Microsoft Press goes digital w/ O'Reilly - Kindle file advice

Microsoft Press books is going digital with O'Reilly "Starting Nov. 30, O'Reilly Media will begin offering Microsoft books in print as well as for download to readers' computers, mobile phones, Kindles or other reading devices..."

O'Reilly ebook bundles and Updates - The O'Reilly page itself features ebook bundles to cover three formats:

' When you purchase an ebook bundle (currently available on a select set of titles as part of a pilot project), you'll get access to all three of the formats we're currently supporting.  Since we began selling PDF versions of many of our titles, we've offered free updates to reflect published changes in the books; the same will apply to the Ebook bundle, which will replace the PDF option on those titles in the pilot program.

When you buy an O'Reilly ebook you get lifetime access to the book, and whenever possible we make it available to you in three, DRM-free file formats -- PDF, .epub, and Kindle-compatible .mobi -- that you can use on the devices of your choice.  Our ebook files are fully searchable, and you can cut-and-paste and print them.  We also alert you when we've updated the files with corrections and additions. '

Techflash says, about the new partnership, "Perhaps the Redmond company -- seeing Amazon's moves with the Kindle electronic reader and Google's giant book scanning project -- is seeing some new potential in the digital book market."

The listing of offerings, relative to file-type, are a bit odd in my cursory look at the beginning of their Complete List of books available in various formats.

 Trying Beyond Java on that first "Complete List" page, I see that the first of two titles shown, shown as released in 2005, is showing the green 'E' which indicates an ebook bundle.  When you get to that listing's page, it actually shows you several format options for purchase: Print, $24.95;  Print + Ebook $27.45; and  Ebook[bundle - Mobi, PDF, ePub] $19.99, and mentions that the Ebook release was February 2009.  They also offer a Safari Online version.
  On a later page, Andrew Savikis advises: "You may find the mobile version of Safari (m.safaribooksonline.com) is a better experience from the Kindle browser"

 The second of two titles for the same book shows a 'release' date of "2008" on the listing page, but when you arrive at the book page, the release date is "2005" as well.  The two pages have different URLs or links but these have exactly the same data on each.

 Checking Amazon for the book, search results bring us to the Amazon listing for Beyond Java.  It's $9.99 in Kindle format and $18.96 in paperback at Amazon, both listed with the book's release date of September 22, 2005.

I remembered reading that O'Reilly was able to have their Kindle books be DRM-free (no rights-protection on the Kindle files) and googled it, to find some interesting info on O'Reilly's Tools of Change page.  Andrew Savikas writes there (April 2009):

' I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management).

  Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get).  The text-to-speech feature of Kindle 2 does work with these books. A list of currently available titles is below [on that page]. '

The 'conversation' at the bottom of that page is fascinating, and there seems to be some doubt by a couple of writers as to whether Amazon has really forced publishers to use digital-rights management, though it was a 'default' for mobi-formatted files in the past.

  But here's O'Reilly's statement about the MOBI files on their own site (the cost of which is more expensive than the Kindle price) and what's been done about updating the accuracy of layout with the Kindle versions:

'... all of our "ebook bundles" include a Kindle-compatible .mobi version that can be uploaded or emailed to your Kindle.

  While the table and code issues remained, readers at least had the other, richer formats (EPUB and PDF) for reference.  We've now updated all of the .mobi files for sale at oreilly.com to display properly on Kindle 2 (basically undoing many of the hacks we'd done to get something passable the first time around).

[Emphasis mine, for Kindle users who bought their Kindle versions from Amazon]
  If you own a Kindle and have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com, visit oreilly.com/e from the Kindle browser to download the updated .mobi files directly to your Kindle.  While we will also update our ebooks with Amazon as changes are made and errors fixed, they currently have no way of updating that content for customers who already purchased it.

 While the rendering in Kindle 2 still leaves a bit to be desired, we felt it was an acceptable baseline, and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the display of technical content on Kindle. (Ironically, the Kindle 2 web browser displays complex content like tables and code quite well -- check out the Bookworm mobile version if you have a Kindle.)   [That's O'Reilly's parenthetical note.]

 Our thanks do go to Amazon for working with us on this. They're a favorite target of criticism (often right here, and often for good reason), but this is a good step and they do deserve some kudos.  While we'd prefer that Amazon directly supported the open EPUB standard, this is real progress in giving readers easy access to digital books without locking them in to a single vendor. '

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A bit more on the iRex DR800Sg e-reader

UPDATE to the main iRex e-reader story

At the left are the Kindle DX and the iRex DR800Sg side by side.

  For the $89 difference between the two:

1.  PDFs will be considerably smaller on the iRex and, as I mentioned yesterday, they are already often too small on the Kindle DX.
2.  The 3G wireless for the Kindle allows web browsing with no limits on sites and with brief emails doable.  This allows direct downloads to the Kindle device from a few other bookstores.
But the iRex wireless will go only to the Barnes and Noble store and to NewspaperDirect and no emails would be possible.

  Where the iRex will shine is in the look of the periodicals it can bring you from the NewspaperDirect site (as well as the choices available), as those are laid out as they are with the actual newspapers rather than using the generic text used for the Kindle subscriptions with just a few photos for the latter.  The SD card will be needed for the added storage space that'll take.
  Questions:
  How much will the iRex's periodical-subscription costs be?  No word on that yet.
  What will be the speed be like, with the e-Ink screen?

SOME QUOTES FROM WEDNESDAY answered a few questions:

STYLUS NOTE-TAKING NOT READY YET
and WHY NOT a HAND-TOUCHSCREEN?
PC World/internetnews.com
  Kevin Hamilton, CEO for IREX in North America, explained that

' "Instead of a finger-driven touchscreen, the DR800SG uses a magnetic resonance stylus, in part to maintain the brightness of the display," said Brons.
  He said the additional transparent touch layer needed to enable finger navigation would have decreased screen brightness by 15 to 20 percent.
  Hamilton noted that Sony's Reader uses just such a touch layer, with the expected detrimental effect on brightness.  Clicking is performed with the stylus or by pushing down on the flip bar [on the left side), which is pushed from side to side for page-turns.

 He added that while the device is ready for electronic ink based note taking, the application that enables the function wasn't quite ready but would be added later as a free update.

 The edge of the unit is blank except for a power switch and a mini-USB socket. Installed in the battery compartment on the back is a 2GB SD Card, which can hold up to 1,500 e-books and can be replaced with a larger-capacity card. '

AIRTIME CHARGES LATER MAYBE
'  He noted, however, that there may be airtime charges for future vertical business applications if they consume a significant amount of wireless bandwidth. '

THE KINDLE'S UNNECESSARY BELLS & WHISTLES?
NetbookBoards.com has this:

' IRex CEO Hans Brons has taken some shots at the Kindle already, hinting that Amazon’s device is too limited and at the same time too fancy.
“We’ve tried to create [an] as neutral as possible device – without any whistles and bells and what have you.” '

Well, that's one way of saying iRex doesn't have some bells & whistles that the Kindles offer, such as web-browsing and email capability + easier notetaking capabilities while iRex currently has ready only the virtual keyboard.  But maybe NetbookBoards was a bit harsh on the statement there.


FULL CONTENT FROM NEWSPAPERS, ADS TOO, HELPS PUBLISHER REVENUES
InternetNews quotes a statement at NewspaperDirect pointing out that full content of periodicals will be downloaded with no missing pieces, and with all the ads:

'...PressReader allows users to download over 1,000 full-content newspapers in their original format, with all the articles, pictures, cartoons and advertisements found in the printed editions.  This ensures that all 1,000 publications on the iRex are recognized as audited paid circulation by international audit bureaus, a critical factor for publishers looking to increase revenues and reach. '

VIDEOS - The first one mentions that the iRex DR800Sg software doesn't work with Macs currently.
  As I mentioned yesterday, the newspaper layout is a BIG plus.  Watch CNet's videoclip on the new 8.1" model and then the youtube video by "pressdisplay" showing what the iRex newspaper editions are like although this one is showing the larger 10" iRex DR1000S.

  They're beautiful but if you look at these from the perspective of someone about to READ the content shown, the print is really tiny so at times there may be a lot of zooming involved.  Note that in the first video though, which is on today's 8.1" model, the newspaper layout is for the full page and when you stylus-click an article you want to read, you get a very straight text-version of the story that looks easy to read.

  Again, the size is iffy.  Large for a novel and small for pdfs and newspapers.  If they ever bring down the cost of the 10" model ($989 for the iRex DR1000s) that'll be the one that works for serious academic and business use once the interface problems reported are gone. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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iRex 8.1" release - at Best Buy, for B&N, w/ Verizon

Brad Stone of the NY Times writes that, later today, iRex Technologies (UK), whose 10" DR1000s e-reader is approximately the size of the 9.7" Kindle DX and selling for about $989, will announce they are releasing an 8.1" iRex DR800Sg touch-screen e-reader in the U.S. for $399.

  They've partnered with Verizon to allow free direct wireless connection to the Barnes & Noble E-Book store and to newspapers at Newspapers Direct, which offers more than 1,100 periodicals and presents them onscreen "largely as they appear in print form."  That is a BIG selling feature if pricing is reasonable.

See UPDATED INFO on 9/24/09 also.

  Stone writes that the iRex will "link directly" to both stores which implies that, like the Sony Daily Edition (PRS-2121) which will link only to the Sony store, the iRex will not be allowing direct free access to the entire web as the Kindles do.

  That's a distinction to remember.  The big news last week was In-stat's finding that per their most recent consumer survey,

' "...current e-book owners desire e-mail capability in the next e-book they purchase," says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “Longer battery life and Internet connectivity are the top two desired features among respondents who don’t currently own an e-book but plan to buy one in the next year.” '

At $400 without the mentioned web-browsing or e-mail capability, this would make a difference to many, as then a device does becomes more of the oft-described one-function gizmo (which the Kindle is not).  I think the chosen size is somewhat iffy since it's too large to pocket and too small to present PDFs that well.

  There are many PDFs that I have to look at on the (larger) Kindle DX in landscape format, to read easily in larger font, or convert to MOBI formats so I can see larger overall text

  And, at the moment, while most people do not realize that the Kindle has a basic web browser using Sprint's cellular 3G spare bandwidth, with direct (but slow) access to all web sites, the other e-readers being released or announced weekly just don't offer that apparently desired capability.

  So, Amazon sits on that lead in top-two desired features but doesn't advertise them because too much use of those would cost them money as they pay the Sprint charges for now.

  What the iRex will offer is a size that's
1.  larger than the cute and eminently pocketable new Sony's, PRS-300 and PRS-600, and
2.  larger than the Kindle 2 with its real-estate hogging keyboard (useful for quick searches and short notes) but
3.  almost 2 inches smaller than the Kindle DX (already a bit small for PDFs in original sizes)

and with a touchscreen (popular) and stylus likely and greater file-format flexibility (their current large models support PDF and EPub formats as well as HTML).

  On their current 10" model they charge an extra $100 for the ability to write notes to be added to your book files.  No word on that for the new, smaller U.S. model until later today, for the $399 price.

  In addition, by next month, you'll be able to buy the iRex at a few hundred Best Buy stores, where they'll vie for display space with the newer Sony readers.

Stone adds that "Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and iRex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices."

  iRex and Barnes & Noble didn't reach an agreement on a house-branded iRex, and B&N may be working on its own reading device, as hinted at by a filing that made the news last week.

  An important consideration will be whether or not its customer support has improved over what is described in a long review posted on the Net from someone with a year's experience with a iRex.  Amazon is providing unusually responsive customer service with its Kindles.

Stone further points out an important wireless detail - "It contains a 3G Gobi radio from Qualcomm, the wireless component manufacturer, which will allow iRex owners to buy books wirelessly when they travel abroad.  By contrast, the wireless modem in the Kindle works only on Sprint’s network in the United States..."

Also, as detailed earlier, they're not quite equivalent in the "unlimited" wireless feature in that the Kindle currently (and for the last 2 years) gives 24/7 free wireless direct access to the entire net, albeit with a clunky web browser, and ability to (slowly) use gmail and other web mail while the iRex will go to two stores.  This is of high value to some of us, less so for others.

  As most who pay for web access on their phones know, that Kindle feature is worth between $30-$50/mo.  The many mobile-optimized site versions available today are best for quicker browsing.

Verizon says it has no plans to subsidize the cost of the iRex reader with 2-yr type subscription fees (as is done for smart phones and for netbooks now).

Analyst Allen Weiner cautions that consumers may wait to see what Apple does with a general-purpose tablet device rumored for the Spring, which will be in color and do video, but most recent whisperings are that it might cost $800.

In my case, I am awaiting what I hope will become my secondary e-reader, in color, for LIGHTER use with materials requiring color, as it would be LCD technology, which brings words and images to our eyes via light, bringing more eyestrain for most.  That would be the Asus EReader with dual-screens in color (LCD) that they hope to sell for about $163.

At that price cellular wireless would not be included for free, but if it has WiFi capability (as opposed to cellular everywhere-wireless) and we could use it in home or office settings), then I would get it as a supplementary reader for books with color illustrations.
 Here's a fanciful mock-up of one.  Note how impossible it would be to read the small print on that kind of layout on it though it looks very nice.  But I'm looking forward to that one.

  In the meantime, the Kindles and Sony's can't be equaled for fantastic ease of readabiity with those e-Ink screens and features (except by the Astak Pocket Pro EZReader, which is orderable from the San Jose company and has a 5" screen, a faster processer than its 6" screen model, is able to read Adobe-rights-protected PDF files, normal PDFs, ePub, and has text-to-speech function, probably through headphones, but NO search/dictionary/highlighting/note-taking).  It also takes a 16G SD card and a has a "promotional" price of $199.
  If not able to afford a Kindle or a refurbished Kindle for $219, I'd take a good look at that one, although I have no idea what the functioning is like, which is important.

 In the meantime I am waiting to see what ASUS comes up with --per multiple reports they will offer two models, one inexpensive (see above) and a version with more features.

---

See UPDATED INFO on 9/24/09 also. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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The Kindle 2 and DX Go to School

A KINDLE 2 FOR HIGH SCHOOL CLASSES
  Advanced Placement English students at Ninety Six High School in Greenwood, South Carolina, are going book free in favor of using Kindle 2's.
  Index Journal's Felicia Kitzmiller reports on the district's recent purchase of 25 Amazon Kindle 2's for classroom use.
"I have one personally, and I love it,” assistant superintendent for instruction Rhonda McDowell said. "We want to be on the cutting edge of technology.”

McDowell said that in the long run the Kindles might save the district money on purchasing books.  She feels that e-textbooks are "considerably less costly than the books themselves, and for every one text they purchase, they receive six electronic copies."

  This is generally true for up to 6 people sharing one Kindle account via one accountholder, including families, housemates, or friends.

  "And once a text has been added to a Kindle it is there until it is deleted, so classes reading the same books can use them over and over again."

KINDLE DX FOR UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
University of Wisconsin students begin their own Kindle pilot program.

' Instead of having students purchase books, UW lent the Kindles with all eight required texts loaded and ready to read.  [History professor Jeremi] Suri's class will be highlighted by Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," infamous for its hefty 1,200 pages.

"We're learning in this, too.  Can you even read 1,200 pages on a Kindle?" Suri said. '

The $10,000 pilot program is funded by their library, involves 20 students, and although Amazon partnered with several other schools, the University wanted to invest in the technology now and get its own data.  They usually spend $700/year on textbooks, but the $500 Kindle DX may save them money, long-range.

 One student likes the lack of eyestrain from the e-ink screen because the experience feels closer to reading on paper than on a computer screen but she finds the small keyboard impractical.
  Also mentioned was that the university prints about 16 million individual pages, between instructors and students, per year.  This would cut down on that and save about 180 trees.

THE HIGH COST OF TEXTBOOKS
In a PressofAtlanticCity.com's article describing the greed behind the ridiculous pricing of textbooks, the column eventually focuses on lower cost and sometimes free textbooks available.

One big positive of free books is that it gets you out of the horribly exploitative textbook market," wrote Fullerton College professor Ben Crowell in an e-mail. "It's just a scandal that they're charging students as much as $250 for an organic chemistry book, and bringing out a new edition every three years in order to kill off the used book market."

The Yale-educated physics professor began his digital textbook 12 years ago, when his lecture notes "gradually morphed" into a book. His interest in the open-source operating system Linux convinced him that free was the way to go, and his textbook is available for anyone to use at www.lightandmatter.com.

  More than 40 colleges and high schools have adopted the book, according to the Web site.

RESOURCES
1.  Cowell's site at www.theassayer.org  Also, Light and Matter
2.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's open courseware site - MIT course materials (textbook and lectures on video) - Free, but no course-credit is given.
3.  Flat World Knowledge, run by former Prentice Hall Business Publishing executives Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstaad, decided to release digital textbooks online for free and sell the extras, such as print copies and study guides.
 Frank says that "About 70 percent of the students who have used the site for class buy products, spending a little more than $30 each, he said. About 40 percent paid about $40 for a printed black-and-white textbook with study aides."
 Another professor appreciates the flexibility of the company's e-books in that professors can rearrange or remove content as appropriate.
4. CourseSmart has an interesting offering although it's not practical on the iPhone as explained vividly by The New York Times's Randall Stross recently.
  Essentially they sell access to e-textbooks for about half the cost of the print version but for only 180 days.
  They have over 7,000 titles while Flat World Knowledge has only 11, but sales for the latter were up 600 percent from last year.

Currently, for a place like Reed College, Amazon pricing for textbooks saves only a few dollars, but Matt Ringle, the Chief Technology Officer there, says
""We're reaching that point where the cost of conventional textbooks has become so astronomical that anybody that provides any relief ... is going to be favorably received by the students."

GREAT LINES FROM MY READING YESTERDAY:
  After seeing that the publishers for the Ted Kennedy book have decided not to release it on the Kindle for fear of losing hard-cover sales (and "The Last Symbol" initially was not set for release on the Kindle for the same reason),
Mike Elgen wrote:

"Publishers need to start viewing eBooks as a business, rather than a threat.  And they need to start thinking about ways to give readers what they want, rather than getting money by withholding from readers what they want.
  Publishers ... it's time for you to embrace the book business.  The story business.  The culture business.  The education business."

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Amazon's Refurbished Kindle 2's at $219 - Apple/Microsoft news-Update

AMAZON OFFERS REFURBISHED KINDLE2's now, at $219, an $80 savings over a new Kindle 2.
  UPDATES 1 & 2) : 9/20/09, 10:33 PM to Original Posting of 12:18PM
    WARRANTY: 1 full year for defects. Doesn't include accidents.
      And no extended-warranty from Amazon is available on these.
      Drops w/damage resulting can qualify for discounted new refurbs.
        Year 1, defects covered include fading in sunlight and
        inadequate screen contrast.
      Above information from Customer Svc Rep Nitesh

    SquareTrade will do an extended warranty for refurbished units
    but won't cover drops/accidents on refurbs.
      Drop coverage is the reason many of us get an extra warranty.
      If using SquareTrade, Google for a coupon to use also.

These are offered for the first time, possibly because they have no more refurbished Kindle 1's and they may be feeling the squeeze from lesser models which are appearing from other e-reader makers who include no study tools at all (search, notes, highlighting, inline dictionary) for the lower priced models, and the other vendors can't offer wireless/Whispernet downloads with a simple web-browser included.

An added bonus is that these will carry the same 30-day return policy -- if you find it doesn't suit you, Amazon will refund your money as long as it's not damaged - "Factory refurbished.  Package factory sealed.  All purchases eligible for Amazon customer service and 30 day return policy."

AMAZON CUSTOMER PRODUCT-REVIEWS
Reviews written by customers who own a registered copy of a product will often have "Amazon Verified Purchase" shown beneath their names.  For a few months, an organization upset by Amazon's digital-rights-protection placed on copyrighted books has had an open policy of asking like-minded people to place 1-star reviews on the Kindle products because of the copyright-restrictions that are placed on the books.  This new verified-purchase label that seems to be slowly applied to user reviews (just begun, per forum discussions) will let people decide on the basis of whether they agree with protest-type reviews or whether they'd rather just know the views of actual owners and users of the product

AMASON FORUM DISCUSSIONS - SEARCHES NOW POSSIBLE
Finally.  This started today also.  I put up a post a couple of months ago answering a question after trying to figure out how to do what was wanted at no cost.  So I tried to find that post by putting into the forum search box (now on the right column of forum pages):
    print folder contents
and the new search function brought it right up !   Very fast searches.
  Caution:  Be sure the box underneath is appropriately (un)checked to restrict searches to that forum or that topic, or not, etc.


APPLE KEYBOARD
A real/physical keyboard for the iPhone is being released soon by Toronto-based Mobile Mechatronics, which says it has built a BlackBerry-style keyboard that attaches to an iPhone.

  This "will sell for $30 with $5 shipping to the United States. There are prototypes in beta test now that have rubber keyboards. The final version will be made of hard plastic, said Mr. Nykoluk."
  They're available for pre-order now.


MICROSOFT WINDOWS MOBILE - remote-applications-wipe
Microsoft changes language on remote-application-wipes in connection with Windows Marketplace for Mobile to be launched next week.

At the TechEd New Zealand 2009 session last week, their Senior Product Manager for Windows Mobile explained:

' If an application is approved but later removed from the marketplace it will then be automatically removed from all mobile devices. '

But that didn't go over very well, in light of Amazon's recent experience with its own remote-wipe for which it apologized and said it was changing its systems so that scenario wouldn't happen again.  Ars Technica received clarification on that from Microsoft this week:

' "In the vast majority of instances where an application is removed from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, users of this application will continue to be able to use these applications on their phones," a Microsoft spokesperson told [Ars Technica].

  "In the rare event an application from Marketplace exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects, Marketplace has the capability to remotely uninstall these applications. While we hope to avoid this scenario, we will make refunds available in such cases." '

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Amazon and Kindle's "Lost Symbol" get a rise

Amazon was trading up 7.4%, after Bank of America upgraded the stock to Buy, on the day that the Kindle edition of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol outsold the hard-cover novel at Amazon - the day of the novel's release.  Some think that Kindle sales might be contributing to the gains.

It was Kindle Nation Daily's Stephen Windwalker who noticed that despite Amazon's not breaking out the figures for Kindle and hardcover editions, the category of "Mysteries & Thriller" was showing the Kindle version as #1 in its "Bestsellers" listing -- and in fact, it still is, on Day 3.

WHY
The Bestseller listings tell you how fast-selling a book or edition is during the last hour or so, and the rankings can change quite a bit within an hour.
  On the Kindle's side was the fact that the hardcover version had been on the bestseller list for 149 days and had caught most of its crowd while this was the first day for the Kindle and after Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group only recently finally decided to issue Brown's book on the Kindle at the same time, despite worries it would cannibalize hardcover sales.
  The publishers of the Ted Kennedy book have decided not to offer that book for the Kindle and I feel they are just in denial.

Windwalker also pointed out that Bezos was looking ahead when he made the Amazon books buyable via the iPhone and iPod apps -- there are a lot of them out there, and people paying $70/mo. plus tax and fees for monthly access that includes web data access (iPhone users) likely want and can afford things now AND might even get the hardcover version if they like a book.

  As it is, the Kindle forums now include many iPhone/iPod users who enjoy their iPhone reading but want the Kindle also for the larger screen and the lack of light shining into the eyes.  There's a bit of a symbiotic relationship occurring, as Kindle users are also getting iPhones to have smaller reading carriers when out and about.  Amazon allows the devices to be "synched" via wireless so that you can close a book and then open it, to the same page, on the other device.

 Despite Steve Jobs' feeling that people generally don't read anymore the way they used to, the Apple devices have been acting as training wheels or drivers for the often-lost book-reading habit in a short-concentration-span world.  In Kindle, Sony, and Apple forums, customers are saying they're now reading more than they have in years.  Hardware companies are aware of this new interest and are fighting to get the next e-reader out there as fast as possible in every size and color they can.

Add that e-books will generally be less costly to produce and therefore less expensive to buy and that there is no wait for shipping, which can take days.

  If people experience an unexpected pleasure in reading from e-readers, as is regularly reported in the e-reader forums, what we've seen is not surprising.


THIS IS ALL RELATIVE
The figures discussed don't include sales from other stores, with print-book stats coming in later as a rule from most places.   It's just that few ever expected Kindle sales would do so well on a much-watched book release.

  Many prefer to carry reading sets on these reading devices (the library feature) while also enjoying the ability to increase or decrease the font sizes as wanted, or the spacing between lines and size of margins - not dependent on what the publisher set in place for for buyers.  People can get used to being able to just search/look up a name or event while reading and having a dictionary definition on the status line for each word.

  With the Kindle, they can furthermore get used to getting on Google to look up more web information on a word or phrase.


E-BOOKS VS HARDCOVER BOOKS
I think most Kindle owners still also want hardcover books when really valuing one just read and will want to have a physical copy of it.  It's true for me too.
  And there is no way e-book readers today, using e-ink's b&w, can begin to compete with hardcover books when photographs, diagrams, other illstrations, maps, etc., are an important part of the book.

  I read online columns constantly and there is a steadily increasing number of columnists who say they resisted using an e-reader for all the usual reasons and are surprised by how much they enjoy using their Kindles or Sonys, and many are now reading on iPhones or iPods on the way to work.  This is inevitably a bigger market over the next two years, even if only maybe 7% of the total now, generally.


The New York Times received a more thorough response than other papers did from Amazon's Andrew Herdener.

' “The big surprise was that, despite sustained, strong physical books sales, yesterday we saw the Kindle edition outsell hardcover editions on the book’s release day,” wrote Andrew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, in an e-mail message.

  He added, however, that the numbers did not include pre-orders of the hardcover, which had pushed the title to No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller list more than a week before its release Sept. 15. '

  Nevertheless, the fact that Kindle sales were better on the release date than print sales, at Amazon, is quite newsworthy.  Grumpy critics of the idea that so many Kindle copies could be sold, when they feel there are not that many Kindles out there, forgot about the iPhone/iPod factor and are usually unaware of how intense the buying of books is with people with e-readers nowadays.

  The sudden outpouring of e-reader devices based on the innovative success of the Kindle and now e-book figures this high for a few days at Amazon, are meaningful precisely because the e-reader flood has only just begun and less fully-featured models are coming out for $160-$200 without wireless or study tools - to be used for just reading ;-)  Will they sell?  Probably.


E-BOOK SALES ELSEWHERE
Publishers Weekly has some interesting e-book stats:

" Shortcovers, the e-book service from Indigo Books & Music, said one-day e-book sales of the title have already surpassed total sales of the Twilight series that Shortcovers has been selling for six weeks and which had been its bestselling e-books.

  Total e-books sales Tuesday at Shortcovers were twice as big as the previous top-selling day.  Shortcovers said most purchases were made on the Web, and provided the following breakdown of mobile purchases by platform: 37% iPhone, 31% Palm Pre, 29% Blackberry, 3% Android. "

MURDOCH GETS A SURPRISE
paidContent.org reported, as did every newspaper the other day, on Robert Murdoch's grouchy regular announcements of intent to charge for mobile access on the Blackberry and iPhone, maybe in a few months.

 He is still complaining that the other big cheese, Jeff Bezos, takes too much for his publications (said to be 70% but insiders reporting elsewhere have said that 33% goes to the wireless provider, 33% for Amazon, 33% for Murdoch).
  Wireless is not a small part of the daily or several-times-a-day subscriptions.

His surprise:  Amazon gets him more paid subscribers than he expected.

' As for the Kindle, Murdoch said it’s wonderful for books, but pretty terrible for newspapers.
  But he seemed glad and a bit surprised that over 25,000 users have decided to subscribe to the WSJ on the Kindle. '

He plans to get behind Sony, who will give him a better deal, he says, although their implementation of cellular wireless will be only to the Sony store, making it less attractive for the $100 additional cost over the Kindle 2, similar in size.


A SHIFT IN ONLINE REACTIONS AGAINST E-READERS?
I read a rather extreme article by The Telegraph (UK)'s Andrew Keen titled
  "Ebooks will make authors soulless, just like their product"

 Well.  What intrigued me was not the article but the reaction.  Let's just say that Keen cannot be pleased.  People make interesting points on many aspects of the issue, but the overriding sentiment is not with his thinking.  A year ago, reactions tended to be the opposite - most comments I read back then were from people who could not comprehend why anyone would spend that much money just to "read a book" and could be quite hostile to the idea that people did not just go get a book free at the library if they wanted to read. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Kindle Myths from news websites, No. 1

For weeks, I have seen gadget- or ereader-info sites parroting one another with inaccuracies such as actually writing that the Kindle does not allow the Kindle-user to go anywhere but to the Amazon store.
  It's not just one or two that write this, but site after site that repeats this erroneous info or writes that the Sony-store-only wireless for the coming Sony PRS-2121 will do what the Kindle wireless feature does.

  The sites I most enjoy because they are more thorough than that are Wired, Engadget, and Boy Genius.

  When a site has deleted a Comment of mine that lets them know something stated isn't actually so (quite often) and when they are holding current notes which means current readers won't see that their info is wrong, I will post some of these here.  Eventually Google.com and people looking for information on what the Kindle wireless does involve will be able to find the information then.

ZIKKER.COM ARTICLE
UPDATE: Allie Vance, noted below, re-posted an article by Shawn Oliver  (See Comments to this blog entry) but the comment I submitted to their comment box was "pending moderation."  I've since reposted the note to Shawn Oliver at HotHardware.com and reworded the below.

Last night, someone on Twitter pointed us to zikkir.com's article, a re-posting by Allie Vance, commenting on In-Stat's much-distributed article that reported that

"...current e-book owners desire email capability in the next e-book they purchase.  Longer battery life and Internet connectivity are the top two desired features among respondents who don’t currently own an e-book but plan to buy one in the next year.”

Yes, I can see that.  But then the article actually says the following

' ...but by and large, today’s batch of readers only feature a few (or one) of those, and not all three.
  Take the market-leading Kindle for example.  It has integrated WWAN through Sprint, but that only enables users to download new books on the go.  Users can’t check their e-mail or surf the Web, which is evidently a real bummer to most.

WHAT THE KINDLE ACTUALLY CAN DO, WEB-WISE
  Could anything be less true? -- that the Kindle can't surf the web or allow you to check your email?  Countless Kindle forum threads include discussions on what sites Kindle users can access and how that can be very helpful when you're not at home.  I have a freely-downloadable file of mobile-optimized websites to surf more quickly.

  I also have tips on using the web browser's various modes to help the loading speed or readability of the sites.  Never mind that Amazon itself puts a pre-set bunch of web-bookmarks on for Kindle users to try.
  But cellular wireless access will be slow, and the Kindle web access is definitely for the patient.  It pays off for some of us info-grabbers on the go though.

WIRELESS 24/7 W/NO MONTHLY CHARGES, CURRENTLY (K1, K2, K3, and DX's)
That this comes with no monthly charges for now is just another plus, and Jeff Bezos has said it is a reason he set the price of the Kindle higher instead of locking people into a 2-year monthly fee on top of the unit, as is done with cell phones.
  The high cost of wireless is why the other readers don't and won't, for some time, be including web-browsing access in their e-readers as part of the cost -- not iRex at $800++, not Plastic Logic at $600-$800 as expected, and not Sony readers, including the Daily Edition due in December.

MY STILL-HELD RESPONSE ON THE ZIKKER SITE  
which shows "No Comments" currently.   [Update: 9:57 PM - it was deleted.]

" Andrys says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
September 16, 2009 at 4:36 am

Well, the Kindles, starting with Kindle 1 all have web browsers, though it’s impossibly slow on the Kindle 1. It is very doable on the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX and I do email on it and browse all kinds of sites to look up things when out on the streets. See some web images from my DX at
http://www.pbase.com/andrys/kindleplus

I also have tips and guides for using the web browser in more speedy fashion (it’s 24/7 free cellular access) and I use it for lookups in stores, in concerts, hearings).  Email is slow going with GMail but it’s doable and I also check yahoo mail.

On the Kindle two, I show some time with Facebook and with the Amazon forums,
at http://www.pbase.com/andrys/kindle2

Forgive the links, but since you mentioned these are wanted items but the Kindle doesn’t allow it, I needed to let you know it very much does. I also have a file for accessing mobile-optimized sites but you’ll see what I could get with the normal webpage of Engadget at the first link above.

– Andrys
kindleworld.blogspot.com

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The Test-Run at Univ of Washington with Kindle DX's

Seattle's KOMO Newsroom reports on the test run of the Kindle DX being done by the University of Washington, with 40 graduate students participating in using the Kindle DX in place of both textbooks and classroom reading materials this semester.

They need to see how well that might work.  Seven universities are taking part, and the University of Washington students will be among the first to actually get the Kindles.

  This is the fundamental question posed:
"How would you have to change a device that was designed as a personal pleasure device to turn it into a learning device?"

  Professor Dan Grossman says, "We want to be able to annotate and highlight and flip back and forth and have that physical experience," he said.
  But on the other side, he says, "We want to be able to search and look up and have massive amounts of information on one lightweight device." - a strength of the Kindle.

PILOT PROGRAM BLOG
seattlest.com reports on the University's blog of results so far as noted on the UW Kindle Pilot blog by the Computer Science & Engineering Dept.

If you follow the link, you'll see they want to annotate PDFs, but since this can't be done under the current licensing with Adobe, the University is converting the PDFs to the Kindle's own format instead, in order to be able to annotate the text, but since the textbooks include engineering materials, there is multi-column material as well as equations, the layouts for which tend to be lost or mangled when converted to the normal text-oriented formats.

Seattlest.com's article interpreted the blog comments as reports that the PDFs themselves were not being shown correctly, with multi-column format changed to single column format only and the math "messed up."

CONVERTED FILES (no longer PDF)
However, it's actually the converted files (in Amazon format rather than PDF) which are not showing correctly.  A number of us have written about this since May, before the DX was released when we saw in the early User's Guide for the DX that they were not offering PDF annotation features (which normally requires a fuller Adobe license for support).  I wrote a comment at Seattlest.com to try to explain that the DX can read and display PDFs accurately but that the problem involves converted files in another format that don't interpret the PDF layout correctly.

WORKAROUND FOR THE TIME BEING
In the meantime, the school's Kindle Pilot blog details a workaround they're trying, using a PDF to WORD converter such as Nuance's and then using Word to reformat the document to single column (this will often not be appropriate) and then sending the single-column'd WORD doc to Amazon's converter to put it into the Amazon format.

The school is of course asking Amazon "if these things can be improved."

THE FUTURE?
I imagine they are!  While I think the tech team has done a really good job with these units and the study tools for the regular books, the Kindles are early consumer-priced versions versus the expensive iRex models (already here but $800+) and Plastic Logic model due in early Spring with good PDF annotation features and more file formats supported but which will cost quite a bit more while not offering web access for reference and research.

I think the DX screen at 9.7" is the smallest students could use for PDFs meant to display on a full letter page, and the landscape mode usually does help quite a bit in enlarging the fonts.  But for university use, I don't understand how students could enjoy not being able to highlight and add notes to their PDFs.  I'm puzzled why Amazon hasn't moved on this aspect of PDF use in academic settings for the coming Fall session as so many of us asked them to in May.  I'm hoping they find a way since they've chosen to run the college studies.

As a consumer-category customer not having to make notes for courses, I really enjoy reading on my DX (I find the screen beautiful to read from) and even highlighting and notating normal books, but if there is no other change coming, the one change they should make is to get the Adobe PDF annotations feature for the DX (and add the ePub format for all Kindles). Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Apple tablet to launch in February, at $800++ ?

This is an UPDATE to the last two entries about the continuing rumors about an Apple tablet or iPad.

  Earlier stories with details about the rumors & hoped-for features:
1.  Apple Tablet Challenge to Kindle Delayed, It's Said - August 19, 2009
2.  Apple Tablet announced early Sept? Yr-end release? - August 14, 2009

9to5Mac's Seth Weintraub reports yesterday that the Taiwan Economic News carried some parts information on Apple's possible Tablet.  I first saw this reported on teleread.org and the image is from the 9to5Mac story.

The Taiwan Economic News story by Steve Chuang reports that Apple will launch "its newest tablet PCs (curiously worded) next February" and that

"The tablet PC features a 9.6-inch screen, finger-touch function and built-in HSPDA (high speed download packet access) module, and adopts a P.A. SEMI processor chip and long lasting battery pack, selling for between US$799 and US$999."

That would be before any Web data-access charges.

Firms specifically mentioned include:
1.  DynaPack International Technology Corp.- "has been exclusively contracted to supply up to 300,000 units of long lasting battery packs a month."

2.  Wanshih Electronic Co., Ltd. "is expected to absorb around 70% of Apple`s orders for mini coaxial cables for the tablet PCs."

3.  "...Layers Scientific-Technics Co., Ltd. and Wintek Corp. will supply power chokes and touch panels, respectively..."

A commenter points out that the pricing seems logical because ""Without contract (monthly fees), an iPhone 3GS 32GB costs 675 € [$986 U.S.] (in Belgium."

CNNMoney/Fortune-Brainstorm Tech's Philip Elmer-DeWitt calls Steve Chuang "a reporter with a pretty good track record on the supply chain beat."

 They also include some thoughts about the parts vendors.
Reaction to the rumored price-point ($800 to $1000 is not exactly enthusiastic. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Tips of the day - 9/14/09

HOW TO KNOW WHEN A REQUEST FOR A KINDLE VERSION HAS BEEN FILLED
  This tip came from M. Francis in an Amazon forum thread.

1.  If you want a publisher to create a Kindle version of a book you want to read, let them know on the book's product page, on the left, below the book's main description.

2. Then add the hard copy book to your Amazon wish list.

3. Once that's done, go visit Mysteria, "your obsessive, obsequious librarian for all your digital stuff."  She's always on-call, working endlessly in the background searching for what you told her (via your public Amazon wishlist(s)) you have to have (books, music, videos).
  Read the page, as it's an entertaining intro.  The number of items she is tracking will show up on the upper right of that page.

4.   If you've not registered before, sign up (there's no cost or spam, people say), and type into the Sign-up box the email address you use for correspondence with Amazon.  If you use that address, she'll also automatically check to see if you have new requests in any of your wishlists.

5.   When a Kindle book (or digital movie or song download) you wanted has become available, she'll send you an e-mail.

6.   Here's how it works.
  And the service is free.


LEN EDGERLY OF THE KINDLE CHRONICLES PODCAST RECOMMENDS ZOOLERT

Zoolert says that they hunt, we gather.  They track hard-to-find items, but best, they TRACK PRICES of Amazon items you want and will send you an alert when an acceptable price you set has been met.

Len and his listeners say this works well for them, the original recommendation coming from Yisroel Parker, and Len Charnoff has a helpful tutorial on using Zoolert. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Mobile Reference books are back

MobileReference posted in the Amazon forums last night, the following note:

Our Dear Readers,

Today 09/11/09 Amazon informed us that "We wanted to let you know that after further review, we will be re-instating your account and once again making your titles available on the Kindle store. We thank you for your patience as we work to provide the best experience possible for our customers."

We thank you for your support!
-MobileReference

That's an UPDATE to the article on Amazon's decision to whittle down the number of duplicates of public domain classics, as some Kindle owners on the forums had worried that they would lose access to MobileReference books at Amazon.

Here are Mobile Reference Kindle books:
. sorted by bestselling
. sorted by "low to high" price
. sorted by avg. customer review
. sorted by most recently published
. sorted by relevance


As ever, here are the regular free and low-cost book links Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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TKC interviews "Library w/o Books" headmaster Tracy

UPDATE: 9/11/09 6:48PM PDT - Podcast 60 is ready.
UPDATE2: midnight - Podcast Extra: Library tour and actual plans
A bit of nostalgia in the image to the left... Note the laptops on the tables of course :-)
  Clicking on the image or on the next link takes you to a brief story on the surging use of the New York City Library though it's not due to the best of reasons -- but it's a good and welcome resource for those who need to find a job in a world requiring wired access.  The article's actual title is "The Library Renaissance."

The article also links back to an article in March on the library's efforts to help jobseekers and points out that "...with Web sites largely having replaced newspapers as the most common job-listing venues, finding work without Internet access has become increasingly difficult."

In connection with the recent story on "A Library Without Books," the Boston Globe article, had said that Cushing Academy had "...decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children’s books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries," although the Globe's writer, David Abel, mentioned, in another paragraph, that the school's administrators had "decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks " -- many have been disbelieving that a school would do this.

 Others, as I mentioned in the Comments area, had seen this as understandable for a school library as opposed to a public library, because in a college-preparatory school like this, the library is used mainly for a quiet and WIRED place for students to go with their laptops.  Students are focused on specifically-assigned books, and the Net gives speedier search access to additional information on those assigned topics -- while a public library acts as a physical database of materials the general public can browse at leisure, though they also have considerable wired access now and terrific online-resources, generally.

  Also, most junior high and high school libraries don't have 20,000+ books in them.
 Cushing Academy has only a few hundred students and the annual fee for attending the school is between $31,200 and $42,850 -- not your average college-prep school.

The reaction has been quite divided, and Len Edgerly of the popular podcast, The Kindle Chronicles, decided to interview the apparent driving force behind the changes, headmaster James Tracy, on the school's library plan.  Many are concerned about the precedent.

  Edgerly has said on Twitter that "Globe's got it wrong" and expanded a little in an email when I asked him about this before we are able to hear the interview when it is uploaded Friday night 9/11/09 (tonight) to the Kindle Chronicles site.  He gave me permission to quote him.

' The TVs are essentially computer monitors, available for kids to work collaboratively on, with controls somehow at their seats.  Also, the Globe got it wrong - the school library will have 10k books of the 20k there now, and several other thousand are being distributed to departments. So actual reduction in volumes is about 7K or 8k...

Any volume which was donated to the school as a memorial is being retained in the collection.   They see the new library becoming the epicenter of the school for students and faculty, compared with its former reality as a little-used collection of traditional books infrequently visited by anyone...

Slide 4 caption includes this: "Cushing Junior Tia Alliy shelved a heavy volume onto a shelf holding the spared books." In fact, that shelf is one of half the original shelves still in the library." '

 That last caption is reassuring when the Boston Globe titled another caption with the contradicting "The school's new "learning center" will have no books -- they have been donated or discarded." -- unless they mean the 'spared' books will be available where they are donated.  All in all, it was a very confusing article, as it turns out.

A look at the full range of Dr. Tracy's approach to the topic can be seen in a talk he gave at a symposium, "Libraries Beyond Books: A Call for New Paradigms."  It's an interesting read, but his choice of words is not always helpful for his case, which can sound 'extreme' when he writes: "This is why, at Cushing Academy, where we are dedicated to forging the most far-sighted pedagogies for twenty-first century education, we have decided to be bookless within a year."

So, in light of all of the above, I recommend that all interested tune in to The Kindle Chronicles Podcast sometime Friday night to hear or download Len Edgerly's interview with headmaster Tracy.  There's now the podcast Extra of a tour of the library and a look at the mockup of their actual plans, with Bruce Lemieux, Director of Technology, and Susie Carlisle, Dean of Faculty and Academics.

  The weekly podcasts are also available as a free-subscription at iTunes and will remain available at the podcast site. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Amazon Winnowing Public Domain Duplicates

Amazon announced today at its Digital Text Platform forums:

' In an earlier posting, we said that we are working on improving the customer experience in the Kindle store for public domain titles like “Pride and Prejudice.”  Kindle customers often find it difficult to choose from the many different versions of the most popular titles.  As a first step, we stopped accepting additional public domain titles.  Later this week, we will be removing many of the duplicate copies of the best selling public domain titles.

 Some of you may disagree with the choice of titles we will be removing.  If you feel that your version of a public domain title has significantly more value to customers compared to the ones we have chosen to keep for sale, please contact us at title-submission@amazon.com and we will review your title.  Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve the Kindle Store.

The Kindle Team '

Scott Douglas drew our attention to this.   he also worried about 'big brother' possibilities with this and interprets the message as saying only one edition will be allowed, although Amazon says that if you prefer your version "compared to the oneS we have chosen to keep..."  they will review the title if the file-uploader contacts them.  They are talking here to those who want to upload to Amazon their own versions of public domain books.

I wrote to Scott on his post because I had first seen, courtesy of Kindlezen on Twitter that Librarian And Information Science News was reporting on Scott's post and a commenter there has a concern (as a UK observer) that Amazon might consider one's public domain books from other sources on our Kindles (many of us have lots of them from other sources) possibly bit-torrent material.  But, really, they have shown no interest in all the things we can put on our Kindles, learned from their own sanctioned Amazon forums, thanks to customers helping one another.

To Scott, I repeated what I wrote to the Librarian news site, thinking I was responding to him there.  Here is the text of what I wrote, which Scott and Librarian news site allowed to be posted right away.  I'm reposting it here so that Kindleworld blog readers can read the info also but with links to what I mentioned.

' Let's not get carried away.
The Project Gutenberg books are directly downloadable to the Kindle and have been for some time. That's 30,000 books.  The steps for doing this are on my site and others'.

Those who Kindle can get books direct to the Kindle from feedbooks.com, manybooks.net (use (mnybks.net to actually download the books to Kindle) and even fictionwise.com now owned by Barnes & Noble.

Amazon will not - after '1984gate' - be deleting any books you've purchased which were uploaded to Amazon... mainly because they'd lose their entire Kindle crowd if they did that again and they know it.
  And they certainly won't be deleting material you got elsewhere.

On the Amazon forums there is a popular and humongous thread of about 1200+ posts from which many learn about how to get books from everywhere else, and how to quickly convert them, as needed, for the Kindle.

And I've written a piece on how to quickly convert any of the million free Google books so you can read them on the Kindle.

As for the public domain books, we can get them from just about anywhere.  What customers have complained about is the never-ending proliferation of public domain books on Amazon, some of which have no table of contents, are badly formatted, have all kinds of errors, because Amazon had let everything up in the digital-publishing upload area, within a day.

They are now, from what I read on Amazon forums, doing 5-day reviews of uploaded material.  Harry Potter books were uploaded almost daily - but the author refuses to make them available for the Kindle and those are then obviously illegal uploads.  Amazon customers reported lots of occurrences of such things.

 If Amazon will have only one version of a public domain, maybe they'll choose only those with working Table of Contents hyperlinks and correctly formatted etc.  My guess is they'd have two or three Amazon-chosen ones for the free-option.  IF it were only one* and the best in their minds, for free, then that's their prerogative and we have less work to do when trying to get a book [from Amazon].  I had to download and check out samples for about 12 versions of the Devil's Dictionary and most were missing essential things like working Table of Contents.

As it turns out, the best one I found came from an individual posting at Mobileread forums and was free. So that's what I'm using.

Remember, we can read MOBI or PRC files on the Kindle and rights-unprotected documents will be converted by Amazon (for free if you send it to [you]@free.kindle.com] and then move the converted copy to the Kindle yourself.  Many of us just run it through a free converter ourselves.

- Andrys
kindleworld.blogspot.com

* As you can see -- in Amazon Kindle Team's note to those who want to upload, or have uploaded in the past, a new version of a public domain book, they mention "ones" to which the uploader's version is felt, by the uploader, to be superior.  So, I don't believe they're thinking of limiting public domain offerings of a book to only one edition but are choosing just a few from the many duplicates they already have and are now finally reviewing for quality of layout, etc. as requested by Amazon customers for some time.

(The above applies to the Kindle DX as well as Kindles 1 and 2.) Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Bits and pieces - 9/8/09

Library w/o books
Re the Library Without Books story. A quick run of news column comments like the ones at Mashable indicate that many familiar with school libraries feel this is likely an ok decision because students today use the school libraries as a place to relax with their notebooks and they really don't use the stacks much.  People tend to feel differently if this had happened with a public library though.
And, it seems the coffee areas will be profit centers :-)

Google settlement
Alternet, quoting AFP's Roddy Thomson, reports that Google "will remove all European books currently on the market from a US agreement to digitise and sell online books that are out of print in the United States."  They'll have to negotiate agreements with European publishers and authors.

To see a good summary of the issues that have been problematical for other companies in connection with the much-discussed Google Settlement, see Bufo Calvin's article on this from Sunday.

Asus' coming dual-screened color e-reader
A lot of ink on this one. Endgadget discusses a prototype displayed at CeBIT last March (lots of photos from CeBIT).  In the comments to the first article, commenters question battery life, comfort in holding and using 2 screens at time in a portable -- but at the price of only about $160 and with color available, even if using more eye-straining LCD screens, this will be attractive to many.  They may offer budget and premium models once they release one of these end of the year.  No details yet. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Small E-Readers and Media Hype

The New York Times reports on the unsatisfactory experience of attempting to use the much-hyped "eTextbook" iPhone app for CourseSmart's 7,000+ textbooks.
    Click on the image at the left to get the larger image.

This is an update to earlier blog articles on CourseSmart and its e-textbooks:
  . How to Save on College Textbooks
  . CourseSmart offers 7,000 textbooks on iPhone/iPod
  . Textbooks, the iPhone, and the Kindle

The New York Times's Randall Stross does something highly irregular in this fast-paced gloss-over news-scanning Net world -- he actually tries using a product before drawing conclusions in 'killer' headlines based on little.  Too often the articles focus on "the look" of things, the 'sexiness' of a metallic or plastic form, the 'cool' factor -- if you can pocket it, it has to be better.

  As a user of nearly pocketable cameras I understand the feeling, but if the camera doesn't do the basic job for the cost, I'd not be proclaiming the smallness of it the best way to go for producing a good result or saying one doesn't need the larger cameras and they are therefore "killed" - a favorite concept for gadget hounds chasing the latest dragon slayer.

Stross points out that squeezing the contents of an enormous printed textbook -- normally using considerable space for hundreds of words, the occasional illustration and lots of "restful white space" -- into the credit-card sized space of smart-phone displays can cause a painful experience.

CourseSmart has tried, and my guess (since they did not reformat the books for the smaller display size) is that they hoped to get a more attractive deal from Amazon if the textbooks were already on the iPhone.  Otherwise, what sense does it make -- to have to buy the version for iPhone which requires a connection to the Net (even if alternately using a laptop for that e-version) and buy another version to be able to read offline in a more natural way?

Stross describes what it's like to actually use a CourseSmart textbook on the iPhone while connected online as required:

' [CourseSmart's iPhone app] uses a PDF image of each page, as does the browser-based version of its eTextbook. All of the charts, graphs and design elements are intact, but everything — including the text — is indecipherably small without zooming in.  Enlarging the text to legible size introduces the need to scroll left and right for each line, which quickly grows tedious.

  Even when used on a PC monitor or laptop, Stross says,

Generally ... just half or two-thirds of a single page is displayed at once.  Successive clicks take you to the bottom of that page, to the top of the adjacent page, and to the bottom of that page. After every page change, the screen goes blank momentarily before refreshing.

  Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart explains that the use of the iPhone for the text can be helpful if
  " you’re standing outside of the classroom, the quiz is in 10 minutes, and you want to go back to that end-of-chapter summary that helped you understand the material.”"

  Stross continues:

' The iPhone doesn’t actually store the image files: a page must be downloaded on-the-fly when requested, which I found to take 9 to 13 seconds, using a Wi-Fi connection.  The downloaded page isn’t saved, so moving to another page, then returning, means downloading it anew.  Rummaging around for a particular passage in a chapter, easily done in a printed book, is an agonizingly long process on the iPhone. '

On August 12, when CourseSmart announced its iPhone launch, I asked this question:

"Does this mean that the students will also need to buy a hard copy text book for the "homework" portion as well as pay half the cost of another textbook in electronic format which they'd need to return to CourseSmart at the end of 180 days?"

 The New York Times reports that:

' At present, a student without a trust fund is probably not going to get both the printed textbook and a subscription that provides access to the eTextbook version; they are now sold separately.  When asked if publishers would be willing to offer both for the price of one, [Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education] said his company was considering offering the eTextbook for a “nominal” price to buyers of the print version.

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Larger format e-readers, not mentioned above but available currently:
Kindle 2   Sony Readers   Kindle DX.

Also see:
  . Sony's Upcoming Models vs Amazon Kindle
  . Some points from reports on the new Sony readers Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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A Library Without Books

As a Kindle enthusiast, I found the following news not only jarring but very sad, since I imagine that most Kindle users will be people who love books.
  At first I thought the story couldn't be true, but a sample statistic they give of actual usage of the library was also grim.

The Boston Globe's David Abel reports on the mind-boggling decision by Cushing Academy administrators to discard all their books in favor of a digital future.  James Tracy, headmaster, sees books as "an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

The academy will spend $500,000 to instead create a 'learning center' -- with reading stacks replaced by "three large flat-screen TVs" projecting Internet data and by "special laptop-friendly study carrels."

In place of the rejected books will be "18 electronic readers made by Amazon and Sony," which will be stocked with digital material.  Those with no access to e-readers will be expected to do research and read assigned text on their own computers.

' Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books," said Tracy, whose office shelves remain lined with books.  “We see this as a model for the 21st-century school."

  The feeling is not universal there.  Librarian Liz Vezina says she never imagined being the director of a library without books. And ...

' Alexander Coyle, chairman of the history department, is a self-described "gadget freak" who enjoys reading on Amazon’s Kindle, but he has always seen libraries and their hallowed content as "secular cathedrals." ... A lot us are wondering how this changes the dignity of the library, and why we can’t move to increase digital resources while keeping the books. "

But there are others who are in step with headmaster Tracy:

' "We see the gain as greater than the loss," said Gisele Zangari, chairwoman of the math department, who like other teachers has plans for all her students to do their class reading on electronic books by next year.  "This is the start of a new era." '

Others lament the decision, of course.   But here are other views that were also surprising, and the sample statistic I mentioned is also shocking to me:

' Yet students at Cushing say they look forward to the new equipment, and the brave new world they’re ushering in.

Tia Alliy, a 16-year-old junior, said she visits the library nearly every day, but only once looked for a book in the stacks.  She’s not alone.  School officials said when they checked library records one day last spring only 48 books had been checked out, and 30 of those were children’s books.

"When you hear the word ‘library,’ you think of books," Alliy said. "But very few students actually read them. And the more we use e-books, the fewer books we have to carry around."

Jemmel Billingslea, an 18-year-old senior, thought about the prospect of a school without books. It didn’t bother him.

"It’s a little strange," he said. "But this is the future." '

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Amazon said to be offering '1984' book/notes or credit to affected users - Update

UPDATE 9/5/09 is at the bottom of this entry.

  Gizmodo's Rosa Golijan reports that 'reader Shinobiwan wrote in with an e-mail received from "order-update@amazon.com' reminding Shinobiwan that on July 23, Jeff Bezos made an apology to Amazon customers for "the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle" and said it was "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles..."

  The e-mail, signed "The Kindle Team," continued:

  As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made.  You will not be charged for the book.  If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30.

  Please email Kindle customer support at kindle-response@amazon.com to indicate your preference.  If you prefer to receive a check, please also provide your mailing address.

  We look forward to hearing from you.

  Sincerely,

  The Kindle Team

Gizmodo isn't in a forgiving mood, as their photo of a Kindle displaying a finger shows.

  The brouhaha has been called "1984Gate" and I gave my take on the dispute July 31.

  Amazon doesn't mention which edition they're offering to re-deliver.  Of the lower-cost ones on product pages which might be similar to the 99-cent copy that wasn't legally sold, I see that:
 1984, published by Synergy House Publications (June 22, 2009) - $1.99, is shown as "not available" -- and another recently uploaded version of the book for $2.98 is also "not available."  The one available is $9.99, so maybe Amazon has authorization to re-deliver the MobileRef book with matching annotations to affected customers after some agreement was reached with the copyright holder.

Just saw the Wall St. Journal report on this.

UPDATE 9/5/09 (No date change being made on posting as updates are not key.)
  I enjoyed the reaction from PCAdvisor's David Coursey, UK, wrote:

" That's good news, and Amazon is known for doing right by customers, but in offering $30 cash compensation, the company probably went a little overboard.
  I'd have offered $19.84. '
(And if Amazon sent me such a cheque, I'd have framed it). "

  The Morning Call reported that "Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said Friday that the company now has the proper rights to distribute the Orwell books."

  Reuters' Alexei Oreskovic wrote " Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said the move was unrelated to the lawsuit, and said the company does not comment on active litigation. " Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Weekend books reminder: free and under $1 ones - Update2

UPDATE 9/4/09 - Two featured free books 8/29 are back to $9.60 as of today.
  So, if at all interested in a newer free book, download it while you can.
  I'll look for other interesting ones this weekend.

REGULAR UPDATE: 8/29/09 - Original posting was 7/26/09.
    These two books were free but now cost $9.99.  They're here for the record.

I'm not around much on the weekends - so, for the many new readers who visit each day and for those who don't usually have time to explore the right-hand column of more permanent links to useful tips and information, I'll highlight the "Free [or low-cost] Kindle books box from that side-column.

The book above is Raising Jake by Charlie Carillo, and the book on the left is The Sari Shop Widow by Shobhan Bantwal.

  Click on the images to get the details for each book.
      Both are $0.00 currently. As of 9/4/09, these are both $9.60 now. The free books that are newer ones are often temporary promotional items by Amazon, and it's hard to know which ones are.


Besides the usual new $$$-books, we can enjoy Classics for free, both from Amazon and from other book sites, many directly downloadable to the Kindle.  A few are promotional and free for only a while.

1.  Amazon's 7,000+ free books, sorted by:
        "Bestselling" or by "Avg Customer Review"

2.  Amazon's currently free  Non-Classics - This one changes.

    a. That link above is to Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLERS.
    b. Here are Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST first.

3.  "Big Deals on Kindle" - This one doesn't change enough.

4.  Project Gutenberg e-books (MOBI ed) catalog for Kindles.  You can search the catalog on your Kindle and click on one to have it downloaded to your Kindle from the site.  There are no Amazon charges on a download from this site.

5.  A long Amazon Forum thread on a million or so books readable on the Kindle - How to get them (mostly free)

ALSO, previously featured free non-fiction books that are free or under $1.00
1. (Recommended under-$1 books)

2. Amazon's most popular free books.

AND remember Michael Rubin is offering, for a limited time, the full text of his $35 "Droidmaker" book on George Lucas and Lucasfilm via a set of 3 PDFs.  The photos from the book are included.

Some of this will be redundant, but at least there are a lot of choices for people on a budget.

---

Updated 8/29/09 Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Kindle adds role as script reader aid

Information Week's Mary Hayes Weier writes that 'The Amazon Kindle has landed a hot new role in Hollywood as a script-reading device.  At Lions Gate Entertainment [makers of "Crash, "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Mad Men"], instead of lugging around briefcases and satchels stuffed with 150-page scripts, some personnel are now reading scripts on their Kindles.

Executives, top script readers, and producers are among the lucky ones getting Kindles from Lions Gate's IT department, with many more employees hoping to eventually get them, said CIO Leo Collins in an interview. "We're getting heart wrenching requests almost hourly," Collins said.'

This is really interesting to me.  I'll quote most of the article, as it's really quite tight and I like the way she describes it, but follow the link to the original article for things I've left out.  Weier continues:

' Because of its dimensions, the Kindle is better than a laptop for viewing scripts that follow the entertainment industry's standards for typeface and page format.  It's important not to deviate from those standards, since they let a studio exec read a block of dialogue and, based on line count, know how many minutes it would run on the film screen.

Executives have long been able to get scripts as .PDF attachments on their laptops, but a typical laptop's 4X3 display makes reading them cumbersome, since a whole page can't be viewed at once.  More typically, assistants print out PDFs and distribute them to studio execs.  It's not uncommon for a film script to run over 100 printed pages.

Now production assistants are sending .PDFs of scripts in attachments directly to registered Kindle users' email addresses that are set up through Amazon. There are fewer steps required to open an attachment on the Kindle compared with a laptop, making it as easy to read as a paper version.

Those reading scripts can also make notations about them on their Kindles. "The Kindle completely transforms the whole experience," Collins said. '

What??  I would have assumed they're using the Kindle DX but if so, no notations can be made on the PDFs currently.  With Kindle 2's, one can make notations on what would be a converted file (PDF to Kindle format) but with that model, I doubt that a full page would show on the smaller 6" screen, which would be displaying a text-reflowed version with quite fewer lines.

' Not to mention the trees and money that can be saved. During weekends and holidays, it's not unusual for Lions Gate to send out paper scripts to executives' homes via couriers. "Now we're at a place where the script just shows up on their Kindles," Collins said.

Lions Gate's use of the Kindle is more of a test than a rollout, but Collins sees the potential for the device to have a bigger impact at the studio in coming months, as well as the rest of the film industry. '

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Legacy: AmazonEncore Edition - Free this week

I'm not a Fantasy reader myself but the genre is huge these days, and most Kindle blogs have highlighted this book because (now that I've looked) the author's story is an inspiration and Amazon is featuring it in a big way.   Add that the Kindle edition is free until September 4, and that should be reason enough to download it.  But there's more.

This is Amazon's premiere title in the AmazonEncore program.  In their announcement, Amazon explains:

'...authors with great potential often struggle to connect with the larger audience they deserve to reach.  We’re fortunate at Amazon.com to have customers who know a good book when they read one...

AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.

Our premiere AmazonEncore title, Legacy, written by 14-year-old Cayla Kluver (now 16), had review titles such as "loved it, loved it," "rich lyrical tapestry and story," and "breath-taking in scope and execution!"   In addition to raves from customers, Ms. Kluver has won several awards from literary groups. The new version of Legacy will be available in Fall 2009. '

And Fall 2009 is here.

On the book's main page: "Legacy was Bronze Medalist in Young Adult Fiction in the 2008 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards; Finalist in Young Adult Fiction in the National Best Books Awards 2008, sponsored by USA Book News."

Kluver started this novel, centering on the turmoil experienced by an 18-yr old heroine, when she was 14, but her 18-yr old sister was there with her world's experience :-) Here's a videoclip of the two sisters discussing her book and also an interview with young Kluver, who is 16 now.

The prologue and first chapter are available on the product page too.

It was interesting to me that some of the appreciative customer feedback was from people who had not realized the author was so young.

If you want the hard cover version after reading the Kindle edition, you can also get that here, though the hard-cover edition isn't free.

Kudos to Kayla Cluver!

As ever, other Kindle specials (free or low-priced) are here.

Lots of e-reader news.  I linked to some at twitter.com/kindleworld. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

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(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
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Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!