eBooks

Libraries are at a crossroads when it comes to offering e-books. Major publishers have draconian policies where they sell books to libraries at a 500% markup or impose limitations have 26 checkouts before the library has to buy the book again. In a few short years libraries are spending double or triple the amount on digital and something needs to be done to convince the publishers to ease up. The only way libraries can be saved is throwing down with Amazon.

Major publishers have gained the ability to dictate their own prices on e-books and this has dramatically increased the cost to the customer. In many cases the hardcover is actually cheaper than the digital version and this is primarily due to predatory pricing.

EPUB is the favorite format for e-books (ignoring Amazon, which like to be incompatible so it can lock users in). EpubCheck is the open-source industry standard for validating EPUB files. If you’re an author creating your own e-book files, you should run them against EpubCheck before releasing them. It’ll make hosting sites happier, since they’ll probably run it themselves and will like your book better if it passes. A book that passes EpubCheck will also give you fewer headaches with readers complaining it doesn’t work on their reader.

Thousands of libraries all over North America issue physical cards that patrons can use to checkout materials at the branch or to use online. In a world of e-readers, smartphones and tablets this is counterproductive and the Harris County Library in Houston Texas has just developed the first digital library card.

The program is dubbed iKnow, doesn’t offer all of the amenities of a full-service library card. It only allows you to borrow audiobooks, e-books, music and video online via Overdrive and can’t be used to check out hard copies of books.

OverDrive is working on a project that could ultimately enable the company to convert PDFs and other file formats into the industry-standard EPUB format for ebooks, without significant loss of formatting and functionality, CEO Steve Potash said during his “Crystal Ball” presentation, which concluded the company’s biennial Digipalooza user group conference in Cleveland, OH earlier this month.

Calibre is one of the premier open sourced e-book editing and creation programs out there and it makes managing your e-reader or tablet very easy. You can convert books from one format to another, change up the cover art and change the author or book name. Today, I want to give you a simply overview on what this program is all about and how you can use it to edit books you download from the internet and send them to your device.

If you have an e-reader issued by Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Kobo your reading habits are being tracked. These companies want to monitor what books you are buying and how long it takes you to get through them. When ebooks are sold on other platforms, publishers and authors are normally kept out of the loop, until now. A new tracking script is currently being implemented that totally negates privacy.

The e-reader and e-book industry often run in parallel when it comes to consumer demand and broad acceptance of reading digitally. Since 2013 the sales of electronic books have been more or less flat, rising or falling by a percentage point or two. It looks like from all of the data currently available that e-book sales have peaked and it is very unlikely the format will ever account for more than 21% of global sales.

Objective – The objective of the study was to determine if summary notes or table of contents notes in catalogue records are associated with the usage of e-books in a large university library.

Knowledge Unlatched is helping stakeholders to work together for a sustainable open future for specialist scholarly books. Their vision is a healthy market that includes free access for end users.
Good for Libraries
Good for Publishers
Good for Authors
Good for Readers
They have just released their pilot report.
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