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August 2006
Mass Download Proves Free E-books
Popular
In the period July 4 to August 11 2006 more than 30 million free e-books were
downloaded during a giveaway as part of the World eBook Fair. The freebooks
bonanza was coordinated by Project Gutenberg, the leading nonprofit organisation
supplying free electronic books, and also involved 125 private e-book libraries
and collections. ``It was a revelation, way beyond our expectations," said
Gutenberg founder Michael Hart.
Aussie winner strides ahead
The Perth-based Ebook Library (EBL), a subsidiary of ebooks.com (aka Ebooks
Corporation), reports that they have added ABC-CLIO and its 550-odd history
reference titles to their contributing international publishers. EBL's catalogue
has expanded by over 400 per cent since its launch in 2004, and they have
added some 20 new publishers in the last six months. The platform now holds
over 60,000 titles across a broad range of all disciplines. www.eblib.com
Popular Books for the iPOD
A company called iPREPpress has
made more than thirty Gareth Stevens Publishing books available for the iPOD.
They're non-fiction titles in areas that will have particular appeal for young
people, such as sports and entertainment, and include celebrity biographies.
These interactive editions feature internal hyperlinks and images, and some
are graphically-based, including some " famous moments in history" titles.
They can be viewed on iPod Video, iPod Nano and iPod Photo alike. http://www.ipreppress.com/
E-books in Bahasa Malaysia
The Open University Malaysia (OUM) is to digitalise reference books that have
been translated into the national language, Bahasa Malaysia. They will be
added to 70,000 e-books and e-journals in the English language that are already
included in the institution's Tan Sri Dr Abdullah Sanusi Digital Library (PDTSDAS),
set up in 2002. http://www.oum.edu.my/
Omagination Gulf sultanate Oman is
set to become the earliest adopter of sophisticated e-publishing in the Middle
East, using IPQ (Intelligent Pixel Query). Local company Bahwan CyberTek is
in talks with Oman Government ministries about possible uses for the new,state
of the art technology. IPQ aims to replace today's standard navigation
interfaces with a non-linear zoomable user interface (ZUI). It can be used
to publish multimedia e-books, newspapers, maps, videos, photos, brochures,
catalogues and advertisements, with an enhanced interactive viewing experience.
The UMPC (ultra mobile PC device)
Examples:
*the Samsung Ultra Mobile PC with
optional GPS, 512MB DDR2 memory & a 7 inch touch screen with 800 x 480 resolution.
*The TabletKiosk (2 Models - the
i7210 1.0GHz,, launch price a whopping $US1,399.00; and little brother the
i7209, 900Mhz, a tad cheaper at $US1,099.00, reported here in Oz for $1650).
The UMPC is a new category of
mobile device (a 17.5 cm {7in} colour screen is standard so far) for which
mobile media centre might be a better description, although that name's been
taken already. They were first glimpsed in Australia at the CeBIT technology
trade show in May 2006. UMPCs handle the media aspects of a PC and more (e.g.
they take still & video pics & may have GPs). Designed for people constantly
on the go, they're powerful enough to compute with and will run full Windows
software versions, but unless you regard them as a tiny laptop, what's the
point?
You're more likely to use them
for contacts - email, VoIP, Instant Messaging and texting - or to download
& watch/listen to online media, podcasts and the like by means of a Wi-fi
connection (for which their multi-gigabyte hard drives are well suited). Or
to play online games.
They're attractive and make a handy
e-reader too, but full-colour high-end functionality like this doesn't come
cheap. There are a range of models from a variety of makers, but expect to
pay $US1,000 or more for any of them in 2006. Will they be cheaper later ?
Maybe… in fact an inside source tells me there's a UMPC Education model due
out in April 2007 for half the price… http://umpc.com/
July 2006
E--Book Sales
There are various figures around, but Management Practice Inc. reports total
e-book sales for 2005 up 44% on 2004, to US$179.1-million. A big jump, but
still under 1% of total book sales. It's still early days yet….
Springing to the rescue
The German-based publisher Springer Science & Business Media has donated over
US$1 million worth of e-books to seven New Orleans universities, to assist
their recovery from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The seven
are: Dillard University, Loyola University, the LSU Health Sciences Center
- New Orleans, Southern University at New Orleans, Tulane University, the
University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana. The gift includes
full searchable access to over 10,000 Springer scientific, technical, and
medical books (in PDF and HTML).
That's your book on the phone E-book downloads to young
people's mobile (US= cell) phones are big business in Japan these days. Telecom
company KDDI has reported e-book sales of 5.5 million downloads by September
2005, up 500% on a year before. Forty per cent were of comics, and girls &
young women aged between ten and twenty were the largest single demographic.
March 2006
Indian Shares Win in Poetry
Eppie
The 2006 annual EPPIE award convention was held in San Antonio, Texas, on
March 18th. EPPIE awards are given by the Electronically Published Internet
Connection, EpicAuthors.com in the USA, for the finest electronically published
books of the year. Some 20 finalists won trophies out of 550 e-books entered
in a broad range of categories.
· Some winners were Pedestals
by Jane Shoup (Echelon Press) in the Action/Thriller category; Dragon's
Son by Elaine Corvidae (Mundania Press LLC) for Fantasy; Faith
of the Unforgotten by L. Grody (Lethal Publishing Corporation) for Children,
Young Adult, and Tween; Funeral in Babylon by Max Overton (Mundania
Press LLC) for Historical/Western; The Last Dance of the Lochkray by
Brian M.H. Goodwin (LTD Books) for Horror; An Audience for Einstein by
Mark Wakely (Mundania Press LLC) for Science Fiction; and in the Inspirational
category Lorien by Michelle L. Levigne (Hard Shell Word Factory). In
five Romance categories winners were Ellen Fisher, Patricia Harrison, Janet
Miller, Karen Sandler and Anita Whiting.
· The Poetry award was a tie between
Ghostly Embers: Visions of Toledo by Larry Rochelle (Booksurge) and
The Oestara Anthology of Pagan Poetry (21 poets represented, including
Nikhil Parekh, 29, from Ahmedabad, India. (Publisher Oestara Publishing LLC).
Nick Bogaty of the International
Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) also won a special Friend of
e-Publishing award, and there were eight Quasar Awards for various categories
of cover art. http://www.epicauthors.com/
February 2006
One Catalogue to Rule Them All The National Library of Australia, located in Canberra ACT, has announced
the Web availability for the general Australian public of its consolidated
national catalogue . This means that anyone in Australia will now be able
to browse information about the contents of 800 state, public and university
libraries, to quickly find out where items of interest are held. Included
in the consolidated catalogue are some 40 million items, especially books,
journals and music. http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au/apps/kss
Bible for iPod A TNIV version Audio Bible for
iPod has been released by the Zondervan religious publishing house, in partnership
with software company Talking Panda. In fact it's a clever audio-visual version
that can be either listened to or read.
January 2006
The Top 10 Best-selling e-Books
of 2005 (according to
the International Digital Publishing Forum)
1. Star Wars: Episode
III Revenge of the Sith by George Lucas (Del Rey,$7.99)
2. The Da Vinci
Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday, $14.95)
3. Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown (Pocket Books, $6.99)
4. State of Fear
by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins, $7.99)
5. Digital
Fortress by Dan Brown (St. Martin's Press, $5.99)
6. Embers Falling
on Dry Grass by Robert Jordan (Simon & Schuster, Inc.,$3.50)
7. Deception
Point by Dan Brown (Pocket Books, $6.99)
9. Holy Bible, New
International Version (Zondervan, $14.99)
10. The Narrows by Michael
Connelly (Little, Brown, $5.95)
Thanks to the International
Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), formerly the Open eBook Forum (OeBF),
a trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry.
