Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | October 25th, 2009

The mar­ket­ing around the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s Answer to the Kin­dle, has begun, even though the prod­uct won’t be sold (for $259) until Novem­ber. Above, you’ll find a B&N video that demos the fea­tures of the new e‑book read­er. Giz­mo­do is already giv­ing the Nook some nice reviews. See 8 Rea­sons You Can Final­ly Love Ebook Read­ers (Thanks to Nook). And you can learn more about the Nook’s fea­tures over at Engad­get.

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Princeton Students Pan the Kindle DX

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Education | September 28th, 2009

Ear­li­er this year, Ama­zon rolled out the Kin­dle DX. This new, super­sized e‑book read­er had one basic goal: to give read­ers dig­i­tal access to text­books, news­pa­pers and oth­er larg­er for­mat pub­li­ca­tions. This fall, the rub­ber has start­ed to hit the road, and the Kin­dle DX has been get­ting tepid reviews, at least at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. There, stu­dents in three class­es (Civ­il Soci­ety and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, U.S. Pol­i­cy and Diplo­ma­cy in the Mid­dle East, and Reli­gion and Mag­ic in Ancient Rome) were giv­en free Kin­dles, and then start­ed work­ing with them. Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Prince­ton­ian, many of the 50 stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pilot pro­gram said that “they were dis­sat­is­fied and uncom­fort­able with the devices.” One stu­dent had this to say:

I hate to sound like a Lud­dite, but this tech­nol­o­gy is a poor excuse of an aca­d­e­m­ic tool. It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to oper­ate. … Much of my learn­ing comes from a phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion with the text: book­marks, high­lights, page-tear­ing, sticky notes and oth­er marks rep­re­sent­ing the impor­tance of cer­tain pas­sages — not to men­tion mar­gin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and inter­ac­tion with the mate­r­i­al occurs… All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my think­ing, and the ‘fea­tures’ have been ren­dered use­less.

These feel­ings were shared not just by stu­dents, but by pro­fes­sors as well. For more, I’d encour­age you to give the Dai­ly Prince­ton­ian piece a read.

Thanks to Bob for the tip, which comes via a men­tion in Engad­get. We love tips. Keep them com­ing.

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Will Sony Beat Amazon Where It Counts?

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | August 25th, 2009

sonyreaderIf you haven’t heard the news… Sony is releas­ing a new e‑book read­er, its answer to Ama­zon’s Kin­dle. Retail­ing at $399, the Sony read­er will fea­ture a touch screen (some­thing the Kin­dle does­n’t have) and the abil­i­ty to down­load books wire­less­ly (some­thing the Kin­dle does have). It will also pro­vide access to thou­sands of free (pub­lic domain) books & doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by Google Book Search. A nice touch.

But I’m won­der­ing whether the Sony read­er will beat the Kin­dle in the one cat­e­go­ry that real­ly counts? Will it have a tru­ly read­able screen? The Sony and Ama­zon screens each use “e‑ink” tech­nol­o­gy, which does­n’t cut the mus­tard. As Nichol­son Bak­er recent­ly wrote in The New York­er, “The prob­lem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had real­ly been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The prob­lem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a green­ish, sick­ly gray. A post­mortem gray. The resiz­able type­face, Mono­type Cae­cil­ia, appeared as a dark­er gray. Dark gray on paler green­ish gray was the palette of the Ama­zon Kin­dle.”

Hope­ful­ly Sony fig­ures this piece out. If not, Apple may. Accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, Steve Jobs is back at Apple, just months after his liv­er trans­plant, work­ing hard and rais­ing the blood pres­sure of Apple employ­ees, as they pre­pare to roll out a mul­ti­me­dia tablet that’s rumored to include, yes, an e‑book read­er.

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How to Get an Author to Sign Your Kindle

in Amazon Kindle | August 20th, 2009

Ok, so we’re back to giv­ing the Kin­dle a hard time. Thanks Scott for the tip!

via the Rumpus.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Hugest Kin­dle Ever

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The Future of Content Delivery

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcasts | August 18th, 2009

sigler2This pod­cast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Best­selling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both avail­able free as pod­casts), podi­o­book dynamo, and social net­work­ing mastermind–on none oth­er than “how will peo­ple read books in the near future?”

In this repod­cast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balti­con con­fer­ence, Scott talks about how he built a HUGE online fan base for his fic­tion, land­ed a major pub­lish­ing deal with Crown Books, reached NY Times best­seller sta­tus, and why he insists that giv­ing his fic­tion away for free is the best mar­ket­ing around.

He presents his thoughts on Big Pub­lish­ing, small pub­lish­ing, smart-phones vs. the Kin­dle, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, lays out the meth­ods by which he pre-sold 1,500 copies of his new, self-pub­lished nov­el THE ROOKIE this April via his own web­site, scottsigler.com. That’s right: For­get print-on-demand and its high­er cost-per-book. Scott breaks down how he pre-sold enough books to pay for an entire print run before THE ROOKIE ever went to press! It’s a mod­el so far ahead of every­one else that we’ve got to take notes!

If you’re a writer or aspir­ing author, you need to lis­ten to this. And don’t let the intro scare you off.

To down­load this file and lis­ten to it on your own time, on your iPod or sim­i­lar device, sim­ple right click this link: DOWNLOAD and choose “Save Link as…” on a Mac, or “Save File” on a PC.

Or lis­ten to it right here:

Seth Har­wood, the author of JACK WAKES UP, will be teach­ing an online course (The Grip­ping Read) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. And he’ll also be teach­ing an Author Boot­camp with Scott Sigler on Stan­ford’s cam­pus on Novem­ber 7 and 14. Each course only has a few slots still open.

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Reading Free Books on the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Literature | August 17th, 2009

Even though we some­times give Ama­zon’s Kin­dle a hard time, the device is undoubt­ed­ly handy for read­ing e‑books. The Kin­dle lets you seam­less­ly down­load books straight from Ama­zon in a mat­ter of sec­onds. And, even bet­ter, you can load the Kin­dle with thou­sands of free e‑books from sources such as Project Guten­berg. (Few peo­ple know this.) This guide will show you how to down­load a free book from Project Guten­berg, and then read it on your Kin­dle. You can also find many free ebooks for the Kin­dle in our Free eBook col­lec­tion.

Step 1:

Go to http://www.gutenberg.org and search for a book you would like to read.

picture-4
Step 2:

Once you’ve found a book that you want to down­load, down­load it in MOBI for­mat if pos­si­ble. If no MOBI for­mat exists, then using plain text works as well.
downloadbook1
Step 3:
After your down­load is com­plete, plug in your Kin­dle to your com­put­er’s USB port. The Kin­dle will show up as a USB Dri­ve.
picture-6
Step 4:
Go to the Doc­u­ments direc­to­ry on your Kin­dle.
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Step 5:

Copy the e‑book file to the Doc­u­ments fold­er. You can option­al­ly rename the file to some­thing more mean­ing­ful if you’d like.
Step 6:

The sil­ver cur­sor on your Kin­dle will begin to spin. When it stops, the Kin­dle is fin­ished sync­ing. Now you can eject and unplug your Kin­dle and enjoy your free ebook!
Fred Hsu designed the handy Open Cul­ture app. Give it a spin. It’s free and it’s good for you.

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Top Ten Reasons Why the Kindle Won’t Be an iPod for Books

in Amazon Kindle, Books, e-books, Most Popular | August 11th, 2009

A lit­tle side­bar to our pre­vi­ous post that won­ders whether Ama­zon’s Kin­dle can rev­o­lu­tion­ize the book indus­try…

1) When you buy an iPod, you can trans­fer all of your cur­rent music onto it. With Kin­dle you have to start buy­ing all new books.

2) The paper-form book (aka “dead tree ver­sion”) is still the best tech­nol­o­gy for read­ing: ful­ly portable, a nice thing to own and put on shelves, great for shar­ing, good in bed, at beach, etc. If you lose it or get it wet, no big deal—easily replace­able.

3) Music has con­stant­ly found new for­mats that improve on the old. Same for the iPod. It’s unques­tion­ably bet­ter than that big­ger, skip­ping CD play­er. Books haven’t been able to improve on the form for cen­turies.

4) Hold­ing 100 albums in your hand is great. Hold­ing 100 books? Not as much.

5) How often do you real­ly go away for so long that you need 10+ books? (Book­stores are every­where.)

6) Kin­dle is too expen­sive (see #1) and too big.

7) Books take much longer to con­sume, don’t work well in indi­vid­ual (shuf­fled) parts, and we often only read them once.

8.) Now that you can car­ry music on your phone, and the iPhone has bun­dled music, email, inter­net, and tele­phone in one small size, is any­one real­ly will­ing to buy a big­ger iPhone or Kin­dle just to read books on it?

9) Most of us spend more time lis­ten­ing to music than read­ing. We just do; it’s eas­i­er to do while we’re involved with oth­er things.

10) Books: they’re bet­ter!

Seth Har­wood pod­casts his ideas on the pub­lish­ing indus­try and his fic­tion for free at sethharwood.com. He is cur­rent­ly fig­ur­ing out how pub­lish­ers should best approach the new, emerg­ing e‑book mar­ket. Hear his ideas in his lat­est Hot Tub Cast™ and read them here soon. His first nov­el is JACK WAKES UP, in stores now.

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Will Amazon (or Apple) Cut Publishers Out of the Loop?

in Amazon Kindle, Apple, Books, e-books | August 11th, 2009

If you’re won­der­ing where the book/publishing mar­ket is head­ing, then you’ll want to give this insight­ful arti­cle a read.  Fast for­ward five years, here’s what you’ll like­ly find: Ama­zon, using the Kin­dle and on-demand pub­lish­ing, starts work­ing direct­ly with authors and cut­ting tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers out of the loop. It will dom­i­nate the book/e‑book mar­ket, much as Apple does the music mar­ket. The only thing stand­ing in Jeff Bezos’ way? Steve Jobs. Why? Because Apple can pro­duce an e‑book read­er that actu­al­ly appeals to a mass mar­ket, and Ama­zon can’t. And guess what? Apple is rumored to have a new device com­ing out this year. More on that here. Thanks to Seth Har­wood for send­ing this along.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.