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In Case You Are Still Wondering About E-books Taking Over

I just received an email from Apple announcing that I could buy an iPad now for delivery next month.

What’s odd about this?

Apple doesn’t spam me. I get receipts from iTunes and an occasional holiday reminder that an iPod makes a great holiday gift. While I’m sure they have many lists for various customer bases, as a light user of Apple products, this is the first time I’ve received a pre-release advertisement to buy an Apple Product.

ipad ad

So much hype over an evolutionary step forward.. the technology is just a larger screen iPod/iPhone with many limitations compare to tablet computer and similar sized laptops… I think this is one more signal that the smart guys are planning for another upturn in the move to ubiquitous devices everywhere.

When you get used to carrying whatever devices add value to your life, there is less and less room for a book in your bag.. especially when the reading experience becomes better than reading ink on paper.

Microsoft Gives Us Another Step Toward Paperless Books

From EnGadget Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details

We’ve been dying to know more about Microsoft’s Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We’re told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we’re told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we’re taking to mean Windows CE 6.

read more here

Find of the Day: Search Through 285,000,000 Free eBooks

E-book pdf search engine

PDF Search Engine is a book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf files.

You can find and download a tons of e-books but please respect the publisher and the author for their creations if their books copyrighted.

You can try a search now for FREE at http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/

Manage Your EBooks To Reach More Readers

More than a decade ago, while working in the computer hardware industry, I saw some data on the trajectory of screen resolution and capacities for the future.

Many pundits were saying that screens as good as paper were coming very soon, but one smart futurist showed us a graph of memory and processor capacities, the number of pixels and resolutions of display materials and just what it would take to have screens that weren’t a strain on eyes and cheap enough to be ubiquitously available.

The DATE for his chart where all of this came together was 2010.

Recent announcement of Apple’s iPad, improvements in Amazon Kindle devices and a multitude of other readers confirm what we’ve known is coming… That feeling that books are a better way to read is going to start fading away.

You may be like the hundreds of authors and readers I’ve talked to over the past decade who claim that they will never enjoy reading on a computer as much as holding a book. Culturally, that makes sense. We’ve had decades of lousy screens and centuries of wonderful books.

Book aren’t going away anytime soon. However, every author should get ready for a much more rapid growth in eBook and alternative electronic distribution.

We’ve been advising clients to get an eBook reader, try out the technologies.. see where the clash among format, digital rights management, hardware vendors and publisher is moving. Feel for yourself where the market is going.

One of the last big hurdles has been the complaint that you don’t get to own a hard cover book when you purchase an eBook.. and must rely on the storage system that too often breaks down.

That’s changing too.

Watch what Calibre Ebook Management Software has to offer.

I suggest downloading a copy to manage all those downloads you can’t find on your hard drive. You may still not ever read them, but just watching this video, I could see real progress from the tools I was using just a few years back.

Apple got us all using MP3 when they got the iPod right.. Maybe they will do this for books.. maybe not.

What do you think?

Who Controls What Price You Get For a Book?

Reading more on the Amazon/Macmillin dispute and the old school bullying tactics both are using in the fight.

I’ve stated in previous posts my position.. I think the consumer (readers) will ultimately control what price we can sell a book for.

Amazon is letting the market decide.

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer

What do you think?