08:20 AM by skinmaan in E-Book General | News

Thought someone out there might find this interesting...

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/23/all...s-going-t.html

"Overdrive, which is one of the main suppliers of downloadable audiobooks to public libraries, announced that it is retiring its DRM-encrusted .WMA formats and pushing everything to DRM-free .mp3s."

For me, this is great news. Great to see the industry moving in this direction.

skinmaan

05:23 PM by pdurrant in E-Book General | News

Adobe have just released Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 with a new DRM scheme, although news of it seems confined to their US web site at present.

Thanks to Nate the Great at The Digital Reader for the heads-up.

UPDATE: What does this mean for me?

The new DRM encryption will only be used on ePubs downloaded for the first time with ADE 3.0. (The retailer's server needs updating too, but that's harder for an end user to tell.)

So to avoid the new DRM scheme, make sure that you only download any newly purchased ePubs with ADE 2.0 for now.

Eventually (possibly even as early as July 2014), Adobe might require the use of ADE 3.0 for new purchases. But until then, using ADE 2.0 is my advice.

ADE 3.0 New Features

More Secure DRM Scheme
Digital Rights Management scheme to protect ePub and PDF files from unauthorized viewing is now hardened and made more secure.

Enhanced Support for Vertical Layout
Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 provides enhanced support for vertical layout and orientation:

• Added support for the CSS property "epub-text-orientation"
• Supported values: mixed | upright | sideways-right | sideways (sideways-left and use-glyph-orientation are not supported).
• Proper alignment of special characters that act as both full width and half width.

Support for CSS 2.1 Text Properties
With the support for CSS 2.1 text properties, Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 can now render books that use CSS 2.1.

• Added support for CSS “position” property.
• Added support for CSS “Z-index” property.
• Added support for list-style-position value “inside”.
• Enhanced support for CSS Float property

PDF Search Improvements
With Adobe Digital Editions 3.0, PDF search has become better enabling you to search for text in a specific range.

Migration to the Latest Version of Compiler on Mac
Compiler on Mac is migrated from XCode 3.1 and Mac OS 10.5 SDK to the latest version XCode 5.0.x and Mac OS 10.7 SDK.

01:06 AM by WT Sharpe in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

MobileRead Book Club
February 2014 Nominations

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for February, 2014.

The nominations will run through midnight EST January 31 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

Book selection category for February is:

Romance

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a poll at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the initial poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations. Please comment if you discover a nomination is not available as an ebook in your area.

Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Amazon (US)

(2) Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) by Liliana Hartk
Amazon US

(3) The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Amazon Au - Amazon U.K. - Amazon U.S.

(4) Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan
Amazon UK - Amazon US

(5) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Amazon U.K. - Amazon U.S.

(6) Behold, Here's Poison by Georgette Heyer
Amazon U.K. - Amazon U.S.

(7) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Zola (Exclusive)

(8) I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Amazon U.K. - Amazon U.S.

(9) Local Custom by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
the omnibus from Baen

The nominations for February are now closed.

11:19 AM by pdurrant in E-Book General | News

Thanks to The Digital Reader for more news on an interesting new reflective LCD display. While it clearly is initially aimed at watches and similar devices, it can scale to ereader sized displays.

At 3mW to 4mW for a 6" display, a 3.7V, 1.9Ah battery like the one in a Kindle could power the display for 70 days or so. Of course, that's just the display, power is needed for the computer part of an ereader too, but it shows that the display is low power enough to be used in an ereader.

The displays going into production have a reflectance of 32% and a contrast ratio of 20:1

In comparison, eInk's Carta display has a reflectance of 44%, but a contrast ratio of only 15:1.

Japan Display claim 40% reflectance for their large screen prototype.

I really hope some ereader manufacturer produces a device with this display.

11:01 AM by Loosheesh in E-Book General | News

Today I got an email from eChristian.com about their site closing down

eChristian.com Store Closing

eChristian.com's final active date will be January 31, 2014.

We are saddened to inform you that the eChristian.com website is scheduled to end on January 31, 2014. This has been a difficult decision because we truly value and appreciate our customers, publishers, and partners. We are thankful for the many kind words and comments for eChristian, but the predatory pricing of industry giants and the publisher stipulated DRM requirements were two obstacles we could not overcome and don't see any positive changes on the horizon. As a result, continued investment in the platform, support, and marketing is unwise.

Have you made purchases from us?

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this will cause and will do our best to help each customer of eChristian get their content off our servers before the site is taken offline.

Please download and authorize* your purchased content from your My Library on eChristian before January 31, 2014 as accounts and downloads will no longer be accessible as of 12:01am PT on February 1, 2014.

*Authorizing your DRMed eBook content will ensure that it is available on that device after the eChristian servers are taken offline. Note that no authorization is needed for downloaded audiobook, video, or DRM free eBook content.

Future audiobook purchases.

Although the eChristian site is being permanently decommissioned, our sister site christianaudio.com is still active and will continue to offer quality, Christian audiobook downloads at great prices!

Contact us with questions.

Feel free to reply to this email or send a note to support@echristian.com if you have additional questions or need assistance in downloading your digital content from eChristian.

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

Previously at MobileRead:

E-Book General - News

• Dutch e-book sales rose by more than 60% in 2013
• Germany's Weltbild insolvency
• E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps

04:14 AM by hughes in E-Book General | News

New (2014 Jan 16) Pew survey results on reading habits:

Most American adults read a print book in the past year, even as e-reading continues to grow

05:25 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

From Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...nsolvency.html

In the long term, the showdown seemed hardly avoidable, as the owner’s low key commitment had to clash with the plan of the management, to radically renew Weltbild over a period of three years, until 2016, by closing many of its 300 bricks-and-mortar outlets, and instead transform it into Germany’s leading domestic Internet platform for books and media.

Led by CEO Carel Halff, Weltbild had become the number two online book retailer in Germany, behind Amazon, while multiplying its various digital initiatives. Focusing on a strategy defined by digital and Internet sales, Halff was betting early on e-books, introducing devices and promoting an expanding catalogue of titles – which included loads of self-published as well as erotic titles, which again drew harsh criticism from the Church. In 2013, Weltbild became a driving force in the Tolino alliance, a consortium formed around a line of e-readers and tablets, which included not only Deutsche Telekom as a technology partner, but also Thalia as the largest chain book store and a direct competitor. In November, Weltbild also announced plans to extend its share in buecher.de, an online bookselling platform co-owned by the Holtzbrinck group (which seemed to be ready to divest its stake) and Axel Springer.

All these simultaneous initiatives may have overburdened the complex ownership structure, as it required a significant financial commitment in a long term plan. When holiday sales stayed much below expectations, and the required investment skyrocketed from € 60 million ($ 82 million) to an estimated € 160 million ($ 220 million), the owners decided to pull the plug.

More at the source, including the (by now) the obligatory Amazon reference even though Germany is a fixed price market.

They're calling it a "Borders incident" but it sounds more like a B&N scenario given their involvement in Tolino.