I am in St. Louis this weekend, along with my parents, for a visit to my brother, sister-in-law, and four nieces and nephews. I am away from my own desktop computer, and am having to make do with a slightly flaky Ubuntu laptop---and do not quite have either the energy or the facilities to write the in-depth examination of how the PRS-700 deals with different e-book formats that I had intended. However, I have brought along the PRS-700 (as well as my iPod Touch) and have observed a few possibly-unexpected uses of the Sony Reader---and another flaw or two---along the way. (Update:...

I'm at the show this morning and I stopped by the Ingram booth to say hello.  They told me that, from their viewpoint, the show has been very successful on the digital end.  They said that last year people were asking them to explain what all this digital stuff was, but this year people seem to know all that and are talking about implementation.  They said that they are getting a lot of interest from hardware manufacturers, so Amazon may be seeing some competition in the future. Update:  As I was leaving I ran into the CEO of Overdrive and told...

Here's a shot of Sarah Wendell (left) from Smart Bitches, and Jessica Kennedy from Books Reviews by Jess. I'll be at the Net Galley booth #4077 at noon on Sunday. The final panel I attended was on, and by, book review bloggers. The panel included Stephanie Coleman-Chan of Stephanie's Written Word, Jennifer Hart of Book Club Girl, Candace Levy of Beth Fish Reads, Natasha Maw of Maw Books, Julie Peterson of Booking Mama, Amy Riley of My Friend Amuy and Dawn Rennert of She is Too Fond of Books. It was given in one of the largest rooms...

Here’s the view from the ferry that I take from New Jersey over the Hudson to New York.  The ferry terminal is only 2 blocks away from the Javits Center so it makes for a pretty good commute. Not only are books on display, but also book accessories.  Here is a booth from Periscope, who makes a book light for the Kindle and regular books as well. You can find it here, by the way. Downstairs is another floor that is composed of primarily children’s book publishers.  Very strangely, it is also the venue for contract...

I’m not sure if the Sony e-reader app, in the eBook Libary, can replicate this view in ePub. But oh how nice it looks with The Gate House, a book in Sony’s proprietary BBeB format. The reader needs to treat ePub the same if it doesn’t already. Notice the efficient use of the landscape-oriented screen on my desktop. Software developers should consider similar arrangements for netbooks, especially those you can’t use in a tablet mode. For desktops, please show mercy and add scrolling via a mouse wheel, a little detail that Sony apparently forget....

You can find a 15 minute interview with me over at the Kindle Chronicles.  It was fun to do it and Len Edgerly is a really nice guy.  Here’s Len’s blurb: Paul Biba, co-editor of TeleRead and a way-early adopter of eBooks, back when he was a globe-trotting corporate lawyer.  He explains why he considers these early days of the eBook revolution so exciting, and why he and TeleRead owner David Rothman disagree on whether we should be afraid that Amazon will gain monopolistic power over the eBook industry....

Road Show, a Hollywood comedy directed by the legendary Hal Roach, is a free public domain movie these days---with a little twist. One of the three screenwriters was Arnold Belgard (1907-1967), a distant relative on my late mother’s side of the family. Three “Bonanza” and nine “Lassie” episodes were also among Belgard’s many scripts. What’s more, he wrote some dialogue for The Fabulous Joe, a talking dog movie, which is fitting since The Solomon Scandals is the only D.C. newspaper novel that ends with a talking Afghan Hound doing a Truman send up at the Cosmos Club. No...

For some months now, we’ve written of the plight of the Yahoo 360 bloggers---an illustration of how “corporate” and “permanent” often don’t jibe with each other. No ideology commentary here. That’s just the way it is. In the grand scheme of things---yes, I’m exaggerating a little for effect---your posts may have the lives of fruit flies. Now Yahoo has announced that “Your blog on Yahoo 360 will no longer be available to you.” Not just for new posts for continued access? The good news---kudos to Yahoo!---is that you can move your blog to another Yahoo site...

At BookExpo I attended a workshop on copyright enforcement. It was a joint presentation by the Association of American Publishers and the U.K. Publishers Association. They presented a whole bunch of info on how much infringement there was, how many evil sites there are and gave some plain misinformation about the Pirate Bay case. I was going to write it up and give you the details, but something about it kept nagging at me and I realized, today, what a sorry thing it was. The thrust of the presentations was how good they were in issuing, and...

  Here is the Dover books.  They don’t do ebooks, and don’t plan to (I asked), but I love their books so I couldn’t resist posting this picture.             Here’s one of the main entrances to the exhibit hall           People are lining up all over to get books signed.  There are even separate book signing venues.  Also, if anyone is offering a free book the table is mobbed, almost like...

Here’s Kat Meyer from Follow the Reader (left) and Natasha Maw from Maw Books at the “”Meet the Bloggers'” booth: Kat was followed by Jason Boog (left) of GalleyCat and Andrew Savikas of Tools of Change The Amazon booth is nothing special and the Sony booth looks exactly the same except for a Sony sign.  They are directly across from each other. Actually, they are both pretty crummy compared to most of the booths at the show. ...

Here are a few shots to give you a feel of what is going on here.  There are booths from the biggest publishers as well as booths from university presses and tiny publishers.  A friend who works for a small publisher, who has a booth here, tells me that in years past the major attendees were book buyers.  This has dropped off a lot, she says, in the last few years and now there is a huge media contingent who prowls around looking to find out what is new and trendy.  Also, she says that rights buyers are making up...