"Short Covers is a great little solution to the problem of finding new books online. Even if you don't use the service to buy anything, it's still a great way to browse for free, and ideal for those idle moments waiting in line at the grocery store." - Charlie Sorrel. Some negatives: The screen is somewhat cluttered and instead of flipping pages horizontally like iPhone e-reader Stanza or the Kindle, the software opts for a hybrid, although mostly you'll be scrolling down, web browser style. It's fine for excerpts, but reading a whole book would be very tiresome."...

"Laura Bush says her husband is meeting the neighbors, making trips to the hardware store, and catching up on some reading via a Kindle. His latest read is a novel given to him for Christmas by former Vice President Dick Cheney." - CNN. The TeleRead take: So when is President Obama, the high-tech and literacy guy, going to try e-books on his cellphone? Why not be a role model and encourage teenagers to do the same? If nothing else, it's time for Obama to officially recognize "Read an E-Book Week."...

From a press release by the Frankfurt Book Fair. These are excerpts selected from a survey the organizers did of over 1000 industry professionals from 30 different countries. As the much-hyped e-readers hit the stores, and digitization continues to revolutionize all aspects of the book trade, this year over 70 per cent of respondents revealed that they feel ready for the digital challenge. The survey also reveals that current opinion is divided on the future of the e-books and digital content versus the printed word. 40 per cent of respondents expect e-content to overtake traditional book sales as early...

Think printed books are on the way out? Don’t tell it to these people. After an Amazon supplier in Bristol, England went out of business, it opened its still second-hand-book-full warehouse to the general public and exhorted them to carry out as many as they could grab. And they did. These weren’t just trash books like the ones you find on most “free books” tables, either, but titles from such well-known authors as Danielle Steel, James Herriot, and others. The librarian blood I inherited from both my parents makes me cringe at the sight of all those...

Fortune is reporting that Hearst will be launching its own e-reader this year.  Hearst has evidently “developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and underlying technology, which other publishers will be allowed to adapt, is likely to debut this year.” … What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own...

As of Friday morning, February 27, three days after the Kindle 2 began arriving at the ship-to addresses of significant numbers of Amazon customers, I find it interesting to take a gander at the composition of the Kindle Store bestseller list. First, the explosive growth of the installed base of Kindles is stunning. The beta version of my new guide to the Kindle 2 has been out for five days and has climbed into the mid-teens on the Kindle Store bestseller list, but with daily sales figures that just last Fall would have placed it among the top...

A few specs for the Onyx Boox e-book reader: --Six-inch E Ink screen. --Touch capabilities. --Memory stick and USB. --532MHz chip. 128MB RAM. --Said to support ePub, PDF, HTML, TXT, CHM, Mobipocket, JPG/BMP/PNG/GIF/TIFF and MP3. Also coming: The Nutt 2 (right photo). (Via MobileRead and Chamber Four.)...

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo. Note: I suspect that the News was much more progressive, in adapting to the Net, than many book publishers, which have yet to fully appreciate interactivity and other advantages of e-books. (Via Read/Write Web.) ...

  "...even if the publishing industry isn't devastated when a single bookstore takes over the e-book world, the marketplace for books will be diminished." - Farhad Manjoo, Slate (via North100). Related: Why the Kindle's DRM is anti-elderly: AARP should fight against it, which we published yesterday....

Once again a post from what is rapidly becoming my favorite newspaper: Here is a snippet from their Book Blog about the Authors Guild protesting against Amazon’s voice technology in the Kindle: Another blow struck against the robot overlords by the Authors Guild, an advocacy body for American writers best known on these shores for its strong tradition of fighting the future. Past triumphs for the Guild have included suing Google over Google Books and encouraging its members not to link to Amazon because Amazon sells secondhand books: now it's going after Amazon's second-generation...

Tweet from the company. March 6 unveiling at Cebit. Also see press release. The details are in line with reports from several weeks ago. Price of the current BeBook, an E Ink e-reader. is $280. Will Adobe DRM will be available. The press release reads, "The ePub DRM standard will also be implemented within the next few months." Another case of confusing Adobe proprietary tech with generic ePub stuff? Or is the IDPF up to something?...

David Pogue, the New York Times Personal Tech columnist, says the Kindle 2 is a better choice than the Sony Reader PRS-700. Among Pogue's reasons: --The Sony PRS-700 screen lacks enough contrast between the background and the text and is otherwise flawed because of the layers added for the touch feature. Ironically, the cheaper PRS-505 has better contrast. --Amazon's store offers more titles. But, hey, this race isn't over yet, and as Pogue acknowledges, the Sony can handle ePub and PDF---increasing the number of potential selections from various stores online. --Books at Amazon...