11:23 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Only few days after the leaked benchmark of the upcoming 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, fresh into our tattle box we received the equivalent benchmark information of the 7-inch model. See attached screenshots for all the details.

Also, if you care to know, the three Kindle Fire devices go by the names Soho, Thor and Apollo.

• KFSOWI, Kindle Fire Soho, Amazon Kindle Fire Entry Level, 7-inch, 1280 x 800 display, WiFi
• KFTHWI, Kindle Fire Thor, Amazon Kindle Fire HD 3, 7-inch, 1920 x 1200, WiFi
• KFAPWA, Kindle Fire Apollo, Amazon Kindle Fire HD 3, 8.9-inch , 2560 x 1600 display, WAN

Now let's hope that Amazon hurries to get these toys on the street!

02:19 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | General Discussions

Has anyone ever heard of this happening before?

So when I got here, I noticed that several of my iPad apps had updates on offer, so I clicked and approved. One of them was Google Play. When it finished and I went to open the app, it told me that it needed to update my book files and this might take several minutes. Time passed and the screen filled in the covers of the 30 or 40 titles I keep live on the machine. Two of them were books I am actively reading for my teaching this fall.

But all of my books had un-downloaded and needed to be downloaded again. The app is an inefficient downloader, almost as bad as the New Yorker app, so I dreaded this, but clicked on the two I needed most at once. (I checked the amount of storage used, and indeed the files really have gone off my tablet.)

And it balked. It turns out that because I am not in a country where Google Books is an approved enterprise (which encompasses most of the countries on the planet), I cannot download. Local wisdom among the wizards here speculates that the undownloading occurred when the update noted that I was outside the US borders and so intervened.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...-wrong-country

02:12 AM by doctorow in E-Book General | News

Not quite sure what to think of this. If you strictly follow Amazon's terms of use for textbook rentals, you're not allowed to cross state borders with your rented books.

Under "Rentals by Warehouse Deals, Inc.", it states

You may not move the textbook out of the state to which it was originally shipped. If you wish to move the textbook out of that state, you must first purchase the textbook. You can purchase the textbook by going to Your Textbook Rentals to view your rental library. Select the textbook you wish to purchase and then proceed through the checkout process. You may also contact us to purchase the textbook. When you purchase the textbook, we will charge you the buyout price of the textbook, and the textbook will be yours to keep.

What if you don't follow their terms?

If we determine that at any time during the rental period you have moved a textbook rented from Warehouse Deals, Inc. out of the state to which it was originally shipped, we may in our sole discretion charge you the buyout price of the textbook and transfer title to the textbook to you, retroactive to the date you moved the textbook out of that state. In such case, the textbook will be yours to keep.

Why all this? Most likely it's related to Amazon's attempt to evade certain state sale taxes.

Inside Higher Ed has the full story.

image U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Flickr

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Been so busy reading e-books that you haven't had time to keep up on the week's news? Here's some of what you've been missing:

E-Book General - News

• China Telecom rolls out Tianyibook e-reader to compete against Kindle PW
• The Kindle ecosystem - how big is it really? Analyst takes a guess.
• Anti-piracy group wants to catch e-book pirates; vendors now required to help them
• Kindle store: Indies avoid DRM to reach wider audience
• '50 Shades Of Grey' author nails down top spot of top earners
• Kobo - Beyond the Book event, August 27 in NYC
• U Press of Kentucky: Own a print book? We give you the e-book for free!
• Apple ebook Judge Denise Cote: a crusading prosecutor
• Amazon Publishing Announces the Launch of “Icons”
• Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers
• E Ink net sales plunged 46% in Q2 2013, is still upbeat
• Rumor: Next-gen Kindle Fire HD 8.9" aka KFAPWA benchmark leak
• calibre V0.9.44 released

E-Book General - General Discussions

• The End of the Small Screen?
• Seth Godin: An end of books, and a new golden age

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources (No Self-Promotion)

• NOOK HD+ 16GB for $120, refurbished (via Groupon)
• Kobo Arc discounted, starting at $130 (US and CA only)

E-Book Readers - Amazon Kindle

• Amazon Silk Has a New Look

E-Book Readers - Android Devices

• Kindle for Android 4.2.0 released

E-Book Readers - Barnes & Noble NOOK

• Nook HD/HD+ Firmware Update 2.1.1 released

E-Book Software - Calibre

• Calibre Companion 3 beta for Android released

E-Book Software - Reading and Management

• ezPDF Reader 50% off (iOS and Android)

03:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

We here at MobileRead love calibre updates, especially when new features and functionalities are involved. The 0.9.44 refresh offers a few pleasant additions, including:

• An option to display all virtual libraries as tabs above the book list
• An improved cover trimming algorithm to automatically detect and remove borders and extra space from the edge of cover images. To try it use the 'Trim' button in the edit metadata dialog. This can sometimes remove too much so if you don't like the result, just click cancel. You can make the algorithm more or less aggressive via Preferences->Tweaks
• Allow customizing the comic metadata reader plugin via Preferences->Plugins to read the series index from either the volume or the issue number of the comic
• Linux MTP driver: Add ids for some newer devices
• Add a trim cover option to the bulk metadata edit dialog
• Make the book information dialog user resizable, with a splitter between the cover and the info panel. Also change the background of the cover panel for books that have been marked using the Temp marker plugin
• Driver for Samsung Galaxy Young Android phone

Also, the following bugs were fixed:

• PDF Output: Do not abort conversion if the document being converted has an HTML cover (found in some broken EPUB files)
• RTF Input: When converting RTF files with no codepage, use the input encoding setting as the codepage

Lastly, the following new and/or improved news sources are included:

• Daily Express by Dave Asbury
• The Independent
• El Periodica de Aragon
• El Correo

Want to know more about calibre? Head over to the Calibre forums.

Related: New calibre database backend - testers needed

07:01 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Benchmark information has leaked that puts teeth in an earlier rumor suggesting that the next Kindle Fire HD will be powered by a speedy Snapdragon 800 CPU and comes with a prodigious 2560x1600 screen (8.9-inch model).

[via Android Community]

05:26 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

A troubling sign for us e-paper lovers? E Ink yesterday announced its net sales to have dropped by 46% in Q2 2013 from its prior quarter. Yet, according to the investor conference held yesterday, things are not as gloomy as they might appear:

E Ink was upbeat about this quarter's prospects.

"Customers have put off their new product launches to the third quarter from the second quarter,” company chief financial officer Eddie Chen told investors.

"There is enormous growth momentum to arrive in the third quarter. You will feel the [strength of] an upswing," Chen said.

This quarter, revenue is expected to at least double last quarter's NT$2.93 billion, as customers were scheduled to ship new e-readers for the holiday shopping season, Chen said.

Source: Taipei Times.

It's also reported that overall shipments of e-readers will remain flat compared to last year, with between 10 to 15 million units.

Further key points from the investor conference:

• E-book and E-reader show significant growth in Western Europe and Asia Pacific markets. According to IHS, the combined e-reader market share in these markets has increased from 38% in 2011 to 54% in 2013.
• Amazon Kindle has entered China and India markets.
• Kobo eReader sales in 1Q13 was up 145% YoY. With the successful launch of AURA HD in US and Europe, Kobo will expand its direct distribution into China, India, Russia, etc.
• Korea Epub will launch Crema Shine e-reader in South Korea in August
• Market share of e-reader shipments: North America: 35%, Western Europe: 27%, Asia-Pacific: 27%, Latin America: 6%, MEA: 3%, Eastern Europe: 2%
• E Ink Triton II colored e-paper Display won the "Outstanding Photonics Award" at Display Taiwan 2013
• New: 13.3" E Ink Mobius Display on a Sony product

04:57 AM by Jessica Lares in E-Book General | News

Amazon teams up with authors to bring a series of short biographies under the brand "Icons" to its library. Released on a bi-monthly basis, the first is set to be "Jesus" by Jay Parini and will be available in December.

http://www.pubexec.com/article/amazo...-launch-icons/

"In a time when our fascination with the private aspects of public lives is so intense, it's not surprising that biography has become one of the most prominent forms of narrative nonfiction," said James Atlas. "Yet reading habits have changed dramatically in the digital age and I am excited to bring these short biographies to the Kindle platform."

The first ten books in the series are Jesus by Jay Parini, Stalin by Paul Johnson, Lucian Freud by Phoebe Hoban, J.D. Salinger by Thomas Beller, Poe by Paul Collins, Van Gogh by Julian Bell, Hemingway by Mark Kurlansky, David Lynch by Dennis Lim, Hannah Arendt by Anne Heller, and Hitchcock by Michael Wood.

"It seems appropriate to launch a series of short, thought-provoking biographies with a figure who has dominated our collective imagination and cultural iconography for over twenty centuries," said Jay Parini, author of Jesus. "This first book in the series will consider Jesus as the human face of god and dramatize the transformation from man to myth."

"We are thrilled to collaborate with James Atlas doing what he does best, and excited about the amazing authors that he's brought on board," said Ed Park.

image: The Last Judgement (cropped), Michelangelo