GW ePublishing

Media companies seeking to control public domain content

Free preview of Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience

Is the KindleFire really that great? Has anyone used one yet?

I haven't played with the Fire yet, but I'm always very dubious of the "tech analyst". Let's face it, dominating the Android tablet market isn't all that difficult right now, as there is a dearth of poorly built, poorly performing Android tablets on the market today. My own personal opinion is that the OS offers a lot of promise, but ironically the real value of the Fire is its connection to Amazon's own "walled garden" of products and services, which flys directly in the face of Android's selling characteristic of "openness".

Randomly, my friend won a Kindle Fire at an office holiday function and I got to play around with it last night. Here are my impressions: First, it's very simple to use though it has that same noticeable lag that all Android tablets seem to have, though I will say not as pronounced as others. It has a rubber-like backing in the same style that the NOOK Simple Touch employs, so it feels good in your hands and won't slide around. Here's one thing that I was surprised about; it's a bit of a brick, meaning it's a lot heavier than I expected. For an eReader, weight seems like a big deal, so I would definitely take one for a test-spin before buying if you can, especially if you're going to use it for long reads. My friend only had one copy of a book, and I thumbed through pretty quickly, and the Fire seemed to handle it well. It had a lot less lag page turning than it did starting apps. On the web, the Fire did pretty well, it downloaded and ran pages smoothly for the most part. Though I will say I went to one of my favorite sites (arsenal.com) to watch some video highlights of yesterday's game, and even though it has a 7 inch screen, the video "wasn't optimized" for the Fire, so the playback size was smaller than it would have been on my iPhone (postage stamp size). On ESPN.com though it seemed to handle video there much better. My other complaint was that the Fire didn't seem to recognize page widths very well, so you have to do a lot of pinching to get the right view of a page in portrait view. So, I'll put down my pocket-protector, ease off the dork-pedal a bit, and just say for the price it's a solid tablet that runs pretty well.

The Apple iBookstore is giving away a copy of the Beatles "Yellow Submarine" book.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen finds that the Kindle Fire comes up short as a reading platform.

I heard this on the way to my Dad's place the day before Thanksgiving and kept forgetting to post the link.

Why SOPA is dangerous legislation.

Breaking news about Google Books

Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions - deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

E-books are more than a publishing platform-they're a ­whole new literary form.

Renewed interest in creating beautiful books as a response to ereaders.

A very interesting collection of essays on the future of the book and publishing.  Free to read online and available in print from O'Reilly.

Good reads recommended from Canadians 

Dec. 12 at 11am - Copyright & Commerce: Orphan Works and Fair Use in a Digital Age. Event is at the Newseum.

Is listening to an audiobook "reading" the book? Why do we tend to think that one form is "true" reading?

As online publishers look to increase ad revenue, readers look to ways of removing ad clutter and a better reading experience.

Print your blog as a book. Can be done for other formats as well such as Twitter and Facebook,

LRMI effort to establish metadata standards for educational publishers.