| If you own an e-reader you often can only buy e-books from the bookstore that is bundled on your device. Many of the budget e-readers out there don’t even have a bookstore that is accessible by users and many people are left to fend for themselves to load content on it. Today we are proud to give you the most comprehensive free e-book resource catalog online. All of these books are hardware agnostic, which means they are not locked by DRM (Digital Rights Management). All you have to do is simply download a title and load in via the USB cable from your computer to your e-reader. Many of these sites also provide the books in more than one format, so they will work with your Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony e-reader and hundreds of others.
Comprehensive List of Free e-Book Websites for your e-Reader is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, February 13, 2015
Comprehensive List of Free e-Book Websites for your e-Reader
Energy Sistem Slim e-Reader Review
| Energy Sistem may not be a household name in North America, but they have been developing e-readers in Spain for the last four years. The company recently unveiled their new product line for 2015, which comprises of three different e-book readers. Today, we take a look at the Slim, which is their entry level model. The Energy Sistem Slim e-reader features a six inch screen that uses e-Ink Pearl and has a resolution of 600 × 800 pixels . The e-paper technology that the Slim uses is fairly antiquated by modern standards. Most of the latest generation devices all use Carta, Regal or even Pearl HD. Older e-ink technology really matters from a practical standpoint. Whenever you are reading an e-book and turning a page the entire screen will refresh. For a split second the entire screen will flash, which breaks immersion when you are really into a book. If you are used to older generation readers this might not be a big deal, if you have bought a cutting edge e-reader in the last few years, it will be noticeable. Energy Sistem never publicly divulged the processor, but it is running 128M of RAM and has 8 GB of internal memory. You can expand the memory via SD if you need more room to store your books. Speaking of books, one of the most exciting elements about the Slim is the sheer number of book formats it can read. It has support for EPUB, PDF and MOBI, this means it will play nice with the vast majority of books you will download or buy from the internet. In order to get you reading right away, there is 500 titles that come bundled, in a myriad of different languages. This reader is fairly bare-bones, which is why it only costs 69 euros. There is no touchscreen or built in light, instead you will navigate around with the D-pad and physical buttons. If you ever used the Kindle Basic models from 2013 or older, you will know what I mean. In the end, this e-reader is running Linux, which means you can’t install your own apps like the Energy Sistem Pro. It doesn’t have wireless internet access either, so you will have to download your own books from the internet. I would recommend this for more advanced users that know where to find e-books online and know how to use Adobe Digital Editions to load them in.
Energy Sistem Slim e-Reader Review is a post from: Good e-Reader |
50 Shades of Grey to Save Bookstores Once More
| The first book in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was released in March 2012 and by the end of 2014 it had sold over 140 million copies. Bookstores all over North America and the United Kingdom all reported dramatic profits with each new installment of the book and setup huge installments to get people buying the books. Even University and College bookstores jumped into the fray, pushing textbooks out of the way and setting up kinky display sections. Things have tapered down in the following years, as bookstores try and find the next 50 Shades of Grey to bolster sales. It looks like that time has come, and its savior, 50 Shades of Grey, again. The motion picture based on the first book is opening on Valentines Day and this is leading bookstores to capitalize on the film by once again devoting a large section of real estate to promote the book. The book's UK publisher, Cornerstone, has arranged a signing with James to take place next Tuesday 17th February at Westfield London in Shepherd's Bush. The ticketed even at WH Smith will see 10 ticket holders win a Fifty Shades of Grey goody bag. WHS has also taken 300 promotional dump bins for its stores nationwide, and WH Smith Travel stores have been running videos featuring both the film tie-in and original editions of the book. 50 Shades of Grey sold the most copies in the United States and many of them were purchased at Barnes & Noble according to publisher Vintage Books. This is prompting the Nations largest bookseller to once again get behind the book and start promoting it near the front entrance once again. Even Amazon is jumping on the bandwagon via their audiobook solution, Audible. They have been running radio ads on Spotify this week, and a short audio clip of Fifty Shades of Grey will appear as a free audio sample in the iOS and Android versions of Audible's app. 50 Shades of Grey to Save Bookstores Once More is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Family Christian Bookstore Files for Bankruptcy Protection
| Family Christian Bookstores which sells books, bibles, supplies and other faith related materials has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company currently runs over 266 stores across 36 States. The largest Christian bookstore chain in the US plans on remaining open during the restructuring of the company and 3,100 employees will continue to have a job for the interim. Christian Fiction is on the decline, as overall book sales have plummeted 15% from 2013 to 2014. Family Christians sales have also been in a steady state of decline, dropping nearly 25% from $305 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2014, according to court filings. Family Christian announced that sales are projected to sink to $216 million by the end of 2015. According to Publishers Weekly, book publishers are on the hook for millions of dollars led by HarperCollins Christian Publishing which is owed $7.5 million. Tyndale House is owed $1.7 million, B&H Publishing Group $516,414, Faithwords $537,374, and Barbour Publishing $572,002. Finally, Ingram’s Spring Arbor distribution arm is owed $689,533. Christian Family Bookstores is hoping to sell all of their assets to other ministry formed by Family Christian. They said it will likely take around 60 days for this to occur. Family Christian Bookstore Files for Bankruptcy Protection is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Final Naruto Volume Tops Weekly Manga Charts In Japan
| The latest Oricon weekly manga sales chart has revealed that the last 72nd volume of Masashi Kishimoto’s long running epic adventure series Naruto sold an impressive 874,120 copies in it’s first week, having been released on February 4th. After an amazing 15-year serialization, Kishimoto has finished the manga with 700 chapters on weekly Shonen Jump. The manga that took 2nd place was Naoshi Komi’s Nisekoi 16th volume with 196,123 copies. And the last 30th volume of Tadatoshi Fujimaki’s basketball-themed sports manga Kuroko’s Basketball sold 337,000 copies in it’s first week of December 2014. Further more, "-Naruto- Kakashi Hiden Hyouten no Ikazuchi", a novelization by Akira Higashiyama’s novelization ranked 2nd in the weekly book sales chart selling 60,611 copies along with Kishimoto’s own "-Naruto- Illustration Collection: Uzumaki Naruto" in 3rd with 42,812 copies! Having grown up reading Naruto since it’s initial release in Shonen Jump magazine back in 2003, it is a sad goodbye, but what a high note it ended on! Are there any manga’s that you were sad to say goodbye to? Let us know! Final Naruto Volume Tops Weekly Manga Charts In Japan is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kindle Text-to-Speech Review (Video)
| One of the features that Amazon offers for Kindle ebooks that not very many other companies offer is text-to-speech. Having the option to have your ebooks read aloud is a handy feature to have sometimes. Not all Kindle books support text-to-speech, or TTS for short. It’s up to publishers and authors to enable the feature. […] |
Collection Highlights: Sweet Sales
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Note: For the best audio experience, we recommend watching this presentation in Chrome. Carrie Smith is a technical writer at OverDrive. |
Kindle Voyage Swees Cover Review (Video)
| After putting together the Kindle Voyage Covers and Cases List last October, I had a hard time choosing a good case for the Kindle Voyage, so I ended up putting off getting a cover until just recently. The cover I ended up choosing wasn’t available when I made the list. A reader left a comment […] |
Hosting an Author Giveaway – Part II
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3. Speaking of Winners (and the losers, for that matter) – Make sure you’re taking full advantage of the winner and loser messages on your giveaway. These are customized but still only about as long as a tweet. The winner’s message can point him to your other books or remind him that you’d love a review after he’s finished reading. The loser’s message, on the other hand, is a fantastic place to say, “You didn’t win? I’m sorry! Send me an email at this account and I’ll give you a code for the ebook!” You can provide the loser with an ebook in any format you wish, from free to paid, but remembering that simply using his email address to “gift” him the ebook from Amazon will cost you less than the price of your print book and will increase your ebook ranking. 4. It Doesn’t Have to Be Your Book – The best part of this tool is that you can give away anything that Amazon has included in the platform, even if it’s not yours. You’re able to find an inexpensive (or expensive, for that matter) item that might go along with your book and offer that instead. Valentine’s Day coming up? Host a giveaway for chocolates, but be sure to mention your romance titles in your winner and loser messages. You wrote a YA thriller about a kid on the run from the mob who ends up hiding out in a vast wilderness? Offer a giveaway of a camping or survival-related item. Just be sure to leverage it with your messages. 5. The Roundabout Giveaway – Critics of Amazon’s tool have said it doesn’t result in what authors really need, and that’s email addresses or contact info and traffic to their websites. Why do authors need that? Because it helps them market their subsequent titles and increase their searchability. But one option some users have already used successfully is to create their giveaways and have the tweets lead to their own websites where the actual giveaway link is located. This only adds one more click-step to the process, but brings fresh eyes to your website. The most important thing to remember about any kind of tool you use for book promotion is that nothing is going to work like magic. All forms of promotion require effort on the part of the author, coupled with genuine, meaningful engagement with readers. Hosting an Author Giveaway – Part II is a post from: Good e-Reader |
The results are in for the Sonic Pi Competition!
| To celebrate the launch of Sonic Pi 2 we held the inaugural Sonic Pi competition. We were looking for some of the best space-themed music, coded with Sonic Pi v2.0 on a Raspberry Pi by school children in the UK aged between 7 – 16 years – and we were not disappointed. After a month of judging, Dr Sam Aaron, creator of Sonic Pi, and the Foundation gang have whittled all the entries down to just ten finalists. We will be announcing the overall competition winner at the Raspberry Pi birthday celebrations at the end of February. Here is Sam’s thoughts on the competition:
  
Drum roll please… Here are our 10 finalists (including cover art, audio, description and code)! If you would rather listen to the compositions then we’ve created this soundcloud album. Enjoy! |
The Street Of Fruiting Bodies is Getting Big-Screen Adaption
| Viz Productions has announced that they will be adapting Sayuri Ueda’s short story, The Street Of Fruiting Bodies, into a feature length film. Furthermore, they have announced that Sam Hamm, the screenwriter of 1989’s Batman and its sequel Batman Returns, has been added on to write the film’s screenplay. The production company is an offshoot to Viz Media, the official distributor of most manga in North America. Viz Productions, based in Los Angeles, California, acts as a mediator between Japanese material and American film companies. The company’s purpose is to help communication between both parties, and to encourage the involvement of Japanese creators in the film’s development process. The first contribution from Viz Media was Edge of Tomorrow, a live action film starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The film is an adaption of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel, All You Need Is Kill. Viz Media’s official synopsis of the story is as follows:”‘The Street of Fruiting Bodies’ depicts the sudden spread of a mysterious and lethal species of hallucinogenic mushroom. The infestation is deadly, but it also offers visions of deceased loved ones to the infected, hinting at the reality of an afterlife, or at least a new kind of existence that is beyond human comprehension.” Some viewers have questioned the choice in material. It doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of story that makes a feature film, though some have speculated the potential ‘trippy’ feeling the film could bring. One question it raises, how much of the film will stay true to the plot in terms of setting? Most movies with an Asian background have been moved to a North American setting, or had the cast replace with white actors. Will the film adaption of The Street Of Fruiting Bodies do the same? Will the infection spread only in one city, or will it be worldwide, opening the possibility of having a multiracial cast with characters from all walks of life? The Street Of Fruiting Bodies was included in September’s Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light And Dark, From And About Japan. The book, released by Viz Media, is a collection of Japanese short stories by many noted authors. The Street Of Fruiting Bodies is Getting Big-Screen Adaption is a post from: Good e-Reader |
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