May 21

Six Months in the “Year of the eBook”

Jorgen dropped off a link to the Mobility Site and an interesting post entitled: “The Year of the Ebook: The Story Thus Far” that is a nice review for eBook fans who have been following the revolution since the beginning and an education to the uninitiated.  A nice recap of the highlights and major stars in the exploding eBook market. (My prediction: Kobo’s $150 eReader is going to dominate the second half of 2010.)

p.s. that’s the first time I’ve ever heard Kindle software called the “the gold standard of eBook reading,”  so I guess we can pretty much assume the writer owns a Kindle.

May 20

Barnes and Noble – eBook Publishers

Here’s a MarketWatch story about Barnes and Noble again showing they’re able to think off the shelf. For a company that up until a short time ago had closed its eBook store, B&N is showing the industry how to make up for lost time.

Not only are they embracing the eBook Revolution by converting their own titles, building their nook eBook Reader, and offering special eBook friendly applications and specials to take advantage of their bricks and mortar locations, they’re also now offering an easy and lucrative eBook publishing service to independent publishers and writers.

Read about their easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform here.

May 19

New Amazon Kindle to fight iPad? What’s going on at Lab 126?

Many thanks to Jorgen for a link to a Telegraph.co.uk post that hints at mysterious activities over at Amazon.com’s research and development department. Apparently dozens of jobs have been posted at Amazon’s Lab 126 which just happens to be the division responsible for building Kindle in the first place.

Industry insiders are suggesting that Amazon is planning to guard its market with a re-design of Kindle that can go head-to-head with Apple’s full-color, multi-function iPad. Read the full story here.

May 18

Does iPad Drive eBook Piracy?

Here’s a link to a great story at WIRED’s Gadget Lab that investigates the impact of iPad’s launch on eBook Piracy. Their initial findings were “kinda.”

Check out the full story on whether there is a story here.

May 17

eText Books Arrive for California Schools…

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin has a post updating last year’s story about California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Digital Textbook Initiative and the state’s cash-strapped school districts’ efforts to find ways to utilize the 30 standards-aligned textbooks now available for high school classrooms.

Schwarzenegger should be applauded for his hi-tech maneuvering. At $105 for an English printed textbook and $65 for math it’s easy to see the long-term savings in going digital. The tough part will be crossing the hardware divide that some lower-income students might face, but the article indicates the use of identical print outs (PDF’s) should provide all of their students access to the information.

May 16

Edit eBook then Publish, then Edit?

Thanks to Jorgen for a link to this Christian Science Monitor story about Amazon sometimes updating eBooks with patches and narrative fixes. This is causing some controversy among literary purists who feel that a book is inviolate once the writer has signed off.

I think updates make perfect sense with science and textbooks to keep up with advances, though it could present dangers for fiction writers.

We’ve all read books that had the art and spontaneity re-written out of them.

May 15

Is iPad or Price Guilty of Supercharging eBook Piracy?

CNetNews’ David Carnoy takes a look at eBook piracy in his excellent article:  “Is iPad supercharging e-book piracy?” Carnoy makes some great points, but it’s a false argument to blame the hardware.

Overpriced digital content is ‘supercharging‘ eBook piracy. Period.

If eBooks aren’t worth stealing for profit, and consumers don’t ‘t feel like they’re being fleeced by publishers, there will be no ‘supercharged’ black market in pirated eBooks.

May 14

Over to the ‘Tempest in a Teapot’ Department

Or should I say “eTempest in an eTeapot.” Okay, DailyFinance posted an article about Amazon’s decision to take Free eBooks off their best-seller list. It seems that free eBooks have been crowding up the top spots that would otherwise be occupied by paid titles.  They will now have two separate lists: Best Selling Paid eBooks versus most popular downloaded Free eBook .

I can’t believe the amount of chatter about this relative ‘no-brainer.’ Wasn’t it just a matter of time before they had to do something?  Seems to me it  will make the ranking more sensible and convenient for readers, authors, and publishers .

May 13

The State of eBook Sales

The New York Times’ writer Bob Tedeschi’s article in Personal Tech: “E-Reader Applications for Today, and Beyond” describes the current state of buying eBooks and makes some predictions about the future for the eBook Revolution. As we’ve been saying since the start, one of the main things holding mainstream adoption back is the publisher and distributor insistence on content and product control based on DRM or tethered eBook formats.

Their product tampering and limitation on use make the buying public justifiably leery about diving into the revolution. It also explains why free eBooks are doing so well. People want to be able to read their eBooks when and where they want.

This, while the market is reporting ‘explosive’ figures. It’s just a matter of time before some smart publishers realize their own policies are slowing sales and they’ll take the chains off the EPUB format.

May 12

eBook News from the Far East

Jorgen sent us a link detailing some of the wider ranging developments in  (implications of?) the eBook Revolution. A post at The Shanghai Daily details recent market and product swings in eBook and eBook Reader sales, while hinting at the specter of protectionism (can censorship be far behind?). They’re nurturing local growth in a market that is fast being overrun by western digital publishers, technology industries and distributors with world domination on their minds.

We’re definitely talking growth though with Zhang Yijun, a senior official at the General Administration of Press and Publication reporting that 2009 e-book reader sales “reached 700,000 units in China and the figure is expected to quadruple to more than 3 million units.”

That’s an exciting development for the revolution, yah?