"Evan Schnittman, head of biz dev at 35,000-title textbook publisher Oxford University Press, says a pal at one of the 'biggest trade publishers in the world' called him this week, shocked at how well Kindle-formatted books had sold in December, just after the Kindle's launch." - Richard McRoskey, Silicon Alley Insider The TeleRead take: That's not all. SAI further reports that Evan looked at royalty statements "which he said 'stunned' him: He had expected to sell up to 200 Kindle titles in December, but says the real numbers were 'an order of magnitude' more than that." What he isn't...

Moderator's note: For another perspective on the Kindle and rivals, check out Benjamin Higginbotham's Tech Evangelist video shown here. - D.R. Microsoft Senior Program Manager and Wiley author Scott Hanselman is a former Sony Reader user who is now a Kindle convert. In this blog post Scott covers everything he loves about his new Kindle. He's so right about the one reason the Kindle exists: "To extract money from my wallet." I find it interesting that Scott has grown tired of his iPod and leans more towards XM Radio, particularly since I'm heading in the opposite direction. I've had XM...

Prof. Powers is chair of Messiah College's English Department. We'll follow him as he befriends—or gives up on?—various forms of book-related technology. A colleague who is a librarian and shares a lot of my interests in writing and reading sent me the following from a friend's blog: "In a previous post my daughter blew me away with her use of eLocker to access her school files from home. Last night my son used MyAccess [link added] to write an essay online. Big whoop---right? Get this---it analyzed and graded it in an instant. Took about 3 seconds tops and he was looking...

I'm about to post Peter Kerry Powers' perspicacious essay "Writing by the numbers: Who needs an audience?" So what is the best way to learn writing? How about reading---of narrative works, not just exposition alone? This is no small part of the rationale behind the TeleRead plan for a well-stocked national digital library system blended in with local schools and libraries. Yes, formal instruction in writing can help, but it's no replacement. Below I'll highlight a just-received comment from a TeleBlog reader named William---titled "How an interest in narrative helped my career": "I write sales copy for several multi-million...

Neil Gaiman's American Gods wil be available for a month for viewing online, although, alas, it can't be downloaded (HarperCollins page and Gaiman blog entry, via Mobile Read). It's s-l-o-w browsing. Perhaps Harper would do better to make a downloadable copy available for a limited time. Even a DRMed copy would be better than the current arrangement. Meanwhile TOR's e-book giveaway continues, with Robert Charles Wilson's Spin being the latest download available in PDF, HTML and Mobipocket. TOR says: "Within a day or so of sending us your address, you should receive an email with a download link...

A bespectacled party guest in The Great Gatsby marvels over the books in Jay Gatsby's  library, perhaps a little sarcastically: "Absolutely real---have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard." Holding up Volume One of the Stoddard Lectures, he "cries triumphantly": "See! It's a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too---didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?" Now the Los Angeles Times is out with a story on home libraries and ways...

"...she weakens her argument by ranting with an elitist tone against modern life with its slang, informality and new gadgets. Having downloaded her book to my digital reader, I found her hostility to eBooks silly." - USA Today reviewer Deirdre Donahue on Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. The TeleRead take: E-books can expand the range of books available and make them usable in new ways; that's hardly a threat to the national IQ. The challenge is to blend them in well with local schools and libraries and encourage young people to love immersive reading---as opposed to simply...

The iPhone is a big hit among TeleBlog readers if you go by a poll from some months back, which showed that half either owned a phone or were planning to buy one. Apple let people down, however, by not making the iPhone and the related iPod touch models very friendly to software from third-party developers. Now that's about to change with the March 6 release of an official software developers kit. Yep, Apple has actually set a definite date now. What a way---deliberately or not---to celebrate Read an E-Book Week! Technorati Tags: iPod touch,Read an E-Book Week...

Could a better Kindle have come from a design student in Australia than from the Amazon pros? Nedzad Mujcinovic, winner of a design award at Monash University, come up with the Livre, the e-book concept above. I actually prefer the Sony Reader's looks. But I love the idea of a multitouch interface to simplify matters for users; just keep on mind that this would have significantly jacked up the Kindle's $400 cost. Click here for a full-sized view. In Engadget's words: "The system uses an e-ink screen overlaid with a touch surface, thus forgoing the multitudinous buttons of the Kindle...

Rita Toews, creator of Read An E-Book Week, was kind enough to explain the corrected dates. Thanks, Rita!  - David As you mentioned, David, Read An E-Book Week is a different date each year because of the way the month starts.  In 2002 I originally registered it as the second full week of March, but over the years it has crept to the second week of March. I didn't do the promoting last year, and this year when I made up the press release I used the second full week of March. When the error was brought to my attention I...

The independent OLPC News has taken aim at an OLPC copycat computer selling for $195: One Elonex Copycat Per Laptop Company. The $195 is about what the OLPC charges governments. Under the recently expired Give One Get One program, individuals could pay $400 to buy a  laptop for themselves and a child in a developing country. Also just out is the Aware A-Book AW-300, shown here. Meanwhile VirtualHosting.com has written up the Top 5 Sub-$300 Laptops---that's VH's wordings. First one mentioned is the Intel Classmate. Technorati Tags: Elonex,XO-1,XO,Intel Classmate,Aware A-Book AW-300...

William F. Buckley, Jr., my political opposite but a gung-ho booster of e-books and the TeleRead proposal, calling for a well-stocked national digital library system, blended in with local libraries and schools, is dead at the age of 82. RIP, Bill. From a USA Today blog: "National Review Online, an outgrowth of the magazine Buckley founded, describes his death at The Corner: I'm devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut. After year of illness, he died while at work; if he had been given a...