Kobo Aura One

Where was this device a few years ago. I have had some issues over the years with electronic devices finding their way into our pool. This new Kobo Reader gets rid of that issue with its waterproof design. This eBook reader is a little larger than most of the ereaders in this category of devices sizing out to 7.8 inch display. The unit is no thicker than an iPhone 6s and not much heavier than the 6s Plus. The Aura One is rated to 6 feet of water resistance, I’ll have to keep it out of the deep end of the pool, which normally shouldn’t be an issue unless you are floating in the deep end.

The number on eBook company that Kobo is competing against is Amazon with their kindle products. With Amazon’s deep source of books to purchase and borrow you have almost any book that you could desire available to you. It’s ability  to also play back audiobooks for those of us that are deep into their Audible Library, is another boon.

Kobo however has deep ties into the the US Lending Library system with Overdrive. So this feature is part of their system. That gives you access to books for free if available from your local and regional libraries that you are a member of.

The cost of this device in the US is going to be around $229 and it should be available in early September.

Review at theverge

New Program to Provide 10,000 free eBooks through your library

President Obama announced a new program aimed at delivering access fro more than 10,000 eBooks to financially strapped schoolchildren across the U.S.. $250 million has been earmarked for this program that will feature titles from many different publishers including: Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Hachette, selected by volunteers from Digital Public Library of America.

The New York Library has signed on to develop the fee app. The program hopes to work with local libraries to boost enrollment of the children and to provide the hardware necessary to access the eBooks. Details are still being worked out on how the kids will gain access but at least there is some positive movement in this direction.

The DOJ is poised to really slap Apple for its eBook price fixing case

The terms of the proposed settlement in the Apple e-book price fixing case were published on Friday by the Justice Department. An article by Neil Hughes posted at www.appleinsider.com stated that:

The DOJ said the change would allow consumers on the iPad and iPhone to "easily compare Apple's prices with those of its competitors." Currently, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases made through App Store software, and does not allow developers to circumvent this rule by linking to a website for purchases.

According to the DOJ statement:

"Under the department’s proposed order, Apple's illegal conduct will cease and Apple and its senior executives will be prevented from conspiring to thwart competition in the future." - Bill Baer, assistant attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division”

The result of this would be that Apple would be required to terminate its existing e-book agreements with the (5) major publishers that were originally cited for conspiring to fix prices. Those publishers were Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group,  Macmillan, Penguin Group, and HarperCollins Publishers. This settlement may also include other digital media products that Apple sells as well including music, movies, television, etc…

It will interesting if the proposal made public on Friday will be approved by the court but if it is, there could be some serious ramifications to Apple in the near future hitting them directly on the bottom line.

Digital Textbooks might be able to tell if you did your work.

CourseSmart offers an education package to schools that allows professors to monitor what their students read in their textbooks as well as the passages they highlight according to a report from the New York Times.

CourseSmart acts as a provider of digital textbooks working with publishers like McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and John Wiley and Sons. The NY Times describes books in use at Texas A&M University, which present an “engagement index” to professors that can be used to evaluate students’ performance in class.

This will be another method the University and Instructors will be able to gauge why a student might be having problems in the course. It will tell them whether they have opened the digital textbook and what pages they have viewed, when they viewed them and how much time they spent reading the textbook.

So the question is going to be is how accurate this information will be in reporting back the students’ “engagement index”. Can the system be gamed and what assumptions does the software make in determining the index. Also, how does the software determine between someone studying really hard from one that is just plain clueless and in a panic trying to catch up on things they either don’t understand

Either way this is going into full gear next fall and it will interesting to see what the results will be. I think that if handled right it could be an effective tool learning more about the quality of the class content, instructor lectures and how much work is actually done by the student. All of these factors contribute to learning process.

For more info on CourseSmart click here…

Is A Bookless Library In Your Future?

An article published in GIZMODO brought to my attention that San Antonio is planning a new kind of library for their patrons. While my preference is to read or listen to books electronically I this isn’t what the majority of the people out want to do. Take my daughter Jennifer, every time that I bring up the discussion of how I consume my literature she tells me that she can’t do it that way. She thinks that the best thing to do on a rainy day is to lay on the couch and read a good book. My mother, after my father’s passing, is slowly shedding herself of some of the technology items that he had. One as the Nook that he used to read with. She would rather go to the library to get the book. I believe she uses it as another excuse to get out of the house and to meet and greet people. You know, socialize.

But, I am firmly in the camp of the group of people that if I can get it electronically, that is my preferred method of consumption. I like having my whole library at my fingertips. I purchase all of my technical books that way so that I can have them available on any device that is at hand. I have even convinced my wife to come over to the dark side, we both have our own kindles on the same account so we can easily acquire and share books together. Its great to see or hear about a book and have that instant gratification of downloading to your device the moment that you want it.

With the advent of the library electronic book sharing system, it has gotten even less expensive to grab that new book or old classic and to have it on your device for a couple of weeks to read it leisurely before it terms out and is brought back into the system. You don’t have to actually visit the library to do this, just sign up for a library card. (Don’t forget to send in your donations to support these kinds of services).

San Antonio’s new book-free library comes with a special name called “Biblio Tech” and they intend to open the first one in the fall of 2013. This is all a part of the a Bexar county wide project. They are not forcing you to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) either. They plan on supplying e-readers (e don’t know which one at this date) to their patrons. This brings up the worry of theft but hopefully they will be able to work that one out as well.  The system puts a time limit of two weeks that you can have the e-reader before it goes dead, and since the library has the patron’s phone number and address in their records this should be enough of an incentive not to be negligent in returning the devices to the library.

This is an interesting new direction for the public library system to take, but there is still something to be said to going into a library to do research using the old tomes that can be found there. In Ligonier where I grew up, the town Public Library is not just a place to get a book. It is also a place to come and socialize. To get away and maybe sit down with the weekly paper or a magazine. We tend to forget in all of our running around and attempts to streamline our lives that there is something to be said in the simple browsing that you do as you walk through the shelves of books in a physical library. So as you may have noticed through this article that I have a slight change of heart from the beginning to this last paragraph on my feelings about a totally digital library, I feel that Library that still has books on its shelves is an important part of our culture but making available the ability to access books electronically is also an important future service that should have available by our libraries.

Kindle/Audible-New WhisperSync Capability

WhisperSync will now link an Audible audio book with it’s Kindle counterpart file. You can try if for free on the link list to the left. You will need a Kindle and the free audible app. You can listen on audible for iPhone, Android or on the Kindle Fire and read with any Kindle E Ink Reader, Kindle Tablet or Kindle reading app. If you have the latest generation Kindle you can read and listen on that device at the same time.

The free trial is for some of the old classics that you probably remember from when you were growing up.

It appears that the cost for this is only going to be about $3.95 or less to add the audio book to your library. Both files show up in their respective libraries so you can listen or read individually or together. Your choice. This will go over big in my house because I am an avid audible book listener while my wife would rather read it on the kindle. Now we can have the best of both worlds.

Amazon also announced 3 new kindle fire’s in 7inch, 8.9 inch and an 8.9 inch with LTE priced from $199, $299 and $499 respectively. All of these devices will allow you to use the new Whispersync voice option and kindle book at the same time on the same device.

Amazon launches ‘Send to Kindle’ feature for Google Chrome

Amazon has created an extension for Chrome that allows web content to be sent to any device that has the Kindle App installed. It provides a single click process that will send blog posts, stories and other Google Chrome displayed pages to be sent to your favorite e-reader device. Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes between devices so that you can start reading the content on one reader and seamlessly pick up where you left off on another device.

The extension, "Send to Kindle for Google Chrome," allows users to send the entire webpage or just selected text to the device.

To get the extension for yourself, head on over to Amazon's Send To Kindle download page. Confirm the download on the Google Chrome Web store and sign in with your Amazon account. When you click the button, the content is formatted for the Kindle and then sent to your device a few minutes later. Amazon has said FireFox and Safari will get support "soon" but there was no mention of Internet Explorer.

Update on the Nexus 7

I have had a little more time with the Nexus 7 and I have found a few quarks that have caused me a little frustration when I compare the same functions on my iOS devices.

Bluetooth Audio Streaming

The first has to do with Bluetooth streaming audio and Audible. I love to listen to my Audible audio books when I am driving in my car but there is some kind of lockup that occurs when I turn off the car and the book is still running. I have to totally power off the Nexus 7 and reset it to get the book to run on the device. This happens every time. My iPhone and iPad both don’t have a problem with this and keep going on their merry way. Once the Nexus has lost that Bluetooth connection it is frustratingly hard to get it back up and running.

Space Limitations

I also found myself loading up several books and podcasts and it didn’t take long for me to run out of space on the 16GB version. So I need to keep my eye on space limitations. However, most everything else seems to running fine. When I was running out of space the tablet began to run very slow and was timing out between functions. As soon as I backed off of the number of books and podcasts that I was running everything came back up to speed just fine.

EReader

I find reading books on this tablet just as nice as most other tablets. The one thing that the Kindle has over the Nexus are the physical buttons to page forward and back on both sides of the screen. This makes it much easier to flip pages. It seems to be more of two handed gesture on the Nexus to flip pages.You can single tap on the edge of the screen to flip a page but you have to tap on right to flip forward and the left to flip back. I haven’t found anything in setting as of yet to change this.

Exchange Email

I have noticed that my Exchange email access is very slow. On my iOS devices they normally beat Outlook to receiving an email response from the Exchange server, which really surprises me. The email does get there but is extremely slow.

Kindle Cover that Charges Your Kindle

I use my Kindle primarily around the pool and a company called SolarFocus has created a cover with a built-in solar panel on the front. So when you have laid your Kindle down and jumped into the pool, you can recharge by having the panel collect those wonder solar rays and boost your battery. If you just have the case with Kindle laying around it will help add up to 3 months of extended charge or 50 hours for it’s include LED lamp.

The SolarKindle is scheduled to be available on January 15th priced at about $80. Pretty neat! A fully charged reserve battery requires only eight hours of direct sunlight and provides up to 80% of backup power to the Kindle. That’s almost three days of use time for each hour of charging!

Amazon Prime - A Potent Differentiator for Amazon

Amazon's Prime Program was originally set up to provide Amazon Members a service that gave them free 2 day shipping. Amazon has evolved this service into far more. The addition of free video streaming for Amazon Prime Members was an interesting addition and when compared to Netflix's streaming service while maybe not having as large of a library is still favorable. Netflix streaming costs about $95/per year, compare that with Amazon's $79. Now with the addition of the free lending library where you can get one book per month, compare this with a cost of $9.99 per for purchase that you are saving $119/year on average this service provides comparable $200's in services for just $79 with the added benefit of free two day shipping on the hard goods that you order. Makes me think of this as a one of those services that area really good value!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Kindle Indie Bookstore

While this isn’t new News, I ran across a saved pointer that drew me back to this site that was started up in August. It is called the kindle indie books site and is a place to explore for and find “unique”, “cool, creative, and different” is classified as “indie”.

The Kindle Indie Bookstore is a unique experience in the literary world, a place to discover the next great authors and their books.

There are over 950,000 publications here now. This section is curated by machine and by human and contains a selection of popular indie and self-published titles.

Kindle Indie Bookstore

The Kindle Indie Bookstore on Amazon.com is a convenient way for readers to explore and browse for top selling, popular and high quality books from independent authors and publishers who publish using KDP. Below are answers to a few commonly asked questions regarding the Kindle Indie Bookstore.
How can I become a featured author?
Our editorial team selects authors to highlight in this area based on criteria that we believe will best serve the interests of Kindle readers. At this time, we do not accept submissions for this placement.
How can I have my books featured in the Kindle Indie Bookstore?
We use a combination of automated techniques and editorial activities to select books based on criteria that we believe will best serve the interest of Kindle readers. At this time, we do not support any specific requests for placement. The likelihood of appearing within the Kindle Indie Bookstore is higher for highly rated, popular and top selling books.
How often are the top selling books updated?
The top selling independently published books are located on the right side of the Kindle Indie Bookstore page and are updated hourly. Books that are featured in the top KDP genres are updated in real-time.
How many genres are featured in the Kindle Indie Bookstore?
Currently we feature books from 7 popular categories in the Kindle Indie Bookstore.
Why do you only feature a select number of genres in the Kindle Indie Bookstore?
We chose seven categories that our Kindle readers look at frequently. Periodically we will review our top selling categories and add to the Kindle Indie Bookstore so that readers can enjoy more variety of great indie books.

Promoting indie books in a separate location is a beneficial step for independent/self-publishing authors. The Kindle Indie Books page rotates 4-5 authors, so if you’re featured, visitors may not see you. It also rotates the order in which various genres are shown.

The page also has a Kindle Indie Books Bestseller List, Top-Rated Indie Books, New Indie Releases and several other indie promo features.

If you are a supporter of self-publishing authors, you may wish to take a look at this site. Remember, there is little screening if any of the titles that are self-published so be a little careful of what you are downloading. Because the books are shown by their popularity, the more popular titles are probably the safest bets. That is of course, that a whole bunch of people didn’t get hornswoggled, Good Reading..

Amazon adds Lending Library to your Kindle Devices

Amazon has announced another new feature for Amazon Prime subscribers, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. If you are a member of Prime, and you own a Kindle, Amazon now offers thousands of books that you can borrow to read for free. They are including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers.

Choose from over 5,000 titles, including more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers, to read on your Kindle.

So how does this work:

Kindle E Ink

The following screens show how to borrow on Kindle E Ink devices.

Kindle Fire

This is only available for Kindle Device owners. So you won’t be able to get these free books on you Kindle Apps on devices like your iPad, iPhone, iTouch and Android devices. You are also limited to just one pick per month so be careful what you pick cause you only get one choice each month. It will probably be a lot easier on the touch screen Kindles but the older “Classic” versions have a few menus that you have to pop through to get where you need to, to make your choice. Have Fun!

Adding PDF’s directing to your iBook Library

I use my iPad for many different purposes but having it as a portable reference device is a big benefit. Besides creating my own PDF documents and storing them in either DropBox or iBook I also collect PDF’s from other sources as well. If you are using your iPad to do research on the internet using Safari as your browser and you come upon a PDF download you can now not only display that PDF in Safari but also save it to your iBook library for future reading/reference. Once you have the PDF loaded in Safari notice in the upper top right of the screen that you have a Open in “iBooks” button choice. The PDF will be immediately transported to your iBook App and displayed on the screen for you. If you exit back to the Library you can then Edit and Move the new document into the “Collection” that you wish it to reside. While it is displayed on the screen you have the ability to print or email it or, of course, just sit back and read it.

Amazon introduces new HTML5-based eBook format

The HTML5 format got another technology boost with Amazon announcing a new HTML5-based e-book format called Kindle Format 8 (KF8). This will allow publishers to create content with rich formatting and advanced design elements tailored to the company’s tablet and e-reader products.

The current Mobi 7 standard doesn’t quite provide the rich formatting capabilities that HTML5 promises. Where will we see the benefit? Amazon is hoping that publishers will take advantage of these new features for adding products that require richer formatting such as children’s picture books, comics and graphic novels. You may also see these new features be taken advantage of in technical and engineering books, cookbooks and school books.

We’re pleased to announce a wide range of new features and enhancements – including HTML5 support – coming in Kindle Format 8 (KF8). KF8 is the next generation file format for Kindle books – replacing Mobi 7. As showcased on Kindle Fire, KF8 enables publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics & graphic novels, technical & engineering books and cookbooks. Kindle Format 8 replaces the Mobi format and adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics, opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love.

The list of new capabilities in Kindle Format 8 can be found here.

Upcoming enhancements to Kindle Publisher Tools will make it easier and faster for publishers to create high quality Kindle books. KindleGen 2 (available soon) creates Kindle content from a wide variety of sources including HTML, XHTML, and EPUB. Kindle Previewer 2 (available soon) provides an easy way for publishers to preview how titles will look on Kindle devices and apps so they can be confident that their Kindle books look great.

The next question is whether EPUB3 which also boasts HTML5 and some CSS2.1/CSS3 features added will win out over this new format. The EPUB format has been the standard bearer for the eBook industry and has a lot of momentum in this arena. But Amazon is one of the forerunners delivering electronic media to consumers. It will be interesting to see which format will win out.

New Kindle Family Priced from $79-$199

If you haven’t jumped into the eBook reader environment yet then maybe one of these new Kindle products will entice you to finally make the leap.

Amazon’s new ad subsidized Kindle for $79 has dropped the keyboard, shrunk the overall size, still has Wi-Fi and a faster processor.

• Lighter, More Compact Than Ever-Less than 6 ounces.-Lighter than a paperback, fits in your pocket.
• Holds 1,400 Books-Carry up to 1,400 books-keep your library with you wherever you go.
• Most Advanced E Ink Display-Kindle's high-contrast E Ink display delivers clear, crisp text and images.
• Read in Bright Sunlight-Kindle's E Ink screen reads like real paper, with no glare. Read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room.
• One Month Battery Life-No battery anxiety - read for up to one month on a single charge with wireless off and a half hour of reading per day.
• Books in 60 seconds-Find a book and start reading in seconds with our fast, free wireless delivery.
• Built-In Wi-Fi-Connect to Wi-Fi hotspots at home or on the road. Includes free Wi-Fi access at AT&T hotspots across the U.S.
• Simple to Use-Kindle is ready to use right out of the box - no setup, no software to install, no computer required to download content.
• Adjustable Text Sizes-Read comfortably with eight different sizes and three font styles.
• Faster Page Turns-Kindle's powerful processor is tuned for fast, seamless page turns.
• PDF and Personal Documents-Email personal documents and PDFs direct to your Kindle to read and annotate on-the-go.
• Massive Selection-Over 1 million books, newspapers, and magazines, including latest bestsellers, Kindle exclusives, and more.
• Low Book Prices-Over 800,000 books are $9.99 or less.
• Free, Out-of-Copyright Books-Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 titles such as Pride and Prejudice are available.
• Free Book Samples-Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
• Borrow From Your Public Library-Borrow Kindle books from your public library and start reading on your Kindle.
• Free Cloud Backup-We automatically back up your library in the cloud, so you never need to worry about losing your books. Re-download wirelessly anytime for free.
• Buy Once, Read Everywhere-Kindle books can be read on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android devices, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, Mac, PC, or web browser with our free Kindle Reading Apps.
• Whispersync-Our Whispersync technology synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks and annotations across your devices so you can always pick up where you left off.

Most of these features flow through to all of the new Kindles. Their mid-range unit has a touch screen and still no keyboard. It is priced at $99 for Wi-Fi only and $149 with 3G. The older Kindle unit has the keyboard and is priced at $99/$139 for Wi-Fi/Wi-Fi 3G respectively. The Kindle Fire has a color Screen, is Wi-Fi only and is priced at $199. Battery lengths vary from model to model and if you are concerned about this you may want to take another look at the specs on this page: Kindle Specs. The Kindle Fire only has an 8 hour continuous reading spec compared to 1 and 2 months for the entry level and mid range touch units.

The Kindle Fire also supports playback of movies as well as apps, games, music, reading and more. It is also using the Amazon cloud-accelerated web browser which may not work with security type connections on the internet.

Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon's revolutionary, cloud-accelerated web browser

• 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
• Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games
• Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk

• Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
• Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
• Fast, powerful dual-core processor
• Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

Quite a few choices. Let me know what you think.

Apple's subscription plan: Time for an app work stoppage | ZDNet

Thought that this was an interesting article about how Apple’s “greed” may get in the way of their keeping their current high market position in the smartphone/tablet world. If they have companies like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu pull their apps from iTunes then they will begin to miss a large part of the entertainment market when it comes to streaming media. This might not be as big a problem for the iPhone but the iPad may see some serious fallout to the android tablets that will soon be plentiful. The sooner that these new tablets are out and provide and alternative the the Apple monopoly the sooner they may see this happen. I would hate for my sake, since I own an iPad to lose these streaming services because I do use them on my tablet but it isn’t my only use of it. If I have to go back to my PC or grab a new device I will probably do it.

Apple's subscription plan: Time for an app work stoppage | ZDNet

CES 2011

Last year Jude and I had launched our video studio right about this time and had produced some videos about products that we thought were neat and that we wanted to have. Many of these products never came into production as is the nature of the beast, but it is still interesting that the same basic theme this year seems to be the same as last year.

Hands down I think that one of the most exciting products of last year was the iPad and I am so glad that I found a way to justify my purchase because once I did get it into my hands, I found many more uses for it then I originally imagined. One of the things that I do daily is look for either new applications or peripherals to add to my collection of supporting items for my iPad. My two newest purchases being speaker docks that charge my iPad and iPhone while playing content. Productivity enhancements and ease of sharing data between systems is still my biggest concern when choosing a new application.

So, enough of my Bully Pulpit! The main focus of new and improved upcoming products include iPad type devices either using Android and Microsoft's Windows for operating systems. Throw in products from HP and RIM and we have a large number of choices in many varying sizes. For many of these we will still have to wait and see if they will actually reach production.

Another carryover from last year is the eBook reader. My feeling is that Amazon and Barnes and Noble are our two leaders with Sony in as a distant third. I am not sure that there is any more room for anything else out there but when people see a successful product they will try to ride the coattails of those products with what they feel is a better mousetrap.

3D TV was introduced last year but this year we see it being put into almost everything with a screen. I am not sold on this yet as anything more than a gimmick, but there is a lot of money being poured into it.

Believe it or not there are some interesting things happening with desktop and notebook computers with the new integrated video residing right in the same silicon with the CPU. there are many benefits to be found doing this that I will discuss in some follow-up articles. But we are seeing a small resurgence in Tablet Notebooks (convertibles), and more units in smaller more powerful form factors.

I haven't seen any new product groups yet but we are still pretty early in the show for me to determine that, more on this later. Anyway, over the next few days we will be perusing CES from afar and as we come up with products that we fill compelling, we will be sure to bring them to your attention.
So for now I'll go back to work and see what I can find!

Amazon rolls out Kindle lending support | ZDNet

Free Public Library Support is about the only major difference between the Nook and the Kindle now that Amazon has begun rolling out the capability to lend a book to a friend. It all has to be done through an Amazon Web Page but at least it is available now. You can now offer books up for lending and the recipient has seven days to accept, and they can borrow the book for up to 14 days once they accept the loan. While the recipient has the book on their Kindle device you will not be able to access it. You can check out the Amazon Help page on how to do this here…

Amazon rolls out Kindle lending support | ZDNet

We have had several interesting discussions at the store lately about eBook Readers

I was browsing through some of the Technology RSS feeds that I subscribe to, (I know that's kind of geeky, but that is what I do in lieu of thumbing through a Christmas catalog or magazine like my lovely wife), and I came across the headline of how Barnes & Noble is now producing 1,800 color Nooks per day. That equates to over 7 million shipping per year, not too bad. Add to that the number of Kindles that are shipping and the number of iPads still flowing into the hands of smiling owners.

Google E-Bookstore has gone live bringing over 3 million titles to any web-browsing capable device with a large selection of free titles. Apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad to read Google e-books are available as well and content will sync across any device you own as the other apps do from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

So, back to the discussion we were having this morning about all of the different products that are now available to read an eBook on. Whether you own a device like the Kindle, Sony or the first version of the Nook (dedicated reading devices), a computer using one of the reading apps produced by these companies, browsing using the new amazon kindle browser site, or a special app on your smart phone or Pad device. There are so many ways to consume the books you buy that it becomes apparent to me that when you are really into a book you can always have it with you until you are done with it.

Personally I like going with the Amazon products mainly because of the types of devices that I own and the ways that I can access what I but and because I am an avid Audible patron dating all the way back to 1989 I have so many ways to consume my reading material.

So what is the point that I am trying to make. I think that the opportunities in this world for enjoying your reading have opened considerably. The devices you invest in will determine the path that you will be able take to access the literature formats that are exploding on the market. Whether you want to feel the paper or work with electronics you have so many options available to you. Whether you want to listen or read or do both you can do that as well.  The world is your oyster, enjoy!

Barnes & Noble opens 'PubIt!' self-publishing portal, details compensation model

So you want to be a published author and Barnes & Noble wants to bring you into their fold. Launching soon, Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! self-publishing portal will soon be available. As you'd heard before, this platform is essentially designed to give independent writers a venue for hawking their masterpieces, with PubIt! converting files to ePUB for use on a wide range of e-readers (read: not only the Nook).

Click to read more ...