains 50 years of documents in 50 languages. All FREE. Check out the story here.

Oct 17

Will Your Brain Like This Article?

Here is a thought-provoking read for your weekend. The New York Times offers an opinion piece on whether the brain is willing to go along with the switch to eBooks and eBook Readers.

They asked five experts from different disciplines and areas of study these questions (from the article): “Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?” Quite an interesting article, actually, and their answers are bound to get your brain comprehending weekend or not, yah?

Enjoy!

(For your pleasure thefreedictionary.com)

Oct 16

Google Editions in 2010

More tough news for Amazon. Google will sell eBooks for any device through an online store called Google Editions that they plan to launch next year.

The development announced in a release here at Reuters is a nice change for Google’s otherwise complicated press life as they battle the many challenges to Google Books. Google Editions will allow Google to start making money from one of its book ventures. (That also includes their controversial index of scanned books through library partnerships…Google Books.)

As yet, they’re not interested in making their own eReading device, opting instead to sell eBooks from publisher catalogues for reading on the various devices already out there.

Not such a nice change for industry leader Amazon’s Kindle that is still coping with a sudden influx of competing eBook Reading devices that are more and more relying on the open EPUB format. Amazon’s still trying to control things with its own (AZW) proprietary format.

Research firm Forrester predicts 3 million eReaders will sell in the U.S. this year, up from a previous total of 1 million. They say it’s encouraged by lower prices, more content and improved distribution. (I seem to remember reading that somewhere before, yah?)

Three words for Amazon: ADOPT EPUB NOW.