From The Literary Platform comes this post about the importance of the editor as publishing moves to the digital platform.  Its by Jeff Norton, founder of Awesome: ... Whenever any industry goes through a paradigm shift of disintermediation, one has to ask what is the function of the intermediary and can it really be eliminated or replaced by someone else in the value chain, or is the function of the intermediary so critical to the entire experience that to disintermediate it would do the end consumer a disservice? In the case of publishing, I’ve heard publishing execs boast about how only they can...

From the TidBits blog: We’ve long thought Apple would add EPUB reading capabilities to Preview or Safari in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but it hasn’t yet happened. While we have no plans to switch away from PDF as the primary format for our Take Control ebooks, it’s clear that EPUB is the future. Unfortunately, we haven’t been happy with the best-known EPUB readers for the Mac, such as Calibre, which is cross-platform ugly beyond belief; Stanza, the Mac version of which strips all formatting and graphics and is now obsolete; and EPUBReader, which requires Firefox and isn’t Mac-like. So rather than...

From and article in Publishing Perspectives: And so about three years ago Gillis and Wickett drew up a list of authors whose work they admired and began contacting them to see if they would be interested in having Dzanc publish their older work in digital format: Dzanc co-founder Steven Gillis (Photo: Ann Arbor Chronicle) “We contacted scores and scores of people, everyone we had respect for. [NBA nominee] Noy Holland and [NEA Fellowship winner] Stephen Graham Jones came quickly. Some authors had to check their contracts. The easiest were those authors who owned the rights and said ‘here you go’ or told their...

If you have a reading disability and are qualified to use Bookshare, then there is a new ereader app available.  Here is part of the review of it from TechLearning: Quality and Effectiveness Bookshare materials are available in several formats, including HTML, Text, Braille and DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System).  Recently Bookshare released Read2Go, an iPad app combining the features of a DAISY reader with the accessibility tools and functionality available in the Apple iOS. The advantage of using the dedicated Read2Go rather than just Apple's iBooks with VoiceOver is that qualifying students with Bookshare memberships can connect directly to Bookshare's online...

If you are commenting on a TeleRead post for the first time your comment will be held for approval.  This is to prevent spam from infiltrating the comments - which it diligently tries to do.  After your comment has been approved your future comments will go up immediately, as no further approval is necessary. I check comments several times a day, but it may take up to half a day for your comment to be approved.  Don't worry if it doesn't go up right away - I'll get to it as soon as I can.  No reason to post a duplicate...

Kobo has a free ebook page here at Top Free eBooks. This page contains in-copyright free ebooks, as opposed to public domain classics.  The "free ebook" link at the top of the Kobo page just points you to public domain stuff.  You need to go to their Top 50 Ebooks page and then to the Top Free eBooks page to get current stuff.  Not very intuitive. Today's top free ebook is The Penguin Holiday eSampler. The Kobo site doesn't seem to have a deal of the day, or at least I can't find it.  When I go to their Great Reads under $4.99...

Nothing to do with ebooks, but too fascinating not to mention!  More in the article. For the last six months, three orangutans at the Milwaukee County Zoo have had the pleasure of playing with a donated iPad a couple times a week, and guess what: They love it. "We show them the iPad, and read them stories or let them have different apps," said Jan Rafert, curator of primates and small mammals at the zoo. "We don't let them hold them, but they can do some of the paint apps by sticking their fingers through the mesh." The orangutan iPad program, known as...

...

I'm late in my daily Woot lookup, but when I went to the site I saw this.  This is a great buy.  I picked up my DX at an earlier Amazon sale and it has become my favorite ereader.  Something about the large size screen makes it a pleasure to read on.   Also it is thin and light, unlike my iPad, so it is easy to hold.  It has a 9.7" screen and 3G (no WiFi). Amazon is still selling it at $380. It makes a fantastic PDF reader and I've put all my PDF manuals on it for easy...

From a Report Summary on Telecompaper: Worldwide digital books market will grow at an average rate of 30 percent per year between 2010 and 2015 to reach EUR 5.4 billion in 2015, or 12 percent of the total book market, according to a report by Idate. E-Book readers will also develop from 3.3 million units sold in 2010 to 29.8 million units sold in 2015, representing a 24 percent growth rate per year. North America will see an average annual growth rate of 13 percent between 2012 and 2015. At that time, sales of e-books are expected to generate a turnover of around...

Hachette have "leaked" a memo explaining why they are necessary. One of the many germane comments about the article is this, from Linton Robinson: BTW, anecdotally, of the writers I know who are making decent livings from published books, about half are either letting contracts lapse or heavily considering it, while putting out books on their own. This is what will kill Hachette and the rest. They cannot compete with the independent author on price. It is as simple as that. The indie has no back office to support. He makes more from an ebook at $3 than he would through Hachette were...

This is an important matter that has created quite a bit of controversy in the industry.  From the press release: The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) announced today the publication of a new Policy Statement detailing best practices for assigning ISBNs to digital products. Developed over the past 18 months within BISG's Identification Committee, BISG Policy Statement POL-1101 addresses the critical need to reduce product identification confusion in the market place in order to provide the best possible consumer-level purchasing experience. BISG encourages all member companies and other industry stakeholders to download the Policy Statement online at http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-cat-4-policy-statements.php and work toward adopting the suggested...