1. Smashwords Smashwords continues to kick goals in self-publishing. In an increasingly crowded market, I just don’t think you can beat Smashwords for ease of use, price (you can’t do better than free), and distribution. Fling your words to Smashwords, and you’ll quickly end up with an ebook in multiple formats, playable on all devices, and distributed to iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store. Soon they’ll be adding Amazon to the already impressive list. The website could use prettying up, but this offering is the best one-stop-shop free solution out there. Other services...

Got the following email from Laisvunas Sopauskas: Just found PHP class which according to the author "provides a pure PHP solution to build ebooks in the Epub format". You can find it here. The class is already used at least in one application. The solution might be of high quality since it was nominated for PHP innovation award 2010. From the linked website: This class can be used to create create an ebook in EPUB format for Apple iPad and other ebook readers. It can set the ebook details like the author, publisher, comments, etc., as well the ebook chapter data. The class builds an...

Dear Publishers, Now that you have your 'agency' contracts (such as they are) in place and are moving on, in your own heads anyway, to Ebook 2.0, can we please start tightening things up a little with some standards? Customers need to know that they can have a reliable, consistent experience in getting the content they want to pay you their hard-earned money for (and at over 1 billion downloads, the iTunes music store has proven people will pay for their content!) They don't have that now, and it needs to happen fast. Here are the first two areas you should work...

Are you a news junkie like me? I find myself constantly checking my iGoogle page or Google Fast Flip (http://fastflip.googlelabs.com) to see the latest stories. I’ve also got my RSS reader going as well. However, one of my biggest problems is figuring out a way to keep my eReader current. Since I’m using an older model Sony (PRS-505) that has no wireless connection, it’s been challenging in trying to figure out the best way to do this. Recently I’ve found a great application that might be a way around this......

Dulin's eBooks is introducing 3 new ereaders. All use the standard Vizplex display. The 5 inch includes a built-in cover and accellerometer and, using Linux, will read FB2, FB2.zip, txt, pdf, rtf, html, prc, chm, djvu, doc, epub and tcr. Included are an rss reader, calendar, notes, chess, sudoku, solitaire, ship battle and clock programs. It goes for $240. Additionally there is a 6" reader going for $275 and another 6" reader with a Wacom digitizer, WiFi and a web browser, but that one is not available yet. Thanks to E-Reader-info for the heads-up....

Last night, Paul Biba startled me with an offer: he had received a review unit of Astak’s 5” Pocket PRO EZ Reader, but did not have the time to review it. Did I want to? Did I ever‽ This will make a great opportunity to compare this competing e-book reader to what I remember of the Sony. With that in mind, I am starting a new series of columns: Two weeks with an Astak 5”. I actually expect to have this reader longer than two weeks—Paul believed it was mine to keep, though I will try not to get too attached...

One of the big tests for the Sony PRS-700, and the thing I’ve been studying the most, is how well it displays the different formats of books it reads. Over the last few days, I have done more reading than I had done in the previous month, and am ready to make some observations. In this post, I will cover ePub and LRF-formatted books. In the next one, I will look at PDFs. Note that the comparison photos above and below may not show any of the platforms at its best, due to strange tricks that backlighting and flash photography play on...

I have just spent a day trying various different types of e-books with the PRS-700 that Sony has loaned me for the next two weeks. By and large, it has been an interesting experience, and I’m starting to see a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of e-ink. It’s been interesting. In this post, I will cover the installation process, and take a brief look at two conduits—the included Library and the open-source Calibre. Future posts will include some photographic comparisons between the 700 and other readers I have been using. Quick Start I guess that someone at Sony had the...