With the shift from print books to digital books come a few nasty side effects. Sure, it’s much easier to acquire and read books when you don’t even have to get out of your chair, but those digital copies can be cracked and disseminated for free with only a little more effort.

As ebook sales expand, so does ebook piracy, so I have to wonder if Apple’s concerted efforts in creating a new kind of iBook experience will open them up to unwanted attention from digital pirates.

Apple certainly wouldn’t be alone in the fight. “Most publishers have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their anti-piracy efforts,” Tom Allen, President and CEO of the American Publishers Association told me. “They take time, money, and personnel away from nurturing creative talent.”

Of course, it’s not just the big-name publishers and the best-selling authors who have to deal with this. I spoke briefly with Rick Tannenbaum, who operates a small publishing firm called Hen House Press in upstate New York. They publish around a dozen books per year, and although they’ve attempted to use DRM to prevent illicit copies from making the rounds, nothing seemed to work.

“I guess if I were a large corporation I’d have the resources to do something about it, but I’m not,” Tannenbaum told me.

Apple has taken steps to simplify the iBook creation experience with the introduction of their iBook Author application, which allows users to create rich interactive experiences (if they want to) without too much needless fiddling. With tools like that available (and a little luck) we may soon see some impressive new works coming from authors of all stripes.

Could those richer media experiences become the next target for the web’s scores of ebook pirates? Very possibly, if only because it presents an interesting new obstacle for them to surmount. There are already tools available that can transfer Apple’s existing iBooks from the iDevice in question to a computer, which isn’t much of a problem considering they’re all stored in the common ePub format. I fully expect something similar to pop up in the coming weeks and months that allows less-than-scrupulous users dump these new iBooks and share them with others.

As they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

But would that really be such a bad thing? The iTextbooks in particular present a unique case here — when I was in college, some students would split the cost of a textbook and make photocopies of chapters and assignments as needed. As long as they had enough dimes on hand, each student got away with an education of sorts and still only paid a fraction of the cost of a single textbook. That sharing mentality exists outside of the scholastic realm for sure, and if more people learn by being exposed to a shared iBook, isn’t the end result a net benefit?

It depends on who’s asking. As my colleague Matt notes, Apple and their partners aren’t in the business of educating people — they’re here to make money. A smarter, entertained audience is a just a handy side-effect of selling more books, be they digital or not. Someone like Tim O’Reilly sees it a little differently. His company removed the DRM from all of their books’ digital editions last year, and noted that they were “delighted when people who can’t afford our books don’t pay us for them, if they go out and do something useful with that information.”

In the end, there will be very little Apple can do to stop piracy. Look at the long history of iOS jailbreaks and unlocks — while not piracy per se, they illustrate rather nicely that there will always be people willing and able to throw Terms and Conditions to the wind to get what they want. The same applies to Apple’s iBooks — just as there will always be people who would pay to enjoy the frictionless purchase of a book, there will always be people who enjoy the thrill of getting things for free too much to resist.

With this morning’s addition of 16,000 Italian-language ebooks, and 22,000 Spanish-language books, Amazon has updated the total number of digital books it claims to offer through its Kindle Store. The company says the new Kindle Store now offers over 900,000 titles in English and other languages, and indeed, the eBooks section actually turns up 950,000+ search results.

For the record: this is eBooks only – all in all, there are more than 1 million books, newspapers, magazines and blogs available for Amazon Kindle today, the company professes on this page (see ‘Massive Selection’) and elsewhere.

Conveniently, Juniper Research this morning released a new report on mobile eBook sales, which it forecasts to reach close to $10 billion ($9.7b) by 2016, up from $3.2 billion this year.

The research firm says the expected jump in eBook sales for portable devices can be attributed to the growing number of dedicated eReader devices on the market, an upsurge in usage across smartphones and tablet computers and the rise of brand bookstore apps like Apple’s iBookstore and, of course, Amazon’s Kindle Store.

Juniper Research says the increasing demand for tablets means that such devices will account for nearly 30 percent of all eBook downloads by 2016.

Perhaps surprisingly, the firm claims smartphones are not, and are unlikely to become, a primary reading device in markets other than Japan (due to the manga comics phenomenon there).

The new version of the Kobo expands on the previous hardware, including a new wireless connection, a new processor that means faster page turns, and three new colors (onyx, porcelain with metallic silver back, and porcelain with a pearlized lilac back. The new Kobo also works with EPB and PDF documents, and has a SD card slot for memory expansion. The new device is available for pre-order starting today, and will be in stores by the end of October. MSRP is $139.99.

From the press release:

The Alex supports EPUB, PDF, HTML, and TXT, and is connected directly to Google’s ebook library. Retail is $399, and while the current version supports WiFi, a 3G and EVDO/CDMA version is expected later this year.

From the press release:

FREMONT, Calif. – April 13, 2010 – Spring Design today announced that the dual screen multimedia Alex™ eReader, available online at www.springdesign.com, will begin shipping to customers as planned tomorrow, April 14.

Weighing only 11 ounces, the Android-based Alex eReader supporting eBooks in EPUB, PDF, HTML and TXT formats offers full Internet browsing using WiFi connectivity, and later this year will also feature 3G and EVDO/CDMA connectivity.

Alex offers multitasking, enabling users to enjoy music while they read, supplement their eBook on the EPD screen with video on the LCD screen, search the Web or use email so users may connect with each other in book clubs and social media.

The Alex eReader costs $399 and measures 4.7″ by 8.9″ and less than a half inch deep. It comes with headphones, AC connector, USB cable and protective cover. The USB 2.0 connector makes it easy to transfer photos, videos or other files to the Alex MicroSD card offering expansion of user libraries up to 32GB. Spring Design will offer periodic over the air updates for the Alex.

Spring will shortly being to announce multi-language versions of Alex for countries speaking Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Korean and Hebrew. Alex is the first eReader to offer international versions of the product through its local country partners connecting to local bookstores.

I always loved to read as a kid, so on family trips I’d bring a backpack stuffed with Hardy Boys paperbacks. The Flip is aimed at bit lower age group with the animated touch screen and read-along feature, but it does allow parents to bring dozens of books in a fraction of the space.

It features various word games and a dictionary feature to teach kids how to read, as well as downloadable content. The aren’t a huge number of “books” available, most being various Disney or Pixar characters, but the device hasn’t even launched yet.

Units will be available this August at $59.99 a pop, with the e-books running at $19.99.

While most prices will be higher – it’s an iPad! Why go slumming? – popular books can hit the $9.99 if need be. Apple takes 30 percent of the sale while the publishers take 70 percent.

I’m all for more expensive ebooks. The 99 cent song has essentially turned the music business into a freak out fest and the publishing industry is even less prepare for the volcano that’s about to erupt right in the middle of their industry.

I’d say $12.99 is a good price for an ebook. At that price Apple gets $4 and the publisher gets about $8. This, in turn, gets the author 2 cents on a good day.

The 6-inch e-redaer slides open, quite possibly like a phone you once owned. It’s only black and white, too, so those of you expecting Samsung to usher in the era of color e-reaers will be disappointed.

The fact is, all of these e-readers are so similar that it really does come down to where you can get books from. For the E6, Samsung partnered with Google to bring its vast collection of public domain books to the reader. And while a partnership with Google is great, and may well lead to future fun and excitement, the idea of partnering up with someone just to get public domain books is sorta weird. Whereas the nook and Kindle are backed by the Barnes and Noble and Amazon bookstores, respectively, the E6 doesn’t have that same commercial relationship, at least not yet.

So, again, as a device not too bad, but e-readers are so similar these days (at least until a company releases a full-color one) that it’s sorta like choosing between an Xbox 360 an PS3: which exclusive games (read: books) are you most interested in reading? And you go from there.

It should be available in March (such are the current plans) for $399, with a 10-inch version costing $599.

From the press release:

SAMSUNG UNVEILS ITS FIRST E-BOOK FOR READING, WRITING AND SHARING ON-THE-GO

Samsung’s New E-book Series Boasts First-of-its-Kind Functionality with a Precision Stylus Pen

Las Vegas, January 6, 2009 – Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, today unveiled its first e-book devices, with six-inch and ten-inch screen size offerings, at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The E6 and E101 further solidify Samsung’s position as a global leader in display technology by raising the bar on the quality of writing capabilities for e-books.

“We’ve used our expertise to create a high-quality e-book with today’s on-the-go consumer in mind,” said Young Bae, director of display marketing, Samsung Information Technology Division. “Samsung is addressing a common frustration that users experience with many of today’s digital readers with a stylus that allows them to annotate their favorite works or take notes. Coupled with wireless functionality that enables sharing of content, this is a truly multi-faceted device..”

Handwriting Capabilities

Unlike other e-book devices, Samsung’s E6 and E101 enables handwriting directly onto the display, allowing users to annotate their reading selections, calendars and to-do lists with a built-in electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus pen. This dedicated pen prevents mistypes caused by hands and other objects that may graze the screen’s surface. A variety of pen and eraser thicknesses make the Samsung e-books perfect for drawing and writing.

Low Power Consumption

The Samsung e-book displays reflect light naturally and deliver an appearance similar to that of printed paper, allowing people to read more naturally than they would with other backlit electronic paper devices. The E101 boasts a ten-inch screen, while the E6, is the more portable sibling at six inches. Because Samsung’s e-book is not backlit, the power consumption is lower than that of other portable display devices. Only four hours of charging prepares the battery for up to two weeks of use, depending on the extent of daily use.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Wireless

Samsung’s e-books are equipped for wireless connectivity as well. Wi-Fi 802.11b/g allows users to download content such as books and newspapers from a server wirelessly, as well as to share certain content with other devices. Bluetooth 2.0 is also a built in feature.
The Samsung E6 and E101 will be priced at $399 and $699, respectively. They will be available in early 2010.

Now to be fair, the Alex only has a frame rate of 3 FPS. But when you compare it to other readers, that have a rate of (generally) 0 FPS, you’re talking a significant improvement. This will allow the Alex to show simple animation, and other types of moving data. The Alex also sports dual screens, a 6 inch reader screen and a smaller touch capable screen mounted below. Maximum PC has a complete write up (and teardown) of the Alex, and they go into a little more depth about what the Marvell chipset is capable of.

Strange times indeed when Sony, one of the most proprietary companies in the whole wide world, decides to adopt wholesale someone else’s formats and technologies. Obviously I think this is a good idea, because I’m a consumer evaluating products based on how useful they’ll be to me. If I buy a Sony Reader, I can start amassing a collection of ePub books. If I later decide that to switch readers, I can select something else that supports ePub.

Via New York Times.

As expected, Sony officially unveiled their latest eBook readers. So, here we have the PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition and the PRS-300 Pocket Edition. The latter rocks a five-inch electronic paper screen display that fits in your pocket and lasts up to two weeks off a single charge. The $199 reader will store up to 350 standard eBooks.

The Reader Touch Edition sports a six-inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard. It also includes an onboard Oxford American English Dictionary. The Touch can be expanded with a Memory Stick Pro Duo or SD card. This one will retail for $299.

Both are due out at the end of August.

*The first two are the Pocket Editions while the last three are the Touch Editions.

[PSGallery=9xmaju104bh]

SAN DIEGO, August 5, 2009 ¾ Sony is today delivering on its promise of making digital readers and eBooks accessible and affordable for consumers with the introduction of two new Readers. Part of a new Reader line, the Reader Pocket Edition™ puts a library in your hands for as little as $199. Both the Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition™ will be available at the end of August, at SonyStyle.com, SonyStyle stores and select retail partners. Also, new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in the eBook Store from Sony will now be available for $9.99.

“We firmly believe consumers should have choice in every aspect of their digital reading experience,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “Our goal is to expand the market and provide greater access to what consumers want to read when they want to read it — whether they buy, borrow or get it for free.”

The Reader Pocket Edition sports a five-inch electronic paper display packaged in a stylish chassis and is available in a variety of colors, including navy blue, rose and silver. The Reader Pocket Edition is easy to navigate with one hand, and fits into a purse or jacket pocket. The diminutive device can store about 350 standard eBooks and provides up to two weeks of reading enjoyment on a single battery charge. It will be available for the ground-breaking price of $199, making it the most affordable dedicated reading device on the market.

The Reader Touch Edition features a responsive, menu-driven six-inch touch screen panel that enables quick, intuitive navigation, page turning, highlighting and note taking with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen. Users can take handwritten notes with the stylus pen or type with the virtual keyboard. All notes can be exported and printed out for easy reference. The Reader Touch Edition includes an onboard Oxford American English Dictionary that allows you to look up a word by simply tapping on it. The Touch Edition also offers five adjustable font sizes, as well as expansion slots for both Memory Stick® PRO Duo™ and SD card, making your portable library virtually limitless. It comes in red, black or silver and will retail for about $299.

Both models feature Sony’s award-winning industrial design and an E Ink® Vizplex™ electronic paper display that mimics the look of ink on paper. They will ship with an attractive protective sleeve and USB cable. Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which now includes support for many Apple® Macintosh® computers as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe® PDF (with reflow capability), Microsoft® Word®, BBeB® files, or other text file formats on the Reader.

Through The eBook Store from Sony (ebookstore.sony.com), users can also access more than one million free public domain books from Google. These titles, which Google has digitized as part of its Google Books project, are available in EPUB format and are optimized for current models of the Sony Reader. From Sony’s eBook Store, Reader owners with a U.S. location can download and transfer any of these titles to their Reader, while new, U.S. located eBook Store users can access available titles after setting up an account and downloading Sony’s free eBook Library software.

Sony is also committed to working with local libraries throughout the country as they make the move to digital books. Sony Readers are compatible with the industry-standard formats that libraries use for their digital collections, so consumers can easily download perennial favorites and new releases from their local libraries and enjoy them for free.

The Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition, as well as available accessories such as AC adaptors, cases and covers with reading lights, will be available at the end of August at SonyStyle.com and SonyStyle stores. Book lovers interested in trying out a Reader in person will also be able to find them for sale at Best Buy, Borders, Costco, Staples, Target, Wal-Mart and other authorized retailers nationwide.

The PRS-300 is going to come equipped with a 5-inch screen and 440MB of storage. The PRS-600 however sports a 6-inch touchscreen along with audio outputs for what we can only assume is a text-to-speech or MP3 player. Neither service manual mentions anything about wireless connectivity which was the buzz a few days ago. Both models will be available in black, silver, and red whenever they are released.

E-book readers tend to be the sizes hardcover books – or a lot larger. That might be all well and good if you’re laying in bed, but the Bookeen Opus is about the size of a paperback, which makes it truely portable. The folks folks over at MobileRead got their hands on the small, but impressive, Opus for a sneak peak.

To sum it up, the Opus is somewhat small with a 5-inch 600×800 screen along with 1GB of internal memory. The small size might not be for everyone, but there is probably a market for such a device. Plus it supports ePUB and PDF files and even allows for organization via folders. There wasn’t any mention of pricing or availability just yet though. Any potential takers?

MobileRead via SlashGear

Wait, what’s this? Hooray! Someone took the initiative and has saved me from spearheading this project. Thank the maker! Adobe and Lexcycle are working together to create an honest-to-goodness open standard for distributing eBooks. It’s based on Atom, which everyone knows is vastly superior to the morass of incompatible RSS formats.

One way to think about this standard is as a kind of ‘OPML for eBooks’ – only instead of RSS feeds, OPDS features a catalog of eBooks, including optional links to book covers and short summaries. Instead of making users jump through all kinds of hoops, eBook applications could simply allow users to ‘subscribe’ to and search through these catalogs from within the application – and users could then download them right to their eBook readers without having to go to a browser or another application first.

It remains to be seen how quickly — or whether at all — the manufacturers of eBook readers (hardware and software) adopt this draft standard. Do you think Amazon would support this in addition to their Kindle Store? As a consumer I support open standards 100%, and would prefer to give my dollars to organizations that support them. But I recognize that content and hardware producers prefer the “walled garden” approach in order to keep their users — and their users’ dollars — locked into their proprietary systems. Exciting times are surely ahead!

Via RedWriteWeb

The fellers over at GearDiary purchased an eSlick eBook reader, a small and relatively attractive ebook reader that was announced before the Kindle 2.

While they like the design and size, the Kindle’s Whispernet is really a key feature missing in all of these other readers. Love it or hate it, the ability to download books is a pretty compelling feature for all but the most die-hard pirates. While it’s easy to find PDFs of public domain stuff and some popular fiction and non-fiction, hitting a button to buy a book over the air in the US is great.

Sadly, this same experience can’t really be replicated in Europe, where I am now, so things like the eSlick are pretty cool.

The Papyrus lacks an always-on cellular connection for obtaining new content, so you’ll need to connect this to your PC. How quaint! The touchscreen can be used to take notes, input numbers into a calculator, and maintain a contact list. Why you’d need a contact list on an ebook reader is beyond me. Samsung seems to be shooting for a weird market of gadget enthusiasts who want a specific kind of device convergence, but not anything that most human beings would find useful.

But hey, you can get the Papyrus in different colors! That’s got to count for something!

Via Pockt-lint.

I’m skeptical about the long-term usefulness of a single application for a single eBook. What’s the likelihood someone will re-read the eBook? Isn’t something like this — especially something like this — better suited as a large format dead tree book you can put on your coffee table, or next to your commode?

Moreover, doesn’t it seem a little short-sighted to use a single app to deliver a single book? Wouldn’t a book framework — a la the Kindle’s iPhone app — provide greater long-term convenience to users, as well as reduce the time required to prepare and release additional content for said app?

Craig Adam created the cover artwork for this eBook titled “Touch of Grey.” This eye-popping interpretation of Blakesberg’s 1991 portrait of Jerry Garcia combines the patented Photomosaic® technology with Jay’s photo archive to create a stunning visual documentation that captures the musical, personal, and cultural experience of the “Dead” on-stage and off. Double-tap or pinch to zoom into the Photomosaic all the way to the full resolution of a single image. Each interactive photograph contains information such as the location, date and photographer notes. Users can e-mail each image to a friend or start a blog-like conversation in the Deadhead forum.

Okay, I admit, that’s a pretty cool application of technology. I’ll totally buy the Iron Maiden app when it comes out, so I can work through a photomosaic of Eddie the Head.

Looks like apps for David Bowie and the Rolling Stones may be coming soon, too.

Via MarketWire

Here is the rundown on features:

• A selection of eBook Library views (thumbnails and cover flow) for browsing your downloaded eBook collection
• Two different page views (single and facing)
• Search tools, including “find text” and “find next” functionality
• Publisher pre-defined copy/paste and print capabilities
• Zoom in/out function to customize your views (by percentage, fit to page, height and width)
• Pre-defined bookmarks to jump to relevant content when set by the publisher
• Note-taking tools with highlighting

The new Follett Digital Reader system will be replacing their previous Adobe PDF eBooks in March 2nd of this year. Hopefully this will save our schools a little money and a lot of paper.

So far eBook devices chief sticking point is the high price. The $300+ range of the Kindle and Sony Reader turns off all but the most avid gadgetphile, book proprietor. Maybe the $259 eSlick by Foxit will find more success even though it opts for a lower price rather than fancy connectivity or e-ink backlighting. It’s still slim at .4-inches thick and ships with 128MB of internal memory along with a 2GB SD card. The unit can even function as a MP3 player. So wanna-be eBook owner, is the $259 price right? Or does it still need to drop a bit more?

Foxit via PC World

Sony’s got a new Reader in the PRS-700 and that Reader, it’s got a touchscreen. Simply slide your dirty, smudge-inducing finger across the six-inch screen and watch as the e-inked pages magically turn, just like a real book. Or use that same finger to enter notes and/or highlight text. There’s also a stylus for people like me who have weird issues with touchscreens. And for those of you who like to read in the dark, the PRS-700 sports LED illumination emanating from either side of the screen.

Total weight is 10 ounces, battery life’s good for more than eight hours, and storage should top out at around 350 books (plus anything else you can fit into the SD card or Memory Stick expansion slots).

The Reader will set you back around $400 sometime in November.

[via DVICE]