With all the upheaval in bookselling, there seems to be a growing distrust and backlash towards Amazon. Borders imploded, B&N is struggling with their physical stores, independent bookstores are disappearing, and Amazon is waiting with open arms for any lost consumers. The anti-Amazon discussions boil down to two main arguments; the idea that as convenient as Amazon is, buying “local” is worth the higher costs, and the idea that Amazon is just plain evil. I understand the “buy local” argument, but the “Amazon as an evil entity sent to suck the life from the competition” argument is, to put it bluntly, completely insane. Sadly, it’s not one that comes from the outskirts, but straight from the Author’s Guild themselves!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Digital textbooks are a bit like alchemy. Everyone wants to find the magic formula, but the experiments just come out as useless lumps, rather than shiny bits of gold. Even iBooks 2 has many skeptics, despite Apple’s deep pockets and impressive publishing contacts. But the best illustration of how tangled and inefficient the eTextbook market is can be seen in the fight between Cengage (a publisher) and Kno (one of the 49,000 services trying to cash in on digital learning).… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In my review of the ebook version of Fahrenheit 451 I was sharply critical of the massive amount of typos and mistakes in the text. It was suggested that I take my complaint to Amazon, which I did … but honestly never expected anything. It wasn’t the first time I had complained, but I had never heard anything back in the past. But last night I got a happy surprise – an email from Amazon’s Kindle Store that an update had been made to Fahrenheit 451, and I could download it from my account. So I headed to the link, and wound up wading through the sea of too many unread books… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Carrypad I’m a huge fan of eBooks.  I’ve been reading them since the Peanut Press days, I have gone on at length about the strengths and weaknesses that I’ve found in the various software eBook readers currently available, and I’ve reviewed a number of “enhanced books” right here for y’all. I haven’t read more than one or two hardcopy books per year in the last several years.  I love eBooks. I think Apple’s iBooks app is pretty decent, all things considered.  As I ranted on at length about, I think there’s a lot of things to be modified, but it’s a good first effort.  So I was… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

After Apple’s big iBooks 2 announcement, I went hunting for more info on prior digital textbooks; it occurred to me that most of the pilot programs and digital textbook stuff are aimed at college level students and up, with the most famous/infamous being Amazon’s Kindle DX experiment with several universities. This makes sense, since college kids foot their own bill for hardware. So why is Apple targeting high schools? Did no one point out that schools are so poor they are firing teachers left and right? A class of 500 freshman starting high school would cost a district $250,000 before textbook costs just to get each kid an iPad, plus ongoing book costs each year. For college this is brilliant because… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy nikdaum) eBooknewser reported today that Amazon quietly shut down Mobipocket, an ebook store that those of us with PDA roots probably remember fondly. Amazon purchased Mobipocket and still uses their format as the basis for Kindle books. After reading the post, I headed over to Mobipocket and found what appears to be the internet equivalent of a broken, abandoned storefront. There’s no announcement that Mobipocket is gone, but the files appear to have all disappeared. Bestsellers, fiction, non-fiction, everything is just gone, with the exception of a handful of classics that appear on the main page. Meanwhile, things aren’t exactly hopping over at eReader/Fictionwise. They haven’t carried a new bestseller or mainstream… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There’s an interesting (and honestly, inevitable) trend in the book world lately: no one’s talking hardware anymore. Yes, there’s new devices, and sales are touted when they’re impressive. But the big announcements that come up again and again are “ebook sales are increasing by these triple digits/these authors are making this much money through ebooks/we have this many free ebooks, etc”. Plus, all those lovely ebooks are available on tablets, computers, smartphones and dedicated ebook readers…so does it pay for a company to offer the hardware without the ebooks anymore? In my view, the answer is no, and I think 2012 is the year we see many of the unaffiliated hardware drop by the wayside. Sony, Ectaco… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The Kindle Lending Library and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program debuted this past fall, and so far they’re off to a great start whether you’re a consumer or an author. As a refresher, the Lending Library is available to anyone with a Kindle and an Amazon Prime account, and you can download one book per month free of charge through the service. The KDP program offers perks to authors willing to sign up exclusively with Amazon, including a share of a $500,000 pool per book borrowed through the program. Needless to say, the exclusivity clause has been a subject of debate among ebook fans, since it tightens Amazon’s hold on the digital book market immensely, and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Remember Blio? It’s ok if you don’t. Blio debuted at CES two years ago, and promptly disappeared off the radar as a serious threat. Don’t forget, CES 2010 was the ebook gold rush, and history has shown that anything not labelled “Kindle” or “NOOK” turned out to be fool’s gold. But the folks behind Blio are convinced they still have a fighting chance, and they’ve set their new sights on Ultrabooks. From the press release: Baker & Taylor, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of digital and physical books today announced an agreement with Intel, the world leader in computing innovation, to provide a comprehensive ebook solution for Ultrabook devices through Intel® AppUp(SM) center. “We are thrilled to Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Big news from B&N today! They’re looking to push down the price of the NOOK and drive more subscription services, so they’ve combined the two! You can get a free NOOK Simple Touch or a $99 NOOKcolor with a subscription to the New York Times through B&N ($19.99/month). Alternately, if you are more of the entertainment news type, there’s always a $199 NOOK Tablet with a subscription to People! This is potentially huge for the ebook industry. It turns the reader hardware into a commodity, not the main show. It also pushes prices down while also lining up ongoing cash flow for B&N and the periodical providers (who I assume are splitting the subsidy costs). Finally, this is a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Most internet users trust Google implicitly for several things: for myself, I use them exclusively for Search, my phone is Android, I rely on Google Maps, do tons with YouTube, edit documents in Docs, browse RSS feeds in Reader, have my daily News fix, have Picasa on my PC for images, and so on. Yet anyone reading my Android editorials knows that I am fully aware that Google is monetizing my actions … big time. For me, a for-profit company that never asks me for money is MUCH scarier than one that does, since I know it is still getting money from me, or from my habits or… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s good news/bad news/WHOA! news from Barnes & Noble this evening. Everything good they had to say came with some bad news, and with some news that could go either way … let’s look at the good and the bad,21 here! First, NOOKTablet sales were off the charts, and B&N had a 70% increase  in sales of ebook readers. These are all really good things. Champagne for everyone at B&N! Except…apparently the NOOK Simple Touch “lagged expectations”, and while B&N claims it’s because of higher NOOK Tablet demand, that’s still a worrisome comment. Especially if you consider that B&N’s competition (Amazon and Kobo) are crowing about great sales, without any “except our newest product” caveat. That’s the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the most common resolutions people make every year is to get organized – being too busy juggling an impossible array of tasks means ending up with too many items left undone to contemplate as the year comes to a close, so NEXT YEAR will always be the year. Taking a cue from that, today’s Amazon Kindle ‘Deal of the Day’ deals directly with becoming more efficient in your day to day life. Here is the description: Using “eat that frog” as a metaphor for tackling the day’s most challenging task, Tracy shows readers how to zero in on these critical tasks and organize their time. He details 21 practical, doable steps Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you didn’t get an ebook reader this Christmas and you really want a bigger screen, Woot! has you covered. They apparently still have some Kindle DX models left over from their pre-Christmas blowout, so if you missed it last time now’s your big chance to snag one. The DX is basically the only “large screen” ebook reader, so if that is important to you or a loved one this is an amazing deal! Amazon is selling brand new units for $379, so $199 for a refurbished one with a warranty is a steal! Via Woot Continue reading on Gear Diary …

So you got a new phone, tablet or computer and you are ready to get to work. You will want to check out Evernote. Evernote will let you save pictures, documents and other forms of information in a single place and then access them from virtually any and all devices. And if you are going to use Evernote you are going to want to check out Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote. Evernote Essentials is a PDF book with some great tips that will get you up and running with Evernote in no time. As Brett explains: The amount of information we want and need to Continue reading on Gear Diary …