Special to TeleRead The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights just finished meeting in Geneva. One of the main topics of discussion was a treaty proposal that would standardize copyright exceptions around the world to benefit blind readers. While there was strong support for the treaty by NGOs and many national governments, there were also competing initiatives put forth by the US and the European Union. Apparently the meeting ended in something of a stalemate. While the stated goal of the treaty is laudable – readers with disabilities should have equal access to the written word...

Further to Luminato, Torontoist has a write-up of a recent panel at Luminato (a local arts event featuring authors Paul Theroux, Katherine Grovier, publisher Sarah MacLachlan, retailer Joel Silver and Atlantic deputy editor Scott Stossel, who moderated the event. From the write-up: The biggest theme of the conversation was that reading on an e-reader is a different experience than reading a book. Most of the panelists argued that the experience of reading a physical book is inherently a better experience (a popular argument throughout the industry right now, but, really, it’s a personal preference and not a universal truth), and a...

Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin made an interesting observation yesterday in an exchange that he and I had on his IdeaLog blog: We should long remember that in the Spring and early Summer of 2010, prices of ebooks actually went *up*. I don't think we'll look back five years from now and see that as a frequent occurrence. He and I agree that rising ebook prices probably won't be "a frequent occurrence" over the next five years. But even though he was basing the comment in part on my data showing that the number of Kindle store bestsellers priced above $10 had grown...

This is from their "About" page: BookRix is an internet portal and the first book community where anyone can place their own books, short stories, poems etc. to be promoted on the web, just like a published piece. The massive Web 2.0 - Projects, which have been hugely popular with music, video and photography fans, now have a sister platform, which will delight literature fans around the world: BookRix. BookRix provides an online destination where authors can showcase their work. Registered users will get to design their own personal profile page. This gives users the opportunity to create their own books, recommend...

One of the biggest problems I have as an ebook reader and buyer is finding that proverbial needle in a haystack of needles, that is, the ebook worth buying and reading that is written by an independent author. The ease of publishing an ebook has created a flood of ebooks to choose among, and making that choice is increasingly difficult. For the “big” books – the newest James Patterson or Elizabeth Peters or David Weber — deciding whether to buy the book isn’t a problem. Either I am already familiar with the author or I have read a review in a...

Total first-week ebook sales for Steig Larsson's instant bestseller The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest amounted to nearly 30% of all units sold, according to a report today from Publisher's Marketplace. The popular subscription-based book industry website's mid-day newsletter is reporting that "Knopf Doubleday spokesman Paul Bogaards says their internal figures show an approximate first week sell-through of 425,000 units--which includes 125,000 ebook editions." If we do the math for ourselves, this translates into a 29.4 percent ebook share of the title's total sell-through, which would be by far the largest percentage yet reported for ebook sales of a major trade...

eBooks present some unique challenges to the “personality” of books, challenges that make me think there will yet be a very long life for pbooks, particularly hardcover pbooks. I am a book collector. I am proud of owning, for example, an excellent first edition of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. I love my first editions of Steinbeck, Twain, and numerous other authors — some signed, most not – books that I canvassed used bookstores and online booksellers for over many years. I sometimes attend lectures by authors at the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library and purchase the authors’ books and have...

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...

Instead of my usual Editor's Pick, I thought I consolidate all the reporting of last week in one place to make it easier for you guys to find: BEA BEA: Endless Ideas and the BeBook at the show BEA: Tomorrow’s Library in the World of Digits BEA: are ebooks good for authors? BEA: A conversation about the agency model IDPF Digital Book 2010 Digital Book 2010: DRM Update and copyright protection in the market IDPF Digital Book 2010: Predictions for 2011 and beyond (and another question dodged) IDPF Digital Book 2010: Epub enhanced, interactive and connected (and a question dodged!) IDPF Digital Book 2010: Taking the Agency Model out for...

Publishing Perspectives has a long article about this today: But two events in 2009 changed things. First was the Jornada de Nacional de Literatura de Passo Fundo (National Literature Journey of Passo Fundo) where some 20,000 students, teachers, researchers and authors gathered together at for a one-week discussion about technologies related to the experience of reading. The second was the opening in December of Gato Sabido, the first Brazilian eBookstore, which started with just 130 titles in Portuguese. Three months later, the e-bookstore has 850 titles in Portuguese as well as 100,000 titles in English. ... On March, 31, Livraria...

I received a press release from Amazon announcing this. This is the first time the books are available as ebooks and they include: An Enemy of the State, Wheels Within Wheels, The Tery, Dydeetown World and Healer. According to the press release the author said: "I'm thrilled that I'm able to make all five novels of the LaNague Federation series - including an additional five bonus short stories - available for the first time in digital, and for the first time all together as a series," said F. Paul Wilson. "The result is a giant roman à thèse exclusively...

The Lewis Four has a comprehensive review of the PocketBook 360, a unit we don't hear too much about. Scott says: Flipping pages was absolutely fast, faster than a Kindle 2 and ran circles around a nook. I tried both unprotected and protected ePub files as well as Adobe PDF and in all cases, the page turning speed was quite impressive. As you'll see in the video below, it finished turning the page before the nook began to refresh it's screen, time and time again. ... To illustrate the difference in speed, I shot some video at 120 frames per second...