For the book industry, 2009 is rapidly becoming the Year of the E-Book. There have been major developments involving Google, of course, but also Barnes & Noble and the Internet Archive. New readers are on the market and more are to come. You can learn about these developments from a wealth of material on the Web, including a diversity of videos. The following post may be just what you need to consider whether e-books and e-book readers are technologies you’d like to try.

Nicholson Baker and Robert Darnton

Popular author with an interest in libraries — famous historian and director of Harvard University Libraries.

	Baker, Nicholson.  “A New Page.”  The New Yorker 85, no. 23 (August 3, 2009): 24-30. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker
	Darnton, Robert. “On the ropes? Robert Darnton’s Case for Books.” Publisher’s Weekly 256, no. 37 (September 14, 2009). http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6696290.html

Free E-Books, Some Sources

Adobe Digital Editions Sample Library
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/library/

Google Books (Select Advanced Search.)
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=war
Before you search, select “public domain.”  Either PDF or ePub works well.

Google Books Mobile
http://books.google.com/m
For iPhone and Android.  While these books were already available on Google Book Search, these new mobile editions are optimized to be read on a small screen.

Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
Select from Computer Generated Files, bottom of the screen.  For Digital Editions, use the ePub format.

Bookserver (The Internet Archive)
http://www.archive.org/bookserver
A lending and vending system for e-books.  It “ will allow users to find, buy, or borrow digital books from sources all across the web. The system, built on an open architecture and using open book formats, promises that the books housed there will work on any device whether that’s a laptop, PC, smartphone, game console, or one of the myriad of e-Readers like Amazon’s Kindle.”  For context read cnet News’ “Internet Archive’s Bookserver could “dominate” Amazon” (19 October 2009): http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10378573-52.html.

What’s Out There? Formats and Readers

An Overview of Current Readers
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

eBook Reader Guide
http://ebook-reader-guide.com/
Compares a large array of readers.

E-Books Come in Different Formats

Wikipedia’s Comparison of E-Book Formats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats

More on E-Book Formats
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_formats
The formats your reader can handle will determine the e-books you can read.  To find conversion programs, conduct a Google search, entering “convert” and “the name of the format you would like to convert.”  To convert ePub format, for instance, enter: epub convert.

SONY

Sony PRS-505
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE2q3_bwUZ4
A detailed overview.

Sony Touch Edition PRS-600
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWl60GNcQIw

Sony Daily Edition – Wireless (The Latest in Sony Readers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23b8-ozAGB0
A direct challenge to the Kindle: good images and impartial comparisons and teaming up with Google.

AMAZON

Kindle DX
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myqkadSYT2Q

Kindle 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgxSR72TWrY
Text-to-speech demonstration.

Kindle 2
http://www.amazon.com
Click on the Kindle image at the bottom of the Web page, see the two videos: A Guided Tour and Amazon Kindle (testimonials).

Mobipocket
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp?Language=EN
These books will work on a Kindle – among other readers,  Mobipocket Reader software, a universal reader for PDAs. The Mobipocket software package is free and consists of various publishing and reading tools for PDA, Smartphones, cellular phones and e-book devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Java ME, BlackBerry, Psion, Kindle and iLiad).  There is a reader software version for personal computers running on Microsoft Windows.  It allows you to import different file formats, among them HTML, PDF, OEB, CHM , TXT and Microsoft Office formats.  Unencrypted Mobipocket books can be read on Mac OS X and the iPhone using Lexcycle Stanza or Calibre, third-party programs.  (Description from the Wikipedia.)

Barnes and Noble

Nook: “The World’s Most Advaned eBook Reader”
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/?cds2Pid=30919

Nook Demonstrated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezlLHKktf9I

Plastic Logic

Plastic Logic Flexible Display Demonstration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0znv3V-GsNk
How flexible is the display?  Very.

Plastic Logic Reader – Open and Flexible (Literally)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOWQvrgdZRE

What Makes Plastic Logic Different?
http://tinyurl.com/6jndaq
What makes this different from a Kindle?  Many things.

Teaming Up with Barnes and Noble
http://tinyurl.com/l36ngk
A very good general overview and – again – the differences from the Kindle

Apple’s iTouch and iPhone

Using the Touch or Phone a Reader
http://cnettv.cnet.com/use-your-iphone-e-book-reader/9742-1_53-50004447.html

eReader.com
http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm
Software and bookstore.

Stanza Tutorial
http://blip.tv/file/1705824
A free app that allows you to read e-books.

Safari
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysWBfaPZs94
Safari: the Web browser.

Kindle Books for iPhone and iPod Touch
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000301301
Buy a book from the Kindle Store optimized for Safari on your iPhone or iPod touch and get it auto-delivered wirelessly.