Despite many predictions to the contrary, eBook readers are still going strong. They may not be as flashy as tablets, but they are great devices with long battery lives, clear readable screens, and lightweight both in size and on your wallet. Most people tend to pick an eBook reader based on their bookstore preferences, what [...]
Tag Archives: Books and eBooks
Barnes & Noble Has Forgotten What Makes the NOOK Interesting
Hey, want to buy a NOOK? Barnes & Noble would very much like it if you did. That’s not surprising — they’re fighting hard for marketshare in an increasingly crowded market. But hot on the heels of their “buy a tablet, get an eBook reader!” bizarre promotion, they’ve been reminding everyone of another reason to [...]
Amazon Buys Goodreads, but Is It a Good Deal?
Amazon announced today that they’re buying Goodreads, a social book site that lets you review books you’ve read, and look for recommendations based on your reading list and the books your friends are reading. Needless to say, this is a slam dunk match for Amazon and Goodreads, as they really can complement each other nicely. There are [...]
Is an eBook a Book, or Is It Something Else?
The fine folks at Forbes raised an interesting question this week: are eBooks really books? Their take is that eBooks are more like software, due to their digital nature. And yes, they are looking specifically at the education markets. But this touches on a larger debate, one that comes up quite often. Opponents of eBooks [...]
Papertrell Aims to Turn Reference Books into Apps
In general, I tend to shy away from the “app-ification” of eBooks. If it’s a book, I want to just sit down and read it. I like eBooks, but I don’t need unnecessary videos, music, etc. However, the exception is reference books, cookbooks, and anything else where it’s not a linear process to read from [...]
GoodReader Releases SDK for 3rd-party iPhone and iPad App Developers
If you’re not in high-tech and are reading this web site from the point of view of a typical consumer, here’s a bit of jargon for you: Software development kit, or SDK. An SDK is a package of software that companies offer (sometimes for a fee, sometimes not) to encourage other companies and individual programmers [...]
Why Barnes and Noble’s Store Shutdowns Are Not The Real Danger Sign
In the Harry Potter books, Voldemort’s symbol appears above the houses of wizards who have been marked for death. Lately, it seems like Barnes and Noble’s stores have the Dark Mark over them. No matter what the company says or does, the news is always greeted with the same reaction: DOOM! The latest round of [...]
Goodbye Spin Magazine After 27 Years
Last summer, after BuzzMedia bought Spin Magazine, it announced it was cancelling the November / December issue as part of a ‘brand evaluation’. Well … over the holidays we learned that print was NOT in fact part of the ‘moving forward’ plan, and the magazine has been killed off in favor of focusing on online efforts. [...]
Pre-Order with Amazon Now, and Get Your Book In . . . 23 Years?
So I like science fiction. I also enjoy stories that take place in really cold places (“Antarctica”, “Kolymsky Heights”, “Archangel”), and I’m also fond of Steampunk, Victoriana, and the Edwardian Era. And the book “Aurorarama” attempts to blend all those elements together, along with a lot of word-play, inside jokes, odd allusions, and (let’s be [...]
Ways To Read More In 2013 On Any Budget!
I love books. I know I am slightly biased, being a former bookstore employee, but I like to think that most people like reading books. The hard part is finding books you want to read. Maybe you can’t find the right authors, or books have gotten too pricey, or you haven’t made the leap [...]
Byook Enhanced eBooks Review
Various developers have been trying since the original iPad to make enhanced and video eBooks a success. There seems to be this impression that books+tablet+video=profit! Yet plain old eBooks have managed to hold their ground quite nicely, leaving the question of whether there’s really a market for a book with video, music, and other bells [...]
Are eTextbooks Fully Baked Yet?
Digital textbooks always sound like a great idea on paper. They save money! And children don’t struggle under the weight of giant books! What’s not to like? Well, there’s the medium for reading on them for starters. Kindles crashed and burned on the college level, and while iPads are great, they are also expensive and [...]
Barnes and Noble Finally Steps Up!
Looks like Barnes and Noble finally got the kinks worked out of their eReader/Fictionwise transition! A few days ago I saw reports that the transfer links were finally working properly, and sure enough, clicking through promised me a forthcoming email with more details. This time, the message didn’t come with a side of time travel, [...]
Does The Shutdown of “The Daily” Mean Anything For Digital Magazines?
New broke this week that “The Daily”, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper, was being shut down. The four people who read it were probably heartbroken. Sarcasm aside, the real question is whether the death of The Daily is indicative of a larger issue. Businessweek brought this question up, pointing out that Newsweek plans to go all-digital [...]
Barnes and Noble and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Fictionwise Shutdown
The Barnes and Noble transition of Fictionwise and eReader to NOOK has been steadily going from bad to worse. First, they had difficulties moving books to the NOOK platform. Then, a huge swath of customers (including both Judie and I) received an error message that our email addresses were not recognized. The Thanksgiving holiday intervened, [...]
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