Today has been an interesting day regarding the mention of Ebooks across media. Here’s a summary with my own brief comments under each -

 

The One Show, BBC, Thursday 4th September

Last night, the One Show, a magazine style program the BBC puts on at 7pm each week night, featured a debate between an eBook reader company manager and a woman who advocated only real books. The piece was brief, and set in a cafe. In my own opinion, the woman reader did little to recognise anything about the economical and ecological impact of book distributions, but the arguments put forth by Mr e-reader were limited also. Such was the nature of the lack of depth found in the One Show’s brief excepts. But at least I got to see an e-reader (the brand was never mentioned) in real life. They’re bigger than I was expecting.

No Link for this one, but the BBC website does re-run shows over the internet.

 

Lifehacker Asks : Do Ebooks, Legal or Not, Make You Buy Real Books?

Based on one author pulling her next book because illegal rough drafts showed up on bitTorrent sites (um, I’ve got to ask how they got there in the first place - who had a copy?) the Lifehacker site asks whether access to a digital copy of a book would make you go out and buy it in real form. There are some interesting comments on the post, well worth reading.

Link : http://lifehacker.com/5045885/do-ebooks-legal-or-not-make-you-buy-real-books

 

A Japanese Rants for More Ebooks

On a Japanese blog, Amlau pleads for more English-language ebooks to be published by publishers - even when they’ve gone out of print in real-life. Amlau can’t get enough english books where he lives. And it’s a good point about finding new markets for books which quickly go out of print locally.

Link: http://www.amyolau.com/2008/09/05/rant-for-ebooks/

 

Jeffrey Carver is Giving Away 2 of His SciFi Books in Electronic Form

Jeffrey A. Carver is giving away Volume 1 of The Chaos Chronicles, Neptune Crossing and Volume 2, Strange Attractors. The downloads are available in multiple formats also, including mobi, e-reader and PDF. On his blog (which I happen to read as an excellent writing blog), Jeffrey explains his new deal with his publishing company Tor.

Link : http://starrigger.blogspot.com/2008/09/ebooks-round-two-ding-strange.html

 

Stuff.tv say Only 13% Want Ebook Readers

I’m not sure what the 13% is of - or what group of people Stuff.tv are talking about or have surveyed (I’m going to presume it’s their own customer base), but they suggest that only 13% want an e-reader - whether now or ever. This post was as the result of the Sony reader arriving in Waterstones in the U.K. recently. 

My opinion - actually, if you consider how many books are published in the course of only one year, 13% sounds a good percentage in e-sales. But I’m probably wrong.

Link : http://stuff.tv/news/Only-13-per-cent-want-eBook-reader/10774/

 

The Guardian says They Still Haven’t Cracked Ebooks

With the arrival of the Sony e-reader, the Guardian newspaper online dishes the dirt, and basically isn’t impressed yet. The capsule review subsidiary blog also talks about this e-reader.

Link : http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/09/ebooks.html
Link : http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/09/capsule_review_sony_reader.html