While neuroscientists and child development specialists have been delving into the psychology of reading e-books and vooks (see The Medium Is The Screen, But The Message is Distraction), a blogger named Danny Bloom has occupied himself with the nomenclature.

Plain old “reading” simply doesn’t seem to cover the various acts necessary to experience a multimedia vook that we have to click, scroll, screen, watch, listen to, and – yes – read. So Bloom, who has been aggregating on his blog a great deal of cogent information and articles about e-books, has proposed the word “Screading”, combining screening and reading.

We buy it completely, and from now on, “Screading” it will be.

Bloom also brought to my attention that “Kindle” is now a verb. It may be a while before “Nook” achieves verb status, however.

RC

Tom Simpson, who works at San Diego State University’s bookstore, may not condone some of the tactics students use to get around the exorbitant prices of textbooks, but he’s certainly sympathetic to their plight. He says so in a “Soapbox” guest editorial in Publishers Weekly. What inspired him was a recent sale he made to a student: two books for $325.

“This year,” he writes, “the college bookstore where I work has its first books priced north of $200. That price tag is painful in any year, but when people are hurting, it’s a travesty.”

Textbook prices have made a lot of headlines recently, highlighted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiative to push his state’s school system into e-textbooks. (Read Hasta La Vista, Textbooks.)

Is Simpson’s store selling e-textbooks? “Digital books have also seen an uptick in sales,” he says. “This semester we have 265 titles available in electronic editions, and with prices reduced to around 40% or 50% off the new hardcover price, an increasing number of students are willing to download a book or read it online.”

Students will do just about anything to hold down the cost of books, including buying used books and international editions, borrowing, sharing and renting. But when all legitimate approaches have been exhausted, there is always stealing. “Cheap is nice,” says Simpson wistfully “but free is better.”

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.

Publishers Weekly just issued a bulletin that “the board of directors of the American Booksellers Association requested that the government begin an investigation into what the organization believes is the illegal predatory pricing policies being carried out by Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target in selling 10 hardcover titles for as low as $8.98. The ABA requested a meeting with officials as soon as possible, arguing that left unchecked, the predatory pricing policies ‘will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to remain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public.’”

PW‘s Jim Milliot writes:

“The letter charged that the big box retailers are using predatory pricing practices to ‘attempt to win control of the market for hardcover bestsellers.’ By selling books below cost, Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target ‘are devaluing the very concept of the book. Authors and publishers, and ultimately consumers, stand to lose a great deal if this practice continues and/or grows,’ the letter stated. Furthermore, the letter noted, the companies involved in the price war are not engaged primarily in selling books, yet their fight could result in the entire book industry becoming collateral damage.

“The letter added that the price war over hardcovers was precipitated by Amazon’s decision to price e-books at $9.99. “We believe the loss-leader pricing of digital content also bears scrutiny,” the letter stated.”

From time immemorial, loss-leader pricing has been an instrument to drive competitors out of business. But with so many retailers and big-box stores joining in the sale of books below cost, the ones being driven out of business are publishers, authors and independent booksellers. We don’t know if ABA has a case but kudos to them for trying.

Richard Curtis

New York Times tech columnist David Pogue gives Microsoft’s Windows 7, released today, a close assessment that MS-watchers will take as a green light, as long as they are aware that the new system carries with it some built-in issues that are inherently Windows-oid.

“Now, Windows 7 is still Windows,” writes Pogue. “It’s still copy-protected, it still requires antivirus software and its visuals still aren’t consistent from one corner to another.

“On the other hand, it’s still Windows in a good way, too, meaning that it’s your ticket to a world of choice — a huge catalog of software and computer options. This Win is a win if you’re in the market for a new machine, or if you’re running Vista now and you’re not thrilled by it.

“Above all, Windows 7 means that Microsoft employees can show up in public without avoiding eye contact. Looks like 7 is a lucky number after all.”

Pogue could have simply said that anything would be better than the Vista OS that 7 replaces, but he went much further, saying that “if the programmers at Microsoft have any strength left at all, they are high-fiving.”

Read Pogue’s analysis here.

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

It’s IDPF time again, that happy moment when the International Digital Publishing Forum and Association of American Publisher release their latest sales stats for the e-book industry. The news, as it has been all year (knock wood), remains glorious: trade e-book sales went from $5 million in August ’08 to $14.4 mil a year later, a few dollars shy of tripling the earlier figure. Equally impressive are the totals for the first two months of Q3-09: they are more than double the same period of ’08, namely $30.6 million as compared to $13.9 million.

The true sales numbers may be even higher than the above chart indicates. Michael Smith, Executive Director of IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) reminds us that:

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade eBook sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is “All books delivered electronically over the Internet OR to hand-held reading devices”

RC

We can’t stand it. Today we learned the names of not one but two e-book readers that had been kept tightly under wraps. The first, revealed earlier today, was BN.Com’s Nook. But we were not prepared to win the bifecta. The announcement of the name of Plastic Logic’s forthcoming device, which we’ve been begging to learn, came today hard on the heels of the Nook. The name?

QUE.

The full formal name is QUETM proReader, the “tm” standing for “trademark”.

Gadgetell details the features of the long-heralded reader which will be launched on January 7 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Feature wise we can expect the QUE to have a an E Ink display that is both shatterproof and capacitive. Additionally that display will be the size of a regular sheet of paper, 8.5 x 11 inches with the complete unit coming in at less than a 1/3 inch thick.

Additionally, the QUE will also be Wi-Fi and 3G equipped with the 3G coming courtesy of the AT&T network. However it looks like it will not only be books that users will be downloading and reading as the press release also notes that the QUE will be able to offer “professional newspapers, books and periodicals” as well as read “PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents”.

We assume it’s pronounced “Kay” and not “Cue” but we haven’t heard anybody actually utter it aloud. In any case we are hereby retiring “Teasle,” the provisional title we assigned to it after wearying of calling it “Plastic Logic’s unnamed e-book reading device.” However, given the ambiguity of the term Que, we have to wonder if “Teasle” isn’t actually the more memorable term.

Read all about it in Plastic Logic unveils and teases us with the QUE proReader ebook reader.

RC

THE NOOK!

As in Book Nook.

As rumored, the E-Ink text is gray and white like the Kindle’s, but there is a color feature for the display of cover and other images. The $259 price matches the current price for the Kindle. The Nook will carry over 1 million titles, about half of which are currently not available on the Kindle.

The device does not appear to be manufactured by Plastic Logic as speculated on a number of blogs. So we still await the disclosure of the name of Plastic Logic’s reader scheduled for release in 2010. “The Nook” is taken, so Plastic Logic will have to dig deep into its pool of titles to come up with something more ingenious. Until it’s official, we’re calling it The Teasle.

A significant difference between Nook and Kindle is the Nook’s e-book-lending feature, details of which will be described in future postings.

Though the name and features of the device were not to be disclosed until later today at a press conference, the New York Times used a clever ploy to scoop most other journalists: it peeked at at an advertisement BN.Com will be running in the newspaper’s book review section next Sunday. The Times‘s own ombudsman Clark Hoyt, who writes a weekly column commenting on the ethical (or otherwise) conduct of its writers and executives, might have a few things to say about a newspaper that uses its own advertising department as a source of breaking news. Whether the name and nature of BN.Com’s device was embargoed until Sunday is not known. Still, there are some tricky ethical issues at play here.

Any comment, Mr. Hoyt?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting - AND ADVERTISING! – performed by the New York Times.

We who are about to die salute Jenna Wortham. Like most of us she has ruminated about the end of life but rather than writing her own eulogy or selecting a coffin, she has been making provisions for disposing of her digital archives and leaving encrypted instructions for her survivors.

“Not to be morbid,” she writes in the “Internet Protocol” feature of the New York Times, “but I have a lot of private information and details stored on my computer — in various Google Chat logs, e-mail and social networking accounts — that I wouldn’t want to be revealed when I log off for good. Who should I consult or what do I need to do to ensure my cache is cleared and e-mail and social networking sites accounts are deleted when I die?”

A good idea, she writes, “is to appoint someone as your digital executor who is responsible for cleaning up your accounts, clearing your browser cache, deleting secret e-mails and trashing appropriate files.”

For other suggestions, read The Digital Afterlife and Morning-After Messaging or forward it to your estate lawyer or next of kin.

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times

You can’t attend two circuses with one tuchus.

We cited that Yiddish proverb a couple of months ago in focusing on Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s resignation from the Board of Directors of Apple because of concern that his presence on the boards of rival companies was no longer appropriate.

It might be even worse than inappropriate: the Clayton Antitrust Act prohibits interlocking directorates because they undercut true competition. Google and Apple started out as allies but Google’s expansion into its neighbor’s mobile phone and other domains has created conflicts of interest for both companies.

Now another knot between the firms has been cut, according to Miguel Helft of the New York Times. After Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz rattled his sanctions sabre, Arthur D. Levinson, former CEO of Genentech, resigned from the board of Google.

Leibowitz was gracious in triumph: “Google, Apple and Mr. Levinson should be commended for recognizing that overlapping board members between competing companies raise serious antitrust issues, and for their willingness to resolve our concerns without the need for litigation.”

Helft points out that Google and Apple were originally united with Microsoft as the “common enemy”. But as Google’s expanded, “it began bumping up against the interests of Apple with growing frequency, fraying the ties between the two allies.”

You can read about other ways that the two firms are going head to head in Google and Apple Eliminate Another Tie.

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

In connection with our recent posting, The Medium Is Screens. The Message Is Distraction…

Anecdotal support for the concern expressed by child development authorities about reading on screen comes from Lily, a 15-year-0ld, who left this comment on the NYTimes “Room for Debate” blogpost:

“I am 15 years old, and an avid reader. I love a good hardcover or paperback, physical pages are easier on my eyes, and I understand completely what my parents are saying when they lament that print newspapers are going extinct. Don’t get me wrong; the digital age is great. I read the NY Times, the Washington Post, and lots of other blogs/sites online. When I come across a word I don’t know, I can look it up in 5 seconds. But I agree with several of the authors above that the sheer volume of information on the web is overwhelming, and is an incredible distraction. I’ll be reading poems on some literary archive site, click on an add that looks interesting, then remember that I wanted to post something on facebook, and completely forget about what I was doing originally. Sometimes I find myself switching activities even more frequently than every 3 minutes, and I don’t think young people are especially good at multi-tasking. I just think that multi-tasking has become unavoidable because of how driven to distraction we are by all the bombarding sidebars. I don’t spend enough time anymore reading “real” books, and so while e-books seem fine, I’d ideally like to maintain regular reading in both mediums.”