Last week Jeroen Brouwers (67), author of the book Sunken Red, refused Dutch/Flemish literary award Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren. Apparently he thought that the prize money, 16,000 euro, was a mere tip, a pittance. The Verbal Jam blog sarcastically acknowledges (Dutch) that perhaps the prize is indeed a little meagre compared to the AKO Literatuurprijs (50,000 euro), the Librisprijs (50,000 euro) and the Gouden Uil (25.000 euro), two of which the author won previously. I guess we won't see Brouwers experiment with tip jars anytime soon....

The Cybook Gen3 E Ink reader is now on sale at the Bookeen Web site for US$350 with: --A six-inch Vizplex E Ink screen. Vizplex has more screen contrast than the older E Ink technology. --A weight of 6.13 ounces. That's almost three ounces lighter than the new Sony Reader PRS-505. --Advertised battery life of 8,000 page flips between charges. --"RSS feeds and eNews." --Support of not just DRMed and nonDRMed Mobipocket but also "many open formats like HTML, Txt, PRC, PalmDoc and PDF. These formats are commonly found on Internet and can be easily generated by many text editors. All these files...

Starting in with books released in December, the Hachette Book USA Group will begin sending .epub files to stores and distributors---for consumer use in that e-book format or conversion to others. How popular could .epub become among readers, so they don't have to worry about books being available only in Adobe or Mobi or whatever? A so-far-small poll at MobileRead suggests very popular. The catch is that major software companies in the IDPF, creator of the standard, will need to live up to the group's pro-standards rhetoric. 72 percent aiming for .epub use Among...

Who says American politicians are the only pols who are megalomaniacs or on the cusp? The Washington Post tells of "talk of creating a new Russian computer network---one that would be separate from the Internet at large and, potentially, much easier for the authorities to control." Could this extend to Russian e-libraries someday? Meanwhile friends of Vladimir Putin, the, er, ambitious, president of the Russian Federation, are buying up independent sites. One mass media expert, Iosif Dzyaloshinsky at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, says: "The attractiveness of the Internet as a free platform...

"...now I no longer need to have a memory, for I have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia. Now if I need to know some fact about the world, I tap a few keys and reap the blessings of the external mind." - David Brooks writing in the New York Times. The TeleRead take: Brooks' intent is humorous, but I still wonder what will be the long-term effects on students growing up in a Googlized world. Will they be as quick with names as a certain blogger of my acquaintance? Actually we should all be grateful that Ted Nelson of...

We've griped about some public libraries splurging on movie DVDs when the money might better go for, ugh, books---both E and P. But what of a future when video-filled, corporately owned "public" libraries are displacing the genuine ones? I've just run across A.D. Nauman's Scorch---free to U.S. readers at the ad-supported Wowio site---and will quote a review by the prolific Rick Kleffel: "Scorch is set in a near-future America where the government has been subsumed into huge corporations. Arel Ashe is a rather plain 30-something woman who is going nowhere in the Adstories department of one of the three. Her second job is...

Amazon has been quietly selling the new Sony Reader---out of stock as I write this---but don't rule out the Kindle. My gut instinct is Real Real Soon. Remember, Amazon is already stocking "Kindle format" e-books. Meanwhile here's a rather tentative comparison of the real Sony vs. the much-rumored Kindle. Screen: Will there be much a difference? Almost surely the Kindle will use Vizplex E Ink. By far, screen quality is my main criterion. Case and related matters: Even if the Kindle won't win design awards, at least it has a keyboard, meaning effortless word-search....

Bizarrely, D.C. gets things right from time to time. Indications are that we'll be safe from e-mail and IM taxes. I'd hope that interactive e-books would also be protected from usage-related taxation. Technorati Tags: Internet tax ban , email tax , IM tax ...

My latest Publisher's Weekly post tells why Hachette's .epub announcement is healthy but is just one step toward razing the Tower of eBabel. Coming up next week in PW will be "DRM as a Lit and Biz Toxin." If you've got pet examples you're itching to share, just comment below. Here's a chance to reach the world's biggest publishers....

Notice? Michael Smith, typesetting supervisor at Harlequin, is mentioned in an .epub-related news release as "executive director of the International Digital Publishing Forum," the e-book industry trade and standards organization. Congrats, Mike. So our scoop was on the money. Related: Short PW item on Hachette's use of .epub....

Moderator's note: A press release is the source of the quoted headline. No, I don't know what Hachette Book Group USA will be doing about DRM. Is it using the Adobe variety of DRM, at least via partners, and expecting people to read .epub books in Adobe Digital Editions? DRM would rule out the enjoyment of Hachette books via FBReader and other open source programs. The same exclusion of FBReader would also happen with Hachette's possible future use of .epub with Mobi DRM, which, by the way, is incompatible with Adobe's "protection" unless there's a secret interoperability pact. And how about...

"Although OCRopus is weak in many areas," says an Ars Technica review, it has some real potential." (Via Bob Russell at MobileRead.) Technorati Tags: Google , OCRopus , OCR , OCR software , scanners ...