| Online digital comic distributor ComiXology has announced today that they have surpassed over 180 million downloads. This is tremendous growth as they only hit the 100 million mark nine months ago. The last calender year has been a year of growth for the comics company. January saw the opening of Paris-based comiXology Europe, the company’s first overseas office, which is spearheading international language content acquisition across Europe. French language navigation, a precursor to full French localization, was also added to comiXology’s iOS apps last month. France does not get much attention internationally, but is home to a ravenous base of comic book fans, who account for a $700 million annual market – roughly on par with the U.S. market. At South by Southwest in March, the company launched comiXology Submit, a turnkey portal for independent comic book and graphic novel creators to promote and sell their works on comiXology’s worldwide buy once, read anywhere platform. “We are laser-focused on taking the comics experience further for both devoted fans and new readers, and we are thrilled to continue to provide our customers a truly diverse library of comic book content,” said comiXology CEO and co-founder David Steinberger. “At comiXology, we see the world through the eyes of comic fans, and it is our ‘reader first’ philosophy that motivates us to continue to improve the mobile reading experience, as well as introduce exciting new content every day – it guides everything we do.” ComiXology Attains 180 Million Digital Comic Downloads is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, July 19, 2013
ComiXology Attains 180 Million Digital Comic Downloads
Acer Iconia W3 Windows 8 Tablet Review
| Acer is no stranger to tablets and have been actively developing them since 2011. They might not enjoy the same critical acclaim that Samsung and Apple do, but their business model works. The Acer Iconia W3 is the first tablet in the world to employ a 8.1 inch display running Windows 8 Pro. How does it stack up against the competition and is it a worthy investment compared to other Windows tablets on the market? Hardware The Acer Iconia W3 features a 8.1 inch display with a resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels. I found that magazines, newspapers and comic books looked fairly solid and all had vibrant and rich colors. The one drawback with the display is the viewing angles and it draws many parallels to the way a 3D television works. You have to be looking at the screen dead on, if you start to skew your prospective and look at it from a different angle, you can’t read the screen. I really don’t understand why Acer did not go with the same IPS display that the iPad Mini used. It is important to note that if you decide to buy this tablet, you won’t be able to really show your friends what is happening on the screen. Underneath the hood is a Intel Atom 1.5GHz Z2760 dual core processor and 2GB of RAM. There is 32 GB of storage space, but once you turn it on for the first time there is roughly 8 GB of usable memory. This prompts users to purchase a 32 GB Micro SD card to boost up their memory. You can also free up storage space by deleting a number of Acer bloatware apps or if you are an advanced user, messing around with the drive partitions. There is a Micro USB port for you to hook the device up to your computer and transfer data easily to the tablet. There is also a Micro HDMI port, if you want to stream audio and video to your home entertainment center or projector. You can’t charge the Acer W3 via the Micro USB, instead you have to use the accompanied power charger. Speaking of power, you will roughly eke out 6 hours of battery life and out of the box it is only charged 54%. If talking to other people via Skype or other video messaging clients is your thing, there are two cameras and mics. Both are a paltry 2 MP, but at least the front facing one is not VGA! The back of the device is one of the most visually striking elements of the W3, with its brushed gun metal plastic. It actually looks very solid, but there are a number of stickers for Intel, Acer and other companies all over it. The front of the device is a mixture of black and white and really is not very endearing. Seriously, it is three different colors and I wish they just decided to go with one. In the end, the poor viewing angles might be a deal breaker for most people. It only costs $365, so if you are looking for a viable Windows tablet that will run all of your legacy apps and all the new Windows 8 apps, you won’t find many cheaper alternatives. The stereo speakers are also the weakest part of the W3. They are placed on the sides of the device, which are in the same position of the iPad Mini. Unfortunately, you really have to get your ears close to the external speakers to hear what actually is playing. Recommend to buy headphones to use on this device if you tend to listen to lots of music or buy a pair of Bluetooth speakers. Software The Acer Iconia W3 features Windows 8 Professional edition. This will give you the ability to run the new breed of native Windows 8 apps and also all of the legacy versions. You can easily install Steam, Call of Duty Black OPS 2, Starcraft 2 and all of the big name and indie titles. Obviously, it does not have a dedicated graphics card, so the big name AAA titles will not excel. I would recommend smaller games and RTS style of games where you don’t need a massive PC to handle all the shaders and particle effects. The W3 when turned on for the first time has a number of Acer exclusives, like their cloud storage solution. This works similar to iCloud, where you can send documents, audio, video and other essential data to your cloud accounts. If you have any other Acer devices, such as their smartphones or computers, everything is delivered there automatically. Most companies these days offer similar services, so its not the most compelling feature. The rest of the preinstalled apps are mainly ones that Acer recommends, such as Spotify, Kindle, Netflix Encyclopedia Britannica, TuneIn Radio and Skype. Most of these are essential, so their fairly practical for the average user. Most people should have at least tried Windows 8 or have it installed on their home PC or laptop. I won’t get into the semantics of the entire experience, but suffice to say its all about live tiles. Most apps you install like a photo gallery, chatting program, news app, will all swap out on the fly, making the entire environment fairly dynamic. This is a far cry from Android and iOS, which is static. The Windows 8 store has a ton of content, since we last saw it when the Microsoft Surface RT and PRO first came out. There is more news apps like Pulse, Nook, and RSS Reading apps. There is also plenty of games and everything else, it feels like in a fairly short period of time, the platform has attracted a number of top tier developers. This helps with the sustained growth as Windows as a viable mobile platform. It encourages more companies to produce tablets with the operating system installed, instead of constantly relying on the only other viable market alternative, Android. I wish Blackberry would take a page out of Microsofts playbook (no pun intended) and throw big money at the companies you need to get signed up to get more users to buy into it. The big selling point about the W3 is the ability to multitask and have many things on the go at once. The other is the traditional windows desktop, that should appeal to the vast majority of people. I found some of the limitations of the hardware, if you have five Windows open with different e-reading apps installed, often when you relaunch the app, the entire screen will be unresponsive and a black screen. You have to then close the app and relaunch it, tedious to be sure. In the end, Windows 8 has all of the apps you could shake a stick at, and there are millions of apps you can install on this. Virtually any game or app made in the last 10 years could run on this. This is where Windows mobile on tablets shine. You can be an artist, engineer, web-designer and just run anything. It will easily handle AutoCad, Adobe and anything else. e-Reading Experience The Acer Iconia W3 is not overwhelming amazing when it comes to being a dedicated e-Reader for newspapers, magazines, manga, comic books or eBooks. The limitations of the current display always warrant a particular viewing angle to actually see the content on the screen. Most people have their own unique ways of holding it and you may feel let down. The resolution isn’t terrible, but not amazing either. You will get the same eBook experience as any other tablet, including enhanced books. One of the drawbacks of e-Reading apps for Windows 8, is that they tend to get the least amount of love from developers. Android and iOS are the top priority and often get pushed the most unique features and overall enhancements. Windows, is not a priority to Kobo, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and most other companies we regularly talk to. So, if you say use the installed Amazon app, you can change the margins, font size, background color, and not much else. Anything you augment in the settings menu will not be updated dynamically and you have to click on ‘apply settings’ for anything to take effect. Comic books and magazines tend to look very solid. You will get the full color spectrum and not feel cheapened. We compared this directly to the iPad Mini and Kindle Fire HD, and both of these turned pages faster and performed better. I would not recommend this tablet as a dedicated e-Reader. Sure Windows 8 is still new enough to warrant a second look, but I would recommend the Kobo Arc, Kindle Fire HD 8.9, or iPad Mini as a dedicated reader. Wrap Up To be honest, there aren’t many pure Windows 8 tablets on the market right now. Most are very overpriced and they have not sold as expected. Microsoft is said to have taken a $900 million dollar loss on discounting the Surface PRO in the last quarter. The W3 is the most affordable tablet right now, but I would still avoid it at all costs. I was turned off automatically by the chosen design aesthetics with 4 different colors on the back, body and sides. Just pick one color and stick with it! The speaker quality was also very poor, that warranted me constantly having to strain to hear anything. The display is terrible and is much akin to a 3D TV in its viewing angle. Finally, there is only 8 GB of memory when you power it up for the first time. I don’t think Star Wars – The Old Republic would even install all the updates after the client was done. PROS Windows 8 PRO! Cons Rating – 4/10 Acer Iconia W3 Windows 8 Tablet Review is a post from: E-Reader News |
LG to Supply 2 to 3 Million iPad Panels in Q3 2013
| Apple is said to have contracted with LG Electronics to supply 9.7 inch sized panels that will go into the 5th gen iPad. The volume of the shipment is expected to be around 2.5 to 3 million and should be supplied during Q3, 2013. Of these, 1 to 2 million of the panels are expected to be those for iPad 5, while the remaining are meant for the previous generation iPad. Analysts believe Apple will continue with the same 2048 x 1536 resolution panels for the fifth gen iPad, though the device as a whole will be lighter and thinner than its predecessors. LG is also believed to be scaling up its production capabilities of 7.9 inch retina display panels meant for the iPad Mini in order to deliver 2 to 3 million of these during the same period. Going by the last rumors concerning the release of the iPad Mini 2, experts had pegged the release to the first half of 2014, given the inadequate supply of the 7.9 inch retina display. No doubt this will spark off a fresh set of speculations about when the retina display enabled iPad Mini 2 is likely to be launched. Apple is expected to launch a new iPad and iPad Mini, as well as a new iPhone this fall. LG to Supply 2 to 3 Million iPad Panels in Q3 2013 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Notion Ink Adam II Revealed Along with Packaging and Accessories
| Notion Ink has been pretty slow with its second generation of the Adam tablet, though it is apparently about to arrive. The last time the tablet was in the news was in May when a set of images of the tablet leaked online. Things have remained quiet ever since, though the lull has been broken by the appearance of a fresh set of images of the next gen Adam tablet, showing greater detail. The entire gamut of the tablet, from the packaging to the accessories, has come to the forefront. From the images, what can be seen is that the packaging has been redone in white. Other details that have emerged show a wide range of accessories accompanying the tablet, including a leather cover featuring a magnetic locking strap. The cover features a smooth finish along the exterior and is available in three dual tone color options, cerulean blue and smokey grey, coal black and burnt umber, as well as coal black and smokey grey. The tablet will also benefit from a docking station that is easy to deploy and folds back for easy storage. There is a stylus as well, which features a rubber cladding to ensure easy grip. Interestingly, the images have also revealed a smartphone that has been named Eve, and going by the naming scheme should make for the perfect partner for the Adam II device. The device does look beautiful with its super slim bezel, which makes the display all the more prominent. The only grouse here is that the tablet could have been provided with a thinner bezel all along. The Adam II also looks too cumbersome. As for specs, what we know of the Adam II from an earlier leak is that the tablet will come with a 10.1 inch display, but with a rather disappointing 1280 x 800 pixel. Powering the device will be a 1.5GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip mated to a 1 GB RAM. The tablet will also include a front and rear two megapixel camera and will run the latest Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Providing the juice will be a 6000mAh battery, which its makers claim is good enough for 10 hours of operation. A high point of the Adam II device will be a secondary monochrome display, which will display notifications so that users won’t have to fire up the entire device to read when software updates are made available. However, exact pricing or availability details are anybody’s guess right now, though they can’t be too far off, or at least that’s what previously leaked images implied. With such modest specs on board, the Adam II seems to be indeed priced at around the $220 mark, as was rumored earlier.
Notion Ink Adam II Revealed Along with Packaging and Accessories is a post from: E-Reader News |
Translated Fiction Continues to Gain Ground with Global Audiences
| With the advent of digital publishing and the comparative ease of selling ebooks–at least as it compares to selling and shipping print editions–niche publishers are beginning to reach international audiences of readers with translated fiction, many of which were contemporary betsellers in their countries of origin. Publishers like Le French Book, which brings French bestsellers to US audiences after meticulous translation into English, and Spanish Publishers, which works in the other direction by bringing US titles to Spanish-speaking readers, are helping to break down some of the border issues by making otherwise undiscovered books available. While there are very specific copyright issues that have to be addressed when publishing a foreign title, the issue isn’t entirely insurmountable. Yet, according to an article by Christina Larson in Bloomberg Business Week that focused specifically on the small numbers of Chinese titles, the publishing industry is slow to pick up international works for translation and reprint in the US and UK. “In 2012, American publishers purchased translation rights for just 453 foreign titles, about three percent of the total books published in the U.S. Of those, just 16 were books first published in Chinese, according to records kept by Chad Post, publisher of New York-based Open Letter Books press.” Some of the reluctance to market books from China may have once had to do with the “exotic” view that many Westerners had of the region, largely due to little being known culturally, a sad state when the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was Chinese novelist Mo Yan. The reluctance to market works from traditionally underrepresented cultures may be changing as more publishers recognize the open nature of reading. Post is hopeful that more works from various regions of Asia make their way to US and UK readers, an outcome made all the more feasible by digital publishing.
Translated Fiction Continues to Gain Ground with Global Audiences is a post from: E-Reader News |
New Nexus 7 2 Likely to Launch Next Week, But Early Details Are Disappointing
| Google is expected to release an updated model of the Nexus 7 tablet soon. Rumors have really started ramping up this past week with leaked pictures showing up, screenshots of pricing info from retailers, and a scattered sampling of technical specs. Right now no one is really sure what to expect from the Google Nexus [...] |
High Altitude Ballooning, sixth-form style
| We’ve been very keen to see schools set up high altitude ballooning (HAB) projects with the Pi. HAB is a stupendously rewarding and challenging way to get some really good cross-curricular work done, requiring skills in maths, computing, physics, geography and chemistry. So we were super-chuffed to get this email from Samuel Bancroft, a school student from Cumbria. The team also sent me some really excellent video from the flight, which you’ll find at the bottom of the post. Hi Liz I’m writing to you to see if you would be interested in writing an article about a sixth-form student high altitude balloon project that was launched on Friday the 28th June. The project was completed by three students from William Howard School, Cumbria. We are Jake Greenwood(16), Samuel Bancroft(17) and Ben Bancroft(17). We all are currently doing our A-Levels. The project started when we all came together with the idea of launching our own weather balloon, to gather scientific data. We got our inspiration from our passion for Physics, and by other launches that has been completed by other people, such as Dave Akerman, the first to launch a Raspberry Pi on a high altitude balloon. We started by seeing how feasible the project would be, by planning out how we would complete it, and pricing it up. We then went to our school, and in turn the Ogden Trust, to look to secure funding. The project was funded by a Royal Society grant of £300, as well as bit extra which was covered between us. My brother Ben, was responsible for the electronics, and the programming of the flight computer (we used a Raspberry Pi for this). He designed it to continuously take readings from the sensors it carried, and send it back via a radio link. He has experience in this field, and wants to do a Computer Science degree at university, after completing his A-Levels. Both Jake and I want to do a Physics degree. The balloon was monitored live via the radio link, which was received by many receivers all across the country, and one in Europe which was 425 miles away. This was only made possible because of the UK High Altitude Society (UKHAS), as they helped track our flight which was vital. This enabled us to track the balloon in real time via its on-board GPS, as well as enabling us to get readings from its sensors throughout the flight. The balloon measured gamma rays, UV flux, temperature and pressure. It also carried a video camera. The balloon made it into near space, at a height of 31,685 metres (103,953 feet). Minimum temperature was at 11km and was -34 deg C. Something of interest is that at 800m in altitude, the Pi suffered an application crash. However Ben’s code successfully allowed the flight computer to restart and resume operations. As one of the Raspberry Pi’s main objectives is to promote computer science in schools, I believe our project serves as an excellent example of the Pi’s success. |
Fred and Ernest are en route!
| A few days ago, Fred and Ernest Lotter dropped into the office to pick up the last boxes of swag and Raspberry Pis they’re taking with them on their epic Raspberry Pi odyssey through Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa. You can read more about their trip in our earlier post. They’ve arranged a lot of stops along the way, but if you’d like them to visit you, you can still email them if you’re not too far off the proposed route, and they’ll see what they can do. Currently, the Lotter boys are in Minden, Germany, where they’re visiting the local university and spreading the good news about embedded systems, the Pi and ARM. (This article is in German, but Google Translate works a treat if your German isn’t up to much beyond asking the way to the station and expressing a love of cycling.) Fred and Ernest are using Facebook to keep everyone up to date with what they’re up to. You can also follow their progress via this map, which tracks their Landrover using GPS. If you can find them using that map, they may have a Pi-themed reward of some kind for you (plus, they’re awfully nice to hang out with). We’ll be keeping you updated with the Lotter brothers’ progress every now and then; good luck if you decide to go out and find them! |
They Can’t All Be Hunger Games
| JK Rowling made headlines all week with the stunning leak that she published another book last April, this time a detective novel that she penned under the pseudonym Robert Gilbraith. From having to immediately answer questions about why she chose to launch it quietly, and then quickly having to field the accusations that the pen name and the so-called leak of the news were just publicity stunts, the industry overlooked the real underlying issue: she got burned when she tried to write anything other than Harry Potter books, as the backlash over A Casual Vacancy demonstrated. Instead of looking for another instant hit generated by months of anticipation and buzz, Rowling quietly wrote her book. In what would at first look like unrelated news, Scholastic’s fiscal report for the fourth quarter (ending May 31, 2013) was released, showing a severe drop in sales compared to the same quarter from the year before. Severe in this case means very close to $200 million. The report also outlined the steps the largest children’s publisher in the world is trying to take in order to make 2014 a little brighter, something that its board and its investors are probably clamoring for and industry analysts may be ringing a death knell over. Here’s where the two very different stories are related. Scholastic’s heart-stopping loss isn’t because the company isn’t putting out great content; it’s because last year saw the release of the megahit The Hunger Games, a series that at one point had all three books in the trilogy in the top ten of the USA Today bestseller list. And while the fiscal loss isn’t something to be dismissed, it does speak volumes about the content that Scholastic invests in. Instead of throwing darts at the “next big thing” and trying to force Hunger Games-style successes every year, it outlines a plan to find the next great series in order to bring it to readers. Back to Gilbraith/Rowling. After the absolute hype over a book that audiences ended up only feeling lukewarm about, Rowling saw an opportunity to simply do her job while still forgoing the sensationalism of the industry. Face it, readers would line up to buy autographed copies of her grocery list, and she knows it. But instead of also throwing darts and trying to churn out another crowd-pleaser, she wrote the book she wanted to write, only this time, she didn’t bother to tell us because she didn’t want to hear about it for months. The reading community has every right to believe that both Scholastic and Ms. Rowling will produce something amazing again in the near future. For now, both are playing it safe and taking their time in creating content that will ultimately speak to their fans. The rest of the publishing industry would be wise to follow their example.
They Can’t All Be Hunger Games is a post from: E-Reader News |
New Locket App for Android Will Pay You a Penny for Unlocking Your Smartphone
| How about an app that lets you earn some money for doing something as frivolous as unlocking your smartphone? A new app called Locket launched today for Android, and will let you do just that. The way it works is like this; the app will place an ad on your lock screen and will let you earn a penny each time you unlock. However, the earning potential is capped to just $0.03 per hour, while the rest goes to the company. Engadget simplified the math for us and has worked out the maximum that one can make out of the app is $262.80 if you unlock your screen at least three times an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This has been the handiwork of a New York based start-up comprising of three individuals, Yunha Kim, Paul Jang, and Christopher Crawford. “Working in banking, my only outlet to my outside life was my phone," said Kim. "And looking at my lock screen – which was just a picture of a daisy – the question was, ‘how do we monetize that?’” This led to the birth of the idea with active co-operation from Jang and Crawford, both of whom hail from an advertising background. The money thus earned can be cashed put, converted to a gift card, or can be donated to charity. New Locket App for Android Will Pay You a Penny for Unlocking Your Smartphone is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, July 18, 2013
JK Rowling’s The Cuckoo’s Calling is Sold Out and People are Switching to eBooks
| JK Rowling attempted to release a mystery under a pseudonym and posed as a retired military policeman named Robert Galbraith to write “The Cuckoo’s Calling” that was released in April to strong reviews but minimal sales. The only reason people found out it was her was due to a few tweets from the wife of one of the heads of the law firm that represents Rowling. Ever since she was outed the book has toppled many of the worlds bestseller lists and bookstores can not keep up with the demand. Barnes and Noble, Chapters and many of North Americas leading bookstores are simply sold out and customers are unable to purchase Rowling’s latest book. You will be also hard pressed to find it at WH Smith and other UK bookstores as well. Mulholland Books said it is going back to press for 300,000 hardcover copies in order to meet the demand. Many book readers are switching to the eBook format and bookstores are lamenting the entire situation. Likely, we are not going to see another 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon this year, but the prospect of one makes bookstores salivate. Bookshop owners are pining their hopes that the new mystery novel will get people in the stores and gain a bunch of sales. Tech savvy customers are buying the book from Amazon, Nook, Sony and Kobo, simply because the electronic version does not have limits. This leads into the deeper discussion of a book with a low print-run starts to catch on, and it will be at least two weeks before stores get more copies sent over to them. In the meantime, digital readers are instantly able to read it and may influence them to continue to buy eBooks, so they don’t encounter another situation like this in the future. JK Rowling’s The Cuckoo's Calling is Sold Out and People are Switching to eBooks is a post from: E-Reader News |
BookWood Seeking to Make your Reading Experience more Fun and Enjoyable
| In the outgoing transformations of the publishing sector new and old, large, medium and small companies are trying very hard to ensure their futures. This is not as easy as you may think, since the grounds under their feet are in constant movement causing serious harm. It may sound trivial, but "What is reading in the digital world?" Prior digital era, reading was a personal event and even with some varying degrees of readers isolation. Content wise, it was always restrict to what was written on the published material. In the digital era, this can still be the case if the reader choses so, but much more can be done. The readers still have full control over his reading but it became just global! We at BookWood, a Brazilian start up decided to face up the challenge and take it face on with this critical question on our minds! Our approach to have a winner App is to win over the readers with cleaver, innovative, fun, enjoyable and knowledgeable reading. Once we succeeded in win over the readers, self-publishing authors, writers, bloggers, companies and publishing professionals will join up the community. We are doing it by first giving the reader o lot of new and patented things for him to use as he reads. First our BookWood will open all file formats available. We think that file format is not a very clever way to guarantee your client basis. Second, the reader will have full control over the e-Reader with no strings attached. We want our reader staying with us because we deserve this honor due to our good and hard work! The most innovative aspect of BookWood is our ability to make the reader to take a virtual trip as he reads to the places mentioned on the reading. This is done by an easy to use link with Google Earth or any other Geo location software. As a reader did you ever wonder "I really would love to see this place!". If you are a reader as voracious as I am, you know that there is no chance to go visit all these places! But you can see them and make your reading more fun, enjoyable and this helps me to better understand some aspect of the reading! Readers all over the world would like to read from a variety of countries, cultures and experiences to enrich the. The reader in the digital era does not need to be restricted on languages, cultures, geographically or any form of restrictions. The reader may have no boundaries or may have as he pleases. In BookWood we decide to fully empower the reader by allowing him the get more information as he reads. The amount of information and from it comes will also be under readers control. In BookWood you can have definitions, translation, make note, and publish them on social nets and much more. Since we think the reader will expand his reading horizons, we decided to help him also in finding his next reading material. So BookWood will have a new visual search tool. As the reader uses BookWood to read, in Google Earth (or any geo software) we will create a layer that will allow readers to select the publication profile he is interested in reading. Once done it, all the reader needs to do is to turn the globe to the place he wants to find his reading and start clicking on the icons! Each icon is a small information window and link. If the reader likes what he reads, click to go the page. So with all these and more, we truly believe that the readers will choose BookWood as his main and most used e-Reader. BookWood will be available in the future to all OS and hardware. We also will develop special versions of BookWood for Education, Comics 3D and Reading Socially. BookWood for education is a new form of making the students more interested in each class by showing him the places related to the class and let him to search specific sites related to the class. The system will also allow teachers and parents to reactive reports on student use and places visited. BookWood for Comics 3D is new form of comics where by using the Open GL platform, comics writers will be able to develop a full story in 3D in one or several files. On the device, the screen will be split into two. The 2/3 upper part will display the 3D files. In the 1/3 bottom part the window will display the text of the story with no limitation on length and details. Each comic box in a traditional comic will be translated into a scene in this new version. A sequential of scenes will make the story. The text and scenes will be synchronized using flags, so the reader reads the scenes above change to fit. If the reader changes the scene, the text will change to fit. This allows also for small special movements to be placed along the story, like opening a box and a rabbit comes out! Social reading is our version of BookWood to the share writing. You will need to wait a bit to enjoy it! BookWood Seeking to Make your Reading Experience more Fun and Enjoyable is a post from: E-Reader News |
Publisher Spotlight: Kensington Publishing Corp. & Urban Books, Part 1
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In a recent article published by Drexel University, How Urban Fiction is Helping to Bring Readers Back to the Library, the author discusses a book by Dr. Vanessa Irvin Morris called "The Readers' Advisory Guide to Street Literature". In her book, Dr. Morris encourages librarians to understand the importance of offering a diverse collection that includes 'street lit', also known as urban fiction. She believes that librarians should read what their patrons are reading to better connect with their community, offer recommendations and know what type of titles to add to their collection. Urban fiction continues to grow in popularity and as Dr. Morris says, "Street lit has proven to be a meaningful gateway through which people become dedicated readers."
If you're new to the genre, here are a few recommendations from publishers Kensington Publishing Corp. & Urban Books to jump start your collection.
For some, these eBooks offer the opportunity to dive into the scandalous underworld of gangs, drugs and violence from the safety of their eReader. For others, the steamy romances in these stories fill their "Fifty Shades of Grey" fix. While plot lines may seem outrageous, your readers may find characters they can relate to, even if those characters are often put in extreme situations. Many of the most popular books are a part of ongoing series so you can stock your collection with multiple titles at once. Click on the book titles to start reading a sample.
Writing team Ashley and JaQuavis also publish successfully on their own, as Ashley Antoinette or Ashley Snell and JaQuavis Coleman. Make sure to check out "Guilty Gucci" by Ashley Antoinette and "The Dopeman Trilogy", starting with "The Dopeman's Wife" by JaQuavis Coleman.
Check back next week for more urban fiction recommendations, including Christian fiction and YA eBooks!
Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.
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Google Play Books Now Available in 9 New European Countries
| Google Play Books has expanded into nine new countries today, bringing their total footprint to 26. Residents in Denmark, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden can now access millions of free and paid eBooks. One of the most interesting aspects of the entire Google Books experience is a new program the company unveiled a few months ago. It is a user portal that allows you to upload your own DRM-Free books in EPUB or PDF formats and have them synced to your Google Account. Any type of book with a digital watermark will also work on the service, such as Pottermore and TOR. Poland and many other countries are seeing major booksellers are peddling digital books with watermarks and not bulky DRM encryption. It will be interesting to see if customers will gravitate towards the Google Platform, which is the operating system of choice for many of the top smartphones and tablets. Once readers get into a routine of being able to transfer books to any device and not have to rely on Adobe Digital Editions and propitiatory software, it is hard to break. Google Play Books Now Available in 9 New European Countries is a post from: E-Reader News |
San Diego Comic-Con: Play Along at Home with Digital Bargains and Apps
| The high holidays of the comics world are here: Comic-Con International in San Diego, which kicked off last night with Preview Night and will run through Sunday afternoon. Comics publishers bring their A game to this con, with panels full of editors and creators breaking news and giving special insights into their work. If your heart is in San Diego but the rest of you isn’t, here are some ways to follow the action from the comfort of your e-reader. Marvel Comics has a free app for iPhone or Android that brings you photos, Tweets, and live coverage from the convention floor. Dark Horse Digital is hosting a Not at SDCC Sale featuring 99-cent issue of their flagship properties, including Abe Sapien, Brian Wood’s new Star Wars comic, and—highly recommended—the first two issues of Francesco Francavilla’s Black Beetle, a stylish retro noir comic. You really can’t find a better use for two bucks than getting these two comics. Top Shelf, home of some of the best original graphic novels around, is holding a digital sale on all platforms, including comiXology, iBooks, and Kindle. Some highlights: Nate Powell’s moving Swallow Me Whole, a story of two children in family haunted by mental illness; Ed Piskor’s manic Wizzywig, the story of a phone phreak (hacker), and Jeff Lemire’s critically acclaimed The Underwater Welder. There’s also a lineup of children’s books, from Korgi to Pirate Penguin and Ninja Chicken, priced at an allowance-friendly 99 cents to $1.99. Asylum Press is also having a half-price sale on Comics Plus. Finally, the Oscars of comics are the Eisner Awards, which will be presented in a special ceremony on Friday evening. You can get ready for the inevitable post-awards discussions with a little help from comiXology, which has thoughtfully grouped all the digital editions of Eisner nominees on a single page. San Diego Comic-Con: Play Along at Home with Digital Bargains and Apps is a post from: E-Reader News |
4 Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Image Search
Learn how to find the pictures you're looking for with these simple tips! |
OverDrive users’ favorite book series unveiled!
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Using the Facebook questions tool we provided 10 initial answers but also allowed for anyone to write in their personal favorites if they weren't already on the list. Throughout the week hundreds of people chimed in with their votes, excitement and comments about what should be number one. What we ended up with was a list of the 25 book series that readers around the world told us were their favorites!
Highlights from the list include the (unsurprising) fact that the saga of The Boy Who Lived received nearly 1/3 of all votes to take the top spot. What was interesting was that the 'Outlander' series received the same percentage of votes as George RR Martin's 'A Song of Fire and Ice' despite being a write in option! Additionally, despite toping the 'Most Downloaded' charts month after month, the 'Fifty Shades' series received less than 1% of the votes.
Thank you to everyone who participated and, if you don't already, follow us on Facebook to be a part of the next poll. Feel free to share the infographic and these results wherever you like and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comment section below!
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Communications Specialist with OverDrive  |
Last week we asked a simple question on Guest post: Happy birthday, Pimoroni!
| Here’s a guest post from our favourite Sheffieldites. For us, one of the most exciting things about Raspberry Pi has been watching the other businesses that have started to thrive as part of the Pi ecosystem. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep repeating it until I’m blue in the face: we believe that entrepreneurship makes the world spin, and seeing Jon Williamson and Paul Beech bring some manufacturing back to Sheffield, a city once famous for making things, has made us very, very proud. Here’s a guest post about the journey they took going from a standing start with no premises, no equipment and nothing but a great idea, to shipping more than 60,000 Pibows to more than 70 countries. Congratulations Pimoroni – we’re looking forward to seeing what you accomplish in year two! We’re celebrating what feels like a decade of work on Pimoroni and the Pibow, even though it’s only our first birthday. We did a guest post 10 weeks in. This is the journey 42 weeks later from being a couple of web and design hackers with ideas, to being a Maker business with some help for those looking to develop their own ideas. The first step was the idea. Ideas are abundant on the Internet (but never cheap), and it’s amazing how many people will have the same basic idea, independently, all around the world. This is why ‘execution is everything’. Making an idea happen can be hard work and expensive though. There are 2.4 billion people in the world in abject poverty, and during a global recession not many people have cash to spare to try something new and unknown.  Ancestor of Pibow When it comes to making things and trying things with minimal or no costs, and lots of help and advice, hackspaces are amazing. Every city should have 10 of them. Support your local hackspace. Our local one is Access Space, running for over a decade now, and it’s where we cut the prototypes of the Pibow and worked out how long it would take to cut a lot of them, should need arise. We spent less than £50 in hard cash getting a Pibow we were happy to ship. After Jon got tired of me saying “just one more little change!” and put http://pibow.com/ live, things went a little nova. Mainly because Liz featured the Pibow here in one my favourite mash notes ever. From there, it was all about making as many Pibows in as short a time as possible and shipping them to you lot. The advice for anyone trying this comes down to ‘just keep doing stuff’. Need a workshop? Ask people you know, walk around the neighbourhood looking for ‘To Let’ signs. Not sure if an idea works? Prototype it as simply and cheaply as possible. Cardboard and spreadsheets are great for this. Google stuff a lot, it’s unlikely you’re the first person to do most of the nuts and bolts stuff. Our first piece of luck was finding a supportive landlord, through a friend, who had some space to fill for a good deal. Our second piece of luck was the help we received from Perspex (Lucite in the USA), who were quite happy to give us an account and a stack of quality acrylic sheets in bright colours based on minimal information. The third thing was not luck. It was the amazing friends and family we have. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to get our first laser cutter, Bert, or cut, pack, stamp and ship so many Pibows from a standing start. I highly recommend having excellent friends.  Early boxing and shipping and the first printer we killed We’d also like to give a shoutout to our distributors around the globe as well, especially Maplin for their early help getting the Pibow into shops, and Adafruit for being super supportive of the Pibow, especially with awesome videos.  Keep an eye on the stack of wood there, it’s been hanging around the workshop for nigh on a year now for good reason Oh, and expect Paypal/Amazon to restrict your account at some point if you’re selling well. There are good reasons they do this, and if you’re prepared for it, and have all the documents you need, then you can expect to release enough funds to keep doing business and fulfilling promises, and then wait a few months for them to decide you’re decent folk after all and give you the bulk of the cash. We found them both fairly helpful, but if we hadn’t be prepared, then there would have been a few months where shipping Pibows 2000 through 4000 would have been delayed by cashflow, the boggart of any new business, rather than us being too tired to run the laser cutters any longer. From August through to sometime around January I think we had 3 days where no Pibows were cut. Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and the day Everyone Was Ill. We ran the laser cutters 18 plus hours a day. Britain decided to leave the gulf-stream again in 2012, so the workshop was bitterly cold and we wore many layers. We got through this mainly through the amazing support and buzz from you guys, and the inventive things people were doing with the Pi. We gained another four laser cutters and a nice extraction system, so we could no longer be located by the smell of acrylic, and named them all after Sesame Street characters as well.  Delivery of a stonkin’ laser cutter We also found time to run the UK’s first official Kickstarter, the Picade, which we’re happy to say is going into official production today, only 4 months late! We’ll talk more at some point about why manufacturing is hard when many other suppliers are involved and some are halfway around the world, but that story is being told to our wonderful backers first. That’s a recap of old news. So what’s new? In the course of making and shipping 60,000 Pibows, we got quite good at packing and distribution. Since one box is much like another, we started our shop, shipping to 70+ countries worldwide. We can confirm that getting stuff into Russia is *hard*. Brazil’s customs are also quite, erm, ‘enthusiastic’, but we’re loving the passion people have for Raspberry Pi in Latin America. We swear Pimoroni was known better in Argentina than Sheffield for a while. After much badgering, we got to launch the Pi Swag Store, to help support the mission the Foundation is on and spread the word. When you show your love of Pi, 66% of the profits go back to the Foundation and you spread the message of computer education for all. Mark runs all these shops, shipping and distribution, and is a bona-fide black belt, and gets to play with swords and sticks. He’s also camera shy. Making the Picade has involved designing a custom PCB and learning a lot about fixtures and fittings and cabinetry, so that’s a new string to our (Pi)bow. As a result Jon’s kinda got addicted to designing excellent PCBs, and we’ve started a new Robot Lab at Pimoroni dedicated to assembling them here in Sheffield, UK.  Simple and angular The whole thing is just amazingly geeky and involves the best toys. We’d like you to welcome Gee to the Pimoroni fold as PCB production honcho. You might know him from Maker Faires as the wrangler of JunkBot and other Maker projects.  This is Mallet’s Reflow Oven, the solder association game… Our first fun little PCB product (after the Picade board) is a nice test card of our abilities, made with love in Sheffield, the PiGlow. Rory has not been idle as Jefé of Operations, he’s been creating and cutting his own designs and we’re happy to say we’ve finally got around to doing the thing we’ve wanted to do since week one of production, make a beautiful wooden case.  Rory doing his ‘Works in Waste Management’ pose We’ve always been a massive fan of Jeffrey Stephenson’s designs, so this is our little nod. Say hello to the Pibow Timber. We’ve also had chance to work on education and spreading the message about what’s possible with the Pi, thorough events like Raspberry Jams, Games Britannia, the Deer Shed Festival, Many Maker Faires and a special event hosted by the Guardian. We hope to expand on what we’ve learned by going into schools, and producing excellent educational resources in the Pimoroni style.  The Guardian Workshop at Google Campus in London In short, we’ve learned how to do hundreds of amazing things that we just plain didn’t know a year ago and thought were impossible for the little guy to do. We’ve also helped and inspired a lot of people locally to do something with their ideas by providing access to our workshop, and sharing the knowledge we’ve picked up.  Our spread at Maker Faire UK in Newcastle We’re working our socks off to move forward now. We want year two to be equally special. We’re looking forward to shipping 500 Picades really soon now. Beyond that, there are two things we’re focusing on this year. The first is add-ons for the Pi so everyone can make new things and learn with the Pi. We think companies like Adafruit, Seeed and Sparkfun have done great service to the Maker community, and we want to replicate that experience in Pimoroni style in the UK. The second is education. We want to work with the best and brightest in the Pi community to create online, visual and classroom teaching resources, because there are some very smart cookies out there, and we love what you all do. Education should be fun, inspiring and feel a little bit dangerous. The Raspberry Pi is a great, affordable, universal tool for this. Thanks for supporting us and what we do, keeping us motivated, berating us when we mess up, then being happy when we fix things, and being patient with us when we’re slow because our brains are noodle soup sometimes Group hug everyone. Keep talking and sharing and doing and being excellent. - Pirate & Ninja |
Issuu Levels the Playing Field for Smaller Digital Publishers
| Digital publishing has proven to be a great equalizer in the industry, in more ways than one. While self-published authors are now afforded the opportunities to publish their work and app developers have a marketplace to share their content, the same is now true for smaller magazine publishers who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily produce the requisite volume to display their titles among the household names in a physical storefront. Additionally, readers now have the ability to find these smaller, often niche magazines, something that wouldn’t have been as feasible before companies like Issuu made their production tools available. Good e-Reader spoke with Scott Kinzie, VP of Marketing for Issuu, about how these tools level the playing field, so to speak, in terms of making it possible to produce a high-quality and engaging work, regardless of current publication size, while also aiding consumers with discovery. “We have a fairly detailed and comprehensive product road map laid out,” Kinzie explained in an interview about Issuu’s platform, “The whole point of Issuu is to connect publishers and readers in a digital environment, making the content that these publishers are working so hard to create accessible to millions of potential highly relevant readers.” Issuu’s most recent development, launched only within the last few months, was a complete reinvention of the science involved in connecting readers to what they want to read. “Today, Issuu allows you to discover high-quality content that’s been produced by a wide range of publishers globally that you may not have had access to previously. For publishers, we’re providing them with an engaged 70 million-plus member audience.” One of the concepts that Issuu has brought to the digital publishing sphere is “stacks,” very similar in setup concept to Pinterest for magazines. Stacks let subscribers sort, organize, save, and share mention of interesting content. When a reader discovers new magazine titles or relevant articles, he can add those articles or issues to his pre-named stacks. In addition, that person’s network of readers can follow those stacks, meaning they will only find article content that is of interest to them and that they have chosen to follow. This stack concept can lead to new magazine subscribers as followers in someone’s network choose to subscribe to the source of some of the interesting article mentions, aiding publishers with discovery of their content and in finding a broader audience.
Issuu Levels the Playing Field for Smaller Digital Publishers is a post from: E-Reader News |
Now That Google Reader is Gone, Which RSS Reader Are You Using?
| Google killed off the most popular RSS Reader on the web earlier this month. Google is always shedding old services, so it’s not a big surprise, but the fact that Google Reader was still being used by a lot people makes the loss questionable. It seems the real reason Google got rid of Reader was [...] |