Sony BBeB e-books ready to be listed at Borders? DearAuthor.Com wants to know

0

By David Rothman

So what will be Borders’ actual business model for e-book’s in Sony’s BBeB format? The Sony Reader apparently won’t appear until this summer. But could Borders, which is to sell the Reader hardware in its hundreds of stores, already have BBeB books ready to be listed? See above image from a screenshot.

The alert Jane–of the Jane-and-Jayne duo at DearAuthor.Com–found an unknown e-book-format mentioned for books such as Naomi Novik‘s Throne of Jade when she was poking around a Borders’ inventory Web site. Hmm. Could that be BBeB? And will the books actually be stored on a Borders-run server, or seamlessly downloaded through the Sony Connect server, or sold via credits purchased at local stores? And what will be Sony’s strategy toward other booksellers?

Meanwhile Jane says the e-books will be released Tuesday, and I hope she’ll give us an update. Jane tells me: “I think the key will be if publishers continue to put out their books in multiple formats: Mobipocket, Adobe and MS Lit as well as the Sony format,” she says. “If not, it could be disastrous.” Whoops. There goes Sony’s dream of domination through an iPod biz model via Sony Connect. Both publishers and readers will most likely end up wanting choice.

Speaking of DearAuthor.Com, I highly recommend the site, which, yes, lives up to its name. Sample comment: “You are a very uneven author for me. I loved your debut book, Body Check. Moderately disliked the second book, Fair Play, and did not finish the third, Total Rush.” The focus is on recreational reading–historical fiction, romances and so on–and, yes, DA has an e-book section.

More from Jane: I asked for bios and other background on the duo and their DearAuthor site. She writes:

As for Jayne and me, these are pseudonyms. We are trying to maintain some online anonymity, or else I don’t know how we can continue to review books with the title Chunkybuttfunky by Dakota Cassidy (which really strains the maxim to “not judge a book by its cover/title”). I can tell you that neither of us has any connection to the publishing industry, nor are we aspiring writers. I am a lawyer in the midwest, and Jayne is the medical field in the southeast.

We are readers who met about 5 years ago on a closed readers email loop. As blogs began to proliferate, we decided to put up our own reviews. We read primarily within the romance genre although we both read on the fringes of historical fiction and fantasy fiction. We have definite ideas about what is good and bad in the romance industry–the genre that we love–and we are strong supporters of e-books. We both use the IPAQ 4700 as our ebook reading device.

Other romance bloggers are reading it and some e-book authors. We are new, having only opened our online doors earlier this month but we have had great response. Since April 3, we have had 721 unique visitors. Thanks for asking about us and enduring this interminably long email.

Hey, no problem Jane! I love to hear from well-done grassroots sites like yours.

Jane on a favorite site of hers: “I think SimonSays is doing some neat things with ebooks. All of its ebooks are 40% off which help to ameliorate the fact that you cannot resell or return the book. For one of their books, they did an online exclusive, allowing readers to download a copy a month before the paperback version is released.”

0

 Print Friendly