Mobipocket is a cross-platform e-book format developed by a French team at the dawn of the e-book revolution.  It was the earliest attempt to make a one-size-fits-all program and for years the most successful.  Then Amazon acquired it and reversed its polarity, turning it from a universal format to an exclusive closed system. That system became the Kindle. E-book publishers wanting to convert files for the Kindle use a variant of Mobi called eBookBase.

According to Diesel founders Scott Redford and Kelley Allen. you can kiss your eBookBase goodbye. “Last month,” they report on the Diesel website, ” eBookBase informed their client base that they had no current or future intentions of renewing their contracts with the Agency Five (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster) and that they were pulling all A5 books off our site.”

Redford and Allen have looked at some other examples of a fading MobiPocket presence and wonder Are We Witnessing the Slow, Agonizing Death of Mobipocket?

It makes sense to us. A whole new suite of tools has burgeoned since the program was introduced and it just may be that the time has come to deep-six Mobi. Au revoir, cher ami!

Richard Curtis

The Huffington Post published a blog by independent publisher Jennifer Havenner with what she calls a “magical solution” to the book industry’s woes:  eliminate book returns.  Here’s how she framed it:

“In a desperate industry trying to scramble together 1% growth after being smacked with the Great Recession, the idea of saving the average publisher $40,000 every year should be a popular one. Add to that a 40% reduction of the industry’s carbon footprint, amounting to the carbon output equivalent of 2 million mid-sized cars, the saving of 60,000 acres worth of trees every year, and an additional $3 billion in profit industry-wide. What is this mystery magical solution?

“The elimination of book returns….By flipping one switch, the industry could make billions, and begin to reverse the environmental damage caused by wasteful practices. The whole industry needs to be on board for a true financial and environmental impact. Looking at the numbers, I see no reason why bookstores and publishers alike wouldn’t jump at the chance.”

Flipping a switch. It is indeed a magical solution, and a brilliant one.  It was brilliant when it was proposed thirty years ago. It was brilliant when it was proposed twenty years ago, ten years ago, and last year too. Everyone in the publishing industry thinks it’s brilliant.  But no one has lifted a finger to do anything about it, even though the returns model has driven countless publishers into merger, acquisition or bankruptcy and left the survivors no wiser or better able to control the hemorrhaging of cash.

And now it doesn’t matter, because a new on-demand business model has begun to replace the old one and in time will prevail. You can read about it in Publishing 3.0: A World Without Inventory Part 1 and Part 2

The time for magic is gone.  The old world of publishing is addicted to returns, and its wise heads never found the courage to break the addiction.  End returns?  A great idea whose time has gone.

Richard Curtis

Have you heard the joke about the traveling trade book salesman?

Actually, that’s the joke.  The publisher “sales reps” that once traveled to independent bookstores in assigned territories, armed with catalogs and advance read copies of books, have become an endangered species.

The reasons are many and complex, but chief among them are the dwindling number of independent booksellers; the growth of centralized, computerized ordering; the rise of e-books; and a bleak trade book economy that makes commissioned salespeople an unaffordable luxury.

Finally, telemarketers are replacing what’s left of a once proud cadre of “travelers” who intimately understood the tastes and reading habits of customers in their territories. (see Howdy Brownsville, New York Calling.) In fact, many of these same forces drove the independent wholesale distributors out of business in the late 1990s. (See The Rise and Fall of the Mass Market Paperback Part 1 and Part 2.)

Finally, the economy has applied the coup de grace. “Contractions in the book business in response to the Great Recession led to cuts in sales forces for large houses like Simon & Schuster,” writes Judith Rosen in the New York Times, “while commissioned rep groups that service independent publishers have also felt the pinch.”

You can read details in Rosen’s Can Sales Reps Survive?

Richard Curtis

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.

Amazon.com Press Release:

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Amazon today announced a new update to Kindle for iPad and Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch, which allows readers to enjoy the benefits of embedded video and audio clips in Kindle books. The first books to take advantage of this new technology, including Rick Steves’ London by Rick Steves and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway, are available in the Kindle Store at this URL.

“We are excited to add this functionality to Kindle for iPad and Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch,” said Dorothy Nicholls, director, Amazon Kindle. “Readers will already find some Kindle Editions with audio/video clips in the Kindle Store today–from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes with video tips on preparing the perfect cake to Bird Songs with audio clips that relate the songs and calls to the birds’ appearances. This is just the beginning–we look forward to seeing what authors and publishers create for Kindle customers using the new functionality of the Kindle apps.”

“We are truly excited to have collaborated with Amazon to launch Kindle Editions with audio/video,” said Peter Balis, Director, Digital Content Sales, Wiley. “Innovations like these represent the advantages that digital can offer. Advancing our content in this manner is important for our authors and our readers and it will raise the bar on what digital reading can offer for years to come.”

“In the new Kindle Edition with audio/video of Rick Steves’ London, the embedded walking tours allow customers to listen to Rick as they explore the sites of London,” said Bill Newlin, publisher, Avalon Travel. “Rick’s narration adds depth to the reader’s experience, while listeners can follow the routes more easily with the text.”

Technologist Jason Perlow has done an analysis of e-book reading apps available on your iPad, and it would be a good idea for you to see what he has to say before downloading any of them.

“The average iPad user may not be aware of features or limitations in the various e-Reader apps available on the App Store,” he says, “so I’m going to try to boil this down so that you can make the appropriate choices which best fit your reading lifestyle.”

You may be surprised, maybe even shocked, by his conclusions. Here in condensed form are his takes on some of the more prominent apps.

iBooks

“While there is no doubting iBooks’ success in terms of its widespread use, of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release….”

“iBooks supports syncing of DRM-free EPUB and PDF content directly to the iPad thru iTunes. This is an excellent feature, but essentially locks the user down to using iTunes as the primary data transfer mechanism and thus requires a host PC or Macintosh in order to maintain the library…”

“Unfortunately, iBooks doesn’t scale very well as the size of your EPUB library increases. While iBooks is perfectly fine for a few dozen or perhaps a hundred or so books purchased from the iBooks Store or synced into iTunes, it is extremely unwieldy once you approach 300+ titles loaded into the database.”

[One issue Perlow doesn't mention is cited by blogger Thomas Baekdal, who writes: "You've already purchased this book but it isn't available for redownload. To purchase it again at full price, tap OK" and his comment is, "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?"]

Kindle for iPad

“Amazon still has the widest array of paid ebook content in existence, with well over 600,000 titles in inventory. However, from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart — you can’t import other file formats into it (such as PDFs or .MOBI files) and it only works with titles you’ve purchased in the Kindle store.”

Barnes & Noble eReader

“Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application. About the only negative thing I can say about it is that like Kindle for iPad, the application is limited to content purchased on the B&N website, and uses the same Safari web interface for purchasing.”

“Other than that flaw, I love this app — the reading experience is far superior to that of the Kindle application, as it has five customizable themes for different colors of text and background and has the best reading fonts I’ve seen in any of the apps I looked at, especially when viewed in the ‘Earl Grey’ theme that almost has me convinced I’m looking at e-Ink and not an LCD.”

“Margins can be adjusted directly from page view to make maximum use of the screen if you’d like. The content browsing interface is also much more elegant than that of iBooks or Kindle for iPad.”

Kobo Reader / Borders eBooks

“Kobo Reader for iPad is…extremely polished and very well-designed.
Kobo’s main benefit is that it supports many different computing and smartphone platforms, so you can have all of your content available with you wherever you go. Like Kindle and B&N, your content is stored in Kobobooks.com’s cloud, so it doesn’t matter if you are using Kobo for iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, PC or Mac…”

“The Kobo reader application is one of the nicest looking on the iPad platform, although it isn’t nearly as feature rich as B&N’s or Stanza from a pure reading perspective. However, the text display is very nice, and you have four scalable fonts to choose from plus a White-on-Black “Night Reading” mode.”

Stanza

“Of all the applications listed here, Stanza is actually a very mature e-reader app, this despite only very recently being made iPad-native with version 3, in early June…
Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF). This built-in compatibility eliminates the need for book conversion to EPUB with applications such as Calibre…”

“In addition to its connectivity features, Stanza has access to a wide variety of free book feeds… It has a wide array of font styles and color themes, and many options for text layout…”

“If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.”

For the complete article, check out Apple iPad Showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps

Richard Curtis

Science fiction writer Greg Bear calls George Zebrowski “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration.”  Zebrowski has published more than seventy works of short fiction and more than a hundred and forty articles and essays. His best known novel is Macrolife which Arthur C. Clarke described as “a worthy successor to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker.” Library Journal chose Macrolife as one of the one hundred best science fiction novels, and The Easton Press included it in its “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” series. Macrolife and a related novel, Cave of Stars, are available on E-Reads along with a number of other Zebrowski masterpieces.

Brute Orbits, an uncompromising novel about the future of the penal system, was praised by reviewers for its characters, originality, and thought. Paul Di Filippo, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, said that “Zebrowski never ceases to invest his individual characters with three-dimensional roundness…Startling, sobering, provocative”, while Publishers Weekly called this novel “boldly speculative.” The book was also honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999.

It is the twenty-first century. Convicts are sentenced to asteroids that move in ever-widening solar orbits, timed to return when their terms run out. But a few ambitious administrators discover that small “errors” in velocity can rid them of selected groups altogether: the hardcore violent, the mentally defective, and especially the political dissidents. Enduring the black vise of interstellar space-time, these human rejects–men and women mixed together–create their own Darwinian societies, struggling to survive.

Back on Earth, a handful of sympathetic and curious scientists have not forgotten these lost citizens. When a technological breakthrough makes it possible to overtake these scattered asteroids, a courageous team sets out to go where none has willingly gone before. What they discover in these “brute orbits” is both provocative and moving–a startling vision of humanity you will never forget.

“A brilliant and dramatic philosophical reflection on the nature of society, technology . . . and humanity itself. Zebrowski is a deep thinker who writes about the big questions’ in the grand tradition of Wells, Stapledon, and Clarke.”
– Jack M. Dann, award-winning author of The Silent and The Memory Cathedral

See George Zebrowski’s author page for other great titles.

In Janet Dailey’s bestseller Rivals a love affair bursts into a battle between the sexes.

Flame Morgan, the high-class v-p of a San Francisco ad agency, is instantly attracted to Chance Stuart, a wealthy, powerful land developer. Chance romances her lavishly but withholds a damaging secret during their whirlwind courtship and quick marriage. Starting with the Oklahoma land rush there has been bad blood between the Stuart and Morgan clans but Chance has long desired Morgan’s Walk, a family estate that Flame has inherited. Flame believes that Chance only married her to get at Morgan’s Walk and blocks his ‘land grab.’

The story throbs with Dailey’s legendary mix of mystery, revenge, jet-set action and red-hot sex, plus Dailey’s tried and true formula for down-home color and sweet romance.

This Kind of War by T. R. Fehrenbach is the most comprehensive single-volume history of the Korean-American conflict that began in 1950 and is still affecting United States’ foreign policy,. This ill conceived action tells us as much about how not to conduct a war as how to conduct one. The action was gritty and often brutal, with hand-to-hand combat in the middle of moonless nights to defend naked patches of hillside. Fehrenbach easily shifts from killing ground to the highest precincts of Washington power, chronicling the decisions that led to military and political blunders resulting in a profligate loss of American lives.

The author, an officer in the conflict, provides us with accounts of combat that could only have been written by an eyewitness in the thick of the action. But what truly sets this book apart from other military memoirs is the piercing analysis of the global political maneuvering behind the vicious ground warfare. Tragically, the Korean War has been all but forgotten in public memory. But not in the minds of military leaders, who reverently study Fehrenbach’s book at West Point and in the Pentagon as a model of historical narration.

Hailed as “a must for all soldiers and former soldiers” by an Amazon.com reviewer, This Kind of War restores the Korean War to its rightful place in American history – as a touchstone for United States foreign engagement and a lesson for politicians ready to shed American blood on faraway soil. Judging by Vietnam and Iraq, the lesson has not been learned at all.,

“This Kind of War has been studied by two generations of soldiers. Fehrenbach describes good decisions and bad ones with insight and expertise. But what he does best of all, and what is so memorable, is his eloquent, sometimes painful description of the GIs who must bear the burden of those decisions. That is the awful beauty of this book – it cuts straight to the heart of all the political and military errors and reveals the brave souls who have to bleed and die for mistakes made. A timely reissue of a military classic.”
–General Colin L. Powell, Former Secretary of State

During World War II, the author served with the U.S. Infantry and Engineers as Platoon Sergeant with an engineer battalion. He continued his military career in the Korean War, rising from Platoon Leader to Company Commander and then to Battalion Staff Officer of the 72nd Tank battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. His most enduring work is Lone Star, a one-volume history of Texas that E-Reads is also honored to publish. He now devotes his time to writing a political column for a San Antonio newspaper.

– Richard Curtis

Remember when IBM pitted its Deep Blue computer in a chess match against human opponents? Well now, HotHardware reports that IBM has developed a “Question Answering” supercomputer that not only answers questions put to it in plain English, but is good enough to play Jeopardy.

The machine is named “Watson” after IBM’s founder but perhaps a play on Dr. Watson, whose questions to his companion Sherlock Holmes invariably elicited the reply, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And don’t forget Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant Watson, who was summoned by Bell on the freshly invented telephone to see if it worked. It worked.

Though it sounds like a multimillion dollar parlor trick, in fact IBM has set its sights on no less a rival than Google. Its ability to answer questions in conversational English give it the advantage over the Google keyboard.

And responding to Jeopardy questions is particularly challenging.  Watson needed to be “trained” to recognize those questions, which are really answers.  And, as the video shows, Jeopardy’s format is filled with puns and other wordplay, requiring a nimble intellect.

HotHardware points out that Watson passed some tests with flying colors, but it still has a way to go before it puts Google out of business.  “Watson has a tendency to crash [and] sometimes goes on streaks of getting everything wrong.”

Well, yes, that can be a problem!

Richard Curtis

E-Reads has responded to the surge in new e-book retailers with an upload of more than 200 titles to Apple iPad, Kobo, Diesel and Google editions.  The ten year old publisher, a leading independent in the e-book and print on demand space, is currently converting its 1000+ title inventory to the specific specs of these and other newcomers in the retail field, as well as older customers.  And of course, you can visit your favorite retailer where you’ll eventually see all E-Reads titles on sale.

Among authors in E-Reads’ upload are Harlan Ellison, Greg Bear, John Norman, Dave Duncan, William C. Dietz, Fritz Leiber, Sean Williams, Janet Dailey, Nancy J. Cohen, and Hannah Howell. Click here for the complete list of June uploads. And remember, that’s just the first of many. So…watch this space for news of new uploads