From an Announcement: Gale, part of Cengage Learning, today announced the availability of the first AccessMyLibrary Public Edition Android application and the first AccessMyLibrary College Edition application for iOS devices (iPhone, iTouch and iPad). [Clip] The AML Public Edition Android app allows researchers using an Android device to access Gale resources through public libraries within a 10-mile radius, similar to the Public Edition applications already created for Apple devices. The AML College Edition is the first Gale app for college students and gives them anytime, anywhere access to the Gale resources available through their college library. Students can use the app to locate their...

Publishers Weekly is reporting the results of a study by the National Association of College stores. Etextbooks and ereaders are not popular, the survey discloses. 74% of students prefer print and only 13% purchased an ebook in the last three months. Of those that purchased one, 56% did so because it was required. Only 8% of students owned an ereading device and 59% of those that don't own one have no plans to purchase one. For ebook buyers, 77% read on a laptop or a netbook. As to devices, the iPhone was the ereader of choice, followed...

From Asia Pulse: A common e-book format will likely be available in Japan as early as April, making content viewable on any reader device. Sharp Corp. and e-book software developer Voyager Japan Inc. will submit the specifications of their formats free of charge to the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan. The trade organization, consisting of 41 major publishers, will then create a common format by the end of March. The government will provide 150 million yen (US$1.8 million) as a subsidy. Currently, publishers must pay fees when they convert their e-book content to fit various formats created by reader device manufacturers. This has...

That's according to an article in Paid Content. Here's part of their chart. Go over to the site to see the full coverage. ...

Project Gutenberg has been a visionary project launched by Michael Hart in July 1971 to create free electronic versions of literary works and disseminate them worldwide. The project got its first boost with the invention of the web in 1990, and its second boost with the creation of Distributed Proofreaders in 2000, to help digitizing books from public domain. In 2010, there are Project Gutenberg websites in the U.S., in Australia, in Europe, and in Canada, with more websites to come in other countries. 1990-94 Initially, the ebooks were mostly in English. As Project Gutenberg was launched from the University of Illinois,...

This looks like an interesting new service for reading articles. Publishers set the prices and will receive 70% of the income. It has been launched in the Netherlands and they are working on an international version. Here's a short video: ...

So says an article in The Christian Science Monitor. According to the article they are especially popular among school dirls and the most popular novels eventually wind up printed. Media-sharing website Maho i-Land boasts 1 million online books and 6 million users who read and/or write novels on the website for free. Many users tap away and compose using their cellphones, simply following a word limit of 1,000 or less characters per page. Budding authors can choose to “publish” their online story immediately or keep it unlisted. Many upload their content as they finish and choose to receive feedback from...

From the UN News Centre: In an unprecedented United Nations-supported initiative, people who cannot see and those who have other forms of visual disability will have access to published works through publisher intermediaries who will create accessible formats of publications and share them with specialized libraries. The new arrangement was announced today at the of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meeting in the Indian capital, New Delhi. It is estimated that only five percent of the world's one million print titles that are published every year are accessible to the some 340 million around the world who are blind, visually...

Hi there, publishing industry. I have spent the last week happily walking my sister through her first days of Kindle-owning, and showing her how and where to obtain reasonably priced content. She has more options than I do because she is not, like me, living in the publishing hinterlands of Canada (or, heaven forbid, living in France---I read the latest at Mobile Read on the new 'single price for digital books' law, and wow, the French are screwed!) But even for a Blessed American like her, there is still the whole agency fiasco, and $25 e-versions of decades-old mass market...

ActuaLitté is reporting that new French legislation will allow publishers to fix the price of ebooks. This will bring ebooks into line with the Lang law that prevents the discounting of books more than 5% below the sales price. The really nutty thing, however, is the provision of the law that prevents libraries from offering ebooks at the same moment that the paper book is released. Clearly this is all aimed at Google and Amazon. Here is a Google translation of part of the article about an interview with Herve Gaymard: In the interview published in The Tribune yesterday,...

Why are publishers so lousy at building the close relationships with consumers that they’re going to need in the coming digital age? Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin suggests that part of the reason might be that their biggest retail customers, perhaps fearful of getting cut out of the loop, don’t want them to. This is the kind of thing you don’t know for sure from the outside. Conversations between publishers and their top accounts, like conversations between publishers and the agents for their top authors, are private and closely guarded. But it has been anecdotally reported...

Update: Marcus reports that CreateSpace subsequently apologized and said this warning should not have been sent. On Tuesday, writer Michael N. Marcus submitted the manuscript of his latest book, The Brainy Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing, to the CreateSpace print-on-demand service for printing. As one might expect, Amazon came in for some mentions—indeed, given the effect they’ve had on the self-publishing landscape, it would be surprising to see any treatise on self-publishing in the present-day that didn’t mention them. Marcus said that the mentions were “approximately 99% positive.” CreateSpace sent him the following response: The interior file submitted for this title contains text referencing...