10:24 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

The whole story seems a tad far-fetched, but a bunch of e-book pirates has made it their mission to compete against Amazon. Torboox is a pirate site which would have stayed in a darkened, cool underground cavern had it not been for an interview with the operator of said site that resulted in a lawsuit against two major German newspapers. A classic Streisand Effect. Anyhow, TorrentFreak, too, had an interview with these guys and was told that their ultimate goal was to bring down Amazon's quasi-monopoly as an e-book seller.

“If you look at it, they are very similar. Amazon is nothing but a hoster for the authors. No wonder they can offer 70% provision,” he [Spiegelbest, the operator of the pirate site] says.

“Amazon does nothing to ‘produce’ books. Thus they are very similar to Torboox. Both of us – legal and illegal – are book hosters, not traditional book publishers. The ebook market is shared between two book hosters.”

The pirate claims that piracy "controls" around 50 percent of the whole e-book market with Amazon owning the majority of the rest. He goes on explaining how Amazon's size is bad for authors and publishers, and that the only way out was a flat-rate on e-books that, conveniently, the pirate site is planning to offer.

“In the end the publishers have to talk to us. They have to find a way to make us legal. It is their job not ours. A flatrate will be 10 euros a month – no limit. Licensing will again be the job of the publishers. If a publisher isn’t wise enough to participate – no problem,” Spiegelbest says. [...]

We have the concept. The publishers have the content. Together we can indeed battle Amazon. And Amazon is not monopolizing films, games or music – why ebooks? For me the biggest problem is this: Will the publishers understand before they vanish? That’s 50-50, no more,” he concludes.

Related: E-book customer sharing with anti-piracy group BREIN faces political backlash, Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers

09:12 AM by faithbw in E-Book General | General Discussions

I just purchased the new Nexus 7 and the high pixel density makes text very crisp and clear. I actually find the text clearer and easier to read on the Nexus as opposed to the Sony PRS-350 that I previously owned.

However, I wonder how tablets with high pixel density stack up against some of the newer lighted e-reader like the Aura HD and the new Paperwhite. Which one is better for reading in bed in the dark. Which provides an overall better reading experience?

08:41 AM by Breid in E-Book General | General Discussions

I am very possibly representative of a minority viewpoint on this forum, but I am puzzled by other folks' desire to store thousands of ebooks on their ereaders. I am building my collection and add all my purchases to Calibre, which I backup regularly. But I only keep my to be read books on my ereader, and as I currently have 40 titles on that shelf, I reckon that will keep me in reading material for at least a month.

I am wondering if I am a slow reader, or if other folks have a higher 'must store' threshold than mine?

[image by Abhi Sharma / flickr]

07:29 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Whether it's the new Kindle Paperwhite, Sony's just unveiled PRS-T3 Reader, or Kobo's upcoming Aura - let's face it, it's not exactly easy to pick the right device to satisfy our e-reading cravings. So props to the guys from Engadget for this in-depth review of the Kobo Aura. Their verdict? Great hardware, great software, albeit pricey ($150).

Funny enough, at one point the reviewer states that the Aura is "easily the nicest mainstream standalone e-reader we've seen", while a little further down he remarks that this device is "decidedly not mainstream" due to its heavy price tag. Confused?

All told, the Aura's hardware isn't perfect, but this is easily the nicest mainstream standalone e-reader we've seen, though the $150 price tag may be a lot for all but the most devoted bookworms to stomach.

The Kobo Aura is the best flagship e-reader on the market. There are, however, some caveats here. First, it's still a hard sell if you're locked into Amazon, as the Paperwhite's recent tweaks have made it all the more compelling a proposition. Second, the $150 price tag makes the device decidedly not mainstream. Kobo just can't compete with Amazon's subsidized reader prices, particularly not with the Kindle's Special Offers ad model, which shaves even more off the price. If you're already locked into Amazon, it's best to wait it out. If you're a Kobo devotee or someone who has yet to pull the trigger on an e-reader (and don't mind paying for quality), do yourself a favor and take a serious look at the Aura.

Related: Kobo forum

06:51 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Psst. Have you heard? With all the recent coverage of the new Paperwhite, it's easy to miss that Amazon just released a new firmware for their first-gen Paperwhite. Among the general improvements and enhancements, one nice new feature to have is the option to select a different dictionary while looking up a word. Also, when a looked up word has different meanings, you can now navigate through the various definitions from within the dictionary definition window. Finally, found search terms are highlighted now (something we think is so intrinsic that it should have been included with the very first firmware release).

Did you already upgrade and want to share your experience? Or are you still holding off for a while to see what other users have to say? Then come and join us in the on going firmware discussion.

06:23 AM by Dulin's Books in E-Book General | News

Send books to the display from an app on the device and change pages with the volume control.

So if you want to catch up with a marathon session of "Fifty Shades of Grey" without caning your phone's battery or knackering your eyes, the PocketBook could be worth a look. Made by e-book-builder PocketBook, the case talks to an app on the phone, where you store your e-books. You take an e-book stored on your phone and zap it to the e-ink screen, turning pages with the volume key.

Link: CNet

06:02 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Heads up, fellow calibre fans: The latest version of calibre has just been released which includes better support for MTP devices. MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) is a bit different from the normal USB Mass Storage protocol in that it doesn't show the native filesystem to the computer; rather, in order to preserve compatibility across different filesystems, it uses a file hierarchy simulated by the MTP driver. With calibre 1.2, you can now ignore any folders within that hierarchy.

New Features

• Conversion: Add support for the CSS3 rem font size unit
• MTP devices, such as Android tablets/phones: Allow ignoring any folder on the device, not just top level folders. For newly connected devices, also scan /Android/data/com.amazon.kindle for books by default (newer versions of the Kindle app place downloaded files there)
• Speed up sorting when the book list is showing a restricted set of books, such as when the results of a search are displayed or a virtual library is used
• Edit metadata dialog: Add an undo option for the Trim cover button

Bug Fixes

• Amazon metadata download: Update to handle website changes at amazon.com
• PDF Output: Workaround a bug in the library calibre uses to render HTML to PDF that caused text in some documents that used small-caps fonts to not render correctly
• Kobo driver: When a sideloaded kepub is added from a Kobo device to the calibre library, it is added as an epub, but the file copied is corrupt
• Fix changing the user interface language in the welcome wizard causing some parts of the interface to remain in the old language until calibre is restarted
• Fix regression in 1.0 that broke setting author names with the | character in them
• Content server: When running from inside the main calibre program, do not restrict the books shown based on the current virtual library in the main program. If you wish to restrict the books shown in the content server, use Preferences->Sharing over the net
• Output dates in the local timezone instead of UTC when generating CSV catalogs
• Library maintenance: When doing a check library instead of dumping the database to SQL and restoring it, run a VACUUM. This works around various bugs in the dump and restore capabilities of apsw
• Edit metadata dialog: Fix adding an image to an empty comments block not working
• Conversion: Fix font declarations with invalid font-family values causing conversion to abort when subsetting is enabled
• MOBI Output: Fix conversion of some super/sub scripts failing if they are the first or last element in a paragraph
• New database backend: Various improvements to make the backend more robust against databases with invalid/corrupt data in them

New and improved news sources

• Countryfile

As usual, if you need help or if you have any suggestions, don't be shy and join the discussions in the calibre forums.

02:05 PM by holymadness in E-Book General | News

A few months ago I signed up for alerts about the launch of Oyster, a Netflix-like reading service. It gives you access to an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee. Today I got an email announcing that the service is live for those with an invitation (those without can join the queue to receive one). You can access it at https://www.oysterbooks.com and there is some information about the launch at http://blog.oysterbooks.com/. It's an iPhone-only reading app for now, which is a bit of a curious choice.

Here's an overview of the service from GigaOm, which includes some interesting details: http://gigaom.com/2013/09/05/oyster-netflix-for-ebooks/

• The service launches with 100,000 in-copyright ebooks (i.e., not free public domain stuff)
• Publishers participating — making at least a few titles available, not their whole catalogs by any means — include HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Workman, Algonquin, Melville House, Rodale, Open Road, RosettaBooks, F+W Media and self-publishing distributor Smashwords.
• Oyster wouldn’t get into details about how it’s compensating publishers and authors, and wouldn’t state whether newer, more well-known titles are getting better royalties than older ones.
• With Oyster, after you add a book to your reading list, you can access it offline. You only need an internet connection to download new titles.
• An iPad app is coming this fall
• Oyster currently has no “concrete plans” to launch on platforms beyond iOS.

I've taken some screenshots of the website for those without invitations. I haven't yet had time to look at the app.

EDIT: Seems like the app is only available in the US iTunes store for now. A tweet from the developers reads, "No announced plans for expansion outside the US yet but it's definitely something we want to do."