Category — Ebooks

April 14, 2012 — Michael E. Cohen talks about the DOJ suit against Apple and five publishers, Amazon, and Apple’s iBooks Author app.

I have a bone to pick with ebook publishers and the developers of ebook reader software. Read all about it on TidBITS: http://tidbits.com/article/12919

Kindle Warning

It’s not clear, really, in terms of what they have access to; mostly it just states you’re leaving the library’s site and going to an unnamed third-party site that does not share the library’s privacy policy.

I wish they’d tell people up front that Amazon gets your email, the title and associated metatdata of the book you are borrowing, and the due date, and that Amazon will email you to tell you that the book is due in X days (usually 2) and offer to sell you a copy. I also wish that they required you to opt-in, or at least offer an opt-out.

Peachpit has posted an article by me about my love for books, and the iPad:

Lisa L. Spangenberg, coauthor of The iPad 2 Project Book, readily confesses to being nuts about books. Like many of us, she is gradually becoming more comfortable with substituting digital reading for paperbacks and hardbacks, but she is already hopelessly in love with the many free (or very cheap) apps that let lovers of reading explore the written world in a whole new way.

There are so many super iPad apps for readers and bibliophile’s that I’ll be posting about some apps that I had to remove from the Peachpit article because it was already quite lengthy. In the meantime, head on over to Peachpit to read The Best iPad Apps for Book Lovers.

Stanza, the free ereader for iOS was broken, quite badly, by the iOS 5 update. Since Lexicycle was purchased by Amazon, Stanza had remained moribound (the previous update to Stanza for iOS was nine months ago). But today Amazon released an update for iOS 5, and it does seem to be working.

You can read about the likely EOL of Stanza for iOS via Macworld.

It’s a shame; Stanza is really quite an elegant reader.

Via Librarian by Day Bobbi Newman (who tweets as @librarianbyday):

It is pretty easy to “extend” the due date of the library ebook you check out to your kindle, just turn your wireless connection off until you’re done with it. This will allow you to keep reading the book until you’re done. The title won’t expire until you reactivate your wireless connection.

Ms Newman notes that the “buy this book” note from Amazon that arrives three days before the book is due is a useful reminder to shut off your connection until you’ve read the book.

This is more practical for readers using the Kindle reader, or using the Kindle app on an iPad or iPhone to read a library book, of course, but still awfully useful.

Amazon and OverDrive have begun rolling out a joint service that provides Kindle books to public library patrons. The service is integrated into the OverDrive-managed interface that over 11,000 community libraries already use to present a library’s ebook, PDF, and audiobook holdings to their patrons; when patrons browse a library’s digital collection, Kindle books now appear as one of the available download options. (This is not to say that every book has a Kindle version, of course: which books are available in which formats depends on the library’s contract with OverDrive.)

To check out Kindle library books, library users need an account at a public library that provides the OverDrive ebook service. On an iPad, a user goes to the library’s ebook Web site in Safari (in my case, for example, I go to the Santa Monica Public Library’s page at ebook.smpl.org). The browsing and checkout process is similar to that described in our 99¢ ebook, Borrow library ebooks on your iPad, until the user actually gets to the book download page. Then, instead of clicking the Download button that appears for EPUB books, one clicks a Get for Kindle button. This opens the Amazon site in Safari, and, once the user signs in, the site presents the same interface shown when a Kindle book is purchased: the user chooses the Kindle, or other Kindle-compatible device, to which the book is sent.

To return a book to the library, or to download it to additional Kindle devices or apps, one uses the Manage My Kindle page on Amazon’s site. The available management options for public library books includes a return option in addition to the other options.

Given the well-known drawbacks of the OverDrive Media Console EPUB reader, the addition of Kindle books to a public library’s ebook holdings means that iPad users can now use the much friendlier free iPad Kindle app instead.

Screen shot from iTunes taken at 2:23 pm today; three of the books my colleagues Michael E. Cohen and Dennis Cohen wrote are in the iBooks Top Computers and Internet Paid Books.

Thanks people who bought our books; thanks Peachpit for being a great publisher. I’ll be sending out review copies this week; thanks to Peachpit for those, too.

iPad Project Singles, based on The iPad 2 Project Book, are ebooks containing complete step-by-step iPad projects.

iPad Project Singles are great way to sample the style of The iPad 2 Project Book. Each iPad Project Single contains a stand-alone project that is not covered in the iPad Project books.

The singles are available as ebooks only, from the iBooks Bookstore on your iOS device, and in the iTunes Store on your computer. Each iPad Project Single costs only .99 cents.

The first three iPad Project Singles are:

Borrow Library e-books for Your iPad. By Lisa L. Spangenberg and Michael E. Cohen.

Build a Comicbook (and PDF) Library for Your iPad. By Dennis R. Cohen.

Convert your E-books to the EPUB format for your iPad. By Dennis R. Cohen.

My co-writer Michael E. Cohen got me using Smile Software’s TextExpander because not only does TextExpander make writing on my Mac easier, the iPad app TextExpander Touch makes writing on an iPad much, much easier, and reduces labor and keystrokes.

But I really began to benefit from TextExpander after reading Michael Cohen’s Take Control of TextExpander book.

Chuck Joiner’s popular podcast features an interview with Michael this week. You can enjoy the dulcet tones of Michael’s voice in the audio version of the podcast at http://www.macvoices.com/wordpress/macvoices-1175-michael-e-cohen-takes-control-of-textexpander/. Or, if you wish to gaze at his striking visage as well, go to the video version at http://macvoices.tv/macvoicestv-1164-michael-e-cohen-takes-control-of-textexpander/.