Archive for the ‘E-Books’ Category

Paul Jun at Copyblogger writes The Ultimate Guide to Publishing Your eBook on Amazon’s Kindle Platform. This quick primer answers useful questions such as; Do I need an ISBN number? What is KDP Select? (Kindle Direct Publishing) What is Kindle Owners’ Library? How do Royalties Work? Here are the recommended steps to publishing a Kindle e-Book:

• Step 1: Define your target audience
• Step 2: Do you have a platform?
• Step 3: Write your eBook
• Step 4: Tools to download before formatting
• Step 5: Formatting your eBook
• Step 6: Before you upload, think this over
• Step 7: Upload your eBook

Bobbi Newman at Librarian by Day asks: Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business? This is an excellent post about libraries and the current state of ebooks.

“I know what you are going to say, I can hear it already – “We can’t! Our patrons demand ebooks!” Except the truth is our patrons want a lot of things we can’t give them – to always be first on the waiting list for the new James Patterson, to not pay fines when their books are late, for the library to be open earlier or later, or to have a system besides Dewey because despite using it their entire lives they still cannot figure it out. When it comes to ebooks, we cannot give them what they want, not really, we cannot give them books from Simon and Schuster or MacMillian or new books from Penguin or Hatchet, and not more than 26 times from HarperCollins, and probably not many books from Random House. What we can do, what maybe we should do, is spend their tax money wisely, and I am no longer convinced that spending it on the current ebook system is a wise move.”

Dianna Dilworth at eBookNewser creates a quick list of 10 Pinterest Boards For eBook Fans. Each of these Pinboards have suggestions for for free eBooks. Here are the first four:

• 1. Open Library
• 2. Project Gutenberg
• 3. GoodReads
• 4. Manybooks

Proquest’s ebrary has published the findings from their 2011 Global Student E-book Survey along with a Social Media Addendum. Over 6,500 students worldwide participated in the survey. Some of the key findings from the addendum include:

• While 41% of students are currently using social media for research or study, 59% are not. Reasons for not using social media include that existing sites are not a reliable source of information.
• When asked if they would use social media to share research with peers, 58% of students indicated “likely” to “very likely,” while 43% stated “unlikely.”
• 35% students indicated they would “likely” to “very likely” pose a question to a librarian using social media, compared to 45% who would “likely” to “very likely” use social media to pose a question to faculty.
• When asked if they would use social media to connect with students with similar academic interests, 69% stated “likely” to “very likely,” while 31% stated “unlikely.”

via No Shelf Required

The staff at UX Magazine has put together a Free eBook: Six Circles – An Experience Design Framework. It is available as a free download in either pdf or ebook format.

“James Kelway started the eBook Six Circles – An Experience Design Framework as an enquiry into how different design principles can be applied to the field of digital product design. This led him to identify six core themes—the “Six Circles”:

• Persuasion
• Behavior
• Visual design
• Usability
• Interaction
• Content

Good products and services combine these themes into better experiences; they induce or entice users into engaging, and guide and assist them as they work through the experiences to reach their goals. Creating these experiences requires a holistic mindset and a multi-disciplinary approach.”

A.C. writes for The Economist’s Prospero blog about Enhanced e-books:Truly moving literature. This is a great article about the latest publishing trend to create enhanced digital editions of e-books which may included added content such as videos, images, pop up biographies, linked glossary entries, etc.

“Yet for certain kinds of book, such as biographies, cookbooks, literary classics and newer forms of interactive fiction, enhancement can add rich and startling new layers. Penguin’s forthcoming biography of Malcolm X, for instance, features rare archival footage and an interactive map of Harlem. The life of “Muhammad Ali” now comes with audio clips of him rapping about his prowess. Richard Dawkins’s “The Magic of Reality” (voted best app at the 2012 Digital Book World) and E.O. Wilson’s “Life on Earth”, are cunning fusions of documentary and textbook, with molecules and stories spinning at a finger’s touch.”

The start of 2012 has been great for library technology stories. Here are 16 of them that you won’t want to miss. Please list any other recent library tech stories in the comments!!

Social Media

1. 5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
2. 5 More Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
3. How Facebook Can Help Market Your Library
4. 10 Tips for Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Library
5. NYPL: Making Collections Possible Through Collaboration

Mobile

6. 8 Essential Apps for Library Conferences

e-Books

7. So you want to start a Kindle lending program
8. E-Books and Libraries: 25 Resources
9. 61 Non-Librarian Jobs for LIS Grads
10. e-Books and School Libraries
11. Threats to Digital Lending
12. e-Book Formats and Devices Infographic
13. Publishers Put the Squeeze on Library eBook Lending
14. How to Talk to Your Patrons About Penguin & Other Publishers Not Loaning eBooks to Libraries
15. Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries

Archiving

16. Personal Digital Archiving iLibrarian Series

Charles Hamaker, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services at Atkins Library, University of North Carolina–Charlotte writes for Searcher Magazine about Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries. This is a thought-provoking article on the pressing issue of e-books in the library realm:

“Ubiquitous web and print ads tell individuals and libraries to “buy” ebooks. But long-term preservation and retention rights to stable content are not the norm, because many resellers and vendors don’t possess those rights from the publisher or author. Instead of true ownership, most ebook “purchases” are more like leases, and leases with few residual rights at that. The only way to assure continuing access and storage for an ebook is a permanent download to a device with rights not governed by strict DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems. With content delivered from a hosted service on the web (aka the cloud), the “purchaser” has no control over the content. Even Google Books bears the disclaimer:

[I]f Google or the applicable copyright holder loses the rights to provide you any Digital Content, Google will cease serving such Digital Content to you and you may lose the ability to use such Digital Content.”

Bobbi Newman at Librarian by Day offers advice about How to Talk to Your Patrons About Penguin & Other Publishers Not Loaning eBooks to Libraries. This helpful post provides a suggested script for discussing ebooks with patrons, contact info for publishers, and plenty of resources on the topic.

Kim Westad at the Times Colonist reports that Publishers Put the Squeeze on Library eBook Lending. This excellent article discusses the current state of e-books and libraries in Canada and provides a great list of 13 websites for free e-books. Here’s a short sample:

“In the Greater Victoria Public Library system alone, there has been an eightfold increase in the use of ebooks. In 2010, total ebook circulation at the GVPL’s 10 libraries was 3,699. That jumped to 29,741 in 2011. And that interest isn’t expected to dwindle…

…library users can’t download Steve Jobs’s biography. It’s published by Simon and Schuster, and they will not sell ebooks to libraries. You can download the Stieg Larsson trilogy at the library, but not the new Stephen King – different publishers, different rules.

Five of the titles on last week’s Globe and Mail fiction bestseller list were not available in ebooks, although they are in print. They are published by companies that are still struggling to find a way to deal with a way to sell ebooks to libraries.”

I’ve been researching e-Books for my library and an upcoming talk I’m giving at a conference and I’ve noticed that not all e-book formats are compatible with all devices. As a matter of fact, it seems that most devices have their own set of formats that it reads and these are rarely congruous with other readers. To help sort this all out I’ve taken a crack at creating my first infographic which displays the most popular devices used for reading e-Books and which of the most popular formats they can read. Please let me know if you think I should include anything else!