e-books

Imagine typing the name of any book into a search engine and having the results include a listing of every place you could obtain a digital copy: every online bookseller where you could buy it and every library from which you could borrow it.

Not only that, but imagine you could click on one of those links—bookseller or library—and download the book immediately to any device: Kindle, Sony, iPhone, computer, or any of the new devices on their way.

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive is trying to make that vision a reality, breaking away from the closed-loop systems that currently exist, where catalogs aren't searchable from the outside and where booksellers tie their sales to dedicated devices. Yesterday, at a demonstration at its the new home in the Richmond, the Internet Archive launched an architecture it created, called "BookServer," that would open up the experience of buying and borrowing books.

"[W]e can evolve from an environment of single devices connected to single sources into a distributed system where readers can find books from sources across the Web to read on whatever device they have," explains a post on the Internet Archive Web site. "Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices."

After the jump, the slide deck on BookServer that Internet Archive project director Peter Brantley presented at last week's Frankfurt Book Fair.

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Mountain View-based Plastic Logic, one of Barnes & Noble's partners in its ebook war against Amazon, has released new information about its upcoming eReader, which it's calling the "Que".

Among other revelations, Plastic Logic is marketing the device to business users, rather than leisure readers.

"With QUE, Plastic Logic is expanding the eReader category, which to date has focused on leisure reading devices and casual users," says a company press release. "QUE is designed to simplify the multi-faceted lifestyle of the modern businessperson, and to quite literally lighten their workload. In addition to connecting its users with their business and professional newspapers, books and periodicals, QUE supports the document formats business users need (including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents) and features powerful tools for interacting with and managing the content."

Plastic Logic says it will release the device January 7 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Full press release, after the jump.

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A Barnes & Noble rep at the CTIA (Wireless Association) tradeshow down in San Diego seems to have spilled the beans on a new e-reader Mountain View-based Plastic Logic is developing in conjunction with the bookseller.

In this video, the rep says a new "dedicated e-reader device" with a color screen, and that will run the B&N e-reader application, will make its debut next spring. The rep also says the device will be the size of a paperback (an AS Byatt paperback, not a Clive Cussler one). Price is TBD.

People who have Kindles love them. But people living overseas, or people who've wanted to buy e-books while they're traveling overseas, have been out of luck. The wireless connectivity on the Kindle has only worked in the United States. Until now.

A new version of the Kindle, going on sale starting October 19, will work in 100 countries. Price: $279. Price of the domestic only version will drop from $299 to $259.

Not a bad move on Amazon's part. The market for e-readers is heating up, and a slew of others are already available abroad. The Financial Times also observes that the timing of the move could also boost holiday e-book sales.

A day after the Princeton student newspaper reported that the university's students weren't crazy about the Kindle for schoolwork comes leaked video of another portable reading device, this one purportedly from Microsoft.

The as-yet unconfirmed project, called the Courier, seems to operate like part tablet, part good old-fashioned paper. Whatever it is, it's got our attention.

Video below. For more deets, see Mashable's and Gizmodo's writeups.

Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Barnes & Noble is adding another eReader to its lineup, this one from Dutch manufacturer IREX Technologies.

B&N announced earlier this year that its books would also be available on devices from Mountain View-based Plastic Logic.

The new consumer-oriented device from IREX, whose U.S. headquarters are in a Los Angeles suburb, features an 8.1 inch touchscreen, stylus navigation, and 3G connectivity.

IREX already sells three other devices in Europe (pictured), which are targeted at business customers. Its online newspaper kiosk offers 1020 newspaper titles from 81 countries, which are displayed in their original format.

For more, ReadWriteWeb did an interview with the IREX's CEO back in June: "Beyond the Kindle: Talking eBooks and eReaders with iRex"

Kindle vs. traditional book smackdown: Who wins? From the videos Green Apple Books is posting to its blog, it looks like it's traditional books.

In Episode 1, two patrons try to resell their books—one brings in a bankers' box of traditional books and leaves with $80 in cash. Another brings in a Kindle and leaves with nada. (You can't re-sell e-books.)

We were a little confused: Surely Green Apple Books wasn't suggesting that we should swim against the tide of technological progress? And sacrifice all the advantages of electronic books (ever try lugging a dozen books on vacation? We have. (Yes, it's a problem. We're working on it.)) Simply because one day we might want to re-sell our books?

Maybe the answer was in this blog comment from Green Apple staffer "kpr."

"We've tried to stress that we're not against e-books, as such. They're coming whether we love them or not. It's the proprietary bent of Amazon and that fact that they've branded 'the Kindle' to be shorthand for 'e-book' (what's that called when a brand name becomes the de facto name of the product e.g. Kleenex and Vaseline?) that grates."

(H/t EFF)

Local authors -- heck, authors everywhere -- take note: Scribd wants your business. The San Francisco-based company already had more than 60 million visits a month when it announced this week that it was making a play for the rapidly growing e-book market.

Scribd's offer: Sell your e-book with us, for any price you want, and we'll take just a 20-percent fee.

The company's initial focus was essentially to be a YouTube for words, with people posting documents of all sorts -- term papers, recipes, PowerPoint presentations -- for free download by others. It succeeded, becoming the most popular of several such services.

Now it's making a play for Amazon's market share by significantly undercutting the online bookselling giant's fees. An article in today's Times Online gives the example of Kemble Scott -- editor of the San Francisco Bay Area Literary Arts Newsletter -- whose book The Sower can be had for $2 on Scribd. This gives him a return of $1.60; not much, perhaps, but more than he got from his first book, SoMa, for which he received only $1.13 of its $15 cover price.

Publishers can also upload specific chapters for download, much like users can purchase a single song through iTunes. And like iTunes, unsigned authors are free to post their work and charge for it. Scribd is compiling a database of copyrighted works with which to filter its content; as publishers sign on, their books will be added to the system.

E-books are still a nascent market, so there's no telling how popular this format might become. Still, so long as people are willing to read their prose via electronics this seems like a win-win for both authors and writers.