Here's my experience after two hours with the ECTACO jetBook-Lite, an AA-battery-operated dedicated e-book reader with a very nice black-and-white non-backlit LCD screen instead of an E Ink display. I bought this specifically to read eReader-formatted books from Fictionwise.com. Fictionwise is promoting the jetBook-Lite on its site. Despite Fictionwise's ad here, which shows "Dictionary" as the first menu choice (click on photo for detailed view), dictionary lookup is not supported with eReader files. It works only with plain text files---or maybe with some other formats---but not with eReader, whether DRM'd or not. Really, Fictionwise-folk, you must...

Sara Weinman just spotted a breakdown of e-book formats that lit agent Steve Axelrod provided for the first week of sales for book by one of his best-selling writers. The numbers show Amazon’s dominance of the e-book trade. Granted, this is for just one title, and it’s a June stat; and some other people’s numbers are odds with his breakdown---suggesting, for example, that Adobe counts more heavily. Still, I have no doubt that Amazon is e-bookseller #1 right now and will be the Goliath for some months, regardless of how well the Nook or other rivals fare. Perhaps...

A Web browser a Pandora app and other apps like Busy Box, a utility, are starting to appear from nookDevs and friends. But first you need to root your Nook to get control of the the gizmo, and that isn’t for novices. Me, I’ll be curious if a variant of FBReader makes it to the Nook, one way or another. Perhaps in the end the Nook will be a cool machine not because of B&N but because of the Android-runnable extras. If nothing else, I wonder what the guys at Open Inkpot are thinking. ...

Actually this is back in November, but I missed it in my listing of starred Google Reader feeds and I think it is still newsworthy. From Defective by Design: Slashdot reported over the weekend that Lulu, the print-on-demand service founded by Red Hat's Bob Young that has been an important resource for DRM-free and pro-sharing authors, is now selling DRM-infected ebooks. Together, we have mostly defeated DRM on music. We now need to achieve the same victory with DRM and ebooks. We need to tell Lulu that DRM'ed ebooks are completely unacceptable. We will not let ebook publishers rob us of...

The Library of Congress's new collection can be accessed through its website and also through the Internet Archive. Here is what LOC says about the collection: Nearly 60,000 books prized by historians, writers and genealogists, many too old and fragile to be safely handled, have been digitally scanned as part of the first-ever mass book-digitization project of the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC), the world’s largest library. Anyone who wants to learn about the early history of the United States, or track the history of their own families, can read and download these books for free....

Smashwords has published its year-end review. As of the end of the year they have published 5,979 original books and are publishing and distributing the works of 2,700 authors and 100 small independent publishers. By contrast, at this time last year, after 8 months of operation, they published 100 authors and 160 titles. A bit of an increase! They have a list of priorities for next year, but one of the things that struck me is that, as they say, "... we've received essentially no press coverage from the mainstream media. Smashwords has never been covered or even...

OK, gang, a little Apple-ology this morning. It’s a harmless game, a cousin of the Kremlinology, except that I doubt Steve Jobs has nukes. Yet. While earlier rumors waft around about the so-called iSlate, DigiTimes now says Apple has ordered a ten-inch display from the Innolux subsidiary of Taiwan’s Foxconn Group after having troubles earlier finding one with glass strong enough. The quest for the right display set back the launch, supposedly, until the first quarter of 2010. The tablet’s main manufacturer is said to be Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry). DigiTimes or at least...

Attention, Amazon shoppers---and BN.com fans, too, as well as those at other Internet stores selling e-books and more! Randall Stross, the New York Times columnist, wants you to pay sales taxes on Net purchases no matter where you live, at least if you’re in the U.S., where he says Amazon collects for just five states. I respectfully disagree with Stross despite the grotesque botch that Amazon has made of my novel’s listings. Here’s a pro-Amazon post---at least if just sales taxes are the issue. Let CEO Jeff Bezos lavish money on lobbyists to rid us of the scourge. Amazon’s customers, inside or...

All Romance eBooks: Freebies (via Jane). Amazon: Refurbished Kindle 2s---currently in stock for $219. Will competition further drive down used, refurb and new Kindle prices? Barnes & Noble: “E-books under $5” and $9.99 NYT bestsellers. Books on Board: Cybook Opus for $198. Lets you bold all text in an e-book to increase readability of books with E Ink. When will Sony add this feature to the competing Pocket Reader, now on sale at Fries for $160, as discovered earlier by Danny Davis? Cyberread: “Review your...

Kindles, Nooks and Sony Readers, along with other e-book gizmos, might not be usable on some international flights to the U.S. At least that’s the case if we extrapolate from a Gizmodo post discussing the new terrorism crackdown.  For six hours aloft, will you have to suffer airline  magazines and other “diversions” in place of a Project Gutenberg classic or the latest bestsellers in E? What do you think, gang? How much danger is here of a bomb hidden in a gizmo like an e-book reader? I’ll not take sides here. I’m just curious. Another issue is whether...

The obvious. Many publishers might as well just be relaxing with their feet on their desks as the e-revolution passes them by. While there’s some welcome progress, such as Random House’s letting Amazon sell its titles internationally, the industry has a long way to go. Of course, as Dear Author points out, there’s the ticklish little issue of who the customers are. Flesh-and-blood mortals? Or the usual suspects selling and distributing e-books and p-books? Either way, big publishers won’t thrive by overpricing e-books and shafting writers, who’ll be more tempted than ever to strike out on their own....

When BlackBerry e-mail went down the other day, some resourceful people could still keep in touch with business associates, friends and family---via the Kindles they also happened to tote. They could, at any rate, if they knew how to use their Kindles for e-mail. I’ve done so ever since I picked up a used Kindle 2 a few months ago for $170. At no charge, I can now enjoy a free BlackBerry, or at least the basic email function. Imagine, email in zillions of places without WiFi! I just use the Kindle’s built-in Web browser---no...