eBook Piracy and DRM Headaches

From Robert McGarvey writing on Internet Evolution:

... On Wednesday last week, at the huge Book Expo America (BEA) tradeshow in New York, RR Bowker vice president Kelly Gallagher previewed the latest round of comprehensive e-book data arising from the Book Industry Study Group's ongoing research into consumer e-book behavior.

The data is fascinating: E-book purchasing definitely ticked up hugely in the first quarter of 2010 (it now represents 5 percent of book sales dollars, a leap from the 1.5 percent registered in 2009). Even more telling is that a surprising 49 percent of book buyers "strongly" or "exclusively" prefer e-books, per BISG research. An unavoidable conclusion is that e-books are on the fast track to becoming the preferred medium.

But when asked by a reporter if the study had generated insights into piracy of e-books, Gallagher indicated that nothing meaningful had surfaced -- which is another way of saying publishers just don't want to look under that particular rock.

Another reality: The DRM (digital rights management) slapped on e-books does not work. "DRM has never worked, pirates have plenty of tools to get around it," wrote Ernesto in an email.

What DRM does do, incidentally, is annoy consumers, per the BISG study. More than one third of the hundreds polled said DRM upsets them, noted Gallagher, and that is up from 28 percent in polling last year. Only 30 percent said DRM does not bother them. Gallagher summed up the findings: "Consumers are increasingly frustrated with the DRM they encounter with e-books."

Is the frustration with DRM enough to prod consumers to pirate e-books? That's the other question of the moment, and when piracy expert Brian O'Leary, a principal at Magellan Media Partners, was asked about this at BEA, he said that as long as legal e-books are convenient to purchase at prices consumers deem fair, he does not envision a rampage of piracy. ...

More about the eBook trends and above research as discussed at BookExpo can by found in this report from Publishers Weekly's Jim Milliot.

Apple Opens iBookstore to Self-Published Authors

Details from ars technica:

To take advantage of the service, you must first have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for each work you wish to make available for sale. Obtaining an ISBN isn’t as difficult a process you might think; it can take as little as two weeks. Second, you must have a copy of the work in ePUB format. There are a variety of different ways to convert text into ePUB format, many of which are free (a list can be found on the LexCycle website). You must also have a valid iTunes Store account as well as a US tax ID.

The last requirement is that you, as the author, must have access to a modern Mac. In order to participate, you must encode your eBook with Apple’s software, which needs an Intel Mac running at least OS X 10.5. The encoding process most likely adds Apple’s very own brew of DRM to the book, ensuring that your writings won't be distributed outside of the iPhone or iPad.

MacLife also has something.

eBook Portability Across Platforms and the Proprietary Software/DRM Conundrum

From The Wall Street Journal:

... commercial e-books from the leading online stores come with restrictions that complicate your ability to move your collection from one device to the next. It's as if old-fashioned books were designed to fit on one particular style of bookshelves. What happens when you remodel?

Much of this problem stems from the publishing industry, which has demanded that e-bookstores embed digital rights management software in most best sellers to keep them from being stolen and swapped, free, online. The music labels once asked the same from digital-music retailers, but eventually agreed to open up.

The e-bookstores share in the blame. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Sony Corp. all want you to buy their own gadgets and to continue buying e-books from their stores. For example, purchases from Apple's new iBooks store can be read only on Apple's own iPad (and soon the iPhone). Even though Apple said it would support an industry standard format called ePub for iBooks, in practice your iBooks purchases remain locked on Apple's virtual bookshelf. (So I hope iBooks customers like Apple's light-brown wood paneling.)

Many of the biggest e-book providers fall short of putting readers fully in charge of their own digital-book collections, but they have begun to unveil their own solutions for moving your e-books around.

Amazon, which jump-started the shift to e-books with its Kindle, lets customers read its e-books through apps on at least six kinds of devices. Amazon custom-built the free apps for gadgets that include the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and (later this summer) devices running Google's Android software. If a device has an Internet connection, the apps automatically load Amazon e-book purchases from the company's website, saving you the fuss of keeping track of files and transferring them between gadgets with cables. In many ways, this is more convenient than the way we manage our digital-music collections by manually adding and deleting files from iPods through a computer.

Amazon's apps are slick and work on many of the most popular devices today, but Amazon buyers should know that they're likely stuck using the retailer's software forever. While Amazon says it plans to keep making apps for more devices, the list of potential devices for reading grows longer every day. Moreover, Amazon sells its e-books in a proprietary format, so there's no way to open those files on another device without an Amazon app or without resorting to cumbersome (and potentially illegal) third-party conversion software.

Barnes & Noble, too, adopted an Internet-connected app approach, providing a seamless way to shift its e-books between the Nook, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPhone, WindowsMobile for the HTC HD2 and soon iPad. Barnes & Noble has been integrating its e-bookstore into niche e-reading devices, like those by Plastic Logic, Irex and Pandigital. It also, uniquely, offers you the chance to "loan" some e-book purchases to a friend for 14 days. But its bookstore requires a somewhat annoying step: Each time you download a book to a new device, you must enter your name and the credit-card number that was used to buy the book in order to unfasten the digital lock on the book.

Beyond the apps, Sony, Barnes & Noble and Apple and a few smaller e-bookstores all promised they'd put their weight behind the industry standard format ePub, which is the e-book version of music's Mp3 and can be read by almost every reading device (except the Kindle). That sounds great in theory, but in practice, the ePub files either can't be transferred or doing so is cumbersome. ...

Slimmer (than iPad) Kindle Due this Summer, Touch/Color in Development

From the NY Times Bits Blog's Nick Bilton:

Amazon could release a new slimmer Kindle in August, Bloomberg News reports, citing “two people familiar with its plans.”

Bloomberg reports that the new Kindle would be thinner than existing models and although the next model would still offer a black and white screen, it would have a sharper and more responsive display.

The Kindle 2 is 0.36 inches thick. The Apple iPad, a rival device, is half an inch thick.

Although Bloomberg said the next Kindle “won’t include a touch screen or color,” a person I’ve spoken with who is familiar with Amazon’s plans but is not authorized to speak publicly said Lab 126, the division of Amazon responsible for the Kindle, is hard at work on multi-touch prototypes for a next-generation e-reader....

Acer LumiRead eReader Due Third Quarter

From SlashGear:

Packing a 6-inch monochrome E Ink display and a Kindle-style QWERTY keyboard, the LumiRead has WiFi – and 3G in a future model – together with an ISBN scanner that can be used to keep a wish-list of titles for future purchase.

There’s also 2GB of onboard storage – good, Acer say, for around 1,500 ebook titles – together with a microSD card slot. It’s also DLNA compliant, which means you can use it to stream music from Acer’s clear.fi system or a third-party streaming system.

As for content, Acer has apparently inked deals with Barnes & Noble in the US, Libri.de in Germany and Founder in China. You can also go online with the built-in browser, and save a local version of pages for reading later when you’ve no connection. No word on pricing, but the Acer LumiRead is apparently due to arrive in Q3 2010.

Note: The two current prototypes, monochrome e-Ink and color LCD, are only a few millimeters thick. The firm has said nothing about pricing. Why they are bothering with a WiFi based model and not jumping directly to 3G in the first iteration is beyond me. Of course, given the Beijing connection, all books will be heavily censored. ;-)

XO-3 Prototype Tablet Coming from OLPC in 2010

Per Nick Barber via PC World:

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the organization is accelerating its development of the XO-3 tablet computer and will have a working prototype by December 2010, two years ahead of projections. Negroponte said the final product would cost US$75.

"At CES [2011] we will show a tablet that can be and will be used for children probably in the developed world," Negroponte said Tuesday during an interview at the MIT Media Lab, the lab he founded. "It will allow us to start testing many of the things that combine a laptop, an iPad and a Kindle."...

A bit more from Ubergizmo.

New B/N Reader for iPad

From CNET's David Camoy, a first-reaction:

... We'll have more thoughts on the new app once we play around with it for a few days, but our intitial impression is that it matches up well against Amazon's Kindle for iPad app and Apple's own iBooks app and even has a few potentially nice extras to help differentiate it. We liked the List view (it's more robust looking than the Kindle apps List view) and the customization options for the page layout give you something to tinker with, though it took us a moment to figure out that the "themes" setting, which includes some preset page designs (you can save your own themes as well), was accessible through a small link at the top of the font settings menu.

The one question we had was what periodicals would actually be available. The one periodical we had in our demo account was the Wall Street Journal, and it wouldn't load on the iPad. All our books loaded fine. (We'll give you more details as we get them). ...

Elsewhere, at Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan provides a very good, balanced analysis of the app's benefits and shortcomings. Matt's likes: a multidevice platform providing access to one's B/N library across the range of computers as well as the Nook, iPad and the new iPhone and forthcoming Android apps ... of course, lots more books to choose from than what you'll find among Apple's iBooks ... B/N's lending feature remains intact, though a bit hard to negotiate ergonomically ... more customizable than the Kindle iPad app ... and a stronger search tool than Kindle's app. Matt's dislikes: Ugly screen, a book-buying process that shoots you out of the browser, less great syncing and library management tools than the Kindle app, no free reading of eBooks within B/N stores as with the Nook, no interoperable DRM solution (so good luck sideloading previously purchased books to other devices). No can do. At least not in the current iteration, although B/N says it is working on this. Matt's final analysis (italics mine):

Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble's endgoal isn't actually to sell you a slab of plastic and silicon. It's to sell you an ecosystem, to glue you to their platform. That's why you can read their books on iPads, nooks, computers, BlackBerrys, whatever. They don't care about the thing you're reading on, so long as they're selling what you're reading.

Here's the thing, if you're actually trying to decide which ebook ecosystem to buy into, if you haven't already: You should go with the ebook ecosystem that you think will last, since all of your books that aren't free are going to be tied up by DRM, and you don't want to wind up like the suckers who bought music files from Walmart when they shut down their store. Obviously, if you've already bought a nook or Kindle, you've made your decision. )

Barnes & Noble's app is, for many reasons, the best right now. They're using the more universal ePub standard. But do you have any doubt Amazon's going to improve their iPad app? Amazon also owns 80 percent of the ebook market. Their ecosystem works better on a broader level, though you are very much locked to it, in part because of their proprietary file format.

Bezos: No Major Changes for Kindle Anytime Soon

From CNET:

... On Tuesday at Amazon's annual shareholder meeting in Seattle, Bezos talked a bit about what to expect and what not to expect from the company's Kindle e-reader in the coming months.

First, he said the Kindle will continue to be a device intended for "serious readers," not a multipurpose device like Apple's iPad, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"There are always ways to do the job better if you are willing to focus in on one arena," he said. But he admitted that "90 percent of households are not serious reading households."

Second, Bezos said that there will be no color Kindle for a while....

eBook Debate @ BookExpo

Farrar, Straus & Giroux president Jonathan Galassi and Authors Guild president Scott Turow just don't get it. The paradigm shift in book publishing is not something that can be "managed," because it is that most unstoppable and uncontrollable of things: a convergence of technology and markets. See the Publishers Weekly coverage of today's debate.

B&N Brick & Mortar Refits to Cope with eBook Reality

Anticipating what the incoming eBook tsunami will do to in-store sales of bound books over the next few years, Barnes & Noble has begun to retool and restock its stores with a diversity of non-book products. Details in The Wall Street Journal.

Kobo Complaint: Bluetooth Flaw

From SlashGear:

Kobo’s $150 eReader isn’t expected to arrive at Borders in the US until June 17th, so hopefully that will give the manufacturer a little time to finesse the firmware. According to one thread over at MobileRead, the Kobo’s much-touted Bluetooth connectivity – allowing for short-range, cable-free transfers of ebooks to the device – has a significant flaw in that it won’t update its books list after wireless use. Ironically, the only way at present to force an update is to plug in a USB cable and unplug it. ...

Pandigital "Novel" eReader

From Twice:

[Pandigital] said it has reached a deal with national book retailer Barnes & Noble to supply e-books and other electronically published content for a full-color, multimedia e-reader called the Pandigital Novel, model PRD07T10WWH7. It is set to ship in June at a $199 suggested retail, through retailers including Kohl's; Bed, Bath & Beyond; Macy's; and other leading retail accounts, the company said. Panadigital expects to reach 33,000 storefronts with the product by the fall.

The Novel shares many of the characteristics of Apple's iPad, which recently launched to great acclaim, including a full-color touchscreen LCD (800 by 600 resolution), the ability to use multiple apps for a variety of applications, and such multimedia capabilities as playing digital photos, music and some video content (at launch the device will not support Flash-based video).

Unlike the Apple product, however, the first iteration of the Novel features a smaller 7-inch screen and runs on Google's Android software platform, which will run some of that system's non-cellphone-specific apps.

Recognizing that access to content was paramount to a successful launch, the company reached an agreement with the Barnes & Noble eBook Store to provide purchasers access to e-book content. The Novel will support a variety of e-book file formats, including EPUB, HTML and PDF. A majority of the titles from Barnes & Noble are expected to be offered in EPUB.

The Novel includes Wi-Fi connectivity to access content online directly through the device. ...

Konrath's Amazon Encore Deal

Thanks to Rich Kelley for flagging Mike Shatzkin's important take on the new Konrath/Amazon deal for Konrath's forthcoming novel Shaken.

Amazon will publish the Kindle edition at $2.99 in October and release a paperback at $14.95 next February ... this is a significant jolt to conventional publishing economics. Sales of Konrath’s $2.99 ebook will deliver him about $2.10 a copy (Konrath says $2.04; not sure where the other six cents is going…), as much or more as he would make on a $14.95 paperback from a trade publisher, and significantly more than he’d make on a $9.99 ebook distributed under 'Agency' terms and current major publisher royalty conventions. And, however one feels about the degree to which pricing is a barrier to ebook sales, one must assume that the $2.99 price will result in a lot more ebook sales than a $9.99 price would. Many times the sales!

eBooks @ BookExpo

Signs of the times. As struggling booksellers and traditional publishers gather at BookExpo, they'll be greeted with seminars about the technology that's killing them. Panels are to include "Welcome to the eBook Revolution" and "EPUB Boot Camp: Learn How to Produce eBooks in the Industry Standard." Hillel Italie takes note of these and other matters, as BookExpo itself shrinks before our very eyes.

Kindle for Android

Sounds like the new app works nicely. This comes from Phandroid: "Androinica got hands-on with the app at Google I/O, and its just about what we expected. And that’s nothing bad at all, as the Kindle app looks like it will make reading on your Android device straightforward and intuitive. ... "

Traditional Publishers' Profit Model vs. eBook $ Realities

Italics are mine. This from the Wharton Business School:

The book may have a bright future in the digital age. But the road from here to there is badly lit and full of potholes in the view of publishing industry experts speaking at Wharton's Future of Publishing Conference held recently in New York.

According to Alberto Vitale, a former Random House executive whose donations helped found The Wharton Lab for Innovation in Publishing, "Digital will complement and enhance traditional publishing. In a short time, it will make the economics of publishing a lot more attractive and compelling." But getting to that point may require a remaking of the book publishing business as it stands today. Noted Judith Curr, publisher of Simon & Shuster's Atria Books line: "Every part of the publishing function has to be reexamined." She warned that publishers may have to take on unaccustomed roles. "We must be aggregators of information, entertainers, agents and managers. At the end of the day, money has to change hands."

Traditional publishers are trying various experiments, but they are deeply concerned about protecting their existing revenues and author relationships.. "We try to experiment aggressively, but it's hard to ignore the fact that 95% of the revenue is print," said David Steinberger, president and publisher of Perseus Books. "Start-ups aren't burdened by having to protect that legacy revenue ..."

Jane Friedman's Open Road Continues to Thrive

From Examiner.com:

As former ambassador Mitchell Reiss is set to begin his new position as president of Washington College, he also announced that he is writing a book, Negotiating With Evil, on the ins and outs of negotiating--or not--with terrorists. As someone knowledgable about the subject, the real surprise is not that he is writing the book--but that he chose to go straight to ebook format with the publication.

Reiss will be publishing his book through Open Road Integrated Media, founded by former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman and film producer Jeffrey Sharp.

Reiss is not the only author to choose ebook format over traditional publishing methods. He's joined by the likes of rize-winning author John Edgar Wideman and crime novlist J. A. Konrath--both of whom enjoy very strong sales through lulu.com and Amazon's AmazonEncore.

Open Road has been having success with the novels of late author William Styron, who wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie's Choice, and others. Those titles were released on May 4th and have been ranking high for Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. ...

Humor: Is Print Dead?

J.A. Konrath hosts a debate. Damned clever.

Sesame Street Subscription Model for Kiddie eBooks

From Publishers Weekly:

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces Sesame Street, and e-content delivery provider Impelsys have launched a new online Sesame Street eBookstore. Readers can subscribe with Impelsys to get unlimited access to a library of more than 100 Sesame Street eBooks for an annual fee of $39.99, although the company is offering an introductory price of $24.99 through July 4. ...

DNAML Announces DNL 2, the Operating System and Device Agnostic eBook Reader

From PR Web:

DNAML Pty Ltd (‘DNAML’) today announced that it has commenced testing of its new DNL 2 eBook format, which is the next generation of its multi-media friendly DNL eBook format.

DNL 2 is designed to be operating system agnostic and work across multiple devices.

“Developing the DNL eBook format to work on multiple operating systems enables the end user to read their eBook on their Slate or iPad device, mobile phone as well as PC’s, laptops, tablet PCs and netbooks with a single purchase” said Adam Schmidt, Managing Director and Founder of DNAML.

In today’s market, device manufacturers are controlling which eBook formats can be read on their devices. This significantly limits the potential proliferation and penetration of eBooks and does not provide a great consumer experience. As a result, the eBook market is becoming oligopolistic and fragmented with multiple proprietary systems, which is not good for publishers or consumers.

DNAML supports openness and a free digital market economy. The new DNL 2 eBook format is operating system and device agnostic, so consumers will be able to freely read DNL 2 eBooks across whatever devices they choose. The DNL 2 format will be open to all distributors, publishers and authors.

DNL 2 is based on the industry standard ePub format and will enable eBooks to be resized where text will be automatically reflowed to suit the screen size of the device, the orientation of the screen, and the font size selected for viewing.

“We see DNL 2 as the security blanket for the publishing industry and consumers” said Schmidt. Consumers will have peace of mind knowing that they have a control centre which stores the purchased eBook, and makes sure it is always available to be retrieved if a device is lost, broken, or replaced.

Publishers will have the option to use the proven ‘Bullet Proof’ DNL DRM eBook security system, which is backed up with a full back office administration system. Most importantly, DNL 2 provides absolute transparency all around. The publisher can see essential data such as sales results, is able to adjust prices and territorial restrictions and much more, all in real time. ...

DNL 2 will support the following Operating Systems

iPhone OS: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch
Android: Devices running Android 1.5+, Android phones, Android tablets
Windows Phone 7: Windows Phone 7 phones
Windows: Windows 98 to Windows 7 on Desktops, Laptops and Tablets
Mac OSX: Mac OSX 10.4 and above, Desktops and Laptops
Linux: Desktops and Laptops
Symbian OS: Mobile phones running Symbian OS
Blackberry OS: Mobile phones running Blackberry OS

Google Editions re: Out-of-Print Proprietary Content

Forget the dead bookstore lead in this article. That's old news. The more important prose relates to Google Editions and the project's plans/hopes for "out of print" proprietary content: "In the beginning, though, it appears that that the only books Google might only be able to sell are those in the public domain. They are still involved in a long-running court battle, trying to get approval to move forward with their plans for Google Books, which would display books that are copyrighted but out-of-print along with with books that have eetered the public domain. Google’s plans had been challenged by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers. While there was a settlement, it has not been approved as the judge considers objections including some from the Department of Justice, which has concerns over several issues including anti-trust. And even if they get approval, there does seem to be at least one more hurdle — last month several groups representing visual artists announced plans to challenge Google’s plans. Another issue is that it’s being reported that Google does not yet have deals in place with publishers."

My view: Rights for "out of print" proprietary content routinely, per most trade contracts, revert to authors or the heirs. I believe that Google Editions should be required to negotiate rights (cutting individual deals) with authors or their heirs for any works that remain under copyright. Intellectual property continues to be property for the life of copyright. As an author myself, I certainly haven't endowed either the Authors Guild or the AAP with the auathority to allocate/negotiate e-rights in those works of mine for which I personally control e-rights. And as a publisher, I see no problem with doing the right thing by authors.

Samsung SNE-60 for UK

From UberGizmo: "Considering that Apple’s iPad is on its way to the UK, Samsung probably didn’t pick a very good time to ship its SNE-60 eBook reader to folks in the UK, but who are we to judge, right? While Apple's iPad is not a dedicated eBook reader, it can still function as that, leaving the SNE-60 to be an alternative eBook reader for you if you're shopping for one currently. Packing a 6-inch 600 x 800 greyscale e-ink display, it measures in at 171 x 120 x 16mm and weighs in at 315g. Wi-Fi is built-in, but sadly there isn’t any 3G. The built-in memory should be good enough to store a good 1,200 eBooks, and if that isn’t enough, there’s always your trusty SD memory card slot. Other features of the SNE-60 include support for ePub, PDF and TXT formats, a built-in dictionary, text-to-speech, and MP3 playback capabilities. There isn’t a firm date as to when this device will be on shelves, but it should be in the next few months. Pricing hasn’t been confirmed yet, but a price of £187 ($276) was mentioned during CES."

No 3G. Move over Kubo. btw, the crappy Kubo releases in Australia next week.

Who Owns Users' eBook Highlighting?

From TechDirt: "There have already been plenty of questions over who 'owns' the ebooks you've bought, with stories of remotely deactivated books and remotely deactivated features -- neither of which happens when you have a real physical book. But there are also other concerns opened up by newly activated features. Apparently one new feature -- sent in by a few concerned readers -- is that Amazon will now remotely upload and store the user notes and highlights you take on your Kindle, which it then compiles into 'popular highlights.' I have no doubt that the feature provides some interesting data, but it's not clear that users realize their highlighting and notes are being stored and used that way. Amazon basically says there's no big privacy deal here, because the data is always aggregated. But it sounds like many users don't realize this is happening at all. Amazon says people can find out they added this feature by reading 'forum posts and help pages' -- but it's not clear how many people actually do read those things. While I'm sure many people are fine with this, others might not be. And it once again highlights a key concern in that the 'features' of your 'book' can change over time. Your highlighting may have been yours in the past, but suddenly it becomes Amazon's with little notice."

Fujitso Next-Generation Color E-Paper

From The Register: "Fujitsu has announced its next-generation color e-paper, ushering in the possibility of lightweight color ebooks with long battery life and fast - well, tolerable - page-refresh rates. ..."

4 Million Google Editions

With enthusiastic publisher participation, looks like Google Editions will boast the largest collection of eBooks available, perhaps as many as 4 million to start.

Kobo Klinker Issues

The first-generation Kobo has problems, evidently. From the Good e-Reader blog: "Many people who read ePub books on the Kobo are getting Font Size issues, where the font is so small it makes reading practically impossible. Sure the pre-loaded books look fine, but if you download books from any other site, forget easily loading them on your Kobo. Many users are complaining about all the software and hoops they have to jump through to load different books on their e-reader, especially if you do not buy them from Kobo. Not only do you have to download Kobo’s bug-ridden software platform, but you also need to install Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Digital Editions. Kobo has verified that these problems exist and estimate around two months until they can release a firmware update in order to fix this. Although Kobo blames Adobe for the problems with books purchased with DRM from other sites. There are also other problems such as organizing your library with books you download from other sources, contributing to an ill-managed organization of your ebooks. ..."

Another Kindle/iPad Comparitive Essay

From Network World. The same that's been heard before.

How Many Ways Do (Some) eBook Readers Love the iPad? Seven.

Megan Lavey raves about iPad as an eBook reader on TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Daily Tech re: Kobo

A bit from Daily Tech. And a comment from me: I think, despite low price tag, that the lack of 3G connectivity is going to create a very large headwind for the Kobo. So let it be written.

Google Editions "Open-Ecosystem"

Chris Dawson writing on ZDNet: "Google Editions has been on my radar for a while now, primarily for its potential applications to educational technology. After all, while the Kindle and Sony Reader were great tools for bookworms, they were hardly the sort of devices that could bring the next generation of interactive books to students with their gray-scale low-resolution screens. Besides, the iPad was just around the corner, right? Google’s distribution model seemed a perfect fit for web-centric tablets like the iPad and any other smartphone or computer to which users happened to have access. For those of you not familiar with Google Editions, this will be Google’s entry into the ebook marketplace. Ultimately, it will probably include millions of scanned titles from their controversial Books project, but until the legal wrangling over Books is wrapped up, Editions will feature both Google’s own Amazon-style store as well as partner sales channels for small distributors and bookstores when it launches this summer. ..."

More Borders Kobo Details/Criticisms

Check here: "So what does the Kobo eReader have over the Kindle and Nook? Price. The Kindle and Nook retail for $249, close to $100 more than the new Kobo eReader. Furthermore, we can also expect their ebooks to be priced on the lower end of the scale since Borders is trying to keep the overall cost for consumer to a minimum. However that is as far as it goes when it comes to advantages. It pretty much goes downhill from there. For starters the Kobo Reader only offers eight shades of gray whereas the Kindle does sixteen. When it comes to transfer, the Kobo eReader has Bluetooth support and doesn't do Wi-Fi or 3G. There is still some hope for the Kobo eReader if the Kobo library offers a good selection of ebooks at low prices. OZCAR guesses that since the screen size is similar between all three devices and Kobo has decided to slash its price by leaving out some features many consumers could do without, this would make it an ideal gift."

Google Editions

CNET UK: "Google Editions will launch this summer, and looks set to start a new chapter in the ebook market. The browser-based ebook store will offer ebooks that work on any device, which could spell trouble for the proprietary systems offered by Apple, Amazon and Sony. Ebooks bought from Editions will work on devices from phones to a netbooks to any one of the range of ebook readers already on the market. Other ebook stores are often tied to the store's own device, as with the market-leading Amazon Kindle, and Apple's forthcoming iBook store for the iPad. Google is planning for Editions to launch by July, although it's likely that will be a US launch date."

Blog Kindle has as many details as are currently available about the program - a very good rundown.

Borders Kobo eReader and eBookstore

Check it out. From John Biggs: "Borders just announced that they’re selling the Kobo eReader, an $149 ebook touted, by Wired, no less, as a Kindle killer. This device isn’t formally Border’s only ebook reader. Instead, they will sell multiple readers online and in stores and the real news is that they’re creating an ebook store that will act as their default spot on the interwebs for ebooks and content. If you pre-order – and you probably don’t want to – you’ll get your Kobo by June 17. While I doubt the Kobo will sell at all, the more compelling offering is Borders’ ebook store featuring 'a million titles' with apps for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android as well as the iPad. While I’d prefer all my content in one place on each of these devices – an overarching umbrella ebook app, perhaps – having a bit of overlap is always fun and some stores – Apple’s for example – are missing large parts of the catalog due to rights reasons. Regardless, it’s nice to know Borders is no longer absolutely irrelevant in the world of ebooks."

This from the San Francisco Chronicle: "If black-and-white 'e-ink' e-readers have any chance to compete with more sophisticated tablets like Apple's iPad, they had better be cheap. And that's the best feature of Borders' new Kindle clone: At $150, Kobo is by far the cheapest of the bunch. But at first glance, that's about all that sets it apart from the Kindle. It's going to be hard for any of the e-ink rivals to come close to Amazon's leading brand recognition, especially as the Kindle starts to sell in retail stores like Target."

No Surprise: Top Ten "Bestselling" Kindle eBooks are Free

LA Times blog: "If you want to pick up one of the bestselling books for the Kindle, you don't have to save your spare dollars or even your pennies -- the 10 top Kindle bestsellers are free. To find a bestselling Kindle e-book that costs more than $0.00, you have to look to No. 14, Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- a book that's spent more than 18 months in the top 100, and has the fairly low e-book price of $5.50."

Will the iPad Mean the End of Free Online News?

Well, will it? Rupert Murdoch has a thought or two. So do the gremlins at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Penguin # 1 on iPad Makes Pearson Happy, But ...

From Daily Finance: "On the one hand, Penguin (PSO) has many reasons to feel good right now. A preliminary first-quarter earnings report released by its parent company, Pearson, pointed to the Big Six book publisher's "good start to the year" in the U.S. and the U.K., and noted that "growth in demand for eBooks also remains very strong." Meanwhile, Penguin and Apple (AAPL) have begun what appears to be a beautiful friendship, and other online retailers appear to be ready to sell the company's e-books again after a protracted delay. But then there's that pesky other hand: Penguin still hasn't sorted out its dealings with Amazon (AMZN) -- and the online retail giant is making the publisher pay for it by discounting some of its hardcover editions at rock-bottom prices."

Coming This Summer: Google's Launch Into the eBook Marketplace

ZDnet: "Google's foray into the ebook market brings new approaches and another killer app for the Android ecosystem. But is it enough to break Amazon's stranglehold on the market?" National Post: "Google's decision to begin selling digital copies of new releases and other eBooks through its Website places the Mountain View, California-based Web giant in direct competition with Amazon.com's Kindle store, the newly launched Kobo platform from Indigo Books and Music and Apple Inc.'s new iBookstore on the popular iPad tablet computer."

The Reason Joe Wikert Trashed His Kindle for an iPad

Worth quoting: "Sure, you can load content [for the Kindle] from sources other than Amazon, but there's really only one digital bookstore for the Kindle. The iPad offers two advantages. First, you can buy from Apple and Amazon, not just one. And second, the iPad natively supports ePub files, which are closer to an industry standard than the Kindle's mobi format."

Kindle Fan Weighing In

Well worth reading: Harry McCracken on the Kindle vs. everything else.

iPad Sales

The iPad has sold 1 million units as of this past Friday, with the new 3G version selling briskly as well. (Amazon keeps private the # of Kindles in circulation.) Same topic here from MacObserver.

More Kindle vs. iPad

Wade Roush likes iPad. But Steve Haber explains why the iPad won't kill eReaders.