07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

It's time again for our roundup on all the stuff we posted on our frontpage this past week.

E-Book General - News

• Better LCDs for outdoors reading
• WHSMith's temporarily shuts down ebook site
• Eleanor Catton wins 2013 Man Booker prize for The Luminaries
• Watchdog to Monitor Apple's eBook Business

E-Book Readers - Kobo Reader

• Bookworld Aus - shifting all bought ebooks to kobobooks.com

Miscellaneous - Lounge

• Halloween Avatars

08:35 AM by Lynx-lynx in E-Book Readers | Kobo Reader

Got an email from Bookworld (Melb). Essentially it says that they are shifting all ebook purchases made from their store to kobobooks.com as a library item against your Bookworld account.

Starting 29 October.

Curious ..... ostensibly the shift is about synchronising your (Kobo) ebook purchases across devices.

Anyone any ideas?

Original message from Bookworld:

07:48 AM by tubemonkey in E-Book General | News

Judge Appoints Monitor to Watch Over Apple’s E-Book Business

A U.S. District Court judge has appointed a monitor to oversee antitrust compliance in Apple’s e-book business.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote on Wednesday tapped Michael Bromwich to monitor Apple’s e-book business as part of a court ruling that the company conspired to fix e-book prices. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and inspector general for the Justice Department, most recently served as the top offshore drilling watchdog after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He will oversee Apple’s antitrust compliance for two years.

In July, Judge Cote ruled that Apple had conspired with five publishers to raise e-book prices. The publishers settled with regulators, while Apple appealed her ruling and denied any wrongdoing. An Apple Spokesman told Reuters the company had no comment on Bromwich’s appointment.

05:37 AM by GeoffR in E-Book General | News

The Canadian born New Zealander is the youngest author to win the prize.

Her novel The Luminaries is set in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush.

New Zealand Herald article

Official Announcement

06:06 PM by pdurrant in Miscellaneous | Lounge

It's October, and the 13th seems an appropriate day to start sorting out Halloween avatar costumes.

I've just taken mine out of the cupboard and brushed it down — as good as new.

So: search your wardrobes for an appropriate costume, and post your avatar in this thread.

(Please add your costumed avatar as an attachment to your post, so that it will remain visible even after you take it off after Halloween!)

01:05 PM by Crusader in E-Book General | News

The article [Mail Online] is extremely sensationalist, but I think it does highlight a legitimate problem with self-pubbed porn titles flooding online stores. I've been frustrated countless times by having to wade through some very dubious titles in the SFF category.

WHSmith was last night accused of profiting from the sale of vile books glorifying violent pornography, rape, incest and bestiality.

The high street chain openly advertised titles with disturbingly graphic content on its website, right next to children’s literature.

Typing the word ‘daddy’ into the search box, for instance, brings up disturbing fictional accounts of bondage and sexual humiliation, as well as collections of bedtime stories for youngsters.

After The Mail on Sunday alerted WHSmith to the appalling content freely available on its website, executives took the unprecedented decision to take the whole site offline while the explicit ebooks were removed from sale.

‘We will tighten our processes to ensure that this error can never happen again and sincerely apologise to our customers for any offence caused,’ the company said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2hcKsMWp3

03:50 PM by afv011 in E-Book General | News

JDI (Japan Display Inc.), a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi, has announced that it will begin to produce Full HD 5-inch “WhiteMagic” LCD displays, which are almost 40% brighter when compared to some of the brightest displays on high-end phones of 2013.

(...)the new displays from JDI utilize an extra white pixel added to the standard RGB (Red-Green-Blue) pixel layout to create a RGBW (Red-Green-Blue-White) pixel layout.

This tweak allows the display to reach a surface luminance of 840cd/m^2, an insanely high brightness when compared to current smartphones (...)

Source

I don't read often on my phone, but any improvements to make the screen more readable in daylight are certainly welcome.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

E-Book General - News

• Crowdfunding: E-ink dev board & SDK with screens up to 9.7"
• New Zealand: Book sales down 15% but ebook sales "explode"
• USA TODAY article: 40% of adults own an e-reader or tablet
• ImcoV6L eReader – HD E-ink, Android, & Frontlight f
• And the Nobel prize for literature 2013...

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

• 65% off Baen's November 2013 Bundle