Away from the Juiced on Ebooks Blog, I’ve been busy on other projects. Here is a list -

What’s Been Happening Today (23 September 2008)?

• WritersDigest.tv - a new blog on my Juiced on Writing blog.
• Craft the Vote post - on the Scrapability blog.
• Work on Research for next novel.
• How to Think Sideways Week 9 reading and work.
• Blog Mastermind Week 8 reading and work.
• 30DC Catchup
• Gmail and GReader catchup.
• Work on PDF Report for Juiced on Writing blog.
• Update work to create these Quick Updates areas on all three blogs.
• New blog post explaining these - published to all three blogs.
• 6 More wooden flower picture frames to hand-paint plus 6 more Beetle Masks to create out of foam - all for my daughter’s upcoming Birthday party.

Technorati Tags: latest personal update

The marketing eBook is a slightly different beast from other informational eBooks. Marketing eBooks contain text, images, links to web pages and navigation controls. The marketing eBook has become a very important part of marketing on the Internet. Viral marketing - getting the word out via an ebook, linking to your product website, blog, resume - it’s now the biggest thing in internet marketing, and eBooks are right in the middle of that info-age.

With a marketing eBook you are able to present your story in an effective way and include links to your web sales pages. Your E-book may well become your best sales tool in your portfolio.

First, your eBook needs to be interesting and informative. Importantly it also needs to be relevant - to both your own content niche and products and to your readers or customers. There’s no point giving away an eBook on auto-mechanics to your scrapbooking mums audience, for instance. Your eBook will  always have links back to your web site and to your sales page. That’s what you’re creating / publishing it for, right?

Next, make certain that you have a prominent section telling readers that they are free to give your E-book away. Yep, let them give it away - that’s the viral in viral marketing.  Let them know that they can post it onto their web site as a free download, that they can use it as a bonus - for subscribers or with another gift package they are providing, and that they can bundle it with other products. This is the way to create word of mouth marketing for your products or services.

Before you send your eBook out to the world, check spelling and grammar, and be sure that you have tested every link to verify that it goes where it is supposed to go. Ensure that your eBook provides a professional and reputation-building offering for those who do get hold of it.

Create a download page for your eBook - on your own site if you need to. Think about your own promotional strategies for the eBook.

Finally, now that your marketing eBook is ready to launch, start your promotional activities. Offer it from your own website, send it out via a subscriber mailing list, advertise it on relevant forums (in your signature if that’s acceptable). Ask a peer or favourite blogger in your niche to review and promote it for you. And you can post your eBook to some of the E-book directories. Many let you post it free of charge, or will let you post a link on their web site to your E-book.

Sign in - registration is free - and you have access to an online reader which has chat and annotation functions on each ebook read. Users - and groups of users can use these facilities to discuss the books they are reading - in fact consider this from an online reading group perspective.

Authors can upload their own books to allow these discussions and receive feedback on their work, and the Book Glutton site itself (launched in January 2008) holds over 1000 books at this time, with many groups of readers also.

Cory Doctorow’s Ebook, entitled Ebooks : Neither E, Nor Books, is currently sitting on the homepage books list. The ebook - based on a paper presented at the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004, makes for interesting reading (even before the arrival of the Kindle and Sony e-readers).

Here are a couple of quotes -

For starters, let me try to summarize the lessons and intuitions I’ve had about ebooks from my release of two novels and most of a short story collection online under a Creative Commons license.

No, if I had to come up with another title for this talk, I’d call it: "Ebooks: You’re Soaking in Them." That’s because I think that the shape of ebooks to come is almost visible in the way that people interact with text today, and that the job of authors who want to become rich and famous is to come to a better understanding of that shape.

Go to Book Glutton to read this dissertion on ebooks, and to join in with reading several other books online, and chatting over them.

If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the "first sale" doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School’s Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?

In the fine print that you "agree" to, Amazon and Sony say you just get a license to the e-books—you’re not paying to own ‘em, in spite of the use of the term "buy." Digital retailers say that the first sale doctrine—which would let you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay—no longer applies. Your license to read the book is unlimited, though—so even if Amazon or Sony changed technologies, dropped the biz or just got mad at you, they legally couldn’t take away your purchases. Still, it’s a license you can’t sell.

Further discussion can be found on the Gizmodo entry linked to below.

Link : Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Locked Up : Why Your Books are No Longer Yours (Gizmodo site, March 21, 2008)

You’ve finished polishing off an album-full of rockin’ tunes and you’re ready to launch your 3-chord wonders on an unsuspecting world.

The problem is, you’re still recording in your mom’s garage and the only ones who’ve ever heard you play are the neighbors — and they called the cops!

So, you log on the Internet in search of information on how to promote your group. Along the way you find two ebooks for sale that are exactly what you’re looking for.

The first one is called "Promoting a rock group on the Internet".

The second one is called "How to make your rock group famous using the Internet".

Now, ask yourself, which of these titles would tempt you the most.

I don’t know about you, but to my mind the second title is far more appealing. The first one promises to tell you how to promote your band, but that’s all. It describes what the book does very effectively but it doesn’t fire the
imagination. It sounds a lot like hard work without convincing you that your band will be famous if you read it.

The second title, however, promises exactly what you want. At the end of the day, you don’t want to ‘promote’ your band, you just want to make your band ‘famous’. In other words it promises the BENEFITS that you’re looking for.

Both titles could be used on the exact same ebook but the second one will be many times more successful
than the first because people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. I’ll say it again: People don’t buy features, they buy benefits! And that rule doesn’t just apply to ebook titles - it applies to every single aspect of your marketing and promotion.

Every time you create a title, write a sales letter, create an advertisement, or build a web page keep that rule in mind: "PEOPLE BUY BENEFITS". It’s the single most important thing to know in marketing. Understand
this point and you will succeed.

To sum up, always keep in mind that the title of your ebook is vitally important to its success.An ebook with a title that catches the attention of the potential customer and promises a benefit to that customer, will be infinitely easier to sell than an ebook with a ‘descriptive’ title.

Your title should do all the following:
- It should attract your potential customer’s attention.
- It should clearly show what your book is about.
- It should arouse your potential customer’s interest and/or curiosity.
- It should promise BENEFITS to the potential customer.

Put yourself in the position of the potential customer. Ask yourself what would attract you in a title. Take a look at other titles that cover the same subject area. Which ones are best? Which are the ones you would most
like to buy? Which ones promise the biggest benefits? What is it about these titles that make them better than
the others?

Do you know someone else who is interested in the same subject? If so, ask yourself which title would interest him/her. Which title would you feel happy and comfortable telling him/her about? Finally, keep your title as short as possible and use a sub-title to drive home other benefits. For example, "How to make your rock group famous using the Internet" with the sub-title "The secrets to rock promotion that will have the major labels scrambling to sign you up".

Remember, it doesn’t matter what the subject, you can create a sellable ebook in just a few hours. Give it a
title that promises BENEFITS to the target market and then TARGET that market, and you’re guaranteed to
succeed.

Hey Ho! Let’s Go!

NOTE: You’re free to republish this article on your website, in your newsletter, in your e-book or in other publications provided that you include the ‘About the author’ information (above).

However, on my longest running blog, Scrapability, it’s noticable when I go off topic and start talking about - say - writing - or a personal life - that I suddenly lose one or two subscribed readers. Many on that blog are only interested in one portion of my life - that of providing scrapbooking information and news. When I start talking about something else, those particular readers get bored with my blog, and quite legitimately so, as they signed up for a reason. Such is the fundamentals of blogging in niches. It’s nothing personal, but it can sometimes find me, as a blog writer, feeling somewhat compartmentalised, and at the worst of times, demotivated. And that has obvious ramifications on my work and on how I face the blogs themselves.

From the Cutewriting blog comes the idea of incorporating a blog widget with text updates somewhere from within the blog - Cutewriting calls this a microblog within the blog. If it’s done in a widget, the contents won’t be published to the feed readers out there, but will remain visible to any who stop by regularly and are more intimate with the blogger as a person.

A text widget can be used to post updates of a personal nature, link to interesting off-topic links, make announcements, or provide a brief summary contents index of your latest posts. For my three blogs, I can use the updates to simply notify my readers of my additional work on outside projects - such as the other two blogs, for instance).

Cutewriting has a section called Today’s Special at the top of the page which is an example of the principle in action.

Technically, the implementation of such a section is dependent on your blogging platform. Some platforms allow you to simply create a normal item (or blog) and choose for it not to be fed out in an RSS feed. If you have a "sticky" ability - to make sure the post remains at the top -  then you can simply rewrite this one microblog or text post each day. Your main entries will still be posted to your menu system and fed out to your RSS subscribers as normal.

Other blogs on different platforms may require the use of a text widget, and it’s placement via CSS or templates into an area on the homepage, the sidebar, header or footer. It would best be placed somewhere at the top, and obvious to the casual browser also.

Here’s How I’ve Implemented the Idea for my Own Three Blogs, Using their Current Configurations:

Wordpress

Wordpress Users can look for a plugin called WP-Sticky which allows you to appoint a post as either sticky (for the day) or an announcement (permanently) as the top post on the page. Specific themes for Wordpress also can include top header bars where text can be input away from the posts.

For both my Juiced on Writing and Juiced on Ebooks blogs, I decided upon the WP-Sticky approach to making my top post an announcement post. The Juiced on Ebooks blog actually (currently) has a designed header section with an About section which I could have changed over to the News section I wanted, but this would have necessitated going into the html or php files each time my news changed. I do not, at this point, feel I have enough CSS or PHP knowledge to be able to insert some kind of widget into that section to allow me to change the text more easily.

I also initially went looking for sidebar widgets which would allow such text entries. There are a couple of sidebar tab menu systems which can save some vertical space by combining several plugins or areas into the one menu system. However none are exactly what I want at this point in time.

So, for both Juiced on Writing and Juiced on Ebooks, I’ve simply inserted a new post - as an announcement at the top. Announcements (using the WP-Sticky plugin) stay at the top of the blog or journal main page forever, whereas Stickies stay for the day. To make these newsy out-of-theme posts less intrusive for the blog reader, I’ve used the More or split tag function within the post, forcing the user to click on "Read More…" to go to view the actual bullet points if they really are interested.

Unfortunately this opion means that the first publication of the What’s Happening post on both blogs will go out on RSS feeds and the like - but only the first one. After this I can simply edit and update the date and my own personal projects whenever I want, and the top post on my blog will be updated with it, without going out as another RSS feed.

Squarespace

For my longstanding scrapbooking blog, Scrapability, I took another tack on this. This blog is hosted on Squarespace, and although I can easily change themes / templates and CSS internally, there are no dedicated widgets for Squarespace users.

Instead, I could have found and inserted any text-based widget via html as a plugin into the sidebar, and very easily. But I couldn’t create a sticky post which would always be on top of the blog entries, not without publishing the entry at a calendar date way into the future anyway.

With the Scrapability blog I decided to make better use of a current page onsite which I’d created as a homepage. Like Wordpress, Squarespace pages don’t feed out to RSS feeds. They are static. So I took my almost valueless Homepage and turned it into the personal and brief update page for all my other projects. This has been renamed to "Other Daily Updates" and is the top link on the main sidebar panel. Anyone who wishes to will be able to go there for personal updates. I’ll also post interesting links I’ve been browsing around, and tidbits of news onto that page, and send RSS blog readers there with quick posts through the normal blog pages if I think appropriate.

A Letter to Ebook Creators

These points are purely as a reader of eBooks. I understand the need many eBook publishers feel concerning digital piracy of their books, and securing their books from this. There also appears a desire in some quarters to control how an Ebook can be shared (or not) including it being printed. I also understand the demand that some have for different formats such as formats supported by certain mobile devices. The industry is still somewhat thrawted by the various different eBook formats and non-standards, but as a customer and reader of eBooks here are my desires -

1. Please choose a format which is compatible with the vast majority of my own systems and those of others. Technically, the easiest for me is PDFs. Not exes – these come in far too many variations, and just aren’t as easy to work with, or even read. In fact, after purchasing some executable eBooks to find they were corrupt, I have a distrust of these, no matter how whiz-bang technically they may be.
2. Please allow an eBook to be printable – many readers don’t enjoy reading on the screen all the time. Having a physical copy to read (on the train or plane) is a selling point.
3. Stay away from formats which have strange digital rights management. I need to transfer my eBooks across computers and possibly onto mobile devices to read. If I’ve purchased something to read, I consider it my right to be able to read this eBook where-ever I desire. You can move a real book around locations, and you should be able to do the same for eBooks.
4. Consider the future and media changes. Remember that many of us are spending hours transferring our old video (and even vinyl albums of music) recordings onto the newer formats. We are also spending large amounts of money backing up our electronic media onto backup storage, and finding that we have to reconvert (using even more software and data storage) when technology changes. This is going to become an issue if eBooks aren’t future-proofed as much as possible, by using standardised and common-place supported formats which work across platform and independently from the software version used to create it. Ebooks might, in the future have different readers and technology for both archiving them, and reading them. I don’t expect you to cater for these, but as you are in the business of creating an electronic product, you should be knowledgeable of the latest trends as a business practice and as a professional. If you choose to provide your eBook in a non-common format, at least provide the textual content also in a more common format such as PDF.
5. Various types / page-lengths of eBooks require differing pricing structures. However there’s a huge discrepancy over an eBook’s price. From my side, I’m not going to pay $77 for an eBook even if it does contain 149 pages of promised special information which can make me a millionaire in two days, when I can buy the same information (as far as I can tell) in a book off Amazon for $12.99 (and with free delivery) or find it free spread across the internet. You can’t leaf through an ebook in your purchasing decision, as you can do a book on a shelf. Having a money-back guarantee is helpful in my own buying decision, as are chapter summaries and looks inside at some of the content.
6. Pricing of eBooks is getting notoriously difficult to fathom, when I can see huge packages of PLR or resell rights ebooks being sold for a pittance on eBay. And yet some eBooks are going for more than I would ever pay for a physical book. There are incidents where both a physical book and an ebook are available, and yet both are priced the same. As a buyer I would expect the eBook in this example to be priced substantially lower. I am well aware that eBooks circumvent the warehousing and distribution requirements of a paperbook and can not understand why both should be the same price.
7. Point 5 above mentions some of the attraction factors towards my own buyer’s decision in purchasing an eBook. This point is going to mention the huge turn-off factor when looking into an eBook – the long scrollable sales letter page websites which have reader’s recommendations and reviews as quotes scattered throughout the page. Why? I don’t know Sam Jones from Arkansas from a bar of soap, and I don’t care what he thinks of your eBook - nor do I actually believe he exists in the first place. If you are going to insist on a sales letter page, then at least keep it factual, and include content which helps me make my own decision towards purchases. Give me the features, the benefits, the cost (often missing from the pages, or embarrassingly dealt with in the smallest fineprint at the bottom), and the previews if possible. But not your made-up character’s testimonial which I simply don’t believe.
8. Sales Letter pages again – don’t tell me I’ve only got five days for this special offer only, then the price is going up. I don’t believe you, and I don’t like being treated like a fool. And contrarily, if I ever found I paid through the nose for an eBook which others got cheaper earlier on, you would never find me buying from you again. This rule does not apply to eBooks which are released as free for a limited time to subscribers or via special online events, and then are sold. I don’t resent that particular special at all – it’s perceived as a kindness.
9. Go to Point 7 again. Note the bit about where you’re putting the cost on the sales letter page. Don’t do that. If you’re selling me something, I want to know how much it is right from the start. If I have to search for it, or worse - if I have to click through to a purchase page before I know how much the eBook is going to cost me, then you’re 99 out of 100 times going to lose the sale.
10. Please include graphics and good graphical design if you can. I know, I know - there are many good eBooks which simply look like a standard novel or technical discussion book. And those are plain text, with limited if any formatting, without pictures, without colour. And they work, right? Yes, but in eBooks I would draw your attention back to Point 2 above. You just can’t sit in front of a computer screen reading a book for a long time, without needing something else to rest your eyes on, to break up the blurriness of the text, to allow you to think. So include graphics, borders, sidebars, stupid little cartoons which make me grimmace, coloured headings, formatted backgrounds - not too much, but enough to break up the text and add value and rest-points to my reading.

EBook Formats

1. Electronic eBooks

These are the compiled eBooks which often come down as a self-extracting or installing executables (exes). They require a specific reader to read them, often available freely or even installed into the eBook exe. Once downloaded, the exe will normally simply need to be run to open the program. Based on html documents originally, most exe-type eBooks run similarly to a browser, using links as page indexes.

There are various compilers around on the market, and unfortunately because of this, one eBook compiled with one is not readable by another reader device. However executable eBooks have some features which make them more usable over simple document files. Many can contain multi-media features such as sound-files or video graphics (which can increase the eBook size).

When choosing to publish an ebook in an exe runnable program format, it should be noted that there may remain some consumer reservations about information products provided in this format. The contents are often un-previewable (unlike PDF eBooks, which are often set to open into a browser on download) and therefore unknown until run. And consumers are often apprehensive about running executable programs on their computers due to the scare of installing viruses or malware also. Providing these exes eBooks through a reputable online eBook store, and with a money-back cooling off period can help alleviate some of these concerns.

From a personal viewpoint, I’ve recently purchased – in packages – several exe eBooks, only to find they a good few have not been fully or correctly configured inside – with missing images, or even some which are un-navigatible past the first page because the hyperlinks through to other pages don’t work, or the menu system is corrupted. Whether it’s because they were built on old technology, old browser conditions, or not packaged correctly or what, I don’t know. But I do know I look on exe versions of eBooks with some distrust.

2. Mobile Formats

Although the most commonplace type of eBook, the PDF (below) is normally compatible across PC types, there still remain some incompatible mobile formats. Certain eBooks call for conversion or reading through different formators. Microsoft Reader uses a format of book not compatible with Mobipocket or Palm Pilot conversions to their e-reader types, for instance.

Some eBooks are only available in certain formats to fit a reader’s mobile device. These many reader types and formats fragmented the eBook market for several years, but recently the market is starting to homogenise and develop eBook publishing standards to allow for the development of mobile reading devices such as Amazon’s Kindle. Despite these newer reading devices (e-readers) now starting to move onto the market, they remain quite expensive, and we still have competing formats out there for such devices. We lately have the news that Apple are looking at developing their itouch phone into an e-reading device also, (hopefully not in a proprietory format for the books). All of these competing standards and expensive options continue to make it a difficult time for the normal consumer on the street to be won over into the world of mobile eBooks.

3. PDF eBooks

Most eBooks nowadays are made available in the PDF (portable document format) format and can be read easily in free PDF readering software (the most popular and recognisable being Adobe Reader which is often made available to download from eBook sites along with the eBook itself).

The PDF eBook has been converted from another document format such as a Publisher application, a Word/Writing application or even a spreadsheet application. Such other documents strike problems if presented in their original format for you, because readers often don’t have the same programs or versions of them on their own computers. And if they can open those original documents, then they can also make edits to your content. Your hard-worked formatting in such original documents will also most probably go astray as readers will not share the same fonts and styles as you did in creating the eBook.

The PDF format allows a document to be converted to a commonly-read document and set the formatting and styling of your eBook in stone. All they can do is read the eBook as you intended (some PDF documents do allow some inputs). PDF readers are available freely, in both Mac, Personal Computer and mobile device formats.

Of the many PDF eBooks out there, many types of eBook can be recognised or categorised and each has a general structure, contents, and pricing range which I will deal with in the next section.

Ebook Types

1. The Digitalised Book

Fiction and Literature

This form is commonly seen in the digitalisation of fictional and literary works. There is a wide range of literature available in eBook digitalised format – often freely downloadable if their age or copyrights have taken them into the public domain. There are many digital library projects out there (examples being Project Gutenberg, and Bibliovault) which are assembling many books from both a historical and current perspective into a repository in digital format. Quite a few current-day authors also allow their published books to be digitalised for posterity also, normally after some years as a normal paper book.

Also recently, some works of fiction have been published by authors as solely electronic novels (sometimes serially published) and eBooks. There are even several blockbuster printed novels which originated in electronic formats before being picked up by physical publishers.

Various formats are being developed for new authors seeking ways to publish outside of the larger publishers and corporates. You may encounter fictional works being published as full eBooks in PDF form, as serialised publications on the web, as podcasts with a complementary PDF, as serial novelisations via social networking sites, or even over mobile phone networks.

However, it should be noted that Fiction does not do a roaring trade online and in the eBook format, in sales anyway. In fact, some online booksellers have stopped selling digital formats of books because of this.

Such digitalised books, whether literary works in the public domain, or newer authors now publishing in this format, normally can be recognised by their length (over 100 pages) and they are normally found with headed chapters and more than one idea contained.

Non-Fiction Info Products

The eBook doesn’t have to have a physically published novel counterpart. And it doesn’t have to be fiction either. Many eBook informational products fit this category also. The many pages of such a book will promote a multitude of related ideas and content, with chapters, sub-headings, indexes, glossaries and additional resources.

Unless your content for longer eBooks is highly informative, consider your reader’s attention. Statistics show that the typical eBook sold is never read fully through. Provided you have sold this and are happy with your money, this may not worry you as the seller. However, consider your reader’s satisfaction. If you create an Ebook which provides wanted information – all the way through, despite length, then that leads to repeat sales.

If possible, for informational products, shorten your eBooks accordingly. Some suggest to a 25-50 page product (see Manifestos or Reports below), although there are many examples of longer eBooks being best-sellers because of their content.

Personal Opinion : So Saying this, it must be noted that it’s the 25-60 page ranges of smaller eBooks which you will see being virtually given away nowadays in large eBook packages on Ebay and other online auction sites. Packages of 300 to upwards of 1000 eBooks contain these smaller eBooks, on a huge variety of topics (and unknown quality) with most of these eBooks containing reseller rights given away in the packages also. Many eBooks of this size also go the way of being offered as bonus or incentive products on sale for supposedly superior information products.

EBooks containing around 100 – 300 pages generally fall into the $27 - $29 price range, but there are quite a few examples out there of bestselling eBooks selling for $97 or $99, the same cost as some paid-for e-courses. Often you might find these higher priced eBooks on special (permanent or otherwise) at around $79 if you’re lucky.

2. The 100 – 200 Page Airplane Book

Typically, larger literary works and fiction-based eBooks can run the same number of pages as the physical book – sometimes over 300 pages. However, some of the best-selling eBooks with an informational topic come in under the 200 page size. I refer to the best-selling 37Signals eBook which has sold over 30,000 copies. The front splash page suggests its size, of under 200 pages, helps to make it a quick-read – “an airplane book”. Providing succinct packaged information in a format which is easily digestable on an aeroplane journey across country or continents is a successful idea.

Similarly, there are now a large range of How To guides, particularly around the productivity stream, which are an even quicker read, at around the 70 – 100 page limits, and often under this.

The Airplane Book normally follows standard formatting of larger eBooks, containing sections, chapters, a table of contents, and normally created in A4 size.

The Airplane Book and some larger eBooks can normally be found priced around the $27 - $29 range. However some of the smaller ones are currently being sold for a reasonable $14.

3. The Pamphlet or Brochure

The brochure is the type of eBook format which many internet marketers suggest are the best-sellers. These are the one or two page quick documents, either in bullet-point format which are produced to resolve one problem quickly for a “desperate buyer”.

The most popular formats are either lists or tips / cheat sheets or best of type documents.

The information provided is only deep enough to provide a resolution which can be downloaded instantly, and on demand. Such users would rather seek these eBooks out than waiting around to gleen the same information from purchasing a book and awaiting it’s arrival. This buyer just wants the information – quickly and in digestable and usable formats. Such pamplets provide step-by-steps and numbered bullets, graphics which enhance the learning experience, and not much filler information at all. Just the facts, Ma’am.

Personal Opinion : I like the list or tips format of a pamphlet ebook, but would, as a consumer, think twice about paying for a small document like this unless it contains totally new information – the many I do own have been given away as free promotional copies to me as a subscriber, or past subscriber, and have worked as an enticement for me to look into larger info product offerings by the same author or website.

Brochures, when sold, can normally be found in a price range of from $1.50 upwards to $10. Many are given away free as bonuses or subscription incentives.

4. The Manifesto or Report

The manifesto is larger than the Brochure, and can range up to about 25-30 pages, thus allowing more text than a Brochure. There are actually sites out there looking for such Manifestos for this particular market. Change This is a site which provides free-to-download manifestos. The format allows for more descriptive text, sub-headings, a mixture of bullet-points and opinions. Unlike a larger eBook , the report or manifesto normally does not have a list of contents page, nor chapters. It can contain a few sections for comprehension, with headings over these. Pull quotes and sidebars, with graphics also enhance the information contained. Like a Brochure, the Manifesto only covers one idea.

Manifestos are often called Reports, and have been made more famous in terms of their pricing – most Reports are available for $7-$9 nowadays (as are some smaller brochures).

1. Guardian Poll

The Guardian UK is still on it’s Ebook vs Real Book spiel (see Ebooks in the Media Today item) and has now posted a two-item poll for readers.

Link : Guardian Poll

2. Notethisdown’s Seth Godwin Ebooks

The Notethisdown blog has posted a small list with links to favourite Seth Godwin ebooks. I happen to have all of these myself, and even have a special category in my Ebook’s folders for Seth’s books so they are easily found. Practical information, and a great writing style. And most of these are free, and can be shared with friends.

Link : Notethisdown’s Post.

3. 20 Best Websites to Download Free Ebooks

The Hongkiat.com site has provided a great post listing twenty websites for downloading ebooks from, complete with screenshots of the sites also.

Link : 20 Best Websites…

4. Plastic Logic’s EReader Revealed

The latest buzz appears around the latest ereader, some suggesting as a Kindle-killer. Plastic Logic’s ereader is a larger flexible device to target business users, capable of showing Office applications, and PDFs. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Note: Plastic Logic has offices in Cambridge UK, my own major city, and I first read about this particular reader some months ago in my local newspaper business section. On the photographs, I can personally see myself being quite comfortable using such a reader like a magazine (in fact, it can have PDF magazine editions on it) and tucking it back into my saddlebag when traveling or commuting. Also good for all those huge technical manuals I used to heft around as a software test manager.

I personally think they may be missing a target market here, concentrating on the business user. Most retail magazines now come in electronic formats, and with the bluetooth and wireless technology incorporated, could be provided as downloads and updates as often as the paper-version. When commuting or even traveling off on holiday, I tend to take large quantities of books, manuals, and magazines with me, and being able to hold them on the one flexible device - including perhaps all those travel brochures or travel guides, just seems immensely hopeful for the future in ebook / ereader technology. Hey, I could even get my latest House & Garden and BBC Focus (Science) magazine fixes at the airports as downloads, on my way out of the country. How kewl is that?

Note: the Plastic Logic ereader still is in demo, and still needs colour.

Link : TrustedReview’s Plastic Logic writeup.
Link : Plastic Logic website