The other day, Fresh Air with Terry Gross interviewed Ken Auletta, the author of the “Publish or Perish” New Yorker article about whether the iPad and the Kindle could “save” the publishing industry (which I mentioned here). The interview is about 20 minutes long and can be listened from that page, or forms the first 20 minutes of the April 27th Fresh Air podcast. The complete transcript is not on that page, but some highlights are. One of the points Auletta brings up is what happens to the independent bookstore in the age of the e-book: ...

In the market for a budget reader? The market is flooding with options these says. The Kobo Reader will hit stores soon, and it's a beautiful reader. But what else is there that is both $200 or less, and available retail? Only two in my neck of the woods: the Sony Pocket Reader and the Aluratek Libre. Of the two, the Libre is the cheaper option and when the box advertised an included 2 gb SD card with 100 books pre-loaded, I knew I had to try it out. I love my Kindle, but it doesn't have folders or other...

A while ago, I reported on Palm putting itself up for sale. It was uncertain whether it would find a buyer—several companies including HTC and Lenovo reportedly considered it but decided “no sale”—but today the announcement came that Hewlett-Packard is slapping down $1.2 billion to take Palm home. There are stories about this all over the place. A couple of the more interesting ones: TechCrunch’s MG Siegler talks with HP VP Brian Humphries about HP’s plans for Palm. I asked Humphries to expand a bit about webOS and how it stacks up to...

From the Amazon Software Update page. It looks like they are adding some things that we have been asking for for a while: Kindle Version 2.5 Overview The 2.5 software update for Kindle and Kindle DX is coming soon. We are rolling out the new software update to a limited group of Kindle users and plan a broad release in late May 2010. Check back here for updates on the release schedule. Here's a list of the coming enhancements: Collections: Organize your books and documents into one or more collections. PDF Pan and Zoom: Zoom into PDFs and pan around to easily view...

Would you like to be able to move e-books from your computer to your iPhone wirelessly? Of course, if you use the Calibre Stanza server and/or the Calibre/Dropbox method, you already can, at least with Stanza, but what about iBooks which loads by hotsync? If developer Greg Hughes has his way, you’ll be able to do just that. He’s submitting a wireless sync app to Apple for approval, which would let you sync your iDevice via wifi just as you can over USB. Of course, as TechCrunch points out, if Apple wanted you to be able to...

Jeremy Kaplan at the Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” blog offers an interesting discussion on the two possible futures of e-text: the iPad-like lockdown, where digital text can be carried around easily but not so easily shared or remixed—or a more open future where text can be shared and used in many different ways. The blog post links to and summarizes a presentation by Steven Johnson at the Columbia Journalism School, discussing those futures. I haven't yet had the chance to watch it or read the transcript, but the discussion sounds like an interesting, albeit familiar, one. Certainly Cory...

It’s been just over a year since Amazon bought Lexcycle, makers of Stanza, and as I reviewed Stanza the other day I glanced back over some of the old blog entries TeleRead writers made back then. I thought it would be interesting to look at a couple of those predictions or opinions in light of how the past year has gone. David Rothman wanted Washington to see the acquisition as a signal to investigate the e-book industry for possible monopoly practices: Washington often bungles things, but at least we can vote the bastards out...

Worried about losing your e-book reader? (Or iPod, iPhone, laptop, netbook, or other expensive device?) Our sister blog AppleTell reports on a service that might offer a solution—or at least provide a little peace of mind. TigerTag is a registration service that lets you tag your devices with individual serial numbers that can be used to tag your items so that any potential good samaritan who finds them has only to look your ID up on the website to find out how to get it back to you. You can order sheets of serial-number stickers for basically the...

Received an email from Alan Washington of Nookfeed about this new service. Here is what he says: We have launched a new web application called nookFeed. It is located at http://www.nookfeed.com. The purpose of this application is to provide a web based RSS reader formatted specifically for the nook. The navigation is controlled with the nook's touch screen, which allows users to easily access RSS feeds of their choosing. The site is currently in a beta stage, but we would love to hear reactions from you and your readers about nookFeed. I don't have a Nook...

A Publishing Perspectives article about a Nigerian publisher hints at the promise that e-books might eventually have in Africa. Bibi Bakare-Yusuf and Jeremy Weate, who founded Cassava Republic in 2006 to publish books by and for Nigerians and those in the surrounding region, see e-books as a way to avoid the problem of foreign-printed books being held up in Nigeria’s infamous customs system—if more Nigerians can get Internet access to buy them. It might also help the company’s books become wider known, if the regional distribution rights problem can be solved. “The challenge at...

From a press release they sent me: MediaNet, the digital music pioneer has launched an eBook catalog and digital distribution service with 200,000 titles from the world’s largest publishers including Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, Random House, and others. MediaNet offers a full set of features built on top of digital distribution platform that successfully now supports more than 100 digital music customers delivering an API and Web Components with no upfront costs. This is a game changing opportunity helping to create a marketplace where eBooks are made widely available through websites of all sizes and applications you and...

When you have 1 million books to choose among, how do you choose which to buy and read? Even when the number was just 10,000 (last seen probably in the late 18th century), the task was daunting. But there was a process that worked — perhaps not with the greatest efficiency — until the rise of ebooks and print on demand (POD). Admittedly, the process let any number of worthy books fall through the cracks. I have no doubt that among the lost were another Philip Roth or Ray Bradbury or Elizabeth Peters. No matter the method, none is perfect. But...