Amazon.com dystopian nightmare has come to a close. Today, the company settled the class action suit brought against it for deleting copies of “1984″ from users’ Kindles. The cost? A mere $150,000.
The real victory in this settlement is the stipulations Amazon made, stipulations which may go a long way to address users’ concerns over the company’s apparent ability to remotely delete books from Kindle devices. Specifically Amazon stipulated it will not remove books in the future, unless:
the consumer requests it or fails to pay;
it is required by a court or regulator to do so; or
it’s necessary to protect to Kindle or the network.
Following up on last month’s news of a forthcoming touchscreen, wireless-enabled e-reader from iRex Technologies, Gizmodo has a hands-on review of the device. As previously speculated, the device will connect to Barnes & Nobles e-book store, further cementing B&N’s plans to remain device independent and service the widest set of e-book customers possible. This point isn’t lost on Gizmodo’s John Herrman, who notes:
At launch, it’ll connect with the Barnes and Noble ebook store as well as ebook libraries for awesome free borrowing, a la Sony, and a few other sources, but it’s open to anyone who cares to support iRex’s generously wide format choices. That’s what ebook readers were always meant to be: Devices that just read books, wherever you want to get them.
In what might appear to be a story from the past, Google is partnering with On Demand Books, the makers of the Espresso Book Machine. The Espresso Book Machine does what it says on the tin: it makes books. Feed it a digital file, and in less than five minutes, you can have a “library quality” (I’m somewhat dubious of this claim) book, complete with real dead-tree pages. On Demand Books has now obtained the rights to print books from Google Books’ archive of public domain titles. See for yourself:
While you can’t argue with the ability to print rare, out-of-print books anytime you like, it seems like a move in the wrong direction. And at $100K for the Espresso Book Machine, it’s unclear who will be in a position to purchase the device – after all, any sizeable book seller is already scheming to either build an e-reader of their own, or partner with a device manufacturer.
Am I missing something? Who is the real target market for this device?
Forrester has published a new report titled “The eReader Price Squeeze” examining consumers’ willingness to pay for an e-reader. The results aren’t pretty:
It would appear that an global economic collapse has been enough to quell consumer’s normal gadget-hungry ways.
What we found was that the price points for how most consumers value eReaders is shockingly low–for most segments, between $50 and $99. (Currently, eReaders in the US are priced between $199 for the Sony Pocket Reader and $489 for the Kindle DX.)
Despite the price decreases for devices from Sony, and the addition of new lower-price competitors such as Cool-er, devices are still way too high. Does this mean we can expect to see more price decreases over the next couple of months as retailers prepare to battle for consumers’ Christmas dollars?
Market research firm DisplaySearch is predicting sales of e-paper displays, the predominant display technology used by e-reader devices, will grow to $9.6 by 2018. Sales for 2009 are expected to reach $431M, a near-quadrupling of 2008 sales ($129M).
While this year’s growth is to be expected given the number of new devices that have come on the market, I’m not sure the long-term growth is warranted (at least not without seeing the report data). We haven’t yet really seen if users are going to accept these devices in the long-term, or if they’ll be supplanted by alternatives. What happens if people get tired of a zillion different devices and decide an iPhone is “good enough” for their portable reading requirements? Or “heads-up” virtual displays become the norm?
Ten years is a long time, and a lot can happen. To put it in perspective, ten years ago most people didn’t have cell phones or broadband in their home. Although the rapid adoption of these technologies might speak in favor of e-readers becoming the norm, there’s just as much a chance that the trend of accelerating technological change may render e-readers obsolete before they reach mass adoption.
I’m excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we’ve scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won’t be tied to or locked into a particular device. We’ll also continue to make available these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the pages just as they appear in the printed book.
This announcement expands the availability of Google’s public domain books beyond its partnership with Sony. It’s clear that Google, like Barnes & Noble, is now pursuing a multi-pronged, device-independent approach to establishing itself in the e-book market. A million titles sounds like a good way to entice users to explore their offering – they only question is if that exploration will translate into an ability to sell other, non-public domain books.
Again, one has to wonder what publishers like Penguin and other purveyors of classic literature think of this move?
In an interesting twist, Sony is working to enable libraries to lend electronic books:
Sony used the launch event at the New York Public Library to highlight some notable new features of its e-book platform. Most notable is the expansion of support for library loans to the Sony Readers. If your local library supports electronic lending, members will be able to download the borrowed books and transfer them to the Reader for 21 days (after which the files expire). Sony is partnering with Overdrive.com to make it easier to search for available books at participating libraries.
The launch of this device also cements Sony’s commitment to the Epub format, an emerging open-standard for e-books that balances multiple device vendors while still enabling DRM schemes to prevent piracy.
I remember the thrill of the “choose your own adventure” books from my childhood. My favorite was a time-traveling series in which you got to be various famous people throughout history (for me, I preferred being Miyamoto Musashi). Now, publisher ChooseCo is going to revitalize the genre, as well as update it for the Kindle and iPhone – another great example of the possibilities of these new devices.
This device is clearly targeted at competing with the Kindle DX on the basis of both form factor and wireless capabilities. At $400 ($90 less that the Kindle DX), Amazon could have a fight on its hand. A lot depends on the carrier iRex chooses, as well as their claim the device will “tie-in with one of the large online e-book sellers.”, a move obviously designed to address one of its larger weaknesses: the lack of an online e-book store. Whether this means iRex will partner with Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or another book seller is still open to speculation.
Amazon.com dystopian nightmare has come to a close. Today, the company settled the class action suit brought against it for deleting copies of “1984″ from users’ Kindles. The cost? A mere $150,000.
Following up on last month’s news of a 
In what might appear to be a story from the past, Google is partnering with 
Interead, makers of the Cool-er e-reader device, is arriving a bit late to the Google Books party. The company is 
I remember the thrill of the “choose your own adventure” books from my childhood. My favorite was a time-traveling series in which you got to be various famous people throughout history (for me, I preferred being