I again had the pleasure of having lunch with IDPF Executive Director, Michael Smith. There was no real agenda, it was just a chance for us to have a good chin-wag about ePub, how things are moving for the format and such other things. This year the IDPF held three sessions but due to my day job duties in London I only managed to attend one of his sessions; missing what I’m sure was an extremely interesting ‘EPUB Update and Tweaks and Tricks for EPUB on Devices’ session presented by Keith Fahlgren from O’Reilly – I’m wholey dissapointed about that.

Still, I did manage to attend the ‘New and Updated eBook Reading Devices’ which was rather interesting.

For this session there were four speakers; Michaël Dahan (Bookeen), Neelan Choksi (Lexcycle Stanza), Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies) and finally Richard Siegersma (ECO Reader). All the speakers had some interesting things to say but a couple of points stuck out.

Michaël talked about their user statistics; 35+ age group consisting of 60% female, 40% male and that digital reader users are mainly for “heavy” readers. Michaël also told us that Bookeen will be releasing their Gen4 6” reader mid-March 2010.

Willem told us that iRex will also be releasing a new reader in mid-2011 which will be full-colour! I presume this is the reading screen itself and not a secondary screen like that of the new Barnes & Noble “nook”.

Networking Events

On the Thursday evening there was the IDPF Networking event which I have to say was much busier than last year, just goes to show how much the digital market and support for ePub has grown over this last 12 months.

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with several members of the Linkedin Ebooks, Ebook Readers Group hosted by Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks). Only a handful of people attended but all were great people and we even had the pleasure of Margaret A. Harrison and the charismatic Steve Potash from OverDrive attending.

eBook Digital Reader Reviews

One of my goals for Frankfurt this year was to do a good bit of smooching with those digital reader people to procure some for review purposes – the results we actually quite positive.

My first meeting was with Phil Wood from Interead, where I had my first hands-on moment with one of their COOL-ER’s – man is that thing light! I also spoke with Royal-Line, who will be bringing the NUTT reader to Europe, iRex, and I also stopped by the Bookeen stand to check out their new Cybook Opus. I have to say the Opus does seem to be a very cool device indeed.

Phil agreed to send me one of their COOL-ER’s, Royal-Line gave me one of their NUTT readers there and then and Bookeen said there might be a possibility of sending me an Opus – from what I saw of the Opus, I do hope this is possible.

Along with the Sony Touch Edition, which I received just last week (a self purchase unfortunately), I will have three (possibly four) new reader reviews on the site before the end of November.

Digital Content is on the Rise

Anyone who’s been around the eBook world during the last 12 months can certainly confirm that we’ve seen a great increase in the interest of eBooks and digital readers and this was certainly reflected at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. There were more, bigger and better digital reader and content provider stands than ever.

All the talk round the net is that 2010 will be the year of the eBook – I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like at next year’s book fair, but I’m going to be there to experience it first hand!

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Frankfurt Book Fair 2009 and the rise of digital content

For those of you who are not from the UK, Argos are a household name — if a Brit hasn’t bought from Argos, you know their neighbour has!

The BookSeller.com article also states that the COOL-ER book store has 3/4 million titles (although not all in the ePub format).

I don’t have a one of these readers myself – I can’t justify spending £189 when I already have a Sony 505 – but as it uses the Adobe Digital Editions, any ePub books you download from epubBooks.com or buy from one of the many book stores around, should render the same as they do on the Sony Reader.

For me, the importance of this Argos/COOL-ER deal shows that eBooks (including the ePub variety) and the digital readers for viewing them are finally entering the mainstream.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New ePub eBook Reader to be sold in Argos…Cool!

The Adobe Digital Edition Devices page has a little more details on each but here’s a very quick run down;

• EZ Reader
• EZ Reader Pocket Pro
• Mentor
• BeBook One
• BeBook Mini
• Cybook Gen3
• Cybook Opus
• Cool-er
• Elonex eBook
• Hanlin V5
• Hanlin V3
• iRex Digital Reader 1000S
• NUUT2
• Sony Reader PRS-300
• Sony Reader PRS-505
• Sony Reader PRS-600
• Sony Reader PRS-700

Have you heard of all these?

Bill himself seems suprised, saying, “this is faster take-up than even this optimist had hoped for, given our launch less than six months ago of the enabling Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK that’s been integrated into all of these products.”

Whether you believe DRM is right or wrong, the positive side of this is that we are seeing more vendors supporting the one eBook format.

We are however still waiting to see if the Amazon Kindle’s will start supporting EPUB; will they use their own DRM – will they use any DRM at all. Let us also not forget Apple, what formats will they support on their upcoming tablet.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

There are currently 17 Adobe EPUB eBook Readers