B&N's Nook Color e-reader is receiving a major update today which brings a wider selection of Android apps to the tablet, plus an email client, faster Web browsing and support for Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies.
The update will also deliver an upgrade to the tablet's base operating system, bringing it a newer version of Android - Android 2.2, code-named "Froyo." While this is not the most current version of Android available at present, it's less of a concern here because the tablet runs its own user interface designed specifically for e-reading.
The future of textbooks is digital and a growing part of the digital economy resides with Android. CourseSmart, one of the largest providers of digital learning material, released an Android application April 19 to make e-textbooks more ubiquitous in the market.
CourseSmart for Android 1.0 brings access to 90% of all core higher education textbooks in use in colleges and universities to Android users. Users can search for topics within a single book or by collection, add and edit notes and can be read in portrait or landscape modes.
At first glance, yesterday's news that Amazon is launching a Lending Library - an arrangement to make Kindle e-books available for libraries to loan - sounds like good news for libraries. But many librarians are taking the news in stride, glad to have more options for their patrons, but cautious - even skeptical - about the program's implementation and its impact.
The stakes are incredibly high for public libraries right now. Federal, state, and local budgets are tight. Libraries are closing or cutting back on services. Alongside these fiscal trends are digital trends: the explosive growth in e-books, something that is radically changing the face of book publishing, book distribution, and yes, book lending.
Clearly consumers are interested in reading e-books, as the latest sales figures from the Association of American Publishers demonstrate. But what isn't clear is how this interest in e-books will translate into libraries' ability to meet their patrons' demands. There are questions about licensing, DRM, fees, and formats, for example.
Despite some of the challenges of lending library books in digital formats, many libraries are exploring the e-book option. However, although there are a number of choices for e-readers and digital content providers, the list of devices that let you check out library books hasn't included the most popular e-reader of all: the Kindle.
That is, until today, with the announcement from Amazon this morning that it is launching a Lending Library "later this year" that will let Kindle owners check out books from their local library.
When the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its sales figures for the month of February, the headlines were easy to compose: e-books have surpassed print in all trade categories.
E-books have become the format-of-choice, these figures suggest. In January, the AAP said that e-book sales were up 116% year-over-year, and for the month of February that growth accelerated even further. February 2011 sales were up 202.3% from the same time last year.
When Amazon launched its new Cloud Drive a few weeks ago, it prompted a debate in the ReadWriteWeb editorial room about whether or not the future of music involved downloads and ownership - as supported by Amazon's cloud stage - or streaming and subscription - as provided by any number of music startups, like Rdio and Spotify. The ReadWriteWeb writers kept our discussion focused on music, but the debate could easily extend to any number of digital media now in Amazon's catalogue: movies, magazines, books.
We're familiar with these streaming and subscription services when it comes to music and movies (Netflix, Hulu for example). But books? Will we (can we) rent books?
Despite the increasing popularity of e-books, children's literature - particularly picture books - has been slower to go digital. There are a number of obstacles in the way, most obviously the emphasis on colorful illustrations alongside the words. As many e-readers have black-and-white screens and as many formats focus primarily on digitizing the text, you're unlikely to find a great selection of children's e-lit in e-bookstores (although that is changing).
It's more common, perhaps, to see children's literature as apps, rather than e-books. Apps are full-color. They offer interactivity, with games and narration.
Those features are important, says David Park, a former tenure-track professor who's left that world to develop his children's e-book startup MeeGenius. Mindful of what parents are looking for, he asked about their interest in digital literature for their young kids. Many said that they weren't willing pay for "just" a digital book. Parents wanted additional features: the ability to have the story read aloud, to have words highlighted as the story progressed, to have it personalized.
Recent changes to Google's search algorithm have sought to reduce the rankings of what Google has described as "low quality" and "low value add" sites. And while some of these websites have seen a significant drop in traffic, we may find that content farms aren't eradicated. Rather, they're relocating. Impact Media's Mike Essex suggests their new destination may be e-books.
On the Internet, many content farms are full of unoriginal content, often scraped from other sites, and republished under different headlines. The advent of easy self-publishing makes it incredibly simple for this process to be replicated in e-books.
"Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it who fetters it in verse." -- John Donne
In advance of National Poetry Month, Publishers Weekly has published an essay by Craig Morgan Teicher on a significant obstacle in the move toward e-publishing. Well, maybe it's not significant. It's poetry.
Poetry is the red-headed step-child of publishing, always last in the queue for its bowl of gruel. But finally, it's gruel-time. The main poetry publishers, including Graywolf, Copper Canyon, BOA, Coffee House and Wesleyan "will make at least some of their books available as e-books by the fall." But there's a problem.
A rather grim story in The New York Times last month posited that our move to digital literature would spell the end of marginalia, the notes and comments that we scribble in the margins of printed books. How would we know what snarky comments Mark Twain left in the margins of his library had he only read books on his Kindle?
I'm not sure that the future of marginalia is quite so dim. Nor do the folks at ReadSocial, who are working on an API that would, as the name suggests, help open up our digital annotations to others and help make e-reading social.
ReadSocial's API aims to provide a social layer that works on top of and across reading systems. In other words, it means that passages from books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and so on can be excerpted, annotated, and pushed to our social networks. The API would serve to free content and discussions from being siloed in a single platform
