| Frankfurt Book Fair has grown into an event that encompasses so much about the publishing industry, with special events focused on self-publishing and six different exhibit halls dedicated to various aspects of digital publishing. But what once was known to be simply a rights fair still serves as a hub of copyright issue, as evidenced by the Copyright Clearance Center's panel, "Open Access: The Force Remaking Publishing." Good e-Reader covered the event live, then sat down with CCC's Christopher Kenneally, Director of Business Development, to talk about why open access—specifically in research and scholarly publishing—is such a vital force in publishing. "The idea that a government would have a relationship with publishing is one that's pretty well accepted around the world, except in the United States," Kenneally explained of the panel. "Even in the UK, it has a relationship. People marvel at the extensiveness of this whole conference, but you can't tell me that German taxpayer euros aren't heavily invested in this. They have decided that it's a better policy to support [publishers] and what they do." Interestingly, the government does have a hand in the publishing industry in the US in terms of copyright legislation. While the rights of content creators are protected under established law, that seems to be the extent of the government's involvement with publishers. According to the panelists, however, the UK has adopted an open access policy towards the publishing of research that is government funded, meaning that research is available worldwide, but as one of the first country's to take such a broad policy towards scholarly publishing, they are not benefiting in kind from access to research conducted outside the country. "There's almost no significant research team today that doesn't have some sort of global character to it. It might be based in the UK, but the researchers are in the Netherlands, in the US, in Japan, in China, wherever they are. It has an impact on US publishers. Half of the IEEE membership is outside the US, so when someone sneezes in the UK about open access, they catch the cold back at IEEE. There's this public policy goal, which is shared by the US and the EU, to make information more accessible." The Office of Scientific and Technology earlier this year outlined a policy around government research, effectively stating that any organization of a certain size who receives government funding to conduct research will have to make that research information publicly accessible. In the EU, they're also working on a variety of open access strategies. "The problem is, the definition that might be agreed upon in the UK by what they mean by open access might not be the same in the US. Some open access materials are free and unconditional, some of them have certain kinds of conditions, almost all of them have attached to them the Creative Commons buy license or buy-nc, which is non-commercial. But within Creative Commons there's no real commercial reuse policy. In the past, researchers gave their copyright to publishers and publishers took responsibility for protecting the work. "What happens in the UK matters to US publishers, and to a US audience. If it's about a particular gene or particular disease, that matters to the whole world. We will benefit from making it available."
Copyright and Open Access: The Future of Publishing is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Copyright and Open Access: The Future of Publishing
Game Developer Digital Magazine Available for Free
| Game Developer, an in-depth monthly magazine for exposing ‘the art and business of video games’, was published by UBM Tech, which also runs Game Developers Conference and Gamasutra.com from 1994 to 2013. Following the magazine’s closure in July 2013, the company has compiled an archive and made them freely available here for all to enjoy. You can now download hundreds of free magazines in PDF format HERE. Game Developer Digital Magazine Available for Free is a post from: E-Reader News |
British Library Offers Trendy eReader Cases
| Big Strawberry, an England based company that specialize in the manufacture of cases and covers for digital devices has launched a new range of ereader and tablet cases in association with the British Library. The biggest draw with the new covers is that they mimic a real book and can easily be slipped in a rack with other hardcovers without anyone knowing which one is hiding a digital device within. Another of the biggest USP of the cases from Big Strawberry is that they feature a unique multi-fit system which means the same case can be a perfect fit on a variety of devices. This works both ways as retailers too are saved from having a smaller inventory to manage. “In addition, the multi-fit technology we have developed means that retailers only need to stock two versions of each cover, to fit all sizes of eReader and mini tablet. This is in stark contrast to existing device covers on the market which have cradle fixings, and require one version per device,” said Ian Dowie, Joint Managing Director bigstrawberry. The exclusive range of ereader and iPad Mini covers are now available from the British Library shop as well as its online store though efforts are also on to rope in other retailers as well to enhance the reach of the new covers. "The British Library range offers an excellent retail opportunity. The covers selected for inclusion within the launch range have broad appeal, and will be desirable to consumers seeking out quality, inspiring cases for their eReader or mini tablet device," said Dowie. "We think our new range of eReader and mini tablet cases is perfect for modern day bibliophiles. The range consists of some of the most beautiful and well-loved book covers in our archives, and as each device cover purchased supports the work of the British Library, book lovers can actively play their part in securing literary treasures for future generations," said Martin Oestreicher, Brand Licensing Manager at the British Library of the new product offering. Among the cases that form part of the British Library range includes: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1905 edition), The Wizard of Oz (1906 edition), Around the World in 80 Days (1888 edition), Oliver Twist (1838 edition), Pride & Prejudice (1907 edition), Hamlet (1911 edition), Robinson Crusoe (1905 edition), Grimms Fairy Tales (early 20th Century edition), Treasure Island (1899 edition) and so on.
British Library Offers Trendy eReader Cases is a post from: E-Reader News |
Comixology Signs Deal with Avatar Press for Plenty of Horror Digital Comics
| Comixology and Avatar Press have announced a new distribution partnership covering single issue digital comics. Over 50 comics have gone live, and 30 of them are available on every platform. Meanwhile, 20 of the comics are dubbed too extreme for mobile and you will only be able to buy and read them on your PC. The Avatar Press titles available today across comiXology's entire platform include Max Brooks' Extinction Parade, Jonathan Hickman's God Is Dead, Kieron Gillen's Uber, and multiple titles from Warren Ellis including Black Summer, No Hero and Supergod. "It's well known that publisher William Christensen – with his singular vision – developed Avatar Press as a place for great creators to tell no-holds-barred stories to a devoted base of fans," said comiXology co-founder and CEO David Steinberger. "We're excited to bring William's unique publishing vision to the world through comiXology's entire platform, and deliver Avatar's more challenging content to a global audience of fans through comiXology.com." "It's great to join forces with comiXology to bring Avatar's editorial to an entirely new customer base – whether it's those fans that haven't been able to find our titles in print or those who simply haven't been exposed to Avatar's uncensored catalog," said Avatar Press Publisher William Christensen. "We look forward to developing a relationship with the digital consumer who will now be able to discover, read, and enjoy Avatar Press titles in comiXology's ground breaking Guided View." Comixology Signs Deal with Avatar Press for Plenty of Horror Digital Comics is a post from: E-Reader News |
RosettaBooks Acquires US Rights to 18 Robert Graves’ Titles
| RosettaBooks has licensed the ebook rights to Robert Graves, I Claudius and Claudius the God in the US. Both the literary pieces are among the most famous works of Graves who is also credited with 140 other contributions to English poetry and novel during his long tenure in the 20th century. With this, RosettaBooks now has acquired the US rights to 10 titles along with world rights to 8 English titles including The Anger of Achilles, which is the translation of The Iliad by Graves. “We are privileged to add these 18 works of Robert Graves to our major author collections at RosettaBooks,” said Arthur Klebanoff, CEO of RosettaBooks. The independent digital publisher had earlier set up an office in London during February headed by Jonathan Ward in its bid to secure rights to more English titles. “UK agents are very focused on this now. They realise these backlists are very valuable and are prepared to think about how they address it; it's become a very lively issue,” said Arthur Klebanoff, the CEO and founder of RosettaBooks. Apart from the works of Robert Graves, RosettaBooks has also acquired the digital rights to Sir Winston Churchill's writings though the publisher has also stated they will be making available at least a dozen of Churchill titles on a print-on-demand basis, with the first to arrive around spring 2014.
RosettaBooks Acquires US Rights to 18 Robert Graves’ Titles is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kobo Inks e-Reader Distribution Agreement in Italy with Feltrinelli
| In July 2012 Kobo made their first foray into Italy by launching their digital bookstore and a distribution agreement with the Mondadori Group, Italy's leading retailer, and publisher of books and magazines. Today, Kobo is expanding further into the Italian market by signing a new agreement with Feltrinelli, Italy’s largest bookstore chain. Starting October 15, Feltrinelli will offer the Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura, and Kobo Aura HD E Ink eReaders. The much-anticipated Kobo 7 HD tablet designed for Readers will be available in-store in late October. Customers will also be able to buy eBooks directly from Kobo’s Italian website. “Digital reading continues to grow in Italy, and we’re building on the momentum we gained with our strategic partnership with Mondadori by creating new opportunities with leading booksellers such as Feltrinelli,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO, Kobo. “Partnering with Feltrinelli will allow us to introduce even more Italian Readers to Kobo’s world-class ecosystem. With award-winning devices, a localized online experience, and nearly 4-million titles including international bestsellers and works from local authors, there’s something to meet the needs of every Reader.” “Feltrinelli chose Kobo because they have created a superior experience for people who are truly passionate about reading,” said Stefano Sardo, CEO, Feltrinelli. “Their commitment to celebrating the written word, for understanding the personal journey of Readers as they thumb through pages, and the delight of discovering new ideas and fostering their imagination, is the same of Feltrinelli and something we share and will help us to create the best experiences for our customers.” The Italian eBook market is growing and it is estimated that over 40,000 titles are available. Tablets seem to be the most popular with over 50% of the reading population owning one and e-readers themselves account for 30%. The four major publishers in Italy control around 60% of the market, but have not digitized the majority of their catalogs yet. Kobo Inks e-Reader Distribution Agreement in Italy with Feltrinelli is a post from: E-Reader News |
Delve into Decades Past: Publishers Weekly Bestsellers: 1970s
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What can books tell us about a generation? A college student would answer this question in a different manner than a stay-at-home mom or a young lawyer. But I am fairly certain that if the question was posed to all three individuals the consensus would be that these were the most talked about books of the decade. So when I decided to do some research about the best sellers from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, I immediately thought of my parents who could comment on the most popular books of their day. The experience of reading aloud my compiled list and hearing their oohs and aahs was entertaining and gave me insight into the popular authors, series, and genres of decades past. Thanks also to my colleague Laura who helped review and select the popular titles from the 1990s and 2000s (coming soon) . Here are a few of the titles that were at the top of our list! You can find all these eBooks in OverDrive Marketplace and sample any title by clicking on the title.
1970s
1970 Love Story, Love Story Series, Book 1 (Erich Segal)
1971 The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty)
1971 The Winds of War, The Henry Family Series, Book 1 (Herman Wouk)
1972 The Odessa File (Frederick Forsyth)
1973 Burr, Narratives of Empire Series, Book 1 (Gore Vidal)
1974 Jaws (Peter Benchley)
1974 The Kent Family Series/ American Bicentennial Series, Book 1 (John Jakes)
1976 A Stranger in the Mirror (Sidney Sheldon)
1976 Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Chronicles, Book 1 (Anne Rice)
1977 The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
1978 Evergreen (Belva Plain)
1978 Chesapeake: A Novel (James A. Michener)
1979 Sophie's Choice (William Styron)
Renee Lienhard is a Collection Analyst with OverDrive
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Kobo at Frankfurt: Devices, Writing Life, and Above All, Books
| An event like the Frankfurt Book Fair is such a whirlwind of activity, with tens of thousands of exhibitors and speakers and hundreds of thousands of attendees. This atmosphere actually lends itself well to learning about a wide variety of book related topics. So when Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn sat down with Good e-Reader to catch up on the latest news from the growing device-selfpub-platform-bookstore, it was difficult to take it all in. That’s due in part to the fact that Kobo has evolved into a one-stop location for any form of book need, whether from authors, publishers, or readers. Tamblyn first discussed the announcement from Aquafadas today that enables the Kobo magazine store to become even more streamlined, even while adding more publisher content faster than many other retailers. “Certainly the first manifestation of the Aquafadas technology has been the new magazine solution. From our perspective, the interesting challenge of magazines was we have this format that people like, and of all the print media out there, magazines have stayed pretty robust and healthy. But a lot of the trends have been towards the deconstruction of that content to make it digestible on a tablet. What we wanted to look at was how to maintain the fidelity of that design experience but create a reading experience without losing the value of that design.” The Guided Reading feature of Aquafadas’ new Cloud Authoring platform allows that design to remain intact while still letting readers consume magazines on their tablets. Other news from the Kobo and Aqufadas collaboration is still pending, as the group continues to work on a self-publishing platform for children’s book authors and graphic novelists; the first step for Kobo was to develop a children’s bookstore to sell that content, and that is now viable. Tamblyn also spoke on Kobo’s self-publishing platform Writing Life, and some of the information that was shared from the self-publishing panel at the CONTEC conference. Some of the data presented at the self-publishing lab included surprising numbers on authors who had never attempted to publish traditionally, as well as the number of authors who have already determined that their next unwritten book will be self-published. Questions were raised at the panel, however, about data from markets outside of the US and Europe. “Two places I would draw your attention to: one is the extent to which self-published works, regardless of where they originate, have made their way into markets to which they were never considered or intended. Where we look at that ten percent of purchasing in self-publishing with us…that percentage is remarkably consistent, whether we’re looking at Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, Brazil, US, or Canada. Why is that happening? One of the reasons is there isn’t the price point tolerance of more developed markets. Self-publishing has moved in to fill a niche of a desire for reading…self-publishing is in many ways the most global form of content because when people upload they have all the rights, and will generally say, ‘Sell everywhere.’ “The other though, is a much more local thing that we’re seeing. We’re starting to do collaborations with our work with the ABA (American Booksellers Association) where we’re doing local self-publishing nights with the local bookstores, bringing together the local self-publishers and having them run clinics for other aspiring self-published authors or people who are trying to get a handle on what this space is…The catalog keeps growing with new authors all the time, new languages all the time, and even as the total business grows, that percentage of self-published sales remains shockingly consistent.” Tamblyn was asked about some of the current trends in e-readers and tablets, especially regarding the several new launches we saw this week in the e-ink device market, and explained where Kobo stands on both their families of e-readers and tablets. “We never backed away from e-ink. We placed what was seen at the time as a crazy bet in a larger screen, higher priced e-ink device at a time when everyone said this was not going to happen. And the device that in the time we forecasted would be five percent of our sales ended up being 25% of our sales. It really resonated with those people who have books at the center of their lives.” Tamblyn went on to explain that the market for tablet consumers is so vastly different from the reader market; those who want the tablet experience may never read on the device, as opposed to the 53% of e-reader users who have been reported as engaging in daily reading on their devices.
Kobo at Frankfurt: Devices, Writing Life, and Above All, Books is a post from: E-Reader News |
Scholastic Talks Children’s Publishing and Digital Content at Frankfurt Book Fair
| One of the great paradoxes of digital publishing and children’s content is that children and teens were the demographics who were at one point the least likely to consume digital content. Whether over the original concerns from parents of expensive device damage and enhanced ebooks being likened to video games, or the young adults’ own feedback that reading was for paper, devices were for socialization, children’s publishing even now is awfully slow to catch up. But one company who is making tremendous inroads into the children’s market should come as no surprise. Scholastic, the world’s largest children’s publisher, has been pushing digital reading largely to their school customers as a convenient, money-saving tool that provides access to a wide variety of vetted, curricular content, so it’s a natural progression then that the children who read on computers and devices in school as part of Scholastic’s Storia platform would then carry over that high interest in digital to their home reading. Judy Newman, President of Book Clubs and e-Commerce at Scholastic, spoke with Good e-Reader at the Frankfurt Book Fair to talk about what digital reading brings to the realm of children’s publishing, and where the company is taking content next. “We’re finding that it’s very hard to engage seven-year-olds, but when they find content they can engage with, they’re much for successful. The more reluctant readers there’s more entertainment value, and for the more proficient readers there’s much more interest. But for the industry overall, it’s still slow. They’re saying about 5% of children’s is digital. We’re talking to other publishers and it seems pretty consistent that it’s just slow.” Newman has a theory on why children’s publishing hasn’t taken off on devices. “Just the translation of regular books when you take a book and stick it up in the e-reader format, then who cares? The medium has so much more capability, which of course gamers know and app developers know. Book people just have to figure out almost how to make a different product.” And Scholastic has done just that. With the launch of their third series to incorporate a print or digital book–an actual stand-alone title within a series, not an enhanced interactive format–that also happens to include an online gaming world that corresponds to the book, readers are taking to the series from both sides of the book: those who love to read and are intrigued by the game aspect, as well as those reluctant readers who get drawn into the books because of their involvement in the online game. Newman also spoke about ways the Storia app is at work in classrooms, especially as more schools and educators put the Common Core standards into practice in the coming school year. Additionally, she briefly discussed future plans for a Subscription-based licensing of ebooks, as well as the recently launched initiative to license select titles to classrooms on a one-year time frame.
Scholastic Talks Children’s Publishing and Digital Content at Frankfurt Book Fair is a post from: E-Reader News |
Use SUMPRODUCT to Calculate Weighted Averages
There are some situations where Excel's AVERAGE function doesn't work. For those situations, you'll need to find the weighted average using the SUMPRODUCT function. |
Korean Conglomerate of Companies Furthers Asian eBook Market
| KPIPA, the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea, was only one of the many foreign publishing entities represented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, so many, in fact, that signs on location are referring to this event as the “UN of Publishing.” But what makes KPIPA so interesting is that it was actually formed by the South Korean government with representatives from four distinctly different business from the Korean book and technology sectors: Pubtree from Namo, Inc., Mbook Harmony, Tabon Books–all of whom are digital publishing platforms–and MarkAny, a digital security and copyright protection solution. Ray SJ Ahn of Pubtree/Namo spoke to Good e-Reader about the state of digital publishing and ebook consumption in the Korean market, as well as what some of the factors are that might be driving the consumers’ ebook habits. “We’re pushing [ereading] really hard,” explained Ahn, “but there are still a lot of consumers who buy paperbacks. But as mobile devices are getting more popular, everything is becoming more digitized.” Ahn specifically referenced an initiative by the South Korean government to go to a strictly digital educational environment across all public school grades, a movement that is already taking shape and that will presumably be fully digital by 2015. This includes the use of smart boards and smart TVs in all classrooms, which has already occurred, and a greater emergence of tablets for students as young as elementary school. “The classroom itself is transforming, too. Before, everyone carried the giant backpacks full of books, but now it’s just an iPad.” But with so many people across different demographics using mobile devices, why isn’t Korea leading the way in ebook consumption? One factor may be price. While not held to some of the laws found in Europe that required ebooks and print books to be the same price, the Korean ebook publishing arena still priced ebooks at only about 70% of the cost of a print edition, which wasn’t an enormous savings, or at least not motivation enough to get people to abandon print. But as bookstores continue to disappear–even faster than in other countries, according to Ahn–ebooks are taking hold simply due to their availability. Ahn also pointed to the younger generation of readers as being more fully immersed in their ebook consumption. As more and more working parents leave scchool-aged children for longer periods of time, they’re turning to ebooks as a way for their children to be entertained, rather than letting them loose on the internet. This, in turn, has resulted in higher than usual numbers of titles being published for children. Ahn went on to describe some of the processes which Korean ebook publishing platforms employ, notably a very user friendly drop-and-drag system which he compared to the ease of using Power Point, a factor which may lead to greater numbers of self-published authors, even as greater numbers of readers go digital.
Korean Conglomerate of Companies Furthers Asian eBook Market is a post from: E-Reader News |
Red Shelf Distribution Platform Targets University Bookstores with Digital Content
| Good e-Reader first caught up with ebook distribution platform Red Shelf at the BookExpo America publishing event in New York, and sat down today with co-founder and CEO Greg Fenton to discuss what changes and updates the company has undergone in the last six months. Apart from a shift of only working from PDF files of ebooks, the market focus of Red Shelf has also shifted to incorporate more of an academic publishing and sales model. “We’ve picked up more of wholesale model rather than the agency model, and this more traditional model is working for us. We realized we’re going to focus on the actual reading experience through the software that we have, so we’ve been doing a lot of updates to that which we’ll be releasing close to the end of the year to be available in the spring semester for a lot of our academic clients.” One other significant change for the company is the ability to accept material from authors and publishers in ePub format, as opposed to strictly PDF. This upgrade allows Red Shelf to be less limited in what types of content they can distribute for their clients. “We moved into working in ePubs now, so we can do more with trade books as well. The PDFs still work really well, and 90% of our academic titles are in PDF, but we wanted to reach trade publishers as well so we had to do ePubs, which are actually easier to work with. “We took our platform and said, we’re going wholesale, we’re going to enhance the reading experience with better technology and make that more robust, and what that’s allowed us to do is set our goal of being at 100,000 titles by the end of the year.” Red Shelf currently sells titles directly to consumers, as well as works with bookstores to place ebook editions of books in their physical stores through “ecards,” as well as through the bookstores’ websites. These ecards allow titles to be bought directly in the store and then downloaded, or the print-on-demand edition ordered, preventing the need to take up shelf space with costly paper editions.
Red Shelf Distribution Platform Targets University Bookstores with Digital Content is a post from: E-Reader News |
Scandinavian riidr Platform Offers White-Label eBook Stores
| With so much of the ebook market and news focused on a US-centric approach to digital reading, it’s easy to forget that much of the world does not purchase or consumer ebooks in the same way. For some markets, it’s the government hold ups, VAT issues, and pricing law concerns that prevent ebooks from growing in much the way some would expect. In others, it’s quite literally lack of access to digitized content retailers that prevents e-reading from growing as it does in the US and UK. Danish company riidr (pronounced “reader”) creates branded ebook stores and white-label sites for publishers and media sites to market and sell their content directly to customers. In many cases, the content the riidr makes available is the same ebook that a North American customer might purchase from any number of branded retailers, like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Kobo, but in the case of the Danish translation of those works, for example, the publisher who owns those foreign rights can sell the ebooks directly to the consumers. “Our businesses are either publishers or media companies that are in the market for building their own ebook stores. We build the core platform and of course, their website,” explained Anders Breinholst, co-founder and managing director. This affords the publisher the opportunity to not only sell to their readers at a higher royalty rate once the need to pay a distributor is taken out of the equation, but also to sell to their readers in the formats they wish. One interesting point that Breinholst made about the Scandinavian ebook market is that many digital customers take issue with some of the DRM standards that North American customers are either accustomed to or wholly unaware of. They are more apt to buy an ebook that the publisher lists with only a watermark-style security as it ensures they can read it on any of their mobile devices. “We provide all of the tech stuff so they only have to focus on driving traffic to it. We cover everything from the hosting to all of the IT stuff. Publishers don’t have the technological ability to build websites, build the app, and so many other things that you have to understand. We basically allow them to get started within three months.”
Scandinavian riidr Platform Offers White-Label eBook Stores is a post from: E-Reader News |
Snapplify, Macmillan Launch eReader App for Educational Content
| As device penetration takes place in more and more international markets, especially where education is concerned, publishers and content developers are discovering new issues that must be addressed in order to avoid the falsehood of the “one size fits all” approach to technology. South African app developer Snapplify was recently tapped to create an ebook reading app specifically for Macmillan SA’s educational content in order to help the publisher avoid some of the pitfalls of ebook distribution in these markets and avoid the issues that arise from print textbook use. Malcolm Seegers, Digital Publisher at Macmillan SA, stated in a press release, “Using the Snapplify digital publishing solution meant we were able to provide an advanced reading platform to South African schools which is adapted to include functionality that is very important for eBooks in education. It also makes the migration to eBooks much easier for schools, and effectively removes a lot of the technical headaches that were previously associated with going digital.” According to the release, the app features include the ability “to make highlights, notes, and bookmarks within content, as well as easily look up words in the built in dictionary. All these actions are stored in the cloud, enabling students to access their notes from any device regardless of the operating system. Actions made on shared devices in schools can still be accessed by the students using their unique login details. This is a perfect solution for emerging markets where not all students are handed an individual tablet, sometimes one device is shared amongst 5 – 10 learners.” This type of app developed for existing tablets also eliminates much of the issues the dedicated e-readers face, meaning updates are as simple as sending out a notice through iOS or Android, depending on the schools’ tablet specifics. Snapplify’s CEO Wesley Lynch will be speaking tomorrow from the Frankfurt Book Fair about the development of the app and what educational implications this type of platform can have, especially in markets that are underserved by technology or that present unique challenges to what the industry commonly thinks of for technology use in the classroom.
Snapplify, Macmillan Launch eReader App for Educational Content is a post from: E-Reader News |
Aquafadas Launches Cloud Authoring at Frankfurt Book Fair
| Digital publishing solutions provider Aquafadas unveiled a new, simplified workflow solution this morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Called AQ Cloud Authoring, the program streamlines the publishing process for a variety of content developers. From magazines and newspapers who may have large volumes of content to distribute, to small press publishers who don’t have an in-house designer team to develop Adobe InDesign files, Cloud Authoring alleviates much of the labor-intensive process by working directly from a PDF, even those converted in a program like Microsoft Word. Allison Reber, Communication Manager for Aquafadas, sat down with Good e-Reader to explain how the process is more directly useful and what specific types of content creators could most benefit from the platform. “Cloud Authoring is another tool to create your content,” Reber explained. “You can create dedicated versions for iPad, your computer, etc. With Cloud Authoring, you can do it automatically online. You drag your PDF file and you can choose the export format you want. You can create ePub fixed layout for Kobo or Amazon, a format for an app, or for a web reader. It’s very easy because you just take your PDF or JPEG [of a print edition] and convert it.” One incredible new feature that Cloud Authoring provides is Guided Reading, which allows readers to move across the text of a newspaper or magazine article or the column print of a scanned print edition without having to move the text around on their screens. By tapping the next arrow, the text automatically shifts to the next block of text, then moves on to the next page once that text is completed. This feature is a simple tool in Cloud Authoring, and can be used by any content developer A year in the making and based on seven years of experience in digital publishing needs, Aquafadas’ goal with Cloud Authoring was to simplify the process as much as possible without sacrificing any of the end products’ features. Reber made note of a French newspaper who published regional editions, thereby producing 53 different editions of its newspaper daily. Now that content can be optimized for digital reading, as all that is needed is the same PDF file the publisher would work from to create the print edition. Of course, the paper’s 2 million readers can benefit from the Guided Reading feature that enhances columnar reading. Aquafadas announced a partnership with Kobo earlier this year to produce the digital versions for the Kobo digital magazine store, and another launch is expected from the partnership in the near future in the arena of self-published children’s books and graphic novels.
Aquafadas Launches Cloud Authoring at Frankfurt Book Fair is a post from: E-Reader News |
Paju Book Festival Held in South Korea
| South Korea's annual book festival, Paju Booksuri was recently held in Paju and ran from September 28 till October 6. Paju situated in the Gyeonggi Province, South Korea is home to a cluster of more than 300 publishing houses and has been developed specifically as a region that would be dedicated to the cause of publishing and content creation and promoting content consumption. The festival which was held at three locations in Paju is in its third year now and has played host to authors and publishers from all over the world. The festival which is considered the biggest of its kind in Asia focused on Asian literature and their authors drawn from 15 countries in the region. Visitors had the chance to browse through their favorite books, listen to audio books, and lectures and so on. Also present were Kyobo Mungo who are the largest bookstore in South Korea that also retail their own ebook reading device, the Sam. Owners of the Sam ebook reader also have access to the Kyobo ebook on a membership basis. Among noted authors from abroad who visited the event includes the British author Tim Bowler of “River Boy” fame. Also present was Dr. Jaerock Lee who is considered Korea's most well known author who has penned such titles as “My Life, My Faith”, “Heaven”, “Hell”, “Man of Flesh, Man of Spirit”, and “Spirit, Soul, and Body” and so on.
Paju Book Festival Held in South Korea is a post from: E-Reader News |
Get a Model A and a camera board for $40
| We’ve talked before about how the camera board and the Model A are natural bedfellows. Whether you’re shooting a time lapse video or hollowing out a sweet, innocent teddy bear, the 256MB of RAM on the Model A is easily sufficient to run raspistill and raspivid, and the much lower power consumption gives you a lot more battery life for mobile applications. To allow more of you to have a play with this combination, we’ve got together with our partners to offer the two together for the bargain price of $40.  Model A and camera board – best of friends UK customers can visit element14 or RS Components (who are also offering a $45 bundle with an 4GB SD card); international customers should be able to find the same bundles on their respective national sites. |