Electronic Publications

Free Books: A Sneaky Success, says "At the height of the dot-com bubble, twenty-somethings with goatees were telling us that e-books were the wave of the future. Those e-books they had in mind were like proprietary software: they weren't free (-as-in-anything), they only worked on proprietary hardware, and they came with shrinkwrap licenses and digital rights management. They failed. The successful model that's sneaking under the radar is the copylefted book."

Here\'s an AP Story making the rounds on new digital book readers at the Library of Congress. They Also Have A Site all about their Digital Talking Books (DTB).


Currently, The library serves almost 730,000 readers of books and magazines with cassette tapes that are read to them by about 500,000 bulky plastic players. An improved sound system in the new digital readers will benefit older users who cannot read braille, the system of raised dots that enables the blind to read by touch.

Over three years, the library will convert about 30,000 titles, mostly standard works and best sellers, to the new technology at a cost of about $75 million.

A Story over at The Chronicle of Higher Education says more than half of the audience members get e-books when they see "Blood Relations", a play about Lizzie Borden. During the show, audience members can tap around on the e-books to see digitized historical photos of the Bordens and the crime scene, and to read commentary especially written for this production.

They Also Have A Website.

Gary Deane alerted us to This Globe And Mail Story on eBooks. According to a survey released this summer by two U.S. Web sites, eBookWeb.org and KnowBetter.com, e-books \"have thus far failed to penetrate the mass market.\"

\"But e-books, for them, have never really taken off. Maybe as the technology and the platforms get better, e-books might still gain popularity. But for those people who are worried that the train has left the station, I don\'t think the train has even moved.\"

Here\'s One From CNN on the pros and cons of eBook use in higher ed.

\"I think they will be a reality for students, 10 years from now,\" said McCarty. \"But the ease of use, the convenience and that satisfying feeling you get when you\'re holding a book and it\'s all just right there in front of you -- somehow that feel has to be embedded into these products so that\'s not lost,\" she said.\"

Jen Young points us to This Chronicle.com story on a report on a study conducted at Ball State University.

They say E-book technology needs some improvement before students will be willing to use e-books instead of textbooks. They found that students had various complaints about the performance of the e-book devices. But students who used e-books did just as well on quizzes as those who used printed texts.

Navigating through digital texts was one of the e-book users\' biggest complaints. They found moving from page to page \"tedious.\" They also found it difficult to find specific chapters in texts and to find particular words.

Aaron sent over This Infoworld story on The \'introduction\' of licence agreements for books (...will they self destruct if given to another reader? The print fades?)

\"...we\'ve already lost some of the basic rights we used to enjoy under traditional interpretations of copyright law. Loaning a book to a friend is not yet one of them, but who knows how much longer we\'ll be able to say that. Today we might still reasonably expect that any sane judge would just laugh if someone tried to get him or her to enforce a license such as Omnicare\'s limited-use license agreement.\"

Gary Deane sent along This Look at how eBooks are doing lately.

They say despite a fair bit of hype, and some recent promising steps, e-books have failed to take off. The total number of e-books sold in 2001 was 500,000 and in 2002 more than a million are expected.

By the end of 2005, things should be looking better. E-books should be earning revenues of almost $4 billion U.S.

Wired is running This Story on a vast $75 million project called NOF-Digitize. An ambitious project that will digitize large swaths of Britain\'s social, political and cultural life.

E-books targeted toward the general population aren\'t being all that well received. According to this article, \"Book Expo 2002 was virtually devoid of e-book chatter, and the 2-year-old International eBook Award Foundation folded because of lack of funding and interest.\" Could it just be that E-books, at best, are overrated and lack the intimacy one finds in cuddling up with a genuinely great page turner?
Read More.

Salon Asks, does the San Francisco Public Library\'s plan to lend out e-books portend the death of the publishing industry?


They are engaging in a six-month experiment with a subscription that allows readers to browse, search, borrow, read and return 1,500 electronic books.

Note: DrWeb points out this is 2 years old!

There\'s a nice Piece At The NYTimes on Librarians squaring off with publishers who fear that free remote access costs them book sales.
They say Web sites of more than 7,300 libraries provide patrons 24-hour remote access to the texts of a few hundred to several thousand electronic books, occasionally even in languages like Chinese and Russian.

But of course, locking everything up is the response from the largest publishers. They say the major trade publishers are refusing to cooperate.

\"Lending over their Web sites — I think that is a problem,\" said Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the books division of AOL Time Warner. \"There is an inherent danger that would worry me — you are opening yourself up to being copied wildly without any control.\"

jen writes \"Chronicle.com says

The Virginia center is working with the University of Puerto Rico on a project aimed at creating an electronic database of older Caribbean literature. It is also working on projects with researchers from Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. \"

CBSNews has This Story on the eBook industry, and analysts utter lack of hope for the industry.


Though companies like Adobe and Microsoft that make e-book software are standing firmly behind the business, insisting growth rates are strong and getting stronger.

\"We haven\'t issued forecasts for the industry in two years, because the market\'s going nowhere,\" said David Card, an analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix. \"E-books were a dumb idea. I am very negative on this market.\"

Simon and Schuster who have owned the rights to Hemmingway\'s books for the past 75 years will be making them available for download. Starting in August, 23 novels will be sold for $9.99 each. Details about the format of the eBooks were not given. Read the full story from BBC.

See also: E-Book Revolution Moves Slowly.

Yahoo News has a Picture and Short Release on A new paperback-sized computer screen that folds like a book with a 6.7 inch by 5 inch flat LCD screen that folds along a central hinge and they say is much clearer than existing devices, Samsung sees potential sales of flat panels for electronic books at 24,973 units this year.

From the books.Guardian.co.uk/ebooks
over the top headline: \"Microsoft
deals blow to ebooks.\"

From the International eBook Award Foundation
[iebaf.org] website:

\"NEW YORK, NY, April 17, 2002 - The International
eBook Award Foundation (IeBAF), creator of the Frankfurt eBook Award, announced
today that due to the current business environment, it would discontinue
the annual award and suspend all activities relating to the Foundation.
Therefore, effective April 30, 2002, the Board will resign.\"

The IeBAF\'s \"Children\'s eBook
Award\" was presented April 10, 2002 at Italy\'s \'Bologna Book Fair.\" 
The winners included,
\"My
First Internet Manual\" [google] in Italian.

 Google
Search: \"International Ebook Award Foundation\"

Charles Davis writes \"Could the advent of electronic texts mark the death of books, for
so long the staple fare of university libraries and college
students? This will be one of the key discussions at a major
conference on the future of textbooks at London\'s City University
tomorrow.

More at
The Guardian. \"

This is a good story, covers alot of interesting ground.

\"Getting that economic model right is really perplexing us at the moment,\" Dr Woodward says. \"How do we decide what is fair? Publishers want to preserve their revenue stream, but in a way that is affordable to libraries.\"

The Guardian has a Story that says to forget e-Books. Online publishers believe the biggest challenge to the \"paperback in your pocket\" will come from publishing on demand.


They say bookshops will change over the next five years, as digital technology enhances the way books are manufactured, sold and consumed.

CNet has a Short Story on Software maker Roxio and spoken-word audio provider Audible who announced software that will allow customers to burn Audible tracks on CDs.


The tracks will only run on a few MP3 players from Sonicblue and Digisette, a few models of Pocket PC-based handheld computers, and an add-on for Handspring\'s Visor handhelds.