Tech review maven Walter Mossberg has posted a review of the Irex DR800SG e-book reader. This reader costs $140 more than the Kindle e-reader and is compatible with the Barnes & Noble store among others. Mossberg was not terribly impressed, pointing out a number of areas where its design and user interface could use improvement.

In observation of Read An E-Book Week, DriveThruRPG and White Wolf are offering a free watermarked-PDF download of the 224-page World of Darkness rulebook (list price $24.99) for as long as the week lasts. Enjoy!

A recent survey shows that 90% of academic publishers have seen a growth in e-book sales over the last two years. E-book sales now make up almost 10% of total e-book sales in those markets—twice the level of e-book sales in general. Academic publishers have apparently been much quicker to adapt to the e-book market than trade presses.

The survey found that academic publishers were also relatively unconcerned about the various challenges presented by the shift towards digital books. Although piracy was one of the biggest concerns, [report co-author Laura] Cox said very few publishers thought of it as a serious problem.

It appears the next smartphone platform to receive a Kindle reader will be Android. jkOnTheRun reports on an Engadget posting of leaked documents from Dell stating that the Dell Streak (aka Mini 5), an Android device, will include a Kindle reader application (as well as several other Amazon services).

Sony is bringing more newspaper and magazine content to its e-book store. Probably in a bid to strengthen its position before the iPad arrives, ReadWriteWeb reports, it is adding 20 new papers and magazines, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. (Sony press release here.)

Google is slowly conquering Europe. Or at least Europe’s great libraries. Even as its Google Books program has proven as controversial east of the Atlantic as west of it, it continues to make deals with European libraries to digitize their collections. The Guardian reports that Google is going to be working together with Italian libraries and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage to digitize “up to a million out-of-copyright works”. There is no word on whether this includes any still-in-copyright works as well.

Oddly enough, it happened only a couple of weeks after Google executives received suspended sentences over a controversial YouTube video. Hmm.

TeleRead founder David Rothman sets down his opinions on the decline of newspapers in favor of the web on his Solomon Scandals blog. He feels that “the real newspaper-killer” is online papers’ lack of interactivity and community.

Speaking of which, here is an excellent argument in favor of saving newspapers, found via Adam Tinworth’s blog:

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Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, Skiff; Corey Podolsky, Entourage; Nikolay Malyarov, Newspaper Direct; David Donovan, IREX

Van Rensselaer: funded primarily be Hearst. They do a representation of the printed version. Building a digital storefront with a platform that can plug into many devices. Not betting on a category or device type. Very keen on epaper, though. When Skiff was formed were no ereader devices on the market that could do a newspaper so created one. Wanted to lead by example so created an end to end system. Will be adding some more hardware partners. Would like more people talking about advertising in ereading. Building an advertising insertion platform for Skiff reader and other platforms. iPad will be good for the category because others will challenge their ODM partners to do better.

Pokolsky: diverse and fluid marketplace. Can’t lump consumers into one category. Looking at a series of micro-audiences. Publishers challenge is not to replicate current business models on line but to understand what the new media allow them to do in monetizing in new ways. It’s a challenge for devices to stay relevant with the current pace of change. One way to do this is to target smaller market which may not be so open to change. iPad will have an impact on their business but on the whole Apple will enlarge the total market.

Malyarov: for newspapers format is less critical than magazines. Want to replicate the content on the ereader for it to be immersive. Challenge for publisher is to be present on all devices at the same time. Newspapers don’t know how to deal with this. Newspapers have found that consumer won’t buy two different editions. If they pay for print they don’t want to pay for a digital subscription, so a readers subscriptions must work on all devices. Mostly consumed on PC/Mac now, but iPhone increasing, and ereaders still very much in their infancy in terms of consumption of content. In terms on newspapers, no particular device is emerging as a market leader. Doesn’t see the iPad as a challenge to ereading at the moment.

Donovan: any one user will have a number of use cases which may involve different devices, so is room for a suite of devices. The economics are very challenging for any publisher who is involved with a 3G device because the file sizes are so large, especially for magazines and periodicals. A huge cost for publishers to absorb. Looking forward to 4G when this component of costs will go away. iPad is a netbook, not an ereader, and it is pretty pricy when compared to an ereader.

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Ana Maria Allessi, HarperMedia; Mike Robinson, Oxford University Press; John Paris, Time, Inc. Moderator Bob Sacks, mediaIDEAS

Robinson: devices have been good for trade market, but for other markets haven’t gained much traction yet (corporate, industrial, education). Market as a whole will expand, but each segment will expand differently and at a different rate. Academic market started to shift to electronic content a few years ago. Leveraged this into trade market. Now looking at content that is electronic content only. Need to re-think the way they do marketing and this is a major focus. The ideal of interacting with consumers is a new idea for them as they traditionally only dealt with wholesalers. Electronic also provides much more information about the consumer and what they are doing. Every segment of the industry will end up having a different business model and publishers will have to be very flexible. This may be a problem in that new business models are generally not captured in author contracts. Dealing with the authors will be hard.
Allessi: Kindle popular with the “power reader” but don’t know how devices will be accepted by casual readers. Don’t know yet how much incremental reading will be done on something like an iPad. 2010 is year in which business model for ebooks will probably settle out. Selling directly to the reader is a very different skill set that needs to be developed. Need to entice authors to move to new models and this will probably be a pretty slow process.

Paris: see ereaders as huge part of future. Ereaders should be thought of as another printing press. Reading on a laptop or a computer screen is not an immersive experience. Up until now Time hasn’t been very aggressive that is changing. Black and white experience (Kindle) isn’t very interesting to them as a publisher. Excited about color devices coming out. Don’t have a 5 year plan, need to be open because don’t understand use case scenarios for all the new devices. Tablet sales less than 1% of computer sales worldwide. Need to see what consumers will be doing. Will see form factors we can’t imagine now. Need to put “free” genie back into the bottle, and need to do more than just slap a magazine into a tablet. iPad-type readers may very well provide the needed consumer experience for magazines. In some of the magazines the ads themselves are part of the “feel” of the magazine and just as important as the content and tablets will give these advertisers the incentive to move to digital.

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For 11 years as CEO of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman was known as the most consistently optimistic voice in the book business. So it’s no surprise that her entrepreneurial venture, Open Road Integrated Media, has her sounding just as bullish about digital publishing.

“What came before was fine,” Friedman said during the opening session Tuesday morning. “What is coming now is going to be spectacular.” Friedman shared the stage with Cathie Black, president of Heart Magazines, as the two veteran media executives detailed how the electronic age is reshaping their businesses.

Here, in brief, the future according to Jane:

Five year plan…by 2015, electronic publishing will make up about 40% of book sales.

Commercials publishing…The digital age will present, “an opportunity for advertising and books.”

The endangered Kindle…”The Kindle, I have a feeling in the next year, because it’s happening that rapidly, may look like a dinosaur.” But don’t gloat Apple—the iPad hype is premature. “I’m optimistic that there will be many (devices) and we’ll use them all”

The non-endangered editor…”The editors and the editors’ taste in bringing in the authors is singularly important and that is something that is not going to change.” But there’s a catch—editors must also now be marketers.

Bigger isn’t better…The book business will more profitable, but with smaller players.

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Are ad dollars the future of ebooks? The question sparked debate Tuesday during a session moderated by TeleRead’s own Paul Biba.

Opinions differed widely among the four-person panel and members of the audience, who questioned whether advertisers would want to sponsor titles and why readers would put up with having commercial messages inserted into books. Panelists talked about institutional hurdles, including book publishers’ lack of experience in dealing with advertisers.

But panelist Susan Danziger, founder and CEO of DailyLit, which caters to time-strapped readers who want books delivered to them digitally in chunks, said that her customers would rather get sponsored content for free than pay for a book.

Panelists Josh Koppel, co-founder of ScrollMotion, and Andrew Malkin, VP of book content for Zinio, were enthusiastic about the potential of book publishers to make money from advertising. Koppel hinted heavily about ScrollMotion’s plans. “I think that you’re going to see some real movement in that space and I think you’re going to see it from us.” Asked later for details, Koppel said he couldn’t reveal specifics yet.

(The subject also came up at a session earlier that morning, when veteran publishing executive Jane Friedman, now CEO and co-founder of Open Road Integrated Media, said digital publishing will create advertising opportunities for publishers.)

Panelist Richard Rhorer, director of digital business development for Macmillan, was more skeptical about the marriage of ebooks and advertising. He pointed out that book publishers already have something most media industries envy—consumers who are willing to pay the full cost of sustaining the business. “I think other industries would say, ‘why in the world would you give that up for an advertising-based model?’”

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Here is a video of HP’s new tablet. No release date has been announced yet.

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Publishing Perspectives has an article looking at the current problematic nature of the ISBN system when it comes to e-books. The article is a good summary of the situation as it now stands, summing up the ongoing debate between whether to give each format of an e-book its own separate ISBN, or assign one ISBN to the entire book.

Publishers tend to favor the single ISBN approach, while booksellers and wholesalers want one for each format. Perhaps not surprisingly—publishers are the ones who would have to pay for the ISBNs, after all, whereas retailers would get the most benefit from having separate unique identifiers for sales tracking. There is even a suggestion to issue separate ISBNs by region to make tracking regional sales easier.

The article says that “the International ISBN Agency and standards body EDItEUR hope to develop a web service whereby supply chain partners can easily request and receive format-level ISBNs from publishers”. In September, Bowkers announced it would be cutting the prices of ISBNs considerably.

One unrelated interesting thing I found in the article was this:

HarperCollins UK gives one ISBN to its e-books in epub format, which is the only format it sells. Says Graham Bell, head of publishing systems at HCUK: “We sell an epub to Amazon, and they sell it on to the consumer in a lightly modified version. Because Amazon sells the Kindle version exclusively, there’s no need for a different ISBN. We know that an Amazon sale is a Kindle sale.” The same will be true of iBooks sold by Apple.

A “lightly modified EPUB”? Really? Given that the Kindle is not compatible with EPUB, that must be some “modification”.

In a separate editorial/comment thread starter, Edward Nawotka asks whether separate ISBNs are really needed. It will be interesting to see the answers.

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In an article on Wired.com entitled Six Months with an eBook Reader: Yeah or Meh?, Geek Dad Brad Moon discusses his entry into the ebook domain.

Brad’s feeling about the iPad is almost the same as mine, so I’ll excerpt that short section of the article:

… I think I’ll hold off. I want an eBook reader that I can carry around and read on the beach. I want a display that I can easily read in the daylight and a battery that lasts for weeks between charges. I read novels for the most part, and they’re black text on a white page, so color is moot, unless you count nice displays of the book’s cover. When I do take the plunge on an iPad, I may do some reading on it, but I can’t see the day when a tablet that’s too big to pocket, expensive enough to make me cringe if I accidentally dropped it, not the greatest for reading in daylight and with battery life measured in hours instead of days, becomes my daily go-to device for reading eBooks; eComics, sure, but that’s something for another day. The iPad may eventually replace my MacBook Air as the lightweight device I use to stay in touch and dabble at writing while I’m off camping, but only if/when Apple caves and allows multiple applications to run simultaneously.

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