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Electronic books: Google & Co want us to read all about it
Bron: The Guardian, Victor Keegan
17.07.08
His kingdom is an alehouse and his scepter
a can, which is seldom out of his hand". Sounds like a familiar
21st century binge drinking problem. But it is actually from The
Man in the Moone, taken from a unique copy printed in 1609 and preserved
in the Bodleian library. I came across it serendipitously as I was
looking through the books - now more than 1m - that Google has been
quietly scanning as part of its ambition to create a digital archive
of every book that has lived or died. Google's "reader"
will point you to a publisher or to a library or somewhere local
to get it. If it is out of copyright you could download it as a
PDF or self-publish it through sites such as lulu.com.
When it started, publishers were up in arms about
Google's presumption that they could scan first and worry about
copyright later. We don't hear many protests now, apart from in
the US. This is because most publishers have signed up to a deal
which enables anyone to read up to 20% of a book for nothing.
Some publishers have found that the more they allow
a reader to read, the more sales it generates. This is one of the
reasons - along with the explosion of print-on-demand titles (another
digital phenomenon) - that pushed book sales up 36% in 2007. They
seem to be rising not in spite of but because of the digital revolution.
Music industry take note.
For a digitally enhanced holiday, Google Reader
is one of dozens of bookish sites that could help. In preparation
for a long drive in France, I downloaded Madame Bovary, read by
Julie Christie, for £7.99 from silksoundbooks.com, a company
that gives the actors who do the narrating a share of the profits.
Whether this has anything to do with audible.co.uk
- now owned by Amazon, which had a near monopoly of audio downloads
- dropping its prices I don't know, but it now offers cheaper audiobooks
including the Guardian's top 40 for £7.99 or less.
Whether reading or listening you are spoilt for
choice with sites such as ebooks.com, fictionwise.com, the wonderful
gutenberg.org
and pagebypagebooks.com
(for free books), or banned books from Lysistrata onwards. Booksdownload.org
claims to be the world's biggest peer-to-peer downloader starting
at £1.99 a month. One of the more interesting sites, Lovereading.co.uk,
with 150,000 claimed readers, has started Lovewriting.co.uk, a paid-for
service offering independent authors a "one-stop shop"
for readers to discover their books. Maybe the start of an iTunes
market for books?
If you want to read digital, what device should
you use? I tried a new app to download a classic to an iPhone or
iTouch for less than $5. When the buttons didn't respond I tried
gutenberg.org instead and downloaded Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
on to my iPod touch for nothing (but beware of network charges).
The reading experience was surprising, but not in the same league
as the new electronic readers that come closest to the pleasure
of reading a real book.
The only problem is that they are either too clunky
(the iRex iLiad) or tied to walled gardens (Kindle with Amazon and
the eBook with Sony). A Guardian colleague showed me a new Cybook
Gen 3 by Book Keen bought from a US site for $350. It is so light
(6.13oz) and thin it fitted into my inside pocket. It downloads
free books from Gutenberg easily but doesn't have a Wi-Fi link like
Kindle and iLiad.
The drawback was a clunkiness and a flash of black
appearing in the background as pages were turned. Only the reader
can say whether ebooks pass Anthony Trollope's criterion: "Of
all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable."
But more needs to be done to encourage more relaxed holidays. A
survey for Credant Technologies found that 83% of workers will take
their BlackBerrys or mobiles on holiday, with 65% confessing they
would be in touch with the office. There is a lot to play for.
www.guardian.co.uk
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