If you’re a socialist-hating libertarian, then you might want to skip this post. For the rest of us, it offers a glimpse into the future. Maybe in a decade or two, the United States and other countries will follow Taiwan’s lead.

Taiwan is planning a new pilot program that will encourage the use of ebooks. This article from eBookNewser explains:

The Taiwan Ministry of Education announced last week that it was about to launch a new program to promote eBooks and eReaders. A total of 6 institutions, consisting of 3 universities and 3 public libraries, have joined forces to encourage the use of eBooks.

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This is an ebook lovers dream come true: Customers can buy ebooks and seamlessly read them across multiple devices. We’d finally have peace and harmony in the world.

Ok maybe not. But that dream is coming true in Japan, where four tech companies, including Sony, have entered into an agreement to allow ebook reading across different eReaders.

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Back in February Apple made waves in the publishing world by changing their App Store TOS. Basically, the new rules required publishers to remove any links within their apps to purchasing options outside the App Store environment.

This meant that Apple would get a sweet 30% cut on all (ebooks, for example) sold. Apple also said that the price must be the same as, or lower, than an out-of-app purchase. This kills any attempt content providers might make to raise in-app purchase prices to make up for the 30% Apple takes off the top.

What changed?

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I just want to write a quick post and follow-up about my experience with my new Amazon Kindle WiFi. I’ve had it for almost a week now. There are only three words to describe my reaction to this device: I’m loving it!

First, reading on it is a pleasure. The crisp e-ink display is easy on the eyes. I can read for hours with no eyestrain. Also, there’s nothing to distract me from what I’m reading, so I can become blissfully immersed in the novel.

Secondly, browsing for and buying books is a breeze. I haven’t bought too many ebooks yet (I still have quite a backlog of books to read), but I have downloaded quite a few samples – preventing myself from buying a lot of bad books and saving money.

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I really hope this article from Wired is a joke. The title is ’5 Reasons Why Ebooks Aren’t There Yet.’ When I saw this title, I thought maybe they’d discuss serious issues like ebook quality control, lack of a standard format, or the failure of the publishing industry to fully embrace ebooks.

Sadly, I gave Wired too much credit. Rather than addressing the serious issues, like the ones above above, the article gives us a few new shallow reasons why ebooks are still inferior to print.

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Note: I started writing this post back in the middle of May, before moving to a new house. The article source I’m use is a little dated but the main thrust of my post remains relevant.

I’ve advocated for a long time here that for ebook prices, cheaper is usually the way to go. At the very least, consumers should not be paying the same price for an ebook that they pay for the print version.

One of the reasons why cheaper is the general rule of thumb is because it produces more sales. But is this always the case? Common sense says yes. However, there are always exceptions to these rules.

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The largest online retailer Amazon.com, announced today that they now sell more ebooks than print books. It was only back in July 2010 that Amazon announced ebooks were outselling hardcovers.

As expected, the phenomenal growth has continued. And I believe this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, especially as Amazon continues to lower the price of their bestselling Kindle eReader.

In their press release, Amazon said:

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Amazon is no stranger to controversy. From remotely deleting titles from the Kindle to requiring POD publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge. And despite these controversial moves, they continue to blaze trails through the digital publishing world.

It’s not surprising there are many who aren’t too happy about Amazon’s growing dominance in publishing. Some are even saying that Amazon is wrecking the publishing industry. The biggest beef publishing insiders have with Amazon, is their highly aggressive digital publishing platform that include several imprints:

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We often hear about authors and publishers speaking out against piracy and how piracy will be the death of the publishing industry. But rarely do we hear about authors pirating their own work.

Is this some kind of publishing bizzaro world? I thought so when I first read this post from Goodreader. In part, it says:

We have found through our research that certain authors have been deliberately been leaking their own books to popular Bittorrent sites such as the Pirate Bay and Demonoid. From the authors we spoke with there were two main reasons why they initially did this. The first factor was to publicly denounce the torrent site for pirating their works and then capitalizing on the ensuing television, radio or online attention that came along with it. The second reason was far more nobler, to share their books for free on sites that often have copyright infringing material.

The first reason I don’t really understand. Uploading your own book to torrent sites and then denouncing them? Seems pretty counter intuitive to me. It’s like murdering someone to make a point that murder is bad.

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Just as I start taking my blog in a new direction by concentrating exclusively on reading, writing and publishing in a digital age (my new tagline!), I read something that makes me feel a little dejected.

I read a post from the Teleread blog entitled “I’m Losing Interest in Ebook News.” This isn’t one of those ebooks-are-ruining-publishing posts. Far from it.

The main argument is that there are so many changes happening in the ebook world, and happening so fast, it’s impossible to keep up with everything. It’s almost a futile effort.

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