A PLACE TO SHARE AND/OR PROMOTE BOOKS - SEE WHAT'S OUT THERE

Sony's New Move

I saw this article in Publisher's Weekly and thought I'd share it with you. It sounds like a good idea to me.

Thanks for reading!
Elaine Cantrell
Hope. Dreams. Life... Love
http://www.elainecantrell.com

Sony Adopts EPUB Standard for Reader
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 7/24/2008 7:16:00 AM
The International Digital Publishing Forum's epub e-book standard received a big vote of support this morning when Sony announced that effective immediately its Sony Reader will now support the standard. Beginning in August, all new devices shipped will use epub, and right now owners of existing devices can go to http://esupport.sony.com to update their device's software for epub support.

Brennan Mullin, v-p of Sony Audio, said the company was adopting the epub standard to encourage more vendors, booksellers and publishers to get involved in the e-book market and to broaden the amount of content that can be viewed on the Reader. The move to use epub is a significant change in approach for Sony, which has used its own standards and restricted consumers to buying e-books for the Reader from its own store. The use of epub will allow consumers to buy titles from a variety of outlets and will grow the number of titles compatible with the Reader to well passed the 45,000 now available through its online store. Another avenue for new material will be Adobe: Sony also annouced today that the device will support Adobe e-books with DRM and will also have the capability to reflow standard PDF e-books and other documents.

Publishers, who generally favor the one-format approach made possible by epub, welcomed Sony’s decision. “Sony’s support of epub is an important step forward in the cooperation of publishers and portable digital book manufacturers to create better experiences for readers,” said Brent Lewis, v-p digital & internet for Harlequin. “We’re thrilled with the upgrade." IDPF, of which Sony is a member, approved epub as an industrywide standard in an attempt to foster interoperability among e-book reading devices.

Mullin said sales of the Reader have been steady and that sales of titles have increased. Interest in e-books has grown and although reluctant to credit a competitor, Mullin acknowledged that the buzz around Amazon’s Kindle “has been good for everybody in the e-book market.” Amazon, however, has not adopted the epub standard.

In addition to adopting the epub standard, Sony has announced it has started offering the Reader in the U.K.

Tags: authors, ebook, ebooks, novels, reader, romance, technology

< Previous Post

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of BOOK PLACE to add comments!

Join this social network

Welcome to
BOOK PLACE

Sign Up
or Sign In

About

Morgan Mandel created this social network on Ning.

Create your own social network!

Badge

Loading…

Get Badge

MORGAN'S OWN BLOGSPOT

Slides, Anyone?

I added a few slides of my books to my blogspot. I'm not sure yet if they should stay on or not.

Do you have more trouble loading my blogspot with the slides up? Do you like them or are they too distracting?

A Christmas Tree Already

On the way home from work yesterday, I passed a house that already had a lighted and decorated Christmas tree up and showing by the window.

Is it not too soon for that? In my mind, the day after Thanksgiving is when the Christmas Season starts. That's when it's fair game to put up a tree and decorations and start shopping. The way things are going this year, I'll be lucky if I get organized enough to decorate a few days before Christmas.

With our dog, Rascal, who lives up to her name, we'll probably go with a fiber optic small tree on top of an end table. One of these days I may pull put the larger tree from the box in the basement and set it up, but not until our doggy is a little more sedate. I don't feel like chasing her to get ornaments out of her mouth. I will be putting up knick knacks, lights inside and decorations on the walls, so it will still look Christmasy. No lights outside because for some reason we have no outlets outside.

While we're on the subject of Christmas trees and such, be sure to add holidays in your books. You can mention decorations and lights or Easter eggs and baskets, or even mattress sales in your descriptions to ground the reader as to the season.
Now, back to that tree I saw. What about you? When do you decorate for Christmas? What do you put up?

Winners and Losers at the CMAs and Life

I love country music and almost every country performer. While watching the CMAs, I enjoyed seeing the winners accept their awards. On the other hand, it was hard for me to see the losers do their best to appear gracious and for the most part succeeding.

For every winner, there's a loser. In life and in books, it's the same way. How people react to their good and bad fortune shows what their characters are made of. You don't have to tell a reader who the good guy or bad guy is. Let their actions speak for themselves. The readers are smart enough to figure it out.

PS Can't finish this blog without saying - You Rock, Taylor Swift! You are one smart, talented teenager! Congrats on all your awards, especially, Entertainer of the Year!!!

CMA Awards Tonight and Twitter

One of my favorite shows is on tonight - the CMA Awards. If you're a country music fan, you're probably like me and will be glued to the TV 8pm EST, or in my case 7pm, in the flatlands of Illinois.

Almost all my favorite performers will be there, except I hear that Rascal Flatts can't make it.

I'll be on Twitter during the show also. That's part of the fun of it - discussing and dissecting outfits, performers, songs and even commercials, kind of like I'm at a giant party with people who all go for the same thing and want to share.

What about you? What kind of music do you like? Do you tweet during a favorite show or event?