Sent to me by Rita Toews, founder of Read an E-book Week—she has lobbied the Canadian government, with fantastic results: Great news! By virtue of an Order by the 41st Parliament of Canada, First Session, Motion M-293 was passed declaring the month of March Read an E-Book Month! The Order reads: That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize that the ePublishing industry has created economic opportunities for entrepreneurs, authors, publishers and e-reader manufacturers; (b) recognize that e-books present significant benefits for seniors and children; (c) recognize that e-books are an environmentally-friendly alternative to books; (d) declare the...

And now, may I present the lucky winners of the Read an E-Book Week 2011 Win an E Ink Watch promotion!  The winners are: Glory H from Dubuque, IA; and Paul Milke from Uxbridge, MA! E Ink has been notified, and the watches will be winging their way to you guys! Everyone join me in Congratulations to our winners! The watch contest did well! Most interestingly, I've gotten some very interesting responses for the write-in portion of the contest, asking what people would like to see in the sequel to Verdant Skies. I plan to respond to many of...

Yes, Rita Toews has obtained a Nook, donated by the E-Ink Corporation, that Read an E-Book Week would like to put in a lucky person's hands! Just go to REBW's contest page, send in your response to the ebook-related question, and on March 13, Rita will announce the winner of the Nook!  Details are on the contest page.  Go and enter now!...

A promotional flyer is now available for those who'd like to help support Read an E-Book Week.  The flyer, a letter-sized JPEG that reads well in color or B/W, can be downloaded and either emailed to others, or printed out and posted at your favorite book-reading hangout... a library, a Starbucks, a bookstore, a bistro, anyplace with a bulletin board (this is a non-profit cause... some BBs don't allow commercial material). The flyer can be seen in full size, and downloaded, from my website.  (And while you're there, consider entering the contest for an E-Ink watch!)...

To support and promote Read an E-Book Week, I have obtained two E-Ink watches, which I'll be giving away to two lucky winners from my site! To be entered in the drawing for the watches, Do one of two things between now and March 11, 2011: Purchase a book from my site. You can also purchase a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc, but you'll have to email me a copy of your online purchase receipt (because the retailers don't tell me who purchases my books, just that they've been purchased). Send me an email...

Read an E-Book Week is right around the corner (March 6-12, 2011), and Rita Toews is, as usual, providing great tidbits about ebooks and giving people encouragement to check ebooks out.  For instance, did you know the ebook is 40 years old this year? Yes, I had to be reminded of this one, myself... but it was in 1971 that Michael S. Hart created the first ebook, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer.  And Rita has other great material on the site, such as: An article by the selfsame Michael S. Hart; Comments by Warren...

Read an E-Book Week 2010 may be over but the amount of downloaded reading material should last readers for quite a while. Several participants of the event commented that traffic on their websites was up dramatically from last year. The Read an E-Book website had well over 60,000 page hits just prior to, and during the week. Mobile phone traffic - both Android and iPhone - was also up from last year. Libraries from around the world were visitors this year. Wright State University Libraries did an article on Read an E-Book Week and produced lapel button templates. Several libraries in...

Read an E-Book Week has begun for 2010, and this year promises to outdo all previous years by an order of magnitude.  Rita Toews has been working her butt off, interviewing for periodicals and blogs, contacting and drawing in new participants and promoters and twittering until her fingers are hoarse! As the list of partners and promoters of e-books has grown, the number of participating authors and publishers has increased enormously.  On Smashwords, over 3,000 authors will participate in the promotional event.  Blio, QBook, Diesel E-Books and Sylvan Dell Publishing have joined most recently. The event...

The human mind is a remarkable device. Present it with a challenge and in no time a host of solutions are returned for consideration. Take, for example, an idea by Michael Hart. 1971 and enter Michael Hart. Mr. Hart was handed the gift of gifts - $100,000.00 worth of computer time with a mainframe computer. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. The first "e-book" was born—a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Since 1971 e-books have morphed into electronic reading in every...

Read an E-Book Week is March 7-13 this year, and Rita's site is freshly cleaned and polished for 2010 (with a bit of my assistance).   I urge all TeleRead members to check the site out, to see a bit of the face Rita is putting out to the public.  The REBW site is a great one for those who are new to the e-book world, and are looking for basic but comprehensive information on e-books, the players involved, the benefits, and e-books' future. REBW is still getting support from the likes of E Ink and Sony, and new e-book producers and...

The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization that provides analysis and solutions for the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world, has done an interesting study of e-books entitled: Innovation and the Future of e-Books. The author of the study was John W. Warren. According to Mr. Warren, the future of e-books may include enhanced e-books. This concept could prove interesting to authors interested in experimenting with hypertext novels. A hypertext novel would include links in the text that take a reader to various locations either within, or without, the novel itself. In 2002 when my...

Rita Toews is founder of Read an E-Book Week. Meanwhile I hope that the White House will wise up and heed suggestions to recognize the week officially. If Obama wants to promote both literacy and tech, what better way to do this? - D.R. Read an E-Book Week is over for 2009, and it was a roaring success! People are obviously interested in all aspects of e-books and electronic reading material. Web traffic came from the four corners of the globe, including: Korea, England, Russia, U.S.A., France, Spain, Argentina, Iceland, Mexico, Portugal, Egypt, China, India, Turkey and the...