You  already can read e-books on your GPS in some cases. Exvaxman vaguely recalls a model that can display files in the .txt format---anyone have further specifics? Meanwhile, another TeleBlog regular, Rob Preece, writes: "I received a Garmin GPS unit for Christmas and was able to use RasterBook, along with a SD memory card, to read eBooks. I'm planning on writing a tutorial on this. Image quality is really pretty good–definitely workable although not as sharp as ePaper." See a tutorial that Rob wrote about RasterBook in a cellphone context. Talk about the knowledge, ingenuity and resourcefulness of our readers!...

"Don't blame" carnage in the book industry "on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader's time or diminished attention spans," says David Streitfeld, a New Yok Time staff writer, in an opinion piece. "What's undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers." Particularly the buying of used books, he believes. Excerpt: "Andy Ross, the former owner of Cody's, told me that buying books online 'was not morally dubious, but it is tragic. It has a lot of unintended consequences for communities.' "Mr....

Hardware failure knocked Feedbooks offline. But co-founder Hadrien Gardeur reports Feed is back. Blame Murphy's Law. The problem happened at the worst time, between Christmas and New Year's, when Hadrien was out of town and it was harder to round up techies. Feed offers free books and other items and even lets you publish your own Related: Easy-to-learn publishing tool from Feedbooks: Reach Kindles, Sony Readers, iPhones---and help the ePub standard....

For the first time, more Americans are getting their news online than from traditional ink and paper, although the popularity of television still eclipses all other forms of media. In an apparently sharp shift in habits, the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that the number of consumers using the web as a main news source surged from 24% to 40% in a year, overtaking the 35% who rely on newspapers. Television slipped from 74% to 70%. Younger people are migrating towards the web quickly. Among the under-29s, the web leaped from 34% to 59% as the leading source of news, tying with...

TomTom One 125 GPSby ComputerTV Circuit City, Amazon and Tiger Direct here in the States are selling Tom Tom GPS systems for just $100 or so. Anyone familiar with the Tom Tom? I also wonder if, like cell phones, GPS systems could be platforms for e-books---for travels? Screens may well get larger. Are any existing models capable of doubling as e-book readers? Related: Sales video from Tiger Direct. and Wikipedia entries on Tom Tom and GPS and automotive navigation systems. Note: TeleRead's Paul Biba is rather knowledgeable on GPSes, and I've suggested that he do a separate post if he...

Some low-income people are actually gravitating to the iPhone because they can use it for many purposes, not just as a phone. Perhaps that's a reason why AT&T is offering $99 refurbs in exchange for two-year wireless sign-ups. They are 8GB 3G models. AT&T's $99 is quite a price drop from the earlier $150. Smart move---this $99 approach (official AT&T page). And an even smarter move would be to couple phones and literacy and do cross-promo with Lexcycle/Stanza, eReader and other companies offering e-readers for the iPhone, as well as deals with publishers. Who knows? Maybe this could be...

How easy is it to produce an ePub book---either your own or a public domain work---and spread it around the globe? This topic is more than just grist for a post. I wanted to give the planet a quick preview of The Solomon Scandals in the standard IDPF format. And, if, along the way, people could also download Mobipocket and PDF versions of the three-chapter sample, not just ePub, then so much the better. Easy to learn Now, having tried the publishing tool at Feedbooks, I can say that it's as easy to master as I'd hoped---at least if...

Editor's Note: I received the following email from Murray C. Park in the UK. Thanks a lot! I've not seen it publicised anywhere and I don't think I even got an email from them, but for the benefit of your UK readers the WH Smith ebook store at http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/ is currently running a 50% off sale on every ebook and audio book. Usually I make most of my purchases from Fictionwise or Books On Board because their prices and selection are usually much better that the local offerings, but I've already snapped up 25 titles in this sale...

Since the words "box" and "case" are often used interchangeably, it seems appropriate on Boxing Day to update the story about the mysterious iPhone Nano case that a Chinese case manufacturer is selling, well in advance of any iPhone Nano product actually being announced. Ars Technica has the story that this case can now actually be purchased for about $25. It does seem odd that the manufacturer would actually sell cases for a product nobody knows to exist yet, doesn't it? Ars suggests that, if it does exist, the Nano might end up being the "$99 Wal-Mart...

How to push your e-book or p-book online? Make it more visible? Use social networks? Perhaps even get it mentioned here in the TeleBlog? Steve Weber, an author-bookseller, offers a number of useful marketing suggestions in Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors. You can download it for free from Feedbooks. Yes, the giveaway surely isn't a coincidence. Perhaps Weber hopes to spur interest in future editions. I notice that a Kindle edition---updated?---is just out. Plug teems with handy suggestions and on-the-mark observations, such as the fact that steady word of mouth counts more than sales bursts on...

Project Gutenberg is looking for volunteers to help with error correcting books that have been previously proofread. Here is Michael Hart's request for assistance. It makes interesting reading. I note, by the way, that Project Gutenberg calls them eBooks - without the hyphen, but with a capital B. I can't think of a more authoritative source for the spelling. David? Disagree? Error Correction of Project Gutenberg eBooks As many of you know, I like to do something around this time every year to take a new step forward in Project Gutenberg. As luck would have...

I had not been aware of this until a LiveJournal post from Steve Miller brought this to my attention, but after checking around (and being pointed to a link by Sharon Lee) I was able to find a fair amount of supporting evidence. It seems there is a movement to require second-hand (or "used") book stores to pay royalties on books they resell. Here is a page from the website of Novelists, Inc., a group which claims to be "the international organization of multi-published novelists" (although I have never heard of them to this point), in which they...