Nate Hoffelder

The Kindle Fire HD is Amazon’s flagship device, so one might expect that Amazon’s own native apps would be the best at their tasks – on this tablet, anyway. That is not true, and as I was reading a new review of the KFHD I began to realize quite how wrong that idea was.

Marcello, the webmaster for Project Gutenberg, posted his own brief rant on the PG website. I’m not linking to it here because it’s not a terribly useful review (and I don’t want to hold him up for ridicule), but I did want to pick up and reiterate a point.

I think you should read Epub on the Kindle Fire HD.

Marcello’s review was written in the heat, shortly after he encountered a number of issues with the Kindle Fire HD.  Some of his anger came from the ads but he was also bothered by how difficult it was to download ebooks from Project Gutenberg in order to read on the Kindle Fire HD.

And he was right; it is difficult.

Whether through a deliberate design decision or mere indifference, Amazon has made it really hard to download and read DRM-free ebooks on the Kindle Fire HD. You can download a Kindle or Mobi ebook and open it, but if you want the ebook to show up in your personal docs you will need to use a file manager to copy the ebook from one folder to another.

That tedious work is something that the KFHD should do for you; it’s not something that the average user should have to bother with, not when it comes to day to day operations.

This kind of file management nonsense is a good part of the reason why I use Aldiko reading app as my main reading app, and it is also why my library is centered on Epub, not Kindle ebooks.

I like Aldiko because first, the formatting options are wonderful, but also because it is so easy to download DRM-free ebooks and open them in the app – far easier than any of the Kindle apps on any of my Android tablets.

Whenever I try to open an Epub on a tablet (after this app has been installed), a menu will pop up with several options. One option will be to import the ebook into Aldiko. With one click the ebook is added to Aldiko’s library and I can find it with the other ebooks I have downloaded.

Guess what? This easy download process works with ebooks from Project Gutenberg, O’Reilly, Munsey’s, or even my calibre ebook library. That means that Aldiko fits in both with how I like to manage my existing ebook collection as well as how I might get the free ebooks I happen across in the future.

I suppose this sounds a little weird, but Amazon has forced me into using a different reading app even on their own hardware.

The Kindle app on the Kindle Fire HD is really only good for reading ebooks I get from Amazon. And since I am going to remove the DRM from those ebooks anyway before adding them to my calibre library, I don’t see a reason to download them to my KFHD at all.

In fact, I’ve gone so far as to advise that Marcello tell KFHD owners to download Aldiko and read the Epub version of whatever ebooks they get from Project Gutenberg. The extra step of downloading and installing Aldiko is a small amount of work but I think it’s worth it.

If you would like to do the same, you can find Aldiko here. That is the latest version of the free Aldiko app and it is hosted on Aldiko’s support site.

P.S. I have also added Aldiko to my 5 Apps for the Kindle Fire HD post. That is a measure of how strongly I feel about this.

Have you been following the latest Epub3 news and regretted not being about to play with it yourself because you didn’t have an iThing or didn’t want to install Chrome? I have a treat for you.

There’s a new cloud version of Readium. It’s still strictly in beta, and you’re not able to upload your own ebooks. But if you want to see the latest features enabled by Epub3, now you can read several of the demo Epub3 files from the IDPF archive.

Readium was launched by the IDPF in February of this year. It was originally intended as a proof of concept app which developers could compare their own home-built Epub3 reading apps to, but it has since been adopted by some readers and institutions.

In fact, just a few days ago Benetech announced that their new accessible browser based reading app, which is used by thousands of visually impaired readers, was now based on Readium. That app was modified heavily and tweaked to fill Benetech’s needs, and at least some of the improvements which Benetech made will be integrated back into the core Readium app.

You can find the Readium Cloud Reader here. I was just playing with it in Firefox, to be honest it is rather buggy. But it is an interesting option, and it is going to get better.

Readium Cloud Reader

So Apple unveiled iBooks 3.0 yesterday and it is difficult to describe my disappointment.

I was expecting this update to be part of Apple’s big education announcement and include complete support for Epub3.  Or at the very least I was expecting more features to be supported, but it doesn’t look like that happened.

I’ve been playing with the new iBooks app yesterday and this morning and so far as I can tell it did not add any new support for Epub 3. Even though iBooks Author is supposed to have better support for creating math equations, the iBooks app clearly doesn’t have similar support for displaying the equations. MathML clearly is not supported; I tried the requisite Epub3 sample and I still cannot see the equations.

Update: I’ve gotten a report that MathML is supported. Baldur checked one of the Epub3 demo files on his iPad 3 and the equations did show up. I still cannot see them on my iPad 2.

I’m also not seeing any change in how well iBooks supports things like Javscript, testing widgets, or other interactive features found in the Epub3 spec.

But one thing I have noticed is that the app seems a lot slower on my iPad 2. For the larger ebooks I have seen a noticeable slowdown in responsiveness, an increase time to open an ebook, and even a lag in the time it takes to turn the page.

But at least this app does have access to new dictionaries for German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Simplified Chinese (iOS6 required). And the app can now receive free updates to purchased ebooks – including new chapters, corrections, and other improvements. There are also new sharing options (the usual Facebook, Twitter, email, Messages).

IMO none of the new features outweigh the poorer performance. Nor does the new scrolling mode, though I am amused to see that feature be added.

Scrolling pages is a viewing mode which PDF apps have had for a while now.  The reason it’s still around after all these years is that it is useful for certain types of reading, and that’s why Apple added it to iBooks. But it’s not as pretty as the faux page turn which Apple integrated into iBooks, so when Apple added scrolling mode they decided, for the first time in a long while, to let function (features) win out over form (prettiness). I find that amusing.

In all honesty this update is one step forward, 2 steps back. I wish I could downgrade.

When it comes to ebooks there is often a difference between ownership of an account at an ebookstore and using it. We have all long winked at the idea that a single account might be shared between several members of a household, but in light of yesterday’s news about Amazon killing an account over violations of their policy this topic deserves a deeper look.

Amazon closed that Kindle account in a manner which was a complete cock-up but technically correct under their rules and procedures. As some Amazon drone saw it, that Kindle owner had violated a rule which necessitated the Kindle owner being cut off from her ebooks.

Luckily this closure was later reversed (thanks to the public outcry and general stupidity of the decision). And as terrible as that was, there was  a lesson in this. If we’re going to be subject to the whims of CS drones don’t you think we should know the specifics of the rules?

This brings me to Kobo. Paul Durrant, a fellow ebook enthusiast whom I know through MobileRead Forums, decided last week to push Kobo to explain the specific details of the T&C we all agree to.

Kobo’s contract with users is fairly standard boilerplate, and there was one particular clause which  says that a "Registered Users" cannot share the ebooks, yada, yada, yada. It’s boilerplate, but if you cannot guess what it says click on the link above.

The thing is, the only person who is  "Registered Users" is the one whose name is on the account. So naturally this raises questions about whether someone’s spouse can use the account. Now that is an interesting question, isn’t it?

A straightforward reading of the T&C says that you cannot share an account between several people, something which is quite common.

Paul wanted to know if that was really what Kobo meant to disallow when they wrote the contract. And after he sent several emails and received 2 irrelevant replies, this was what he was told:

Legally, only the account holder has license to use the material.

That’s a very interesting answer, because it means that there are potentially millions of Kobo users currently in violation of Kobo’s T&C. They are all at risk of having their account closed and losing access to their ebooks.

But what’s even more interesting is that apparently Kobo expects you to buy a separate copy of an ebook for each person in your household who want to read it!

Heck, that’s something I didn’t even do for paper books, and it’s certainly not something I’m going to start doing for ebooks. And while I’m sure it’s some publishers wishing for this more than Kobo, this still came from Kobo customer service and the Kobo T&C.

It’s Kobo’s CS dept that expects you to buy multiple copies of an ebook. To be honest this almost feels like something out of The Right to Read (by Richard Stallman):

For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.

Kobo fits right in, don’t they?

I suppose Kobo is going to revise their T&C, but as it stands many people are currently in violation. They are at risk of losing everything they bought in the Kobo ebookstore (another argument in favor of removing DRM).

But the question I find most interesting is this: Why was that clause in the T&C? It goes against how we all know that paper books are used, so it should be pretty obvious that ebooks would be used in a similar manner.

Don’t you wish Kobo had thought about the terms of the contract before writing the boilerplate?

I do.

Here’s something interesting.

Last weekend I repeated a rumor that Apple’s 23 October press event might have something to do with iBooks. I didn’t put much weight in the rumor at the time but today it looks like I am wrong. A reader has tipped me to some recent changes in iTunes. A number of ebooks listed in iTunes are now saying that they require iBooks 3.0.

A Google search has turned up 6 titles with this requirement. The ebooks come from a variety of publishers and and support a wide variety of languages (Chinese, Urdu, and Arabic). This is a rather curious bit of news, considering that iBooks is still available as v2.2. This most recent update only came out last month and it added support for iOS 6.

What’s more, a French blog has reported that there is a 7th title which requires iBooks 3.0. That’s one I cannot see in the Google search results. I wonder how many other titles require the new app?

Update: And here is another.

In any case, I don’t see what it is about the next version of iBooks that these ebooks would need, and that’s a good thing. It means there will be at least one new detail to be revealed at the Apple event 3 days from now.

We already knew that we would likely see the iPad Mini for the first time, and we already knew that it probably would cost $249. Combine these 3 details and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Apple is making a deeper push into the education market.

The iPad costs more than most schools are happy with, and even the iPad 2 costs too much. Now with a smaller $250 iPad Mini Apple will be poised to go after a more budget-minded market segment.

P.S. See, this was why Amazon unveiled Kindle Whispercast a couple days ago. Amazon got a hint that this was coming and decided to preempt Apple.

Update: Liz Castro connected me with another ebook developer who has been making ebooks for iBooks 3.0 for the past few days. He has been tweeting his progress and one thing he’s already noticed is that iBooks 3.0 appears to offer more Epub3 support. The fixed layout spec in Epub 3 requires the latest version of iBooks, only Apple hasn’t released it yet.

It’s not clear yet how much of Epub3 is supported in iBooks 3.0, but my guess is that Apple is going to support the complete spec. In calling it 3.0 Apple is signalling that the new version of iBooks is a major revision. It also brings the numbering in sync with Epub 3, and while that could be just a marketing trick, it might also be intended as a sign that Apple supports the newer features found in Epub3.

Curiously enough, Apple does support some Epub3 features in the current version of iBooks. But not all features were supported, so this new release is a good sign.

Remember how Amazon used to make a big deal about the Kindle Millions Club, a group of self-published authors who have each sold more than a million Kindle ebooks? They have not announced any in a while (I guess the novelty wore off), but the idea must still seem fresh and new to B&N.

Barnes & Noble sent out a press release today touting Barbara Freethy as being the first self-published author to sell a million copies of her ebooks via PubIt. Freethy is the author of 31 novels, including the 17 titles from her backlist as well as 3 new works which she has uploaded to sell in the B&N Nook ebookstore.

According to her blog, this milestone comes a few short months after a similar one in the Kindle Store, making this author the first to proclaim achieving the one million mark in both major ebookstores.

Note, though, that Amazon hasn’t announced her induction into the Kindle Millions Club. I guess Amazon lost interest after the first score of authors.

Still, congratulations are in order. Barbara has achieved a goal that many other authors would trade their souls for. Well Done!

Remember how last month E-ink showed off a smartphone prototype and promised that someone was working on the idea? I just found one.

Charbax is in China at the moment and he got his hands on the latest product from the Chinese ereader maker Onyx.  This is a straight smartphone design, not the dual sided demo unit which we saw a while back. But it is also a working unit with Wifi, 3g, and it runs Android. The prototype doesn’t have a name yet, so right now Onyx is calling it the E-ink phone.

I’m not sure what size the screen is, but it looks to me like this is the 4.3″ screen found on the Trekstor Pyrus Mini. But I can tell you that the screen is flexible, the touchscreen is capacitive, and the battery life is expected to be 1 month.

The smartphone shown below is the very first prototype, and this video s the first time it’s been seen in public. No official release date has been set but Onyx plans to officially launch it some time next year.

Anyone who has been following ereader news has probably been expecting/fearing  today’s news. the Kindle DX is only available on the Amazon website as a used device (it’s not even available as a refurb).

Amazon is no longer selling the Kindle DX, and based on their general disinterest in updating the hardware or software, I don’t expect it to come back into stock. This ereader was released in 2009, updated in 2010, and then basically ignored since then. After the price cut a few weeks ago, and now an OOS message (with no expected return date), it looks like this ereader is no longer going to be available.

Amazon first unveiled the Kndle DX in June 2009, making this 9.7″ ereader the third Kindle released as well as Amazon’s first large screen model.  This was the ereader which Amazon expected to be adopted as a textbook platform.  And in order to promote that goal, Amazon also announced that June that several major US universities were going to run pilot programs using the Kindle DX in the classroom.

Yeah, that didn’t turn out well. Amazon learned the hard way that when you pitch a product for the student market one, it needs to be usable by the visually impaired, and two, it needs to actually function adequately at its intended purpose. The Kindle DX failed on both counts.

Several lawsuits were filed in late 2009 by visually impaired students and the National Federation for the Blind. In general, the universities were faulted for failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This law specified that the disabled students were to be given equal access, and that has long been interpreted both by the NFB, the Dept of Justice, and quite a few judges to mean that schools and institutions can’t buy radical new tech if the visually impaired cannot use it. This interpretation of the ADA has long been a thorn in the side of ereader makers and it is still tripping them up. Witness the recent settlement by the Sacramento Public Library as an example of the law being enforced, and the K3 (Kindle Keyboard) as evidence of Amazon’s response to the lawsuits in 2009 (that ereader is ADA compliant).

But even if the Kindle DX had been accessible for the visually impaired, it was still not all that usable as a textbook carrying ereader. The several partner universities released reports in 2010 on their various pilot programs, and for the most part students didn’t care to use the device.

Universities as diverse as Reed College, UVA, and Princeton (as well as several later pilots like the one at the University of Washington) all reported that students didn’t care to use their digital textbooks on the Kindle DX. Leaving aside the difficulty in getting the text into the Kindle format so it could be used on the KDX (this isn’t nearly as much trouble now), many students found the Kindle DX generally slow to respond as well as not terribly comfortable to use.

Students commonly needed to make a lot of annotations and then access them quickly and the KDX simply couldn’t match the speed of a student with a pen  in their hand.  The students who participated in the pilot programs also reported that the Kindle DX couldn’t turn the page fast enough nor jump around inside a textbook as quickly as they needed. And then there’s the issue of having only one screen to display several textbooks for a course, but that is a problem all ereader share.

All in all, the Kindle DX turned out not to be nearly as useful as the 6″ Kindle, but I suspect it was more successful than we might think – at least, Amazon sold enough units to justify an update in 2010 and continuing to keep it in stock.

Given that this ereader debuted less than a year before the iPad, and yet managed to stick around for 3 years when most every other large screen ereader died in early to mid-2010, Amazon must have done something right.

Nevertheless, I will not mourn the passing of this ereader. I have one and the iPad (or most any Android tablet) is frankly a better value.

Goodnight Gracie.

One common justification for high ebook prices is the claim that ebook sales tend to increase at the cost of sales of paper books. While that is certainly true in my case, a study which was recently released by the University of Hamburg suggests that I might be an outlier.

This study, which was released with the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, shows that 22% of digital readers also buy 3 or more hardback books a year. That is more than the average readers who don’t use ebooks; only 15% buy those 3 or more hardbacks a year. The report also showed that the digital reader tended to buy as many paperbacks as they did before adopting ebooks, though there was slightly more purchases among some digital readers.

This report also revealed that digital readers spent around 50 euros a year on ebooks, while the survey group as a whole spent about 115 euros on paper books. And while it was not the preferred site, almost everyone had bought from Amazon at least once (79%). The most shopped bookstore, much to my surprise, was Thalia (24%), followed by Weltbild/Hugendubel (20%), iTunes/iBooks(19%), Project Gutenberg (7%), and Libri.de (7%) .

I don’t have many more details from the study (I’m still looking for it), but I do have one interesting detail. This study is based on a survey of 2,500 German readers, and 1157 read ebooks. That’s a remarkably high percentage. The latest data in the US dates from this Spring, and that showed that only about 30% of US readers had adopted ebooks.  Hopefully this is a sign that ebooks are catching on and catching up in Germany.

via Welt.de

image by stu_spivack

Remember how I wrote yesterday that a hack was in the works for Sony’s new ereader? It turns out that I was about 12 hours ahead of the actual hack being released. I think I should have waited.

The complete multi-step hack was posted this morning on The-eBook.org. It requires updating your T2, jailbreaking it, and then installing a new set of apps (here). The process takes a bit of time but it does work, as you can see from the image at right.

But I’m not sure it is worth doing just yet. My T2 is surprisingly unstable. Virtually every app from the web browser to the search widget to the Amazon Appstore client has crashed at one point or another. I have not even tried to install any new apps and I’m not planning to do so.

The set of apps i installed are basically the same set of instal files as used on the earlier PRS-T1. It includes the Zeam launcher, CoolReader, FBReader,  Dropbox, and other apps. These apps work, so at the very least I have a minimum function tablet- not that it is worth much.

Now that I have hacked it I know that this ereader is running Android 2.2. That’s rather disappointing considering that the previous model, the T1, is also running Android  2.2. Sony cares so little about this device that they didn’t even bother to update the OS it is running on. Okay, the average user wasn’t going to be able to use the features of the newer versions of Android, but they would still benefit from the under the hood improvements found in newer versions of Android.

If you have the T2, I would recommend waiting for a more stable version of the hack. And if you’re thinking about getting this ereader, I’d go for the earlier model instead. It’s cheaper now and has a headphone jack, which the T2 does not.

But if you are dead set on hacking your PRS-T2, here are the instructions.

1. Update your Sony Reader to the latest firmware.
2. This will take a will to download and run, so go get this ZIP file and this ZIP file while you are waiting.
3. Reboot.
4. Plug your T2 back in to the USB. Click yes on the screen.
5. UnZIP the jailbreak file. Find the file labeled flash_reader. Run it.
6. Reboot.
7. Plug your T2 back in to the USB. Click yes on the screen.
8. UnZIP the minimal-root-zeam file. Find the file labeled flash_reader. Run it.
9. Reboot.
10. When asked to choose between "Home" and "Zeam launcher",

At this point you should be looking at a standard Android home screen. If not, make sure you updated the ereader and then repeat steps 3 through 9.

When txtr unveiled the Beagle ereader yesterday I fell n love. It’s a great looking minimalist device with a 5″ screen which is going to be sold cheap, run on a pair of AAA batteries, and not require any cables at all. It’s a smartphone companion which connects via Bluetooth.

The device was based on a great idea, but as yesterday wore on one of my readers noticed that the Beagle had a couple serious shortcomings. These were details which I missed because I was insufficiently pessimistic about how txtr would screw up the new ereader.

It turns out that the Beagle is limited to only storing 5 ebooks at a time and it is not an ereader so much as it is a page viewer. It’s running on a very weak (and cheap) CPU which can do little more than show page images. This explains part of the reason why txtr’s Android app is required to transfer ebooks; that app has to convert the text into page images before they are transferred to the Beagle.

On a related note, this means that this device, which is not actually an ereader, does not support the Epub and PDF claimed in the press release and product page.

While this is the first time I have seen this type of conversion on what was intended to be a mainstream device, it is not exactly new. In the past I have come across projects to turn portable DVD players and digital picture frames into faux ereaders. The first step in loading the ebooks was to convert them to page images which could then be viewed on the device via some type of image viewer. This is an old trick which I think dates back to the late 1990s.

So why is this an issue?

First, the so called Beagle ereader is missing a lot of the basic features we have come to expect like a TOC, resizeable text, and so on. But the greater issue here is that txtr could have released a real ereader for only $15 to $20 more – a negligible increase in price considering what would be gained.

While that might seem like a lot, given that the Beagle sells for under 10 euros, it’s really not. That 10 euro price is going to be subsidized by carriers, and the actual parts cost for the Beagle is somewhere above $50. While I don’t have actual figures, I do know something about the cost of the screen, and if we take the estimated costs for Amazon’s $79 Kindle as a guide we have enough info for a back of the envelope calculation.

That Kindle was estimated to cost $85 to make, but for now lets ignore most of the items on the list and focus on just 2 details: the screen and the logic board.

Amazon reportedly paid $30 for each E-ink screen. That figure is off, but I cannot say by how much (it’s confidential). But I can say that txtr will likely be paying a lot more for the 5″ screens. They’re not buying in as high of a volume as Amazon so they won’t get the same discounts as Amazon. And that means txtr could be paying at least $40 a screen, and the cost might be above $50.

That screen is the single largest cost for the Beagle – or for any other E-ink ereader for that matter. Another major cost is the logic board. This contains the CPU, Flash storage, and other chips which make the ereader go.

Amazon’s $79 Kindle was estimated to have $30 in chips inside, all packed on a single board the size of a laying card. Assuming that the Beagle went with cheaper components, it likely used a logic board which cost $10 to $15.

And that means, folks, that the Beagle could have been a real ereader like the cheap Kindle had txtr spent an extra $15.

The decision to not use the more expensive chips might make some sense given how txtr expects the Beagle to be used but it is still a false economy. They pared the costs down to the point where the lost abilities outweigh the savings.

If you still don’t agree with my conclusion, let me give you a counter example. The Pyrus Mini, a new ereader with a 4.3″ screen, is going to cost 50 euros. This is a very basic ereader, but unlike the Beagle it actually supports Epub and PDF. Admittedly, Trekstor has earned the epithet Dreck-Store in Germany, suggesting that they make awful products, but it is still cheap.

If Trekstor can afford to make and sell the Pyrus Mini for 50 euros then txtr could have made the Beagle into a real ereader. And that is why I am pissed with txtr. While they have great ideas, apparently one of the steps in bringing those ideas to market involves screwing up on a simple and basic point.

This is something they seem to do with all their hardware. For example, the original txtr eReader never made it to market because txtr couldn’t figure out how to get the costs down. That thing stayed at a price above 300 euros, and that just wasn’t practical in 2010 (or any time since).

P.S. If you’re thinking that transferring the images over Bluetooth is slow, you might be wrong. These will be grayscale images with a minimum of data. The file sizes should be quite small and thus quick to transfer.

A few minutes ago I showed you the new ereader from Bookeen, the one which was following the trend of lighted higher resolution screens.

Txtr, a German ebook developer, went in the other direction. They’ve just unveiled the Beagle, their new cheap ereader. This baby has a 5″ (800×600) E-ink screen and measures less than 5mm thick. It’s being pitched as the smallest ereader in the world, and for once that marketing hype might be true.

This ereader fills a volume of only 100CC, so while it might have a larger footprint and weight than the 111 gram Trekstor Pyrus Mini, it very likely has a smaller volume.

The Beagle doesn’t have Wifi or a touchscreen, but it does have something almost as good.  It has Bluetooth, and that means you should be able to pass ebooks from your Android smartphone or tablet – no cable required. That is a really smart move; txtr just made it easy for anyone to add the Beagle to their existing stable of mobile devices without having to worry about the hassle of another set of cables. But the press release does say that this is Android only (the app requires Android 4.0), and that could be an issue.

Update: A txtr rep has shown up in the comments and he says that the txtr iOS app will also soon get support for transferring ebooks to the Beagle – PCs too.

Power is supplied by a couple AAA batteries, and txtr is boasting that you can read for a year on a single charge. The Beagle also comes with 4GB of storage (no card slot), and the pared down hardware has resulted in the Beagle weighing in at only 128 grams.

Final Update: And here’s the catch. One reader noticed (and txtr has confirmed) that the Beagle can only carry 5 ebooks at a time. They have to be pre-rendered by the Android app before being transferred over. (Thanks, Flobber!)

As for price, the 10 to 20 euros mentioned before is the subsidized price; I don’t know what the actual retail will be. If you want the lower price you will need to contact a cell network which carries it and buy it from them – with contract, probably.

Second Update: txtr’s promo video is finally live on Vimeo. it had been locked when this post was published.

txtr beagle from Yvan Go on Vimeo.

There had been previous attempts to sell ereaders via the major mobile networks, including Amazon’s ongoing partnership with AT&T,  but so far as I know none had been all that successful in selling lots of devices. I think the txtr Beagle could change that.

Txtr has come up with a device which complements most any Android smartphone in size, weight, and function. It practically sells itself.

I’ve always been a fan of libraries, whether they are built into the flatbed of a truck in Mexico D.F. or whether they’ve grown to cover the entire city of Klagenfurt, Austria. Today’s library can be found in Romania, where Vodaphone has converted a subway station into a digital library.

Throughout the month of October, riders who visit the Pia?a Victoriei metro station will be able to scan QR codes and dwonload ebooks and audiobooks. This project, which was launched in collaboration with Editura Humanitas, offers readers samples of 49 ebook titles in Epub and PDF as well as 10 audiobook titles. You can find the ebooks here, The selection is a mix of original and translated works.

As clever as this idea is, it is really nothing more than a marketing ploy. I think it would have been better served if they had offered free public domain titles instead of a limited number of samples. Now that would have had a positive effect by getting people to read.

Universign.ro via eBookFriend.ly

On Monday I reported that you could find Kobo’s 2 new ereaders in some stores in the UK and in Canada.  Like I noted at the time, the new devices are not available on the Kobo website nor can you find them in US stores (they’re not even listed on some sites).

Kobo has confirmed today that they screwed up the launch. They have cheerfully announced over on their blog that both the Kobo Mini and Kobo Glo are available in some stores in the UK and Canada.

That’s basically what I reported 4 days ago, but do you see what is missing?

Kobo hasn’t released any details on when their retail partners in the US, NZ, Australia, or elsewhere will get the ereaders (though I am told Fnac has them in stock). Nor has Kobo said when we will be able to order the ereader via their website.

Can you believe they’re not even available on Kobo’s own website? Sure, they’re listed, but the website still says "coming soon". And that, my dears, is a sign that something, somehow, got screwed up.

I have reached out to Cerys Goodall of Kobo for an update on when US buyers will have a chance to get the Kobo Glo and Kobo Mini. If she replies (LOL) I will update this post.

So, do you think they are having supply issues or distribution issues?

The Frankfurt Book Fair is coming up next week and it looks like there’s going to good news to share about the German ereader market.

BITKOM, a German IT trade group, has just released their estimates for ereader sales in Germany. They’re expecting to see over 800,000 units sold in 2012, more than triple (334%) the estimated sales in 2011. The sales value is believed to be more than last year (obviously), with an increase of 163% to 78 million euros.

Interesting how the sales volume doesn’t match the unit volume, isn’t it? That’s because Germany is seeing the same drop in retail prices which is being experienced in the US. Prices are being drive down by the introduction of cheap LCD based ereaders and tablets as well as cheaper and smaller ereaders like the Trekstor Pyrus Mini, which has a 4.3″ screen, or the 6″ Pyrus, which retails for 59 euros. The average price for an ereader in Germany is currently 97 euros, or down about a quarter from last year.

The German ebook market is also expected to grow significantly this year and the next, with 1.4 million units expected to be sold in 2013, an increase of 78%. The total sales volume will lag slightly behind, growing by only 65% to 128.5 million euros.