When I was at the conference last week someone told be that the publishing industry had learned from the mistakes of the recording industry and that publishers wouldn’t follow the same route of alienating readers. Today I have the misfortune to report that at least one publisher haven’t learned anything.

John Wiley, a technical and educational publisher, filed suit in federal court last week against 27 John Doe ebook pirates (PDF). These dastardly villains were all caught using a bittorrent client to pirate a Wiley "For Dummies" ebook on 18 and 19 October 2011. Let’s hope they get the electric chair.

This suit is laughable on multiple levels. Where shall I begin?

First, the cover at right belongs to a real book published by Wiley, which is itself worthy of comment about being hoist by their own petard. But I digress.

Let me cover the obvious lunacy in the filing.  Wiley’s lawyers are claiming thatn"the amount of lost revenues is enormous". Really? I don’t see how the current situation can be all that bad; it was only last month that Wiley reported that ebook sales had tripled and now accounted for 11% of revenues. Just think, if not for the pirates, ebook sales might have quadrupled! Or More!

TBH, their total revenues were down a fraction of a percent last quarter (press release), but that was by no means dire. Their revenues were up 4% at the end of last fiscal year. They’re not suffering, by any measure.

I could go on to ridicule the rest of the filing (there is some excellent hyperbole in need of deflating), but I will not. It’s actually simpler to criticize the very principle of suing individual pirates. My position on fighting piracy is simple, and I have said it before. Only fight piracy in ways that allow you to turn a pirate into a customer. If you’re not going to make money off the expense of fighting piracy then it’s not worth fighting.

Will suing individual pirates stop the rest? No. Will it turn the pirates into customers that are worth more than the lawsuit will cost? No – actually, it might cover the cost of the lawsuit. The RIAA have filed thousands upon thousands of lawsuits and they did usually keep enough coming in to cover their costs. (Curiously enough, none of the artists who performed the pirated songs ever got a cut, so arguably the RIAA just barely covered the cost of the lawsuits. *snort*)

But even if these pirates are made to pay, the PR damage might outweigh any financial gain. The RIAA have filed so many piracy lawsuits that the very concept is subject to ridicule. The RIAA have made themselves a joke for the failed efforts to thwart piracy by suing single pirates. And yes, even the RIAA decided that this lawsuit is a waste of time. That’s why they stopped.

Wiley are going to bring that label upon themselves. What’s worse is that they are going to show themselves to be people who didn’t think this through, and that they don’t really understand the technical or cultural details of bittorrent. Wiley either don’t know or don’t care that this type of lawsuit is ineffective.

And the cherry on top is that Wiley are a technical publisher; many of their customers do understand these details. A lot of us are going to snicker at Wiley as this lawsuit progresses.

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Three days ago GameStop announced that they were now selling a trio of Android tablets that came bundled games. The tablets are available on line and in some stores.

I’m 3 days behind everyone else on this story, so that would have been enough to pass on it and go write other posts. But I’ve read a couple of the posts about these tablets and I thought I could add something: first hand knowledge. Also, this story is related to one I posted last month, and I wanted to wrap it up.

You might recall that back in early September GameStop released a few details on their upcoming gaming tablet. It was supposed to be branded by GameStop and be made by a major manufacturer.  I posted on that story, and it turns out much of what I wrote was wrong. That’s okay with me; much of what GameStop said last month was also wrong.

The "GameStop branded tablet" isn’t actually carrying a GameStop brand; I know this for a fact because the "GameStop branded tablet" was launched last week, and all 3 tablets are still branded by the original manufacturers.

It was a little disappointing to find out how much was wrong about last month’s story, but I was still curious about how GameStop was handling the bundled games, retail packaging, and so on. I couldn’t find the info online so I visited my local GameStop store. One of the 3 in my area (they’re within walking distance of each other) had the tablets on display and in stock.

The 3 tablets are the base models for the Acer A100 (7″, 8GB), Asus eeePad Transformer (10″, 16GB), and the Samsung Galaxy Pad 10.1 (16GB). So far as I can tell the tablets are identical to ones sold elsewhere; they have the same hardware specs and come in the same retail box (I saw them). The only difference is that the ones sold by GameStop have 7 free games already loaded onto the Flash storage. They also have an extra sticker on the box reminding you about the free content.

Most importantly, these 3 tablets don’t cost any more than the regular retail price (same as Best Buy, Walmart, etc).  While you can find them somewhat cheaper online, the 7 free games make up for the difference.

I don’t care for gaming, and I’m not in the market for a new tablet. But if I were going to get a tablet I would definitely  get one from GameStop. I might not like any of the those 7 free games but free is free.

This was not the move I expected from GameStop, but this is also a much better idea than the plans discussed last month. I’d get one of these tablets because they are the standard retail product and thus I can check online reviews and count on the standard manufacturer’s warranty. If they had been completely rebranded by GameStop then I likely wouldn’t want one; they’d be unknown hardware and thus a greater risk.

What GameStop  have done here isn’t just to get more gaming customers into their stores; instead they will be taking tablets customers away from BB, Walmart, and other retailers with the bundle offers. This includes casual gamers, a group that is far larger than GameStop’s core customer base. And that is why this was such a smart move.

It looks like GameStop may have just kicked off a new price war for tablets. It won’t be long before someone else responds to GameStop by launching their own bundle. Things could get really interesting by Christmas.

I’ve heard the most interesting rumor today, and while I don’t know if it is true I thought it was worth sharing.

I’m sure you recall that about a month ago I posted on a leaked slide from a Barnes & Noble meeting. My source had given me proof that B&N had a new NookColor coming (I thought there were 2, but other sources disagree).

Today I have something new. This is still an unsubstantiated rumor, but I’ve gotten a hint that there’s something Nook related happening on 7 November.

Update: I now have a second source reporting that a big change is coming soon.

I’m probably jumping to the obvious conclusion, but I do have to wonder if Barnes & Noble will be holding an event 11 days from now. But we know they have a new NookColor and it has to come out eventually. Also, that week is just about the last chance that B&N has to release the new NookColor; the Kindle Fire ships soon after. (I’m not sure the new NookColor will have much of a market if it’s not available until after the Kindle Fire ships.)

On the other hand, my info comes from a retailer that they’re going to need to ready space for a new Nook display. While that’s interesting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a new Nook is coming.

Update: Check out what my second source said:

Every morning at work, we have a meeting. We discuss everything from new cafe product to books and music/dvd releases, as well as store goals. This morning, during our meeting, we were talking about this brand new NOOK department. Nook has never been considered a department, ever. Our store has went through an entire makeover the past couple weeks. We discontinued music/dvd/and audiobooks. we expanded Toys/Games to the back as a new department. in the center we took away the customer service counter and built a massive NOOK boutique. This space is HUGE, with bright lights, LED TVS, touch screen POS systems, the works. Our manager told us, this space was not designed to house just 2 nooks. He was being candid, he said, November 7th there will be a major announcement from the company. he concluded saying it was exciting times. Obviously something is coming.

Update 2: I now have a third B&N employee reporting the same thing. Yeah, I’d say it’s going to happen. Would anyone care to guess what we’ll see? I’m thinking that the original Nook might be retired because that would free up a lower price point for the Acclaim, thus enabling it to compete with the Kindle Fire.

On the other hand, look at how B&N responded to the K4. They dropped the price of the Nook Touch refurb so it matched that if the ad-subsidized K4. That suggests that the current Nook might be kept around with a price of $149 to $189, with the acclaim priced at not too much more.

Update 3: A Wall Street Journal article confirmed the expansion of the Nook Boutiques. That’s good enough for me.

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It looks like I jumped the gun yesterday when I announced a new hack for the Sony Reader. Last night the developer released a new version of the hack which added a bunch of new functionality. Most importantly, the update finally let me install new apps.

It’s been just over a week since the first proof of concept video,  and I’d say that we now have a hack that’s finally ready for the end user. I’ve installed various versions of the hack 3 or 4 times this weekend and all the installs went off without a hitch.

The hack doesn’t come with much (but now that I can install apps that 's no longer a problem). All it has at the moment is ADW Launcher, CoolReader, Dropbox, as well as a few things that we can’t use (phone, camera, etc).

If there’s an app you’d like me to try, please ask.

I now have the Kindle Android app running on my PRS-T1, and I got it from the Amazon Appstore. The app turns the page a little slower than my K4, but it does run. I’ve sent several ebooks to the T1 and I even downloaded a library book. The T1’s page turn buttons don’t work with the Kindle app, but the rest of the app works just like it should (bookmarks, highlights, etc).

I also tried Angry Birds (just because it’s there). I could download it from Amazon but I couldn’t install it. This might be due to the space  limitations; I’m told there’s a limit on how much space the T1 will provide for apps.

The install process is pretty simple. I feel comfortable in suggesting that you try it and it looks relatively foolproof.

1. Download and unzip the hack from here. Look for one that says "package installer"; that’s what you’ll need in order to install apps.
2. Plug your T1 into your PC and put it in USB mode.
3. Find the folder for the hack and double click on flash_reader.bat. Read the prompts on the screen and respond.
4. Let the T1 sit until the software finishes installing. If successful, your T1 will reboot.

If it doesn’t work, you can ask for help here. BTW, if you have already hacked the T1 then you might need to install the restore firmware first. That will remove any remaining parts of the hack.  If you don’t install the restore then the broken parts might hang around.

Okay, now that the initial joy of hacking the T1 has worn off, I’m beginning to see it in a different light. Yes, this is a $150 Android tablet with a funky screen, but so is the Nook Touch. And the Nook Touch is actually a better option because you can get it for $80 – or just over half the price of the Sony Reader PRS-T1. True, that’s the refurb price, but it comes with the same warranty and it’s only $80.

On the other hand, I am liking the buttons on the T1 as well as the general appearance. It’s a sleek looking tablet.

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Last week I was the first to find out that the Sony Reader T1 had been hacked (video), and today I am the first user to have a hacked T2 in my possession.  Early this morning I went out and bought a T1 just because of the hack. I’m still playing with it, and it looks to be rather interesting.

Update: There’s been a few major changes in the past day or so. I can now install apps.

The hack was just released Thursday night (here) by the fellow who shot the demo video, and I have to say that it feels like  it’s still a work in progress.   There wasn’t much included and I haven’t gotten anything to install (yet).

But the hack itself was easy to install, and it doesn’t replace the original firmware, of course. All it does is modify the existing software and add a number of new apps.  You get a new home screen, Cool Reader, a file manager, and a dictionary. It’s also easy to switch back and forth between the 2 home screens (press the home button).

Unfortunately, I have not been able to install any apps yet. But to be fair I only tried for 5 or 10 minutes before writing this post. I was hoping to include a photo showing the Kindle app, but no. I’m also having trouble installing the Amazon Appstore.

The other problem I encountered was that my hacked T1 is still using the default browser, and it won’t allow me to download install files. That means that I cannot simply browse a website like freeware lovers and download anything yet.  But I’m still playing with it so that might change by the end of the day.

All in all, I am comfortable with suggesting that you install the hack. It looks relatively stable and it is reversible. Even if your attempt to install the hacked firmware ends badly, you should still be able to re-install the original.

I know I’m posting this without any amazing photos, but I wanted to get the news out as fast as possible. If more people try the hack then we’ll figure out how to get around the quirks faster. You can find the instructions and a zip file with the hack here.

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Amazon has just released some technical  details on the new Kindle ebook format, which they are calling Kindle Format8. (If you were one of the people who wanted Amazon to adopt Epub, well, this is about as close as they’re going to get.)

It’s a follow-up to the previous 7 (I didn’t know there were that many) generations of the Mobipocket file format, and as you can tell from the name change Amazon is finally killing off Mobipocket.  Amazon is boasting that it adds "150 new formatting capabilities, including fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics, opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love."

Now, the Kindle file already included support for a pair of HTML5 tags, audio and video. The Kindle itself cannot support these tags, but you can use them to embed audio and video files that can be read by the Kindle iOS apps. The new file spec includes support for a number of formatting features that I’ve been wanting for a long time now as well as a number of rather exotic components that I’m not sure any one is using, even in Epub.

It’s important to remember that at this point we don’t know quite how Amazon will use the tags nor do we know which of the tags will actually end up inside the Kindle ebook file itself.

You see, Amazon has long allowed you to make ebooks using the latest valid HTML 4 tags. Amazon then took the code you supplied, threw out the formatting that wasn’t supported, and made an ebook which contained the old, funky, and limited formatting supported by the current Kindle (and old Mobipocket) apps.

Trust me, I’ve looked at the actual contents of a Kindle ebook. There is often a big difference between the source content and the ebook. In fact, the HTML5 tags that Amazon currently use in the Kindle format are not used according to spec.  Amazon did their own funky thing with the tags, and I suspect they will repeat that behavior.

Given the vast change in the supported tags, I wonder if Amazon will also make a radical change to the Kindle file itself?

Right now the standard Kindle ebook is a single file with metadata at the front, followed by one long string of text (the content of the ebook, TOC,and more), with images attached to the end. The file is often compressed, but the organization never changes.

Here’s the interesting part. If you want to support really complex formatting, it’s best to have multiple files. That’s how Epub does it; the Epub file itself is actually a ZIP file. If you unzip it you will see that it contains a bunch of different files and folders. Amazon will likely have to do the same thing with the new Kindle ebook file. Oh, joy.

BTW, you might want to replace your Kindle 2 if you still have one. The various Kindles will need a firmware update before they can support the new format, and there’s almost no chance that Amazon  will update the K2 again.

On  a related note, the K3 will very likely get the update; Amazon recently gave it support for the Kindle Cloud.

Kobo have just outed their new Android tablet on twitter. (Surprisingly, Kobo leaked this on Twitter before they put out a press release.)  It’s now up for pre-order on their website. I was the first to find that leaked listing a few weeks back, and now I bring you the Kobo Vox.

Update: Kobo have posted a video for the Vox. It’s at the end of the post.

Like we knew from the leaked listing, the Vox is a 7″ Android tablet. Screen resolution is 1024×600 (capacitive touchscreen), and it’s openly running Android v2.3 on an 800MHz CPU. It comes with 8GB Flash storage,  SD card slot, speaker, and a headphone jack.

The Vox comes with Kobo’s reading app and Kobo Pulse, their new app for the socially obsessed. There’s no mention of an app store, but it is running Gingerbread and Kobo clearly state that you can install apps.

The Vox will of course come with the usual Android apps, (browser, email, media, etc). But Kobo are also shipping it with Facebook, Twitter, RDIO (a music app), Zinio, and PressReader. Clearly they don’t plan to copy Amazon and  tie you into the Kobo ebookstore. They want to let you read content from wherever.

And of course the Vox will ship with the Kobo ebookstore, where you can buy from among 2 million plus ebooks.

The tablet is pretty much what I expected from the leaked listing, and as you can see Kobo are matching the price of the Kindle Fire. That’s smart, but also absolutely required. BTW, did you notice that Kobo also beat the ship date for the Kindle Fire and the (it’s coming eventually) Nook Color Acclaim? Good for them.

Oh, and I guess this means that the Acclaim is going to have to be pretty awesome to justify the $350 price tag that B&N were planning on. Heck, who am I kidding? The Acclaim is going to sell for less or it’s DOA.

Battery life for the Vox is 7 hours and it weighs around 400 grams. It’s listed for $199 on the Kobo website and you can get your choice of 4 colors. There’s no word yet on international availability; it looks like the Vox is only shipping to the US and Canada. (If you have a confirmed order elsewhere please let me know.)

Kobo Vox

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Mike Shatzkin wrote a post this morning on Kobo’s new partnerships (in the UK and in France) and how those deals were going to make Kobo one of the major ebookstore competitors. I had a rather interesting experience yesterday that really makes me wonder if that is true.

I went up to NYC yesterday to attend a comic book convention. While I was there, I attended a conference session on self-pub and how the aspiring writer could use Barnes & Noble’s PubIt to get their content into the Nook Store. B&N organized the session, which is why it focused so heavily on them, but the panelists did discuss B&N’s competitor, Amazon.

They mainly talked about why they didn’t like Amazon’s platform and why they preferred B&N over Amazon, but they did provide reasonably accurate info. But the most interesting detail in the discussion about the various platforms was that Kobo was never mentioned.

Not once – not even as an afterthought. All the authors and publishers on the panel talked as though there was a binary choice: Kindle vs Nook, and that tells me something about Kobo’s market presence. Admittedly, my experience could just be a marketing fail for Kobo, but it could also be a sign that they are not nearly as important as we give them credit for.

I think that the discussion I witnessed was an accurate reflection of how the panelists viewed the ebook market. Kobo isn’t even on their radar. At the very least, I would have expected Kobo to be mentioned as an alternative to Amazon on the international market but they weren’t. This leads me to wonder if  the trifecta of "Kindle, Nook, and Kobo" is really a valid statement.

I’m beginning to suspect that we call Kobo one of the major ebookstore because of the perception that they are important, not because they have a major market share. If I’m right, then the perception that Kobo is a major player comes from the echo chamber that is the publishing press. Everyone has heard enough times that Kobo is a major ebookstore that we have just come to accept it without actually looking at the numbers.

And what limited figures I have for Kobo’s market share independently support this idea. I’m told that Kobo has around 2% to 5% of the US  market, with the vast majority of the market taken up by Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and Apple coming in third with around 10%). And this figures aren’t estimates; they’re based on what publishers are discussing off the record.

What do you think?

It’s been 2 months since Thalia first announced that they were going to release a new Oyo ereader, and earlier this week they finally unveiled the the Oyo II.  The original is on the left, with the new Oyo on the right.

As you can see, the Oyo II looks pretty much like the original Oyo. It has the same button layout, 6″ Sipix screen, capacitive touchscreen, Wifi, and card slot, but the Oyo II also has 4GB Flash storage, longer battery life, as well as a faster CPU.

Thalia had it on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is wrapping up today. It’s going to ship in November, and  Thalia will carry it on all 300 of their bookstores, as well as their website. It’s also going to be available via buch.de and bol.de. Retail is 119€, which is a slight discount from the original Oyo (that sold for 139€). I’d say the price drop is likely due to the new K4 being sold in Germany for 99€.

Thalia also mentioned that they plan to release reading apps later this year, with Android coming in December and iOS app coming in January. Readers will be able to use the Android app and the Oyo II to buy directly from Thalia’s ebookstore, where they stock 300k titles with 100 thousand in German.

I think Thalia should have gotten out of the hardware end of the business.  They’re simply not big enough to be selling enough Oyo ebook readers to justify the price. I would lay odds that they are loosing money on each sale.

It would probably have been better to partner with Sony and sell the PRS-T1.  Redirecting it to the Thalia ebookstore would require minimal work and saved Thalia the development cost.

via Heise.de

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We’ve known ever since the T1 launched that it ran Android, and for the longest time everyone has been saying that it couldn’t be hacked becuase it wasn’t running a full Android install.

Clearly that’s not the case. Do you see that menu at right which shows a bunch of different reading apps? Yeah, the T1 isn’t supposed to be able to do that.

Update: And now you can hack the T1.

My newest best friend sent me a link to this video this evening. As you can see, the Sony Reader has been hacked and it’s now running AWLauncher and a bunch of different reading apps. (I kinda wish that they had included the Kindle app; that would have been funny.) The video isn’t all that great, but it does show that the T1 is well on its way to joining the Nook Touch as a 6″ Android tablet.

But the hacking is still a work in progress; not all Android apps can run on the T1. Angry Birds, for example, will crash. Still, this is excellent progress.

Update: I’ve heard back from the hacker:

The hack is in pretty early stages. Not ready for release yet. I’ve run CoolReader, FBReader, ReLaunch, AWD.Launcher, Android Terminal, that’s pretty much it. For some apps the latest and greatest version wouldn’t work (CoolReader, Terminal), but for FBReader the latest "stable" version crashes while the "experimental" 2.0 alpha works quite well.

So now that we have 2 hacked 6″ Android tablets (Nook Touch and Sony T1), which do you think is better? I’m leaning towards the Sony becuase of the extra buttons, included stylus, and becuase I think it’s a prettier design.

Thanks, kuzelnik!

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It looks like I was right 2 months back when I predicted the end of Stanza; the latest version of iOS was released yesterday and Stanza won’t run anymore.

Update: It took Amazon a month to release it, but there is an update for Stanza.

A friend took the screenshot at right. It shows the Stanza app having a rather impressive crash. To be honest, I’ve never seen such a crash before; most apps just shut down quietly.

iOS5 offers a lot of valuable improvements, new features, and other cool tricks, but it also changed enough that it broke a number of apps. Over the past 5 or so months that it has been available as a beta release, app developers have had the chance to test their apps and fix the problems they found.

But it doesn’t look like Amazon bothered to put any effort into fixing the Stanza app.

There have been numerous crash reports going back 4 or more months and yet no word from Amazon or Lexcycle on when the problems would be fixed. I’d say that is a good sign that Amazon stood back and let the new update kill the app.

All the other reading apps I’ve checked work just fine on iOS5, which means that the developers of the apps proactively worked to identify and correct any issues. Amazon did this for the Kindle app, and I know of a couple other reading apps that even mention iOS 5 in the update notices. The digital textbook developer Kno have even sent out emails warning about possible issues with their app.

This is a time where I regret being right. I had hoped, for the sake of Stanza’s users, that Amazon would come through in the end. Nope. Stanza was last updated back in February 2011, and it looks like that was when Amazon pulled the plug.

Stanza was one of the first best apps on iOS when it launched in 2008, and its success paved the way for all the rest of the reading apps. Amazon bought the company in 2009, for their own reasons. I’d always thought that Amazon bought Stanza just to make sure Apple couldn’t. Given that Amazon appear to have abandoned the app, it looks like I was right.

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This week the hardware news has been coming well, I’d like to say fast and furious but it’s really coming at a trickle. A second ebook reader has launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This time around it’s the Liro Color, a 7″ Android tablet/ereader from Trekstor.

The Liro Color is running Android v2.1 on a 7″ screen with Wifi, a microSD card slot, and 2 GB Flash storage. There aren’t a lot of details available yet, but this ereader reportedly has 7 hours of battery life, can play MP3s, and it supports an integrated ebookstore. It’s due to ship soon with a retail of 99 euros.

Unfortunately, it looks like you won’t be able to buy it directly from anyone just yet. It’s actually part of an ebookstore platform that MVB are promoting at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

MVB are a rather interesting company. They’re a subsidiary of the German Booksellers and Publishers Association. The platform they’re pitching would work something like the IndieCommerce Program that is offered by the American Bookseller’s Association. Booksellers can slap their own label on a stock ebookstore and sell ebooks (and ereaders) to their customers.

In any case, I’ve already had my hands on the hardware. I reviewed it a few months back as the Aluratek Libre Touch. It was an okay ebook reader back then, with a nice screen, good balance, and a responsive touchscreen. I reviewed it strictly as an ereader becuase it was running an old version of Android. Luckily the Liri Color is using a newer firmware than the one I reviewed, so it will likely have an even better performance.

As a tablet, the Liri Color is probably a nice deal. It doesn’t have Android Market, but there are enough third part app sources that it shouldn’t be a problem.  It’s also priced about the same as the European price of the new Kindle, so you could get this instead and load the Kindle Android app.

This is definitely a budget tablet that I’d want to get my hands on.

via

OverDrive are reporting today that they’ve seen a record number of new ebook patrons over the past year, as well as a vast increase in app installs, mobile checkouts, and a vast increase in ebook checkouts.

It’s been a stellar year at OverDrive, with total ebook turnover looking to hit 16 million checkouts, which would be triple that of 2010. They’ve also seen a near doubling of new users signing up, with nearly 2,000,000 already joined this year. Those new users have also added to a spike in installs for OverDrive reading app; there’s now over 9 million copies of the OverDrive Media Console in use, including over 2 million on iOS and Android.

OverDrive continue to maintain their lead in the library ebook market, and they have over 15 thousand  partner libraries sharing thousands of ebooks and audiobooks everyday. Patrons can read and listen on their PC, BlackBerry, Android, or iPad.

But OverDrive won’t be the only game in town for much longer. 3M are working on their own competing platform, and early reports on the beta testing are quite positive. The 3M Cloud Library is intended to go head-to-head with OverDrive, and it can go one better. 3M have also designed the platform so it can lend the ebook readers as well as the ebooks, and let the library staff manage them from the one portal.

Baker & Taylor also launched a library ebook platform this year called Axis 360. it’s being launched in close partnerrship with Barnes & Noble and is intended to work with the Nook ebook readers. It’s still under development though, but it’s going to launch with titles that Baker & Taylor currently distribute through Blio.

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image by mamamusings

I was planning to write a review of the Kobo Touch this week but unfortunately I have encountered a hardware problem.

Over this past weekend I set a new goal for myself. I took all my ereaders out of  storage and stacked up all the ones that I had never written a review for. I plan to use each one for a week and then write a review on the weekend.

By popular request on Twitter, I set out to review the Kobo Touch first. Unfortunately, the review is going to have to go on hold until I get my unit downgraded to an older firmware or I get it replaced.

I don’t know if I am the only one who has encountered this, but I cannot get the touchscreen to respond consistently (with firmware 1.9.11). My Kobo Touch seems to only recognize very specific screen taps and ignores the rest. I often have to tap the screen 3 and 4 times before it deigns to turn the page. This is a problem, because I’m used to devices that let me touch the screen however I want and have it respond.

Normally I might tough it out, but I posted my problem over on MobileRead. Within a couple hours I got this response:

My experience is that I have the most consistent turns when I tap right down into the bottom right corner of the screen. Not sure why that is, but it’s where works best for me to tap ergonomically speaking anyway so it works well for me.

Yeah, that’s not good. The device is supposed to support the user, not force the user to adapt to its quirks. No, wait, if his experience is that extreme then I wouldn’t call this a quirk; this sounds like a major flaw with the Kobo Touch.

If I had to guess, I would say that this is likely a software issue. That’s what the second comment posted over at MobileRead suggests. But I’m not sure, frankly; a sample size of 3 isn’t enough to diagnose the problem. All I can say now is that there is a problem, and that it has rendered my Kobo Touch unusable.

I hesitated to post this complaint, given that I posted someone’s open letter to Kobo Sunday night.  But eventually I decided that the Kobo Touch is a premium ereader, and the public needs to know what they’re getting into when they one.

I hadn’t realized when I first read the letter quite what nesler meant when he said he wouldn’t recommend the Kobo Touch; given the issues I have had I wouldn’t recommend it either.

P.S. If you’ve had issues with the touchscreen or you know how to fix it, please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I’m going to finish out the week on the iriver Story HD, and post that review this weekend.

Pottermore  scored quite the scoop today.

Charlie Redmayne, currently the Chief Digital Officer for HarperCollins, has just announced that he is leaving the company to join Pottermore as CEO. He joined HarperCollins in 2008 with a goal of overseeing their transition to the new digital economy. He did the job so well that he was promoted to CDO in 2009.

And now he’s going to head up Pottermore.

As you probably know, Pottermore is a new digital initiative from J.K. Rowling.  When it launches, it’s going to be the premier online community for Harry Potter fanatics as well as the only place to buy Harry Potter ebooks. The site has had some growing pains, and due to the overwhelming demand the developers have pushed the ebookstore back to next year.

Normally I’d deny the value of a good manager my labor roots are showing), but this was a good move for Pottermore. Redmayne brings a fair amount of practical experience with him. He’s not only led the team which built the digital platforms at HarperCollins, but he also launched a social startup in 2000, which he then sold to BskyB. This is an excellent example of a round peg in a round hole.

HarperCollins announced the move in an internal memo, which I have embedded below.

October 10, 2011

TO:            All Employees

FROM:        Brian Murray

I regret to announce that Charlie Redmayne has decided to leave his role as Executive Vice President, Chief Digital Officer with HarperCollins to return to London full-time.

Charlie has been a tremendous leader in the digital space during one of the most challenging and interesting times in book publishing. HarperCollins is in a terrific position because of Charlie’s efforts and accomplishments across all divisions around the world. We were fortunate to have such a talented digital executive for the last three and a half years, and I understand that we couldn’t expect him to live on both sides of the Atlantic forever.

Of his departure, Charlie said, “I’m very sad to be leaving HarperCollins—it is a terrific company and I have loved my time within it. HarperCollins has made great strides in the digital world over the last few years—because it is well led and has great people. These efforts will continue at pace and I look forward to watching their future success.”

The search for a replacement is already underway. Larry Nevins, Executive Vice President, Operations and Technology, will oversee the group until a permanent replacement is found.

Charlie’s last day with HarperCollins will be November 4. Please join me in wishing him all the best on his future endeavors.