Florida or Ghana, E-Reading Innovators Face the Same Challenges

NY Times: "Worldreader, an e-reader nonprofit with a project in Ghana, and Clearwater High School in Florida, who also have an e-reader project, have found they are facing many of the same challenges. The kids each group serves are radically different in income and expectations. But they are quite similar in character. ... "

Worldreader.org Announces Random House E-book Donation & Digitization Project

PW: "Worldreader.org the 'market-based' not-for-profit organization designed to use e-books and e-readers to put 'a library of books within reach of every family on the planet,' has announced that Random House has agreed to donate thousands of books for an upcoming iREAD pilot. Titles will include such classic works as Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, and Moby Dick, all formatted for e-readers. The donation will also include the entire Magic Tree House collection by Mary Pope Osborne, which Worldreader officials said was 'a real favorite' among children in its earlier trial in Ghana. In addition, Worldreader.org recently announced an agreement with African publishers to digitize thousands of African books. ... "

Frankfurt 2010: David Risher's Worldreader.org

PW: "As a senior vice president of product and platform development at Amazon.com, David Risher was well aware of the potential of ebooks. But it wasn't until he left the company in 2008 that he discovered just how powerful ebooks really can be. Today, his non-profit venture, Worldreader.org, is undertaking an ambitious goal – to bring ebooks and ereaders to the developing world and, along with them, a self-sustaining reading and publishing culture."

Nonprofit Tries One-Kindle-Per-Child In Ghana

Nonprofit Tries One-Kindle-Per-Child In Ghana - Digits - WSJ:

In the developing world, where literacy remains a giant challenge, might digital books be able to leapfrog their print counterparts?

That’s what a non-profit called Worldreader is trying to figure out with a series of trials in Ghana that involve giving students Amazon.com Kindles to read in school and at home.

Worldreader was co-founded by David Risher, a 45-year-old former Amazon senior vice president who was responsible for growing the company’s operations beyond books. He left Amazon in 2002 before it created the Kindle, but was taken with the gadget’s ability to offer access to a huge assortment of books in parts of the world where getting a regular book into the hands of students can be a six-month challenge.

“There’s a huge difference between being able to read from a selection of the 10 books that you happen to have — or that somebody donated — versus being able to get your hands on a book that you are really interested in,” says Risher. “When you combine that with very very low distribution costs for additional books and falling technology prices, these are ingredients for doing something really special.”

Risher says he thinks e-books will let the developing world skip the paper stage, in much the same way cell phones have helped countries skip the landline stage ...