Nov 02

COOL GADGET! But will it help with gas mileage?

I won’t go on too much about this, check it out on Crave at Cnetnews. I just love the scifi lines on this ride. Bridgestone, the tire maker (surprised?), is developing a flexible eReading device. We talked about a reader from Bridgestone before, but this one looks quite different from the eReader in that article. I wonder if it’s related to this development we dug up over at Bridgestone about Electronic Paper. A challenger for E Ink’s market supremacy?

Nov 01

Will eBooks hurt ‘bricks and mortar’ bookstores?

TopNews.net thinks they will… Read the article, here.

It can’t be any more doom and gloom than what these bookstores have been going through already, as traditional publishing collapses around them, destroyed by short-term corporate thinking: as publishing giants abandoned selection for bestsellers.

It’s just the evolution part of the eBook Revolution. Bricks and mortar bookstores will have to evolve to survive, but did they think bookstores would never change? The smart ones will be embracing the idea of eBooks, and building opportunities around the idea that their bookshelves now extend infinitely onto the Internet. They can offer every book ever written.

They’ve just got to stop resisting it and adapt, yah?

Oct 31

HORROR AUTHOR TERRIFIES PUBLISHERS THIS HALLOWEEN WITH FAIR eBOOK PRICES!

This one’s fun for the end of October… I just put up the whole press release because I like his thinking, yah?

There’s a contest for a FREE SONY eBOOK READER too! Here’s the link.

TORONTO, ONTARIO – (Oct. 31/09) Horror author G. Wells Taylor hopes to shake things up in the exploding eBook marketplace by offering his list of full length novels for $1.99 each to celebrate the Halloween release of his new novel BENT STEEPLE.

bent_steeplet_cover_6x9_front_4_5_low_resAnd it isn’t just a promotion. “I’m selling content here. There’s a royalty to cover and a few expenses but we’re not paying for printing and shipping. $1.99 for an eBook is fair.” The Indie writer’s decade online laid the groundwork for creating a user-friendly web presence and platform for his Reader-direct pricing. “The old publishers wanted the status quo to continue because they had all the money and control, but the ‘status quo’ didn’t feed many writers.”

He describes his horror novel as a disturbing tale that would scare the glitter off a modern vampire’s cheeks. BENT STEEPLE has teeth.

Something is in the trees. In BENT STEEPLE a blizzard isolates a remote northern village that was stricken by a fatal and unknown disease thirty years before. Some survivors believed a vampire stalked the frozen forests, but their suspicions sounded like insanity. Now their secrets have drawn them back for vengeance, salvation and for blood.

On top of the new book and low prices, visitors to BentSteeple.com get a chance to win a SONY eBOOK READER TOUCH EDITION with BENT STEEPLE installed. Visit BentSteeple.com for your chance to win. (No purchase necessary. See web site for contest details.)

Oct 29

$149 eBook Reader from ECTACO

Bookseller.com has a story about a new eBook Reader that’s hitting the eBook Revolution at $149 (US). It’s maker, ECTACO, is declaring it the cheapest eReading machine on the market. The jetBook-Lite uses four AA batteries and promises 23 hours of continuous reading. On top of that it works with Barnes and Noble eBook store, and runs various formats including PDF. Read about it here.

More on the story including pictures and video at engadget.com.

Early critics point out that it doesn’t have the various functions offered by the industry leaders, but that’s kind of a given, considering its price.

So, before you hate this thing right away, take a look at it at least. Its designers know that we need a cheaper eBook Reader to allow the universal adoption of the device.

Especially if publishers are trying to legislate HIGH eBook prices, yah?

Oct 28

Barnes and Noble forges a powerful Alliance

Thanks to Jorgen who dropped by with a link to Wired focusing on Barnes and Noble having an advantage over its competitors because of its 1,300 or more bricks and mortar locations and ability to shelve paper books beside electronic. An excellent bridging tool if you think about it. And now that they’ve inked a deal to sell Plastic Logic’s Que proReader beside their own Nook it looks like the battle’s going into full swing. I wonder if this speaks to the library’s ability to introduce eBooks through our comfort zones.

Any way you look at it, things will be getting hot for Kindle!

Oct 27

Are eBooks cooler to read that books?

I’m sure it’s more than that, I really am; but the Telegraph.co.uk reports a spike in library membership since those staid old institutions started offering eBook downloads.

Thanks to Jorgen for this link to a story about libraries that had been bemoaning a decline in membership suddenly marking increased interest in digital books and media. Only time will tell if it’s a fad brought on by the novelty of reading books on ‘devices’ but one could argue that library eBooks are the perfect fit for lives that never seem to have enough time.

How many people stopped going to the library because they couldn’t spare an hour, or because the idea of rambling through the Dewey Decimal system had long gone out of vogue or memory? It’s quite possible that ordering books over the net, just like ordering movies, music and pizza is the modern solution for our busy lives. It will be up to future sociologists and philosophers to determine if all of our insular cocooning was a good idea or not.

Actually, libraries might provide a bricks and mortar foundation for knowledge and learning in our modern lives: offering shelves of ‘actual’ books and opportunity for interaction while reaching outward into communities with new digital connections and products.


Oct 26

enTourage eDGe DualBook Reader/Netbook

Okay, in the “keep a cool gadget a secret” department I give you the enTourage eDGe DualBook Reader / Netbook. Check it out at its homepage.

So, am I the last to hear about this thing? A very cool machine with an E Ink display on one side and a 1024 X 600 pixel color touchscreen on the other. It closes like a book too.

It’s obviously for people who want a little more from their reading experience, but it’s the first one I’ve seen that marries E Ink to color touchscreen technology. And the price is going to scare most ‘readers’ off, ringing in at $490. I do like the thinking behind it though.

So, I’d order one tomorrow if they could shave about $300 off the price, yah?

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…