Электронные книги

More Details Emerge on “Google Editions,” Google’s eBook Store

the new digital books program will launch in the first half of 2010 and will offer 400,000 to 600,000 ebooks at that time.

Про бизнес-модели – самое интересное:

As noted on The Bookseller, a site covering the Tools of Change conference, Google Editions will offer three business models. The first will allow a consumer to purchase the ebook from Google Books, Google’s online collection of digitized books. The second will allow consumers to purchase from a partner retailer and the third would direct consumers to a publisher’s website. In the first route, payments are split 63/37 in the publisher’s favor. If purchasing from a retailer, that split would be 45/55 with the 45% going to the publisher and the retailer splitting the remaining 55% with Google. No decision has been made on the split for the third option, purchases made via a publisher’s own website. Edmonds also noted that these splits are not set in stone just yet – discussions were “just beginning.”

Barnes & Noble Taps Kindle Designer For Its Athena e-Book Reader – BusinessWeek

Yes, it’s true. The much-anticipated device from Barnes & Noble, which has been eliciting oohs and ahs since leaked photos appeared on Gizmodo, was designed by Ammunition Partners, a San Francisco firm headed by former Apple design chief Robert Brunner.
Although Amazon has never confirmed this, two sources tell me that Brunner’s team also designed the initial Kindle for Amazon in 2007. Back then, the Net giant had yet to design a hardware product of its own, so relied heavily on Ammunition to come up with the look and feel for the device. Brunner, among other things, is famous for overseeing design of Apple’s first laptop.

Jane Friedman Starts Open Road Integrated Media, an E-Book Company – NYTimes.com

Sixteen months after stepping down as president and chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Jane Friedman has formed a new company that will republish old titles by big-name authors including William Styron, Iris Murdoch and Pat Conroy in electronic form.
Together with Jeffrey Sharp, a film producer of features including
“Boys Don’t Cry” and “You Can Count on Me,” Ms. Friedman, 64, has
founded Open Road Integrated Media to focus almost exclusively on
digital publishing. The company will also seek new authors willing to
be published in the electronic format first.

Exclusive: First Photos of Barnes & Noble’s E-Reader – Barnes and Nobles reader – Gizmodo

Barnes and Noble’s late to e-books. But the company’s new gadget—first seen here—should address the weaknesses of all other readers with screens evoking a Kindle and an iPhone. A source from within reveals the first photos and details.

The Barnes and Nobles e-reader project, set to be revealed next week, has been under development for years, with several devices of varying size and capability in the pipeline. First rumors said it would have a color e-ink screen. Then people said it didn’t. They were both kind of right: The layout will feature a black and white e-ink screen like the Kindle has—and a multitouch display like an iPhone underneath other. Pow!

Слишком похоже на полет фантазии дизайнера. Но, возможно, и правда. Соединение двух дисплеев – черно-белого eink и цветного сенсорного LCD – было бы интересным решением.

Google book sales to begin by June of next year | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

At the Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt Google announced that it will be running out its own book sales offering by June of next year.

А вот этот слух еще интереснее: Google plans ‘buy anywhere, read anywhere’ offer – MobileRead Forums

it was “definitely” Google’s intention to partner with device manufacturers, but declined to give names. She added she “doubted” Kindle would be on board.

EA Extranet: “EA ANNOUNCES FLIPS ON THE NINTENDO DS”

Guildford, UK – 9th October 2009 – Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announces the development of FLIPS™, an innovative new book range created for the Nintendo DS™. FLIPS has been designed to give children of all ages a fun new way to read their favorite books. EA has worked with some of the UK’s leading publishers of children’s books and magazines, including Egmont and Penguin Publishing, to bring modern classic titles from critically acclaimed authors such as Cathy Cassidy, Eoin Colfer, Enid Blyton, and the various writers from the popular boys series, ‘Too Ghoul for School’ to the DS. Each FLIPS title features multiple books and the first four titles will be exclusively released on Nintendo DS in the UK on the 4th December 2009.
Each FLIPS title featuring six to eight books will be sold separately with an RRP of £24.99.

Еще недавно я думал, что детские книги последними избавятся от бумаги.
А если еще учесть, что букридеры с цветными электронными чернилами значительно ближе, чем кажется…

Using The International Kindle Could Rack Up Fees | paidContent

In addition to the $2 per-book fee for non-U.S. downloads, paidContent has learned from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) that it will cost users $5 a week to access their newspaper, magazine and blog subscriptions via Whispernet.

Кажется, Amazon упорствует, делая всё возможное, чтобы пользоваться Kindle было неудобно и дорого.

New Kindle Will Download Books Abroad – NYTimes.com

Международные продажи Kindle 2 начнутся 19 октября 2009 года. Букридер будет продаваться по $279 (без цены доставки). При этом цена для внутреннего рынка опускается до $259. “Международный” Kindle будет снабжен sim-картой от AT&T и, таким образом, сможет загружать электронные книги из Amazon. Покупателям не из США будет пока доступен каталог из 200 тысяч книг.

И еще любопытные данные, о которых сказал Безос: когда продаётся электронная книга наряду с бумажной, на электронные продажи приходится 48% (в мае доля электронных книг составляла 35%).

New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Partner to Make 500,000 Public-Domain Books Available to the World | LISWire

Readers and researchers looking for hard-to-find books now have the opportunity to dip into the collections of one of the world’s most comprehensive libraries to purchase digitized copies of public domain titles. Through their Digitize-on-Demand program, Kirtas Technologies has partnered with The New York Public Library to make 500,000 public domain works from the Library’s collections available (to anyone in the world).
“New technology has allowed the Library to greatly expand access to its collections,” said Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. “Now, for the first time, library users are able to order copies of specific items from our vast public domain collections that are useful to them. Additionally the program creates a digital legacy for future users of the same item and a revenue stream to support our operations. We are very pleased to participate in a program that is so beneficial to everyone involved.”

Using existing information from NYPL’s catalog records, Kirtas will make the library’s public domain books available for sale through its retail site before they are ever digitized. Customers can search for a desired title on www.kirtasbooks.com and place an order for that book. When the order is placed, only then is it pulled from the shelf, digitized and made available as a high-quality reprint or digital file.

What makes this approach to digitization unique is that NYPL incurs no up-front printing, production or storage costs. It also provides the library with a self-funding, commercial model helping it to sustain its digitization programs in the future. Unlike other free or low-cost digitization programs, the library retains the rights and ownership to their own digitized content.

Кажется, это удачная бизнес-модели оцифровки библиотек: читатели заказывают (за скромные $1,95) оцифровку, и эта копия затем используется библиотекой. Таким образом, вся работа делается не самой библиотекой, а платят за всю эту радость прямые заказчики цифровых копий. Остроумно.

Adobe – Online events : Event Details

Discover how the Adobe eBook platform makes reading an immersive experience—everywhere and across devices. Join us for an hour-long complimentary online eSeminar and explore how the Adobe eBook platform enables reader engagement through a streamlined workflow for authoring, protecting and delivering digital books. Hosted by Adobe product experts, this eSeminar shows how to enable a seamless reading experience across multiple screen types and why an open, interoperable eBook platform serves your readers best.

22 октября 2009 года в 21:00 мск.