Archive for the ‘E-books’ Category

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Kindle Software (Free) to Read Books on Your PC Coming Next Month

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

If you’re a Kindle owner and want to have the option to read your Kindle content (books, newspapers, etc.) on your PC start smiling. Kindle software for PC’s is coming next month and will be free to download and use. If you’re a Mac user and want to “Kindle” on your computer, it will be a no go situation.

From the Announcement:

With Kindle for PC, you can read some on your PC, read some on your Kindle, and always pick up right where you left off. Whispersync helped make the Kindle for iPhone application the most popular books app in the Apple App Store.

Access the Kindle for PC Web Site

Source: Amazon.com

Posted in E-books | No Comments »

It’s the End of the Book World as We Know It — And publishers should feel fine.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

It’s the End of the Book World as We Know It — And publishers should feel fine.

Publishers have been battling Amazon (AMZN) over the price of e-books, only to get outflanked by Wal-Mart (WMT) last week on the bread-and-butter best-sellers. In an effort to boost traffic on Wal-Mart.com, the Bentonville, Ark., retailer is offering select hardcovers that are among the most anticipated of the season for $8.99. Who saw that coming?

Not the publishing world. Book people are easily spooked. And their first line of defense is to hyperventilate. That’s what literary agent David Gernert did in the New York Times when he claimed, “[P]ublishing as we know it is over” if readers come to expect hardcover best-sellers for $9 at Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target (TGT) (which matched the offer.) He feared the low price would turn readers off to literary books at $25: “I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best-sellers take the consumer’s attention away from emerging writers.” But instead of fretting over first novels, publishers and agents should latch on to this development as a way to restructure the economics of the industry to everyone’s benefit.

In truth, there are no barriers to success in the book business. Publishing is ruthlessly efficient. Books that excite readers take off; those that don’t disappear fast. There’s no evidence that John Grisham crowds out the great American novel. In fact, it’s quite the reverse. What the industry lacks are products that excite readers. Where publishing is brutally inefficient is the process by which it selects products and allocates resources. And those toxic assets—all the unearned advances—are paid off by the best-selling authors. Stephen King, John Grisham, and the Freakonomics guys cover the cost of failed books.

Much More After a Click
(more…)

Posted in Consumer Issues, E-books, Search News | No Comments »

New From the Internet Archive: Bookserver, An Open System Allowing Users to Search Multiple eBook Catalogs from a Single Interface, Makes Crawling Easier Too!

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Think one search interface allowing users to search multiple ebook catalogs from various providers. At the same time, making it easy for various search engines to crawl content from these and other ebook sources.

Before moving on to press coverage, you might want to take a look at a slide presentation about BookServer technology from Peter Brantley, Director, Bookserver Project at the Internet Archive and Co-Founder of the Open Book Alliance.

Also, you can get a very basic feel for searching with Bookserver technology by heading to homepage and looking for the search box on the page. You’ll only be searching one catalog (The Open Library) but it uses Bookserver’s Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS). Of course, all of the books you find are free to access, read, download, etc.

Now, on to media coverage.

From an Article

The Internet Archive and various like-minded partners have launched an open architecture for selling and lending digital books online, an effort to consolidate the fledgling market for net texts – and give Google a little food for thought.

Dubbed BookServer, the open platform is meant to provide a standard means for booksellers, publishers, libraries, and individual authors to serve texts onto laptops, netbooks, smartphones, game consoles, and specialized ereaders a la the Amazon Kindle. The Archive has already demonstrated an early incarnation of the architecture with the Kindle and Sony’s Reader Digital Book.

See Also: Access the Complete Article

Source: The Register

See Also: Internet Archive’s BookServer could ‘dominate’ Amazon (via News.com)

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are available from a wide group of sources. Effectively, commercial publishers, lending libraries and even individual authors would have a way to index their work and offer easy digital distribution under BookServer, Kahle said.

[Snip]

Kahle said that he’s been thinking about such a project since before the advent of the World Wide Web, but that the technology has never been ready. But that’s changed over the last 20 years, he said. “We’ve now gotten universal access to free (content),” Kahle added. “Now it’s time to get universal access to all knowledge, and not all of this will be free.”

Much More After a Click
(more…)

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, E-books, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Webcast: Cory Doctorow Interviewed about Copyright and Libraries at Internet Librarian International

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Internet Librarian International took place last week in London and one of the keynote speakers was writer, blogger, “copyright activist,” and editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow.

Here’s an 11 minutes webcast where Doctorow chats with Jaap van de Geer about several topics including:

Copyright in the age of the Internet

What publishers are scared of

The future of publishers and libraries

A few quotes from Cory:

+ “Libraries need to get better embracing the wild and woolly nature of the Internet.”
+ “Explain to patrons how to be media literate about Wikipedia.”
+ “Wikipedia has lots of value if you know how to extract that value.”

eBooks

More Quotes from Cory:

+ “eBooks right now are very good for is they are very complementary to print books because they are searchable, because they’re portable, because they are good for reference where a print book is better for a long for reading experience.”
+ “Libraries need to watch out for a means of delivering DRM into their collections.”
+ “One thing I would love to see more libraries doing is having local copies of public domain works and Creative Commons works in their collections that can be freely lent and having that be the core of their eBook collection and having that be the standard by which all commercial eBook offerings are judged.”
+ “Inter-library loan is a wonderful thing.”

The ownership of a book (vs, records and movies)

Author recognition of copyright issues

Librarians

Final Quote from Cory

+ “The reason librarians want to make works available is because they are bonded to the holy goal of universal access to all human knowledge not because they have some little self interest. This is approximately true of most the people who work in publishing too.

Source: CrapHound.com

See Also: Congratulations to Cory for being named by the UTNE Reader as one of “50 Visionaries Who are Changing Our World.”

A figurehead for “copyfighters” everywhere, he’s on a crusade against a corporate monopoly on patent law. Doctorow thinks replication feeds a culture of creativity and might even be programmed into our DNA; it should be encouraged, not criminalized.

The entry is loaded with links to help you get to know (if you don’t already) Cory and and his work.

Posted in E-books, Information Industry, Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Libraries and Librarianship, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

The Book That Contains All Books

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

From a Column by Stephen Marche in the WSJ:

On Monday, the Kindle 2 will become the first e-reader available globally. The only other events as important to the history of the book are the birth of print and the shift from the scroll to bound pages. The e-reader, now widely available, will likely change our thinking and our being as profoundly as the two previous pre-digital manifestations of text.

[Snip]

The introduction of the printing press brought a similarly enormous change to the nature of reading. One of the most interesting figures in that transformation is the great Benedictine scholar Trithemius. He lived in Sponheim in the 15th century and managed to amass a library fully half the size of the Vatican library, an incredible achievement. He was also the author of “In Praise of Scribes,” the foremost defense of scribal practice, in favor of writing things out and against printing them.

[Snip]

But I am immensely excited for the new phase of the book. So far the new technology has been called the “e-reader,” a term obviously picked by engineers, not poets. In literary terms it’s a transbook, by which I mean that it is the book which can contain all books.

[Snip]

We are still in early days, but it is obvious where the transbook is headed: It will eventually provide access to all text that is non-copyright, and to the purchase of every book in or out of “print.” Kindle 2’s boast of being able to hold 1,500 titles will eventually sound as ludicrous as those early ads for floppy disks boasting that they could hold up to 64k of data. We will want everything and we will get it. Possibly there will eventually develop a subscription service, which provides access to all books for a monthly fee. At any rate, a single object will contain the contents of all the world’s libraries. It’s just a matter of when that will happen. And who will profit.

Much More in the Complete Column

Stephen Marche is the pop culture columnist at Esquire magazine.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Posted in Digitization Projects, E-books | No Comments »

Library Use of E-books: 2008-2009 Edition Reviewed in Learned Publishing

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

The PDF file available here is of a book review (really a “report” review) from the October, 2009 issue of Learned Publishing. The report being reviewed, Library Use of E-books: 2008-2009 Edition, was published by Primary Research.

Here are a Few of the Stats that are Included in the Review:

This is an update of a report that was first published last year, when the 2006–7 figures were analysed. It is heavily weighted towards academic libraries, and quite US-centric: 77.03% of the respondents were college or university librarians (as opposed to 22.97% public or special librarians); and78.38% of them worked in the US (as opposed to 21.62%‘non-US’ librarians).

One of the most interesting findings of the report is that librarians with the biggest budgets (of $4m or more) increased their expenditure on e-books much more in 2006–7 (when the average increase was 35%) than in 2007–8 (when the average increase was 14.2%). Even more markedly, librarians with budgets of between $1.5m and $4m increased their expenditure on e-books by an average of 53.3% between 2006 and 2007, but by an average of just 7.43% between 2007 and 2008.

[Snip]

Of the sample featured in the report, half had a NetLibrary contract, 34% used Gale Reference Library, 27% used Ebrary, and17.6% used Safari. Institutions with budgets of over $4m were seven times more likely to subscribe to Safari than others(which is not surprising, given that Safari has a specialist appeal, and libraries with smaller budgets tend to buy only very generalist e-book collections).

The libraries in the sample were relatively loyal to their e-book platform providers. On average, 77% expected to renew current contracts (with83% of academic librarians expecting to do so, and 61% of special/public librarians). 70% of the total spending on e-books in the sample was with aggregators; 24.6% was with individual publishers (the remaining 5.4% is not accounted for).

Much More After the Click
(more…)

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Digital Literature Taking Books From Dead Trees to Electronic Screens

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From the Article:

Yet for some, using the latest technology is not always the ideal way to read. Matt Fedel, an undergraduate student at Texas A&M, is skeptical of reading the digital way.

“I think people love the tangibility of turning the page instead of just scrolling through,” Fedel said.

Others, like SMU senior Kelly Pearson, miss the experience that buying books was before she bought her eReader.

“I miss the way they smell,” Pearson said. “Just walking into a bookstore and finding a book, I really enjoy that.”

These intangible benefits are what retailers such as Half-Priced Books are relying on to keep their business model afloat.

“People are always going to want the feel of a book, the smell of a book, the experience that comes with reading an actual book in front of you,” said Megan Kuntz, public relations specialist for Half-Priced Books.

[Snip]

The digitization of printed books also has potential implications for libraries. At SMU, for instance, the university libraries began offering digital copies of books online more than five years ago, through a program called Net Library. This shift has freed up shelf space and allows students to access research materials from anywhere, 24/7.

Melanie Golder, a research librarian at SMU’s Fondren Library Center, believes that electronic texts are here to stay.

“In the library world, we’re trying to meet students where they are,” Golder said. “And today that’s on their computers.”

Source: Pegasus News (Dallas, TX)

Posted in E-books, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Stats and Facts About the Online Book Browser

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

From the Article:

LibreDigital, a digital publishing company that also works with publishers, authors, retailers and social networking sites to offer sample book chapters online, on Wednesday released some data on how readers browsed such content over the past 18 months.

One big takeaway: previews increase sales.

“We know that allowing readers to preview book chapters before buying has a positive impact on both print and e-book sales,” LibreDigital CEO Russell Reeder said in a statement. “In the case of one well-known book publisher, one in three people who browsed decided to purchase the book online. As a result, leading publishers are increasing their use of online previews when planning promotional campaigns for both new and existing book titles.”

Source: InternetNews.com

This news release from LibreDigital offers some more info:

+ Women are spending nearly 70 percent more time browsing books online than men do

+ The most popular genre of books browsed online is romance novels, followed by books for tweens/teens and business books. The peak time for browsing romance titles is 11pm – 1am, in contrast to 4pm – 11pm for tween/teen books and 9am – 5pm for business books

+ An average reader spends more than 15 minutes browsing a book. They also preview an average of 46 pages of each book they browse

+ Adults are more likely to share links to content via email, while younger readers prefer to share within social networks like Facebook and MySpace

Posted in E-books, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Coming in 2010: Google To Launch a Book Downloading Service for Publishers

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

From the AP

Service called Google Editions

Service will be browser based

Price per book set by publishers

Starting with 400,000 to 600,000 titles

From Reuters:

Launch will be in first half of 2010

Readers will be able to buy e-books either from Google directly or from other online stores such as Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com. Google will host the e-books and make them searchable.

We’re not focused on a dedicated e-reader [like the KIndle, Sony Reader or the soon to be announced device from Barnes & Noble} or device of any kind," Tom Turvey, Google's director of strategic partnerships, told journalists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Google Editions will allow Google to make money for the first time out of one of its book ventures -- which also include a controversial project to scan and index tens of millions of books through partnerships with libraries.

Turvey said Google would give publishers 63 percent of revenues and keep 37 percent for itself where it sold e-books directly to consumers. In cases where e-books were bought through other online retailers, publishers would get 45 percent and most of the remaining 55 percent would go to the retailer, with a small share for Google, he said.

From the BookSeller

Google is poised to launch its "buy anywhere, read anywhere" digital books programme Google Editions simultaneously in the US, UK and Europe...

...once bought, the e-book would exist in a "cloud library", which could be accessed from potentially any device, including laptops, "smart phones" or e-readers. "As long as you can get onto the library, you can access it,"

Once a book has been accessed on a given device, a cached version will exist, making it possible for readers to access the book offline.

Google Editions has three business models: to allow the consumer to buy the e-book via Google Books; to buy it from a partner retailer; or from a publisher's own website...

[Amanda] Edmonds, [Google's director of strategic partnerships], said it was “definitely” Google’s intention to partner with device manufacturers, but declined to give names. She added she “doubted” Kindle would be on board.

Google is not new to content sales. In January, 2006 Google launched a video store on the Google Video site with fee-based content from a number of producers. The video store remained online until August, 2007. This LA Times story has more including how Google wanted to focus its energies on YouTube which they acquired in October, 2006.

Hat Tip: Library Stuff

Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

NY Times “Room for Debate”: Does the Brain Like eBooks?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Access Does the Brain Like eBooks

The New York Times asked five experts to share their views on the brain, reading, and eBooks.

From the Introduction:

Writing and reading — from newspapers to novels, academic reports to gossip magazines — are migrating ever faster to digital screens, like laptops, Kindles and cellphones. Traditional book publishers are putting out “vooks,” which place videos in electronic text that can be read online or on an iPhone. Others are republishing old books in electronic form. And libraries, responding to demand, are offering more e-books for download.

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

This is a lengthy article so we’ve selected a very small portion to include in this post. The article is absolutely worth spending some time on.

Much More After You Click Below
(more…)

Posted in E-books, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

eBooks and eAudiobooks Becoming More Popular With the Public

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

This New York Times article focuses on how patrons are using eBooks and eAudiobooks more and more these days.

OverDrive, Google, Scholastic BookFlix and NetLibrary are mentioned in the article but no mentions of other sources (both free and fee-based) like Project Gutenberg, The Internet Archive, or ebrary.***

From the Article:

About 5,400 public libraries now offer e-books, as well as digitally downloadable audio books. The collections are still tiny compared with print troves. The New York Public Library, for example, has about 18,300 e-book titles, compared with 860,500 in circulating print titles, and purchases of digital books represent less than 1 percent of the library’s overall acquisition budget.

But circulation is expanding quickly. The number of checkouts has grown to more than 1 million so far this year from 607,275 in all of 2007, according to OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries. NetLibrary, another provider of e-books to about 5,000 public libraries and a division of OCLC, a nonprofit library service organization, has seen circulation of e-books and digital audio books rise 21 percent over the past year.
[Snip]
Academic publishers have been more willing to experiment with subscription models, inviting libraries to pay an annual fee for unlimited access to certain books. Scholastic Inc., the children’s book publisher, also offers library subscriptions to BookFlix, a collection of picture books that children can read online.

Source: New York Times
Hat Tip: LS

*** Even if you’re library doesn’t subscribe to the ebrary service, you can still have access to over 20,000 titles online (a subset of the full ebrary database). Head to Shop.ebrary.com. Once your on the page you can quickly register for the ebrary Discover. It’s free. However, you’ll need a credit card and must put on a small amount of money, let’s say $5.00, toward your ebrary account. Once completed, you’ll have complete full text searchable access to 20,000 titles (multiple academic and general interest subject areas). Why did you need to place the money on the credit card? The only fee with ebrary Discover is to print or copy a page. If you do, the cost is deducted from the $5.00. Most pages cost about $.25 to copy or print. You can always put more money on your credit card if you want to copy/print more content. Pretty cool, isn’t it!

See Also: More Publishers Now Partnering with NetLibrary, eBook and eAudiobook Collections Continue to Grow

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The Mobile Researcher: McGraw-Hill Professional Business Books Become iPhone Ready, Over 600 Titles Will Be Available by End of ‘09

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

From the Announcement:

McGraw-Hill Professional, the world’s preeminent business publisher of print and electronic content, is partnering with ScrollMotion, a leading developer of original iPhone applications, to offer e-books as applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. ScrollMotion is the creator of the Iceberg Reader, an e-Book reader for the iPhone, which provides interactive functionality around content, including search functions, email sharing, multimedia, and more.

The first McGraw-Hill titles are now available on the iTunes Apps Store. This launch list of acclaimed e-Books covers must-have information for all aspects of business, including career development, management, innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, finance, investing, and more, designed to help consumers make better informed business and financial decisions. The first group of titles includes two recent best-sellers, How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O’Neil and Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty by Ram Charan.

More than 600 fully interactive McGraw-Hill titles will be added to this collection throughout the rest of 2009. E-books will be added on a rolling basis as new titles publish, and will cover other areas, including Medical, Engineering, Computing, Education, and more.

Source: McGraw-Hill (via PR Newswire)

Posted in E-books, Print Publications, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

First Photos of Barnes & Noble eBook Reader Appear

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

This Gizmomdo post contains several images of the soon to be released Kindle and Sony rival. Aside from the images what else do we learn?

+ The reader be officially announced/released next Tuesday

+ It will have a black and white e-ink screen (like a Kindle) and a multitouch display (like an iPhone).

+ According to Gizmodo, the device will have “some sort of access” to Google Books (likely out-of-print? and/or public domain? titles).

Note: Clicking on each photo provides more information about the B&N Reader. Worth clicking. Also, the article makes no mention as to the price and what format(s) the reader will be able to access.

Source: Gizmodo

Posted in E-books | No Comments »

Kindles Come to the University of Wisconsin

Monday, October 12th, 2009

From the Article:

Ken Frazier, the director of libraries at the University of Wisconsin, recently did something that might seem odd in this era of tight school budgets.

He spent $10,000 in university funds to buy 20 Kindles from Amazon.com. He’s testing the electronic readers as a textbook replacement in a pair of undergraduate and graduate history seminars.

Students who received Kindles “immediately saw the convenience of packing all these books onto one device,” Frazier said. “They’re thrilled to be part of this experiment.”

See Also: ResourceShelf Recently Posted About How a “Kindle in the Classroom” Trial is Going at Princeton University

Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

More Publishers Now Partnering with NetLibrary, eBook and eAudiobook Collections Continue to Grow

Friday, October 9th, 2009

News from NetLibrary (it’s a division of OCLC) today that:

1) The collection of eBooks is now passed 200,000 titles (We first posted about this in August)

2) The eAudiobook Collection has passed 13,000 titles

3) NetLibrary has added 35 more publishers to their roster of publishers that supply content to the eBook and eAudiobook collections.

To see a list of new publishers, see the bottom of this news release. For a complete list of NetLibrary’s more than 550 “publishing partners,” visit this page.

Source: OCLC

Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

State Initiatives Regarding Electronic or Open-Source Textbooks

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

State Initiatives Regarding Electronic or Open-Source Textbooks (PDF; 560 KB)

A growing number of states are using legislation as a means of enabling the use of electronic or open-source textbooks. This ECS StateNote examines the differences between e-textbooks and open-source textbooks and takes a look at related action in several states.

See also: Exemplary State Online Resources for Students, Career Explorers and Adult Learners (PDF; 60 KB)

Source: Education Commission of the States

Posted in Access to Information, E-books, Education, Information Policy, Search News | No Comments »

Why Big Books Still Matter

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Why Big Books Still Matter

Dan Gross, my colleague at Newsweek and Slate, pinged me the other morning after he had read the reports that Sarah Palin’s new book—suddenly announced for next month—would not be available as an e-book. Gross, a pioneer in e-book publishing long before Tina Brown, had noticed that Palin’s publisher was following Ted Kennedy’s by holding off on the e-book format. Ever alive to a budding trend, Gross figured two important instances presaged something more than a coincidence. Could I, Dan wanted to know, provide a third case, and was this preference on the part of publishers for withholding the e-book on the biggest titles an economic issue? (Gross’ column on this point can be found here.)

I replied that I did have a third example that proved the rule—Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol—but the principle it revealed was less about the digital format and more about the role physical books play in the publishing industry.

Dan Brown’s publisher had been happy to supply the title in digital form. That allowed The Lost Symbol to sell more digital copies on the first day at Amazon than physical copies. This is because the thing of great value on the first day of sales was actually reading the book. (Merely owning it was not enough.) That’s something you can do whether you’ve read the book on paper or your Kindle.

With a big personality book, however, having read the book is far less important than owning it. These books are talismans, powerful objects that carry the aura of the person they’re associated with. That aura doesn’t attach to an e-book. You need something more substantial, at least something physical. When you buy a Kindle edition of a book, no one knows you’ve got it, no one can see you read it across an airplane aisle, and no one can admire it on your coffee table.

Source: The Big Money (Slate)

Posted in Consumer Issues, E-books, Search News | No Comments »

E-Books: Amazon.com Announces New “Global” Kindle; Company Also Lowers Price of “U.S. Only” Kindle

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

From the Story:

The company announced on Tuesday evening that it would soon begin selling a new version of the Kindle that can wirelessly download books both in the United States as well as in more than 100 other countries.

The new Kindle is physically identical to Amazon’s current Kindle…The main difference: it will use the wireless network’s of AT&T and its international roaming partners, instead of Amazon’s existing wireless partner for the Kindle, Sprint. Sprint’s network is incompatible with most mobile networks outside of North America.

The new Kindle will cost $279/US and will start shipping on October, 19th. The “U.S. only” Kindle is also in the news as its price is being lowered by $40 to $259.

Mr. Bezos declined to offer specific information about Kindle sales. But he said Kindle titles were now 48 percent of total book sales in instances where Amazon sold both a digital and physical copy of a book. That was up from 35 percent last May, an increase Mr. Bezos called “astonishing.”

The NY Times article also points out some e-book reader sales predictions from Forrester that were reported yesterday by Forbes.

According to a report from tech analysis firm Forrester Research published Tuesday, 1.2 million digital readers will be sold in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, bringing the total sales estimate for 2009 to around 3 million devices, fully a million more than Forrester’s previous projection. And in 2010, Forrester expects sales to double again to 6 million.

What about content for the “Global” Kindle?

From Amazon.com News Release (#1)

Over 1,000 different rights-holders now have books available in the Kindle Store, including leading publishers Atlantic Books, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Penguin, Profile Books, Quercus, Simon & Schuster and Wiley.

About 200,000 English-language titles will be available internationally. The Times points out that catalogs of available titles, “will be tailored to the country they purchased the device in.” In the U.S., about 350,000 books are currently available for the Kindle.
(more…)

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NY Times: In E-Books, It’s an Army vs. Google

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

From the NY Times Article:

A broad array of authors, academics, librarians and public interest groups are fighting the company’s plan to create a huge digital library and bookstore. Their complaints reached the ears of regulators at the Justice Department, which last month helped derail the plan by asking a court to reject the class-action settlement that spawned it.

[Snip]

Some analysts say the broad-based opposition to Google’s lofty plans was unprecedented and a harbinger of the intense scrutiny the company’s ambitious agenda will face.

“This was the first issue through which Google’s power became clearly articulated to the public,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia. “All sorts of people — writers, researchers, librarians, academics and readers — really feel they have a stake in the world of books.”

[Snip]

“The benefits far outweigh any of these criticisms that are being made, many of which are quite theoretical,” Mr. [David] Drummond [Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, Google] said. “We have a good process now for taking into account some of the objections.” He added: “The fact that there are some critics doesn’t mean you should be paralyzed and not do something that provides value.”

Much More in the Full Text of the Article

Source: New York Times

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Opinion: Why We Need $4.00 Books

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

From the Article by Mark Coker:

Here in the U.S., most consumers already think twice before shelling out $7.50, $15.00 or $30.00 for a good read. If a book at the current prices represents a big purchase for citizens of the world’s most affluent economy, imagine the cost burden for the vast majority of the world’s literate people.

The growth in worldwide literacy has created a massive affordability gap between those who want books, and those who can afford them. Therein lies both the threat and the opportunity facing publishers.

[Snip]

The publishing industry has successfully responded to the price issue in the past by releasing lower cost formats such as the mid-sized trade paperback and the small purse-sized mass market paperback. Each lower cost format dropped the price 30-50 percent.

By offering customers a cheaper, smaller and less expensive format, publishers expanded the available market for their books and enabled a larger number of readers to gain access to affordable reads.

[Snip]

Many publishers view ebooks with a skeptical eye. After all, won’t cheap ebooks cannibalize expensive print books?

This is the wrong way to examine the situation. Lower cost ebooks help publishers retain customers who might otherwise abandon books altogether in favor of lower cost alternative media options.

Ebooks also hold the promise to expand the worldwide market for books. Hundreds of millions of new middle class and literate consumers have come online outside the US, especially in developing countries.

[Snip]
(more…)

Posted in E-books, Print Publications | No Comments »

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