When I first saw the tweet that laptop computers and other digital devices (including the Amazon Kindle, and I’m assuming the B&N Nook) are banned from some coffee shops, I had to read the tweet twice. Then I read this NYT blog post in which the author described his experience at one coffee shop:

After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle.

I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.”

I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.”

Surprisingly, the employee makes this argument:

He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers.

The basic argument these coffee shops make is that people buy a latte, then sit at a large table with their entire “office” spread out and sit there for 5 hours doing work.

Continue Reading

Teleread might just be one of the oldest advocate of digital books on the net. David Rothman started Teleread back in 1992, advocating national digital library systems, and has kept it going ever since. The blog reached a new milestone after being sold to North American Publishing Company. The move is a very positive step, not just for Teleread, but for blogs everywhere. It’s one more example of how blogs are mainstream and won’t be going anywhere soon.

Continue Reading

I know a lot of my readers on this blog are interested in ebooks, publishing news, self-publishing, writing and so forth. How do you keep up with all these topics without spending all day searching the interwebs. Of course Google is probably the first place you’ll search. But Google has tools that will allow you to stay current on just about any topic without wasting a lot of time.

When I first began Brad’s Reader, my main focus was on literature and writing. Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use? I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”.

Continue Reading

Did you honestly think I’d go without writing a post about the newest cool gadget from Apple? Don’t worry, I’m not turning Brad’s Reader into a fanboy site, but the iPad has tremendous implications for the world of ebooks. Will it be the long awaited ‘Kindle killer’? I don’t know.

For the last year or so (maybe even longer) there have been rumors that Apple would eventually release a tablet device. That day has come. At first glace, iPad is a beefed up version of the iPhone/iPod Touch. But under the hood the iPad is impressive. I want onto the MacRumors blog and here’s what they had to say:

Continue Reading

Book publishers are still struggling to figure out a way to deal with ebook pirates in a way that will not alienate the average ebook reader. The music industry did a very crappy job of this, and they are paying the price.

In general, the publishers believe that ebooks strip sales from print books (of course, print books are more expensive) and that ebooks are so easy to pirate, they need to be loaded with draconian DRM to protect the financial interests of the publishing company and the author.

I think that these publishers are deluding themselves. Ebooks can help drive sales of print books and ebooks, in the end, are more profitable because of the ‘infinite supply’ theory. Furthermore, DRM has done little to stop pirates. DRM only serves to keep honest readers from buying an ebook.

Continue Reading

The New York Times wants to charge you for the content you read online. Faced with declining revenue for their print editions, the NYT needs a way to bring in more money. But is charging for reading the news online the best solution? This question is hard to answer, given that there are so many free news aggregate sites out there that people can go to for their daily news fix.

Continue Reading

Ebooks are only a part of the digital revolution we are seeing in the world. Everything is becoming digitized; from literature to music and video. Computers are the new entertainment centers. Access to vast amounts of information is now at our fingertips and it’s only going to increase over time.

There’s one new literary magazine start-up that is helping take literature into the future. The quarterly publication is called Electric Literature Magazine. They are using more than just ebooks to help sell literature to a wider and more diverse audience.

Continue Reading

In an earlier post I wrote (Should ebook readers be multifunctional?), I argued that for the most part, when I sit down to read, I want to read with few distractions. I don’t a bulk of my reading on my Sony Pocket Edition Reader and have found myself doing less reading on my iPhone. Call me a purist, but sometimes I just want to read.

Continue Reading

Science fiction and fantasy author Neil Gaiman is going to write a short story using Twitter. To be more precise, his going to write the first 140 characters of a short story, then let other Twitterers write the rest of the story. The crowd-sourced piece of fiction, once complete, will be compiled by BBC Audiobooks and will be made available on the BBC Audiobooks website as well as iTunes as a free download.

Continue Reading

It has been known for a while now that Amazon compensated those Kindle users who had ‘1984′ deleted off of their Kindles by offering affected users a new copy of George Orwell’s novel or a $30 gift certificate. What hasn’t made the news, until now, is the status of the lawsuit brought on by student Justin Gawronski who not only lost the ‘1984′ novel, but also the notes he had taken on the Kindle for a class assignment.

Continue Reading