Tag Archives: eBooks

This Beijing Subway Now Has A Library Of Free E-Books For Passengers | Co.Exist

Posted on by

On the subway in Beijing, as in most cities with underground Wi-Fi connections, commuters usually spend their rides mindlessly staring at their phones, scrolling through emails or playing games. But now riders on one metro line have another option: With a scan of a QR code inside the train car, they can access a library of free e-books.

The books are curated by the National Library of China (NLC), which hopes to help make people more likely to read in everyday life. Working with subway operator Beijing MTR, the library launched the new “M Subway Library” in January.

READ MORE: This Beijing Subway Now Has A Library Of Free E-Books For Passengers | Co.Exist | ideas + impact.

Publishers Know You Didn’t Finish “The Goldfinch” — Here’s What That Means For The Future Of Books | BuzzFeed News

Posted on by

Millions may have held their suspicions, but last month the Canadian e-reader company Kobo confirmed it: Most people who buy The Goldfinch don’t actually finish it. According to the company’s data, less than half of Canadian and British Kobo readers in 2014 made it to the end of Donna Tartt’s behemoth novel, one of the best-selling of the year.

How did Kobo know this? Like every e-reader and reading-app maker today, the company, a subsidiary of the Japanese e-commerce titan Rakuten, has access to a comprehensive suite of data about the reading behavior of its users. In a white paper titled “Publishing in the Era of Big Data” and released this fall, the company announced that “with the onset of digital reading … it is now possible to know how a customer engages with the book itself — what books were left unopened, which were read to the very last word and how quickly.” In other words, if you read books digitally, the people who serve you those books more than likely know just what kind of reader you are…READ MORE: Publishers Know You Didn’t Finish “The Goldfinch” — Here’s What That Means For The Future Of Books | BuzzFeed News.

James Patterson’s New Book Will Self-Destruct In 24 Hours | Co.Create

Posted on by

I have not read any Patterson books in the last decade or so, as I’m not a fan of his collaborations with other authors to churn out titles. That being said, this is a fantastic book promotion concept. Very creative…and ‘thrilling’ idea.

James Patterson's New Book Will Self-Destruct In 24 Hours | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce

He’s got bazillions of fans, sold hundreds of millions of books, and has been called the best paid writer in the world. But this is probably the first time James Patterson will release a book that will actually explode.

READ MORE: James Patterson’s New Book Will Self-Destruct In 24 Hours | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce.

E-Book Legal Restrictions Are Screwing Over Blind People | WIRED

Posted on by

Snip

…For the nearly 8 million people in the US with some degree of vision impairment, the advent of ebooks and e-readers has been both a blessing and a burden. A blessing, because a digital library—everything from academic textbooks, to venerated classics, to romance novels—is never further away than your fingertips. A burden, because the explosion of ebooks has served as a reminder of how inaccessible technology really can be…

READ MORE: E-Book Legal Restrictions Are Screwing Over Blind People | WIRED

Adobe’s e-book reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe—in plain text [Updated] | Ars Technica

Posted on by

Adobe’s Digital Editions e-book and PDF reader—an application used by thousands of libraries to give patrons access to electronic lending libraries—actively logs and reports every document readers add to their local “library” along with what users do with those files. Even worse, the logs are transmitted over the Internet in the clear, allowing anyone who can monitor network traffic such as the National Security Agency, Internet service providers and cable companies, or others sharing a public Wi-Fi network to follow along over readers’ shoulders.

Ars has independently verified the logging of e-reader activity with the use of a packet capture tool. The exposure of data was first discovered by Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader, who reported the issue to Adobe but received no reply.

via Adobe’s e-book reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe—in plain text [Updated] | Ars Technica.

HarperCollins Is Now Using Digital Watermarks To Stop Ebook Piracy | Gizmodo

Posted on by

HarperColllins and ebook distributor LibreDigital, have signed up to use a new technology called Guardian Watermarking for Publishing from Digimarc, a new anti-piracy technology that embeds an invisible watermark into ebooks at the time of transaction. The service is cloud-based and offers an easy-to-integrate API for most ebook formats, including EPUB, PDF and MOBI.

READ MORE: HarperCollins Is Now Using Digital Watermarks To Stop Ebook Piracy | Gizmodo

Kobo’s Aura H20 Makes The High-Res E-Reader Waterproof – Your Move, Amazon | TechCrunch

Posted on by

Kobo has a new e-reader out that actually could shake up the market, since it offers waterproofing as a standard factory feature on a $179.99 e-reader, with a high-res, 265 DPI 6.8-inch e-ink display. The Kobo Aura H20 basically takes the already-impressive Aura HD, makes the design thinner and lighter, and adds IP67 environmental resistance, which is a tough package to beat.

via Kobo’s Aura H20 Makes The High-Res E-Reader Waterproof – Your Move, Amazon | TechCrunch.

 

Readworthy: Education & Technology, Librarianship

Posted on by

Education & Technology

Librarianship

This Video Game Could Revolutionize Publishing—and Reading | The Atlantic

Posted on by

When the Best Books of 2013 are listed, the most important may not make the cut. Thats because the most exciting literary innovation of the year is not a book at all, but a video game for iPad and iPhone. Device 6 is a metaphysical thriller in which the world is made almost entirely from words. Playing it is like reading a book—except, in this book, the words veer off in unexpected directions, rather than progressing in orderly fashion down the page. When Anna, the game’s protagonist, turns a corner in the narrative, the text does too, swerving off to one side at a right angle, forcing the player to rotate the screen.

More in this story about other innovative gaming apps that have a literary angle. Read: This Video Game Could Revolutionize Publishing—and Reading | Rowland Manthorpe | The Atlantic.

The Book as App: Multi-Touch Ebooks and Their Future in Libraries | Nicole Hennig

Posted on by