Buy e-book reader, but not immediately

Every bibliophile knows that if you need to create more space on your bookshelf or tote hundreds of books, there's only one way to do it-get an e-book reader. Touted as a tech marvel, the e-reader allows you to carry an entire library in a single device. Globally, almost all paperbacks are being converted into e-books. In fact, there's a new set of authors that only caters to the e-book market. Take the self-published crime novelist John Locke, who sold one million copies of his e-book Saving Rachel through the Kindle store on Amazon.

Despite the obvious advantages, is it really worthwhile to invest in the device, and if yes, which e-reader should one buy? Let us try to find an answer to these questions.

What to consider
There are various e-book readers available in the country. These include Infibeam's Pi, Wink (EC Media International) and Amazon's Kindle, which are priced between Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000. Most e-book readers have a screen size of 5-7 inch, with an e-Ink display, which makes it easy to read the text. Before buying one, check that the text doesn't look faded in direct sunlight and has an anti-glare screen. You should also be able to either change the size of the font or zoom in and out.

The next important factor to consider is the formats that the device supports. The universally compatible formats are PDF and EPUB, which are supported by most devices (Kindle is the only device that does not support EPUB).


Full report here Economic Times 

Amazon pledges to fight any increase in e-book prices

Online retailer Amazon UK has pledged to its Kindle customers that it would fight back publishing houses' plans to increase the prices of e-books.

Amazon UK's comments emerged as some publishing houses are mulling over plans to adopt an "agency model" for selling their e-books across platforms. The adoption of the agency model will make publishers setters of the consumer price of their e-books.

But, the online retailer claims that any increase in the prices of the e-books will not only affect the consumers, but also the publishers and authors.

Commenting on the topic, Amazon wrote in a blog post, "For a number of reasons, we think this is a damaging approach for readers, authors, booksellers and publishers alike."

Full report here Top News

E-book industry booms in China

The e-book industry in China is booming and is now the second biggest in the world after the US industry.

In 2009, the number of e-books sold in China reached 3.82 million, and that in the first half of 2010 amounted to over 20 per cent of the world's total.

However, there had been a few problems in the popularity of the e-book industry, leading to the country's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) releasing a few instructions, Xinhua reported.

The problems include weak protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), lack of industry-wide standards and a dearth of domestically-produced reading material. The administration also outlined a few tasks for the promotion of the industry.

Full report here Hindustan Times

DK Books to focus now on e-books, travel

Dorling-Kindersley-India (DK-India), a publishing subsidiary of Penguin Books, is expanding its footprint in the Indian market with new digital and travel titles in 2010-11. It has cut down its list of titles post-recession in 2009 to concentrate on its quick-yield travel, lifestyle and digital segments.

'We are building our digital operations in India,' Aparna Sharma, managing director of DK India, told IANS here.

In 2009, the imprint cut down on its titles by at least one-third to survive the downturn... and the trend continues.

'We have narrowed the focus down to our strengths - travel, lifestyles and digital books so that we get the maximum returns. We are publishing nearly 180 titles a year and we do not want to increase the number,' she said.

However, children's books remain a priority area.

Full report here Sify

When eReaders nudge into bookshelves

It is a sunny afternoon, and Pradeep Palazhi the COO of Bangalore-based EC Media International P Ltd (http://bit.ly/F4TPradeepEC) is cheerful. Understandably so, because only a day ago his company’s Wink, the desi eReader, was out in New Delhi with a price tag of less than Rs 12,000.

“I foresee eReaders accelerating a larger trend towards electronic/ digital publishing,” he begins, without batting an eyelid, during our interaction in Business Line. “Digital media in publishing is not going to replace printed media. However, it is going to be growing in size and share of the publishing market. More and more content will be published in electronic and printed formats to start off and the balance will tilt towards electronic formats in the future.”

Another interesting aspect, in Pradeep’s view, is the way the whole eBook phenomenon is going to affect the traditional libraries. The jury is still out, but early trends indicate that the library model will have to undergo a significant makeover in the process, he avers.

A thought that Pradeep offers to the traditional bookshops is that they will have to come up with innovative models to adapt to the eBook revolution. “While eBooks are not going to replace printed books, they will definitely reduce their share of the market. Digital publishing or eBook publishing will result in increase of self-publishing market. It will be easier and cost effective for authors to publish their titles which may not be accepted by a traditional publisher. This market will see a huge growth over the next few years.”

Full report here Hindu

Digital future lies beyond e-books

Google took search to new heights on the Internet, but the Web is still chaotic. In this chaos, there is another angle — what happens to publishers who invest resources to build content and what happens to people who want quality content served in a helpful way? Above all, how does the Internet take our quest for meaningful knowledge to the next level in surfing the chaos?

I found some answers to these questions a few days ago, when I met Jeff Patterson, CEO of Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com), a US-based firm created through a partnership between technology publisher O’Reilly Media and UK-based education and technology services company Pearson Group.

Safari Books, recently launched in India, aggregates books with permission from publishers, and is now largely focused on technology and business books aimed at IT industry professionals and managers. It organises the books, indexes the content and pages with sophisticated software and charges a subscription rate from users, who can be libraries, researchers, techies or managers looking for quality content.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Creative uses for books

In July, Amazon.com announced that, during the previous three months, it sold more e-books than hardback books.

 This may or may not portend something about the future of the form in which long chunks of text are published. But what about the future of the long chunks of text that have already been published as physical objects with paper pages bound between covers? There are, after all, many such things around. Set aside any emotional attachment you may feel toward the reading of physical books; the truth is that creative uses for books that do not involve engaging with words on a page already abound.

For starters, books have served as useful raw material for conversion into an impressive variety of artworks. Jacqueline Rush Lee has created a body of work that turns books into organic-looking shapes - sometimes pages are rolled, sometimes they seem to grow from their open covers, sometimes they’re squashed into wholly different forms.

Su Blackwell’s intricate cutouts rise from old books like impossible pop-ups; Stephen Doyle has made tanks and staircases from paper pages, resting on open books that serve as pedestals. Guy Laramee and Brian Dettmer have each created compelling three-dimensional objects by carving or otherwise restructuring books.

Full report here Deccan Herald

IGNOU to give its students ebook readers

Indira Gandhi National Open University will supply ebook readers pre-loaded with study material to its MBA students within six months.

The move is aimed at enabling students to carry the required material without having to carry 10-15 books. The move is also intended to reduce the consumption of paper.

Prof V N Rajasehekharan Pillai, vice chancellor of IGNOU, said, "We want to provide ebook readers to our students. These devices have become cheaper and we are looking to include it in our study material to reduce the number of books our student needs to carry, it will also help us reduce paper consumption."
He added that IGNOU is talking to a number of technology providers to supply these ebooks. He said, "We believe that we will get these books at affordable price as the numbers generated by us will be in millions, and will help in reduction of prices by increasing the economies of scale."

IGNOU is also planning a number of initiatives in the wake of 3G and BWA service launches, which will enable it to deliver richer content directly to its students.

Full report here Telecomyatra

Wink to launch e-reader for Rs 6000

Wink, the e-reader promoted EC Media and the Kerala-based publishing house DC Books, will reach a wider audience once the promoters launch a cheaper version in a few months.

“We are customizing our product to match the need of Indian customers. The current models from Wink have display of 6 inch and are in the price range of Rs 11000. At Wink we have plans to launch ebook reader with 5 inch display which will be priced around Rs 6000. This product will enable us to reach more customers, ” said Pradeep Palazhi, chief operating officer, EC Media, in an interaction with CIOL, after the launch of Wink in Delhi on Sep 21.

This new model, to be launched in 3-4 months, will have five-inch display and other features that are almost similar to the existing models of Wink ebook reader. Wink is also planning to launch some new models with six-inch display in the price range Rs 8000. Wink allows users to read in 15 languages and makes available 200,000 titles to choose from.

“We are working on a business model to further reduce prices on both the devices and content for our users. At present we are offering 50 free ebooks on purchase of our product. Further we are working out on models that can subsidize price of ebooks in our offering,” said Palazhi.

Full report here CIOL

Will e-readers improve the adoption of e-books in India?

Amazon pioneered the e-reader through Kindle, and Apple set the trend with its much-publicised iPad, launched in April this year. While iPad received a huge response with 50,000 units sold in the first hour and about 300,000 on the first day, the phenomenon may be repeated with Samsung’s Android-based tablet PC, the Galaxy Tab, which was unveiled this month. The question now we ask ourselves is, is now the time to replace our much-cherished books and newspapers in the big book shelf with a compact e-reader?

Though electronic publishing has existed since the advent of the web, it is the new generation of e-readers that are likely to improve the user experience and, hence, the adoption of e-content, especially e-books and e-newspapers. An e-reader is an electronic device, designed primarily for reading digital books and periodicals. A typical e-reader supports 6- to 9.7-inch display screen, weighs between 300 and 600 grams, uses either e-ink monochrome display, used in devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, or color LCD screens like those used in Apple’s iPad.

Compared to the developed countries, where most people are exposed to the internet and computer-based reading, online reading habit in India is much less, thanks to poor PC and internet penetration. The PC penetration, even in urban households, is just about 30 per cent, while the internet user base stands at a poor 7 per cent of the population. The other barrier in e-readers’ adoption is the one-time cost of the device, considerably higher than the conventional books. The present price of e-readers in India ranges between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000. Colour screen e-readers like iProf costs about Rs 15,000, with iPad yet to be introduced in India.

Full report here Business Standard

New Indian e-book reader offers 200,000 titles

Bangalore-based digital publisher EC Media International has unveiled its e-book reader Wink which allows users to read in 15 languages and makes available 200,000 titles to choose from.

The e-reader, launched at the India Habitat Centre here Monday, hawks its booty from its online store -- www.thewinkstore.com -- which also stockpiles newspapers, magazines and selected articles.

The titles in 20 categories range from children's books, religion to fiction.

Priced at Rs.11,490, the e-reader has a 400 Mhz processor, a six-inch screen, screen resolution of 600X800 inches, Wifi connectivity and weighs 260 gm.

Full report here Economic Times

Giving e-cues to the book lovers

The world is flat, Thomas Friedman said famously, and innovators like Brij Singh are proving this through their work and the choices they make in life.

Singh, an IIT Roorkee graduate who spent 10 years in Silicon Valley, US, as a serial entrepreneur, moved to Bangalore recently and founded Apptility – a web services company that counts revolutionising e-publishing among its many goals.

Through Fliplog, one of its flagship products, Apptility and Singh aim to “reinvent books for the digital generation”. “Traditional books and content formats are getting disrupted with the ongoing digital revolution, and with Fliplog, we want to be at the leading edge of this transformation,” says Singh.
The company uses the Fliplog platform to create e-books that are available for download on the iPad and iPhone – two gadgets that Singh is an unabashed fan of. He also believes the iPad has an important role to play in India. “It will be instrumental in innovation leapfrogging and will give a new starting line to Indian designers.”

Full report here DNA

Will e-readers improve the adoption of e-books in India?

Amazon pioneered the e-reader through Kindle, and Apple set the trend with its much-publicised iPad, launched in April this year. While iPad received a huge response with 50,000 units sold in the first hour and about 300,000 on the first day, the phenomenon may be repeated with Samsung’s Android-based tablet PC, the Galaxy Tab, which was unveiled this month. The question now we ask ourselves is, is now the time to replace our much-cherished books and newspapers in the big book shelf with a compact e-reader?

Though electronic publishing has existed since the advent of the web, it is the new generation of e-readers that are likely to improve the user experience and, hence, the adoption of e-content, especially e-books and e-newspapers. An e-reader is an electronic device, designed primarily for reading digital books and periodicals. A typical e-reader supports 6- to 9.7-inch display screen, weighs between 300 and 600 grams, uses either e-ink monochrome display, used in devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, or color LCD screens like those used in Apple’s iPad.

Compared to the developed countries, where most people are exposed to the internet and computer-based reading, online reading habit in India is much less, thanks to poor PC and internet penetration. The PC penetration, even in urban households, is just about 30 per cent, while the internet user base stands at a poor 7 per cent of the population. The other barrier in e-readers’ adoption is the one-time cost of the device, considerably higher than the conventional books. The present price of e-readers in India ranges between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000. Colour screen e-readers like iProf costs about Rs 15,000, with iPad yet to be introduced in India.

Full report here Business Standard

How do you have a book signing with an e-book?

The future of the printed book and the electronic book or e-book came under the microscope last week when local and international experts shared their views during the country’s first digital publishing conference dubbed “The Future of the Book.”

While many said printed books will stay for decades more and that the e-book will not bring about their demise, the strong impact of electronic distribution on the book publishing industry cannot be denied.

“There is a palpable fear that technology will render printed books obsolete,” said Dennis Gonzales, chairman of the National Book Development Board and one of the conference keynote speakers.

“An e-book reader that can hold 40,000 books (titles) is feared to make people no fan of bookstores anymore... But there are also those who say nothing can replace the smell and feel of a real book, so e-book is not a threat,” he said.

Full report here Philstar

Reading roots

Bookganga.com aims to revive sales of Indian regional literature and curb piracy of e-books

It was at a preview of Apple’s iPad that US-based IT entrepreneur Mandar Joglekar realised that with the increasing popularity of e-reading across the globe, there was still scope to revive Indian literature. “While preparing a presentation for American Newspaper Association on the next generation’s reading habits, I found it compelling that the older newspapers there were heading towards bankruptcy due to decreasing circulation and ad revenues. There is little doubt that India will soon follow suit and, using this as an advantage, I thought it is time to launch an initiative that will bring dying Indian literature to its patrons,” he explains.

So, on August 30, Joglekar — who runs multiple internet ventures for the NRI audience, like citizen journalism website globalmarathi.com and social networking initiative myvishwa.com — launched bookganga.com. This, Joglekar hopes, will become the amazon.com for Indian literature soon. The website already has on sale close to 7,000 titles across English, Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit in the e-book as well as hard copy format. The website, within three weeks, is already attending to more than 150 orders from within India and many others from countries like Australia, Peru and the US.

Full report here Indian Express

Deepak Chopra releases 'Muhammad' early as an e-book

Hot debate in the US about Islam has sparked spiritual guru Deepak Chopra to release his upcoming book weeks early in electronic form. Chopra fans can stay tuned to online retailers for exactly when the e-book will soon become available.

The new book, a fictionalized biography of Prophet Muhammad, is set to be released in print form on September 21 in the US. (Oct. 1 in the UK). But HarperCollins, the book's publisher, authorized e-book retailers to sell the book as soon as possible. The decision comes in response to the heated controversy in the US about the nature of Islam and the proposed mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City.

Born in India, Chopra has become a leader of alternative medicine and has written more than 50 books translated into more than 35 languages. His newest book, Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet, is part of his "teaching novel" series, in which he offers fictionalized biographies of the founders of prominent religions. His prior novels Buddha and Jesus were bestsellers in the US.

Full report here Independent

JustBooks upgrades library inventory management system using RFID

India-based library chain JustBooks is using RFID technology to automate its inventory management processes. JustBooks’ more than 160,000 library items are all tagged with UPM Raflatac ShortDipole RFID tags converted into custom book labels by India’s systems integrator Great Eastern Impex.

JustBooks embeds RFID tags into each member card and every library item. Customers use the membership card to log into an unmanned touch screen kiosk equipped with library management software and readers from ThingMagic. The kiosk can be used to issue and return books placed on a designated tray area.

The library management software is mapped according to the library’s layout and linked with inventory data and the back-end. Using additional equipment, the library staff can check the correct location of any item that may have been misplaced and put it back in its original location.

Full report here RFID

Online libraries: 'E' for convenience

With the proliferation of e-readers and development of e-ink technologies, there are those who have already begun to put chisel to headstone of traditional reading. On the other hand, technology is making access to books easier, such as in the form of online libraries that let readers browse and reserve books online, which are then delivered home.

EasyLib in Bangalore is one such establishment, marrying a "real" library of almost 22,000 titles with an online model. Proprietor Vanishree Mahesh used her own comfort with browsing online as an yardstick to build EasyLib. "I built the website [and] software myself. The bricks-and-mortar version and the online version both pretty much launched on the same day." That was July 2001, and today EasyLib has over 2,000 members.

FriendsofBooks on the other hand is an exclusively online library, run from Delhi/the National Capital Region, though they do deliver in other cities. Founder Arti Jain was fascinated by the network of public libraries in the US, a stark contrast to the situation in India. She and co-founder Manish Kumar decided to address this problem with FriendsOfBooks.

Full report here Sify

Soft bound

Dog-eared paperbacks or sleek e-book readers — the debate seems so 20th century. Things have moved on quite a bit since November 2007 when Amazon took the ‘first’ giant step with Kindle. Since then, thanks to an expanding market, no e-reader manufacturer, including Amazon, has slept peacefully.

But while the rest of the world (read the West) was spoilt for choice, most desi readers continued to rely on their Amrikan aunts for the ‘Not made/Available-in-India’ e-book reader, which more or less meant Kindle minus shipping charges.

But come 2010, indigenous geniuses made it clear that though they may have entered the ‘war zone’ late, they have come fully loaded.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Why I still love the kindle

Electronic notepads and tablet PCs have been here for ages now. But then Kindle came along and changed everything. It let you carry your books wherever you went, without adding to your luggage. It also let you order new books online, without having to go to a store. But then Kindle was not perfect. Many people hated its black and white screen though it was the gadget's best feature, making it easy on the eyes and using up very little of the battery.

Then came the Apple iPad which has a colour screen and lets you do a lot more with the books, especially with those for kids. But, in India, you still have to depend on a friend abroad to get you one, and then the battery does not go on and on like the Kindle.

The market became interesting when Kindle took the fight to Apple by releasing an app for the iPad, which meant you could buy books from the Kindle store and read them on the iPad. And the books were trademark Kindle, all in black and white. There are other apps that let you read magazines and books in colour.

Full report here Indian Express