E-Reads™ is
...a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors. Our books are available in all e-book formats and paperback. Read the latest publishing news and provocative blogs by top commentators in the traditional and digital publishing fields.
FEATURED TITLES
2001 Things To Do Before You Die
Dane Sherwood
Bestselling author Dane Sherwood is back with an astounding list of 2,001 things you always wanted to experience but never took time to live through. From taking a cross-country train ride to sending a me...
The Sins of Lady Dacey
Marion Chesney
The ton could only speculate how a pair of turtledoves would cope as the guests of the scandalous Lady Dacey. Surely she would attempt to corrupt them--an act that both Pamela Perryworth and Honoria Goodham ...
Desmodus
Melanie Tem
In the shadows of the moon a bloodthirsty caravan is heading south. After a plentiful season of savoring the sweet taste of warm blood, the matriarchs sleep while the men carry them to their winter sanctuary. O...
The Reluctant Swordsman
Dave Duncan
Wallie Smith can feel the pain. He goes to the hospital, remembers the doctors and the commotion, but when he wakes up it all seems like a dream. However, if that was a dream how do you explain waking up in ...
The Magicians
James Gunn
Unseen by an apathetic society, a stupendous battle is being waged between good and evil. In the center of an unassuming town, gathered in a nondescript hotel, are the most powerful forces of time eternal: the ...
Mastering the Business of Writing
Richard Curtis
One of the most comprehensive guides currently on the market, MASTERING THE BUSINESS OF WRITING is an insider's guide to the business of being a professional writer. All aspects of the publishing industry are ...
Guardian Angel
Linda Winstead Jones
Defying her father's wishes that she find a suitor and marry, Melanie Barnett is well equipped to sharp shoot anyone who gets in her way in Paradise, Texas. She isn't out to play the love game, but when a maske...
Created, The Destroyer
Warren Murphy
When ex-New Jersey cop Remo Williams is electrocuted for the murder of a dope-dealing goon, CURE, a super-secret government agency that doesn't really exist, schemes to resurrect Remo as the ultimate killing ...
The Hoax
Clifford Irving
The ultimate caper story, novelist Clifford Irving's no-holds-barred account of the literary hoax that stunned the publishing world, is the story of his faked “autobiography” of Howard Hughes. HOAX was firs...
Heiress
Janet Dailey
In Heiress, two sisters meet at the funeral of one of the most prestigious men in the country, Dean Lawson, their father. Abbie Lawson, the dutiful genteel daughter bred in the lap of luxury and, Rachel Farr, a...
The Earl and the Emigree
Elizabeth Chater
The Earl of Stone and Hammer has always led a peaceful and undisturbed life. That is until a gorgeous young French woman shows up on the doorstep of his home. She brings news that his brother, who has been miss...
Shanji
James C. Glass
On the planet Shanji, a ruthless Emperor rules a subjugated people. Kati, raised by the lower caste Tumatsin, is taken captive by the Emperor's troops, but saved by The Searchers, who see her as the promised ...
The Gentle Degenerates
Marco Vassi
Marco Vassi was possibly the greatest erotic writer of his generation. His first publisher at Olympia Press, Maurice Girodias, compares his talent for prose to Henry Miller's writing. His sexual explorations...
The Face in the Frost
John Bellairs
THE FACE IN THE FROST is a fantasy classic, defying categorization with its richly imaginative story of two separate kingdoms of wizards, stymied by a power that is beyond their control. A tall, skinny misfit o...
Tales of the Village Rabbi
Rabbi Harvey M. Tattelbaum
In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and "cool": brownstones and beatniks, cof...
Seize the Fire
Laura Kinsale
Olympia St. Leger is a princess in desperate need of a knight in shining armor. Sheridan Drake, amused by Olympia's innocence and magnificent beauty, but also intrigued by her considerable wealth, accepts the p...
(Pictured right: The Intel Classmate prototype)
Speculation on the next generation of Kindle (my wife refers to them in Yiddish as Kindeleh) is reaching fever pitch, such as this piece on cnet news by Adam Richardson and another on engadget by Thomas Ricker.
The prognostications seem to be focusing on student applications, and though Kindle 2.0 will probably be a bit bigger for collegiate use, my own opinion is that that is not where e-book readers have to go to win the premio gordo of universal college adoption.
At the dawn of the E-Book Era, circa 2000, I recognized that pocket-portable e-books would never succeed for student use. The reason is size. Textbooks and other illustrated books simply cannot be crammed into anything smaller than a screen close to the size of a laptop. That’s why I advocated the tablet concept and design. Tablets have all the virtues of laptops PLUS touchscreen functionality. For students, reading books on an e-reading device is highly desirable but not as imperative as the ability to handwrite notes on their device’s screen. Resistance to widespread adoption of e-textbooks is explored in an excellent article by Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed, Next Step for E-Texts. “Whether — or when — e-textbooks become as ubiquitous as laptops or smartphones on campuses depends on several factors that continue to hinder widespread adoption. Observers of the nascent market point variously to available hardware, consumer demand and the dearth of content made specifically for digital formats,” writes Guess.
Manufacturers are not unaware of these issues and have been developing a variety of readers, variously called netbooks, ultraportables, and mini-notebooks such as the Intel Classmate, that appeal to the specific needs of the student. No one has hit a home run yet, but there’s a fortune waiting for the manufacturer that does.
– Richard Curtis
(Pictured right: The Intel Classmate prototype)
A few recent guesses by pundits are saying that the Kindle 2.0 will be thinner all around, so that the additional bulk away from the screen is further minimized, such as the prognostication today at Wired.com. I imagine that the Kindle project’s master design reference is to approximate the comfort of something easily handheld and portable like paperback, so that would limit the screen size from approaching laptop proportions right off the bat. Unless it’s flexible and foldable, I don’t think there is going to be an A4 sized Kindle for quite some time.
Netbooks already have screen proportions that are small and similar to Sony/Kindle’s e-ink screen, but with the added bonus of a responsive operating system, keyboard, and great multifunction ability. So why didn’t Amazon design a netbook like device? Well, two years ago, the manufacturing costs were still really high and e-ink devices are far less complicated. Another reason is that netbooks require more sophistocated operating systems as underpinnings. As Apple and Microsoft know, the ability to run additional 3rd party applications makes the project much more complicated to contain and support. The Kindle is only meant to be a vector for encouraging book sales through Amazon. Finally, netbooks still have short battery life, and the necessary powering-up habits that go along with that, which discourages long reading. But if the iPhone and iPod have taught us anything, it’s that when a device can go a full work day without charging (so that the power cycle is when we sleep), it’s something we’re keener to adopt, and that’s why e-ink devices and iPhone’s still hold their own against tablets for reading.
Eventually, by the time Amazon and Sony have figured out better ways to protect their sales channels for ebooks, the future netbooks and tablets will get to the battery life they deserve and the Kindle may not be necessary anymore.