eBooks

Buyer Beware – MyPadMedia

It sounds great…”Unlimited books and comics for your iPad!” But what is MyPadMedia? Well, it is a site that promises the holy grail to readers: pay them $50 ONCE, and the floodgates open for unlimited books. What books? Well, you need to pay to play, my friends. There’s a testimonial that claims to have read “the whole twilight series”, but if you want more you need to pony up some serious dough, sight unseen. From all appearances, it is a huge scam. Red flag #1: no searchable listings. Pay up, but they won’t tell you what you’re paying for! Red…


Numbers Take on the eBook Fiction Section

(image courtesy Readymade) It’s time for another “State of the eBook”! This time there’s some quickie news, and then an examination of numbers. What’s for real, and what’s a smokescreen? More on that in a bit. Kindle: -The Kindle app for PC has been updated! Apparently, it adds a few interface improvements. Hopefully, the next step is going to be releasing some new Kindle apps (cough, Android, cough). -In addition, it looks like Amazon will be offering commissions to affiliates for Kindle books. B&N nook: -The nook may/may not have outsold the Kindle in the first quarter. The actual results…


Don’t Mess with Amazon

Lately, book pricing is a better drama than daytime soap operas. While the publishers have thrown their undying love and affection towards Apple, Amazon has been quietly maintaining their dominant position. Time and again, the publishers complain bitterly about ebook and book pricing, but the reality is they need Amazon far, far, more than they need Apple. And Amazon knows it. Reason one why you shouldn’t cross Amazon: Penguin has been a holdout on the agency pricing for ebooks, so they’ve been MIA in the Kindle store. Amazon has clearly learned from the disastrous showdown with Macmillan, and they found…


The Case for eBook Readers

It’s been a big week for dedicated ebook readers! Sure, everyone wants to talk about the iPad, but the Kindle, nook, and their comrades have been generating some headlines of their own this week. Barnes and Noble nook: The nook has had a busy, busy week. First, it hit Best Buy shelves, so if you have a craving for an ebook reader but an aversion to bookstores, you’re all set. To go along with this new retail takeover, B&N is airing a series of commercials about the nook during primetime. It’s actually a very effective commercial and plays on the…


Jetbook Lite Ebook Reader Review

Earlier in the month I did a tour of the Jetbook Lite’s hardware. Now it’s time to delve into the software side, and really get to know this little ebook reader! Upon booting the Jetbook Lite, you have three choices; ebooks, pictures and settings. Pictures is nice, but only if you desperately love showing off your photos in black and white. Otherwise, you’re more likely headed into either settings or ebooks. Settings offers the usual complement of options, from font changes to serial numbers. You can also adjust settings within the book by accessing the contextual menu. Adding books is…


Is Fictionwise About to Walk the Plank?

Teleread has an interesting editorial about the future of Fictionwise/eReader (or lack thereof). Yes, there’s the elimination of the buywise program, and there’s the slow death of the PDB format in favor of ePUB. The really bad news: There’s no intention to release an iPad-specific version of eReader. So your choices are either blow the app up to 2x size or skip making use of the gorgeous iPad screen. Or, of course, just buy your books through Barnes and Noble instead. It’s a shame, really. Many, many ebook fans started their reading on Peanut Press, which turned into eReader and…


Hey Amazon, Where’s Kindle for Android?

Amazon, it’s time to release a Kindle for Android app. Maybe you’re working on one in secret, but why not let people know? You had a coming soon sign hung for the Blackberry and Mac apps for months before those appeared, but not a peep about Android support. And Amazon MP3 is heavily featured on many Android phones, so it’s not like you’re fighting with Google. This is a subject I’ve ranted on before, but in light of the ebook market changing with the entry of the iPad, it bears a second view. What really perplexes me is that you’re…


Books on the iPad: Comparing the Printed Page to ePub and PDFs

PDF. ePub. Kindle. iBooks. eBooks. Nook. eInk. Web Browser. Laptop. Audiobooks. For over 10 years, I have been trying to move to an all-electronic workflow for reading and consuming books, especially technical books. It started when I was a consultant traveling in planes to a variety of locations all over the US and internationally. Even when I was working locally, I had a 3+ hour commute daily for a number of years. One of the first things I did was switch to listening to audiobooks (via Audible) for my long daily commute via car. It not only kept me more…


The App-ification of eBooks

One of the arguments that has risen out of the “iPad as an ebook reader” debate is the idea that books, as a platform for pure reading, are dead. That’s what Cody Brown argued in a guest column on Techcrunch, riffing off Paul Carr’s NSFW post. This concept that “everything is better as an app, with pictures and videos and SHINY HAPPYS” is, in my opinion, totally wrong. Are books going to change? Absolutely, and there are many ways in which they will continue to evolve and grow. However, the basic root of a book is going to remain the…


Jetbook Lite Hardware Tour

I’ve been playing with a Jetbook Lite the last few weeks, and as I put together my full review, I thought I would start with a quick overview of the hardware. There are a few features of this particular ebook reader that make it stand out in a sea of eInk devices, and they were worth showcasing separately. First of all, unlike most ebook readers that use built-in rechargeable batteries, the Jetbook Lite uses plain AAs. Battery life is excellent (it’s still on full bars with the initial set of batteries), and it’s nice to know if you’re traveling you…


eBook Competition Gets Fierce

The iPad has landed! But that’s far from the only bit of ebook news this week. Things are really heating up, so let’s dive right in! First, the Association of American Publishers released their estimates for 2009 book sales. The bad news is that overall book sales declined 1.8%…but the silver lining is that ebook sales GREW 176.6%!!! It’s very exciting stuff, but ebooks still aren’t big enough to carry the whole book industry. Overall book sales were $23.8 billion, and ebook sales only made up $313.2 million. It’s a start, but a small one. If you’re comparison shopping for…


GearChat: Are iBooks a NY Times Bestseller, or a Publisher Reject?

image courtesy CNET Here at Gear Diary, we love ebooks. We also love to debate all manner of gadgetry, so of course, we had to share our thoughts on what Apple’s foray into ebooks would mean for the world… Doug: I’m wondering how much shaking out we’re going to see in the next 6 months or so. Carly, do you think Apple is going to yank the non-Apple eBook readers? Carly: No. What’s the point? iBooks seems like a “oh yea, let’s get in on this too” project, rather than a serious effort. Unless they have a plan for coordinated…


The “Ethics” of Book Piracy

How do you know that ebooks have hit the mainstream? Check out the New York Times “The Ethicist” column this week. In it, a letter was received from someone inquiring about the ethics of downloading an illegal copy of an ebook if the downloader already owned the paper copy. Specifically, the inquirer needed to know: I bought an e-reader for travel and was eager to begin “Under the Dome,” the new Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, the electronic version was not yet available. The publisher apparently withheld it to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all…


Why Monthly Periodicals Still Have an Uphill Battle

This isn’t another post about Zinio on the iPad. No, this is a post about why certain types of magazines will continue to have an uphill battle in an always- connected world. All the magazines I looked at on my iPad since the Zinio app was released look great. The colors a brilliant, the navigation is simple. And there is no lag when moving from page to page or from magazine give to text view. It is a gorgeous way to read eMags. But it has one fatal flaw. Let me explain… Last a week, March 31st to be precise, I was notified…


Zinio For iPad – Review

Over the last week I have written a few times about the upcoming Zinio app for the iPad. The reason for my enthusiasm was two-fold. First I had been using Zinio as long as I have been using Tablet PCs. Since moving to the Mac I had used it less — not because it doesn’t work well on the Mac, but because it really lends itself to the tablet format. When the iPhone app came out my enthusiasm was once again peaked; on the larger iPad the promise of eMags was hopefully going to be fulfilled. In addition, my attempt…


Agency Model Cometh; Be Prepared for Speedbumps

(underlying image courtesy Amazon) The agency model is slowly kicking in, and it’s causing some disruption across the ebook world. Unfortunately, there’s really no way to dodge it; if you want to buy ebooks, you are at the mercy of the publishers. Even worse, the retailers who sell ebooks are also in the same position, and in the span of less than three months, they have been attempting to completely overhaul their method of doing business. So what kind of changes should we be expecting? We already know that Kobo and Fictionwise have been forced to give up their incentive…




Where Is the Dedicated eBook Reader Market Headed?

(photo courtesy Engadget) Kobo today announced they will be selling a lower-end, dedicated ebook reader for $149 at Indigo in Canada and Borders in the USA. The unit itself is pretty basic; you transfer your books via USB, and it has some nice UI flourishes, but that’s about it. All day various websites have crowed that this is the start of the slide to a magic $99 ebook reader, and I agree. The bigger question, though, is what market does a cheap ebook reader serve? Kids: This is a fairly easy one; you wouldn’t necessarily expect a child to take…


Amazon Is 1-2; Exclusive Deal with Another Author, but Rebuffed by a Publisher

(underlying image courtesy Pittsburgh Peas) Amazon is still pounding out exclusive deals with various authors (the better to thumb their nose at Apple, presumably). This time it is with science fiction author F. Paul Wilson, who is apparently well-known for The LaNague Federation Series. If you aren’t familiar with the series (I wasn’t), the author describes it as: “Galactic Empires are a joke. At least I’ve always thought so. So when I started writing science fiction I looked for something different. I wanted to set my stories against a single consistent coherent background–my own Future History. I based the socioeconomic…


Amazon, the iPad, and Why iBooks Might Not Be So Great

Amazon has been proudly showing off their iPad app today and made it clear they’re looking to develop for tablets as a category. Since there’s really only one category of Apple tablet-esque devices, it’s safe to assume devices like the HP Slate, and possibly, hopefully, Android tablets, will also be blessed with a big-screen and finger friendly version of the Kindle. Compare this to the iBooks app, which, if it has any portability at all, will most likely only move between the iPhone and the iPad, and possible on Macs. If you had to tie your data up in a…