Monthly Archives: May 2012

The Timed Reading Experience E-Book

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Yesterday, on The Passive Voice, there was an interresting blog entry on TREEBook, a new eBook format that stands for Timed Reading Experience E-Book.  The format allows for the embedding of multiple storylines based on readers’ actions and behavior.

The comments on this one are interesting. The idea seems to have left a bad taste for quite a few…. And, maybe I’m alone in this, but I think  something like this would drive me crazy as I would be constantly wondering what had been added or what I had missed. That’s hardly a recipe for a relaxing read.

Hey, Muggles! Soon, you can borrow Harry Potter on your Kindle!

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Amazon announced today that all 7 Harry Potter books would be available in the Kindles Owners Lending library as of June 19, 2012.

According to Amazon’s press release:

 Owning a Kindle just got a whole lot better for magic-loving Muggles. Starting June 19, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) is adding all seven Harry Potter books (in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) to the Kindle Owners’Lending Library (KOLL). Harry Potter is the all-time best-selling book series in history, andAmazon has purchased an exclusive license from J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to make the addition of these titles possible. The Kindle Owners’Lending Library is a benefit of Amazon Prime membership—Prime members also enjoy free two-day shipping on millions of items and unlimited streaming of more than 17,000 movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Owners’Lending Libraryhas now grown to over 145,000 books that can be borrowed for free as frequently as once a month, with no due dates.

“We’re absolutely delighted to have reached this agreement with Pottermore. This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we’ll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners,” saidJeff Bezos, founder and CEO ofAmazon.com. “Over a year, borrowing the Harry Potter books, plus a handful of additional titles, can alone be worth more than the$79cost of Prime or a Kindle. The Kindle Owners’Lending Libraryalso has an innovative feature that’s of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter – unlimited supply of each title – you never get put on a waiting list.

This is an exclusive deal between Amazon and Pottermore.

Just the facts…

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I just listened to an interesting podcast of the Kojo Nnadami Show on E-Books: Chosing a reading device and a bookseller.

While there were some interesting points to the broadcast, as an ebook aficionado, I found it a little disturbing that people considered experts in the field could be totally unaware of certain facts about the ebook industry.

Among the misstated facts:

  • Amazon deleted 1984 off customers’ Kindles last year. In fact, it was 2009.
  • It is unusual for someone to own more than one ereader.
  • Typos and scanning errors are no longer a problem with ebooks.
  • It seems that there is also some confusion about the program Calibre and its capabilities. Calibre can convert one ebook format to another; it does not strip DRM from ebooks. There are third-party plug-ins for the program, however, which are rumored to do that.

The broadcast does make some valid points about the ownership issues surrounding ebooks.