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The Vietnamese publishing industry has its work cut out for themselves when it comes to digital publishing. A new report has surfaced that electronic books only account for 1% of the entire publishing sector. The main barriers preventing adoption is retail visibility for e-Readers, Piracy and barriers of copyright. When it comes to the retail sphere, there is simply no e-readers around. In all the local electronics stores, they're ridiculously hard to find. Merchants don't think customers don't want e-readers and customers aren't buying them. There is only one single store in all of Vietnam that sells e-Readers, Phuong Nam Cultural Joint Stock Corporation in Saigon. Most people have to order them on EBAY or travel abroad. Often when you buy an e-reader in a retail environment in Vietnam and its capital Hanoi, you will get a gift. Retailers often give a DVD with thousands of pirated ebooks that are dug up from forums and other file sharing websites to give people something to instantly read. The majority of people purchasing these often opt for the gift, knowing that these books might not be legal. Publishers are beginning to petition the government to declare a war on piracy to make the digital shift worth it. Publishers in Vietnam are at a crossroads, they need to shift to digital but are showing disdain for how prevalent piracy really is. "If we don't publish ebooks, our publications still would appear on a lot of websites and forms, from which people can download the publications free of charge, even though with lower quality than the printing versions. But if we publish ebooks, they would be unlocked just 15 minutes after the publishing moments, at with the same high quality," said Nguyen Xuan Minh from Nha Nam Publication Company. With the rampant piracy, low worker income and the unavailability of e-Readers to buy, it is no wonder why eBooks only account for 1% of all published works. eBooks only Account for 1% of all Published Works in Vietnam is a post from: E-Reader News |
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
eBooks only Account for 1% of all Published Works in Vietnam
Audible Unveils Free Audiobook Windows Campaign
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Audible is probably the definitive service for purchasing audiobooks. The company is owned by Amazon and often runs a series of promotions that give away free content. Today, Microsoft has announced that Windows and Windows Phone 8 users can get a free audiobook using the native app. This is open to new users to Audible only, so existing members will not be able to participate. You would figure with a free audiobook promotion you might be able to pick and choose what you want. This is certainly not the case with this one! There are only three free audio editions available, American Sniper, The Great Gatsby and The Power Trip. This new promotion is only available for US residents, so again, users in Canada, get the shaft. You only have until May 13th to take advantage of the offer. Obviously, this is not the most compelling freebie promotion Audible has ever run, but if you have a hankering for something to listen to while commuting, now is your chance! Audible Unveils Free Audiobook Windows Campaign is a post from: E-Reader News |
OverDrive Around the World: Chinese Publishers & Chinese Content
| I've always wanted to travel the world. I want to fill my passport with stamps from across the globe, eat exotic food and hold a monkey. I'm probably not going to reach those goals anytime soon but it's nice to live viciously through OverDrive—whose worldly presence would make even Anthony Bourdain jealous.
We've even touched down in China! Our current selection of Chinese content is pretty impressive—everything from cuisine to culture to intriguing children's literature. It also boasts a wealth of English language titles that have been translated to Chinese, allowing your library to reach even more users. OverDrive is committed to thinking globally and we hope our libraries will extend our initiative. Add some multi-cultural titles to your collection today! Here are some Chinese publishers, just to name a few, to get you started!
Cloudary Corporation: This publisher has everything you need to beef up your Chinese collection. Covering the heavy hitters like Romance, Fantasy and Juvenile Fiction, you will be able to find something for all the readers out there! Here's a great place to start, 我在星光下等你 (I'll Wait for You in the Star Lights), a big hit among Young Adult audiences.
ZHE JIANG PUBLISHING UNITED GROUP: I love the jacket covers featured in this collection because most of the artwork is hand panted. In this collection you will find hundreds of different children's titles to choose from and if the bright colors were enough to distract this 25 year old, I'm sure it will go over really well with your younger readers. Here's my favorite: 红帆船抒情童话：早安天使 (Chinese fairy tale: Good morning angel), which also happens to be the recipient of the 2002 Bing Xin prize for children's literature.
Get out there and explore Content Reserve for even more options!
Christina Bernecker is an Account Specialist for OverDrive. |
HarperCollins Promotes Enhanced eBooks with New Website
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Many of the top publishers are battling the maelstrom of self-published authors and fickle public sentiment. The average customer only knows what they buy on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Kobo. Enhanced eBooks are the big buzz word for the last few years and brings a slew of multimedia enhancements to your reading experience. In order to built more public awareness on what enhanced eBooks, HarperCollins has just launched a new website to educate the public and draw attention to some of the best works. Some books featured on the page right now are American Gods, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Telegraph Avenue, Prague Winter and more! Visit the page to watch a great video that features authors such as Michael Chabon and Colin Powell discussing their enhanced e-Books. The new website is available for anyone to take a gander at HERE. There are also a number of previews that you can download right to your device, to see what all of the hype is all about. The vast majority of the publishing world refer to EPUB 3, KF8, HTML5 and other formats as enhanced eBooks. HarperCollins is bucking the trend and referring them as Deluxe E-Books, which obviously confuses people and further fragments the publishing industry. The fragmentation of the next generation of eBooks is one of the main aspects that will be discussed at the upcoming IDPF conference, Digital Books, right before Book Expo America. HarperCollins Promotes Enhanced eBooks with New Website is a post from: E-Reader News |
New York Times Removes Digital Videos from Paywall
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The New York Times announced today that they are removing all videos on their website from their Paywall. In the past, you could only watch 10 per month, before you had to pay a monthly fee to watch videos and read articles. Now, it is possible to watch unlimited content, without ever having to pay. The New York Times Paywall system has been live in some form or another since 2011. The shift to giving people enough free content and then making them pay, was a savvy one. In the last quarter circulation revenue rose 16.1% to $257.8 million mainly because of growth in digital subscriptions. They currently have a digital subscription base of 640,000 and seems to be increasing by double digit figures every quarter. The majority of digital subscribers use the website and various apps for mobile/tablets to catch up on the days news. The New York Times basically dangles a few free stories to rope people into paying, but there are common ways in the internet browser to bypass it. The shift to free videos, will put more eyes on one of the few global newspaper brands and hopefully increase the digital subscription rate. New York Times Removes Digital Videos from Paywall is a post from: E-Reader News |
Hackspace security system
| NESIT is the New England Society of Information and Technology in Connecticut, and they have a made a security system for their hackspace that gives us terrible feelings of envy. Their old RFID door lock, powered by an Arduino, was getting old and came bundled with some problems: it didn’t allow for easy modifications to the database of users (the old setup wrote user information straight to the Arduino’s eeprom), couldn’t output video, and would have been expensive to hook up to the network; running its server all the time would have cost about $200 in electricity over a year. Running a Pi for a year costs about $3. So Will, one of the hackspace members, set to work getting a Pi interfacing with an RFID reader, and finding some housing for the whole setup. It had to be secure, lockable and robust: somehow he squirreled up an old outdoor telephone network box made of heavy-duty plastic, which he cleaned up, using a Dremel to modify the door of the box so it could accommodate an LCD screen originally intended for a car reversing system.  Before…  …after. Note glistening result of elbow grease application.  Guts Will really went to town on this build. He could have stopped there, but has also made sure that the system will tweet when someone enters or leaves. It also monitors temperature, can be controlled from his phone, sends an email alert if someone tries to tamper with the case, and detects motion: if it spots someone walking past, it’ll play a short video about the hackspace. NESIT’s put details of the build online, and have made this video of the system in action. We note that the “beep” you’re using doubles as an excellent cat-scarer, Will; I have the scratches to prove it. |
How to Connect iPad Retina Display to a PC
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Ever wondered what it would be like when a regular retina display of an iPad is connected to a PC? Or if such a thing is at all possible in the first place? Well, here is a cool guy named Andrzej who has been able to pull off the feat. The entire operation is quite simple and cheap, though will still require the expertise of a computer geek. It’s just $70 to accomplish the task. Quite predictably, the retina LCD display costs the most at $55. The only other expense incurred was that for Molex 502250-5191 connector, a pair of which costs just $14 and is required for connecting the FPC of the panel to a PCB. Coming to the specifics, the LCD panel manufactured by LG came with an eDisplay Port, which made things simpler in that these are compatible with the conventional Display Port found on almost all the modern video adapters. The only other piece required was a PCB, which is an extremely basic piece and is homemade. The only issue was that of manually soldering the pieces and this proved to be a bit tricky thanks to the tiny connector pins on the FPC that needed to be connected with the DP cable wires. Turn to emeryhacks for the complete details. What is achieved in the end does make it worth all the effort. For what you get is glitch free performance even at the full resolution of 2180 x 1536 pixels.
How to Connect iPad Retina Display to a PC is a post from: E-Reader News |
