#google ebooks

[teleread]

Google-backed digital-only ebook project: The Bookseller gets confused, confusing

Google-backed digital-only ebook project: The Bookseller gets confused, confusing

If you read today’s new headline in UK book trade journal of record The Bookseller, you could be forgiven for thinking that Google had just launched a major new ebook initiative to overhaul Amazon in the digital book stakes. Editions at Play, the actual project under The Bookseller‘s headline “Google launches e-book ‘experiment'” appears in fact to be an experimental initiative by London’s Visual…

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[mercerislandbooks]

eBooks Are Easy At Island Books

Selling ebooks is a relatively new thing on our website and we want to be sure it's an easy way for our customers to keep reading.

I figured the best way to see if it was a good customer experience would be to try it out myself. I decided to download a book I've been wanting to read forever and have been too cheap or lazy to get my hands on yet. I picked The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, a book told from the point of a dog who chronicles his master's car racing adventures and his family struggles and triumphs.

Before I get to the book, I'm here to reassure you and shout from the rooftops the following message: "It was EASY, ENJOYABLE, AND CHEAP." All I had to do was log in to my Island Books account, search for the book, select the ebook format, buy it, click on the "My eBooks" tab, log in to my Google account, and click "Read." That was on my computer. On my iPhone, I downloaded the Google Reader app and went through the Island Books website to click "Read" again on that device (I only had to do that once and then the app opened the book on its own).

The cons of purchasing through our site mean you can't read it on your Kindle, but every Kindle owner I know has an iPhone and a Mac too, so it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience and it allows you to support your favorite local indie bookstore.

I didn't look up from my iPhone for about 36 hours, as long as it took me to read the book. I read in line at the grocery, at the dog park, and right after I parked my car for a few guilty minutes.

As you may have guessed, even with the predictable ending I loved the book. The Art of Racing in the Rain will stay nearer to my heart than Marley and Me ever did, more due to the heart-wrenching story of the family struggles than the dog. The villains are the grandparents, and they don't let up for a minute on wrecking their son-in-law's life after their daughter becomes ill. And how could I not love a dog who pees on important legal papers to show his objection? I loved all the intimate and familiar Seattle and Mercer Island settings too.

Overall it was a win-win: I liked the book and I liked the eBook experience. That's the story of my  initial foray into ebooks. While I'll never give up my dusty overcrowded shelves, I'll be doing this again.

—Miriam

[akshay-mehta]

The 7.3-ounce Story HD, which retails for $139.99 and sports an electronic paper display made by LG, offers XGA (768x1,024) resolution and has 63.8 percent more pixels and faster page turn, thanks to an advanced processor from Freescale Semiconductor based on ARM Cortex technology. It also has built-in Wi-Fi and allegedly gives you up to 6 weeks of battery life from a single charge. As far as other specs go, the Story HD has a QWERTY keypad, and supports ePub and PDF formats with DRM.

The e-reader is set to launch on July 17 with the Google ebookstore on board, making it the first Google eBooks e-reader. Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20078395-1/google-ebooks-and-iriver-launch-story-hd-e-reader/#ixzz1RoK6ToeU

[ijustlovebooks]

25 books from Powell's Books for .25 cents

Google eBooks  Unbridled Books

For a very limited time (June 9-11, 2011) Powell's Books is excited to offer a selection of 25 Google eBooks™ from literary publisher Unbridled Books for a mere 25¢ each! (Click here to purchase all 25 at once, for a total of just $6.25.)

If you haven't read any of these remarkable titles, now's the perfect time. Or, if you've never yet tried a Google eBook, the cost of entry is only a quarter.

There are 25 books in this aisle.

Featured Titles in Google eBooks - Unbridled Books

Panopticon by David Bajo Publisher Comments As the California borderland newspaper where they work prepares to close, three reporters are oddly given assignments to return to stories they’ve covered before — each one surprisingly personal. The first assignment takes reporter Aaron Klinsman... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel Publisher Comments Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon Publisher Comments Young Tessa is a diminutive girl, far too small for farm work and the object of ridicule by both her own family and the other children in their isolated Midwestern community. Her father seems to believe in nothing beyond his crops, certainly not... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari Publisher Comments A disillusioned and raggedy American reporter and his drunken photojournalist partner are the last to see three Japanese schoolgirls who disappear into Taroko Gorge, Taiwan’s largest national park. The journalists who are themselves suspects &,mdash... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Shimmer by Eric Barnes Publisher Comments In just three years, CEO Robbie Case has grown Core Communications, a data technology company, from 30 people to over 5,000. Now a $20 billion company made legendary by its sudden success, Core is based on a technology no other company can come close to... (read more) Your price: $0.25

Captivity by Deborah Noyes Publisher Comments This masterful historical novel by Deborah Noyes, the lauded author of Angel & Apostle, The Ghosts of Kerfol, and Encyclopedia of the End (starred PW) is two stories: The first centers upon the strange, true tale of the Fox Sisters, the enigmatic... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson Publisher Comments In 1946, a storm-wrecked boat carrying Hollywood's most famous swashbuckler arrived dramatically and accidentally in Jamaica, and the glamorous world of 1940s Hollywood converged with that of a small West Indian society. After a long and storied career... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Wolf Point by Edward Falco Publisher Comments Tom "T" Walker, a 57-year-old businessman, knows better than to pick up a beautiful young woman hitchhiking with her dangerous-looking boyfriend, but he stops for them anyway. He’s been living alone, his life ruinously off course, in such utter... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert Publisher Comments Lily and Mabel find themselves on their own, living in their grandmother's antique shop in rural Nebraska. They're bound together by their loyalty to each other and by a haunting urgency to reconcile their own, disparate versions of the past so that they... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch Publisher Comments He’s in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, because his Eskimo mother has moved home, and Cesar, a seventeen-year-old former gang banger, is convinced that he’s just biding his time ‘til he can get back to LA. His charmingly offbeat cousin, Go-boy, is... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Unnatural History of Cypres Parish by Elise Blackwell Publisher Comments Set in southern Louisiana in the weeks preceding the great flood of 1927, this novel depicts a place and way of life about to be forever changed. On the verge of manhood and a stone’s throw of the rising Mississippi River, Louis Proby is pulled between... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld Publisher Comments In 1961, when Amazing Grace Jansen, a firecracker from Appalachia, meets Mary Elizabeth Cox, the daughter of a Black southern preacher, at Kentucky’s Berea College, they already carry the scars and traces of their mothers’ troubles. Poor and single... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lisa Haines Publisher Comments Beauty and privilege, a charming, handsome husband and two promising young daughters, money, a beach house on the Pacific — Jane has everything that Mattie thinks she wants. But Jane always works to damage what she’s given. Mattie knows that... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton Publisher Comments Caddie Blair feels everything strongly — and so she works hard to keep her distance. It’s the ethical thing for a journalist to do, especially in a war-torn region like the Middle East. And Caddie wants to believe that nothing is as important as... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa Publisher Comments The Wonder Singer is an operatic literary caper about one young writer’s manic ambition. The ghostwriter’s best chance at fame almost disappears when his Diva dies suddenly in her bath. His solution is to steal the tapes, liberate the Diva’s aging... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Journal of Antonio Montoya by Rick Collignon Publisher Comments We are proud to reintroduce the classic first novel by the author of Madewell Brown. When little José Montoya’s parents are killed one August morning by a cow, his Tia Ramona and his Tio Flavio are troubled by how best to raise the boy... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Good Doctor Guillotin: An Anatomy of Five by Marc Estrin Publisher Comments The Good Doctor Guillotin follows five characters to a common destination — the scaffold at the first guillotining of the French Revolution: Dr. Guillotin, of course, a physician and member of the National Assembly, involved in many important... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott Publisher Comments In July of 1995, the news photographer Gray Banick disappeared into the Bosnian war zone and doing so took away pieces of the hearts of three people who loved him: Emil Todorovic, his interpreter and friend; Jack MacKenzie, his mentor who taught Gray to... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Conscience Point by Erica Abeel Publisher Comments Madeleine Shaye has a successful dual career as a concert pianist and TV arts correspondent, a great relationship with her grown daughter, and a love affair that is the envy of friends. She believes she has all the luck. But her blissful life... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego Publisher Comments The Islands of Divine Music is a novel of five generations of an Italian-American family finding its place in the New World. Against a backdrop of Immigration, Prohibition, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the new millennium, five... (read more) Your price: $0.25

The Green Age of Asher Witherow by M. Allen Cunningham Publisher Comments Supplying a quarter of San Francisco’s coal, Nortonville of the 1860s-70s is a flourishing empire in small, seeming to promise unending prosperity and a better future. But beneath the vibrant work ethic of its Welch citizens lies an insidious network... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

Vanishing by Candida Lawrence Publisher Comments There is no more revelatory a memoirist at work today than Candida Lawrence. Her three earlier volumes have chronicled her life underground with the two children she snatched from their custodial father and her battle with cancer in a poisoned world... (read more) Your price: $0.25 Google eBooks - Electronic

[colomca-blog]

Van kijken komt kopen #GoogleEbooks #Holland #2011 @MMboeken @CPNB @publishr

Google eBooks marcheert op naar Holland in 2011. Verkenner Philippe Colombet ging op Vers voor de pers op zoek naar strategische allianties met uitgevers en retailers. De boekverkopers zagen het wel zitten, terwijl de uitgevers in naam van de auteurs nogal defensief reageerden...stelletje conservatievelingen!   

Als auteurs Judith & Sabine van Vugt (wie?) van road novel Colombiaans carnaval (wat?) bij onafhankelijk fonds MM boeken, hoorden wij met stijgende interesse het verhaal van googleman aan. Google belooft een groter bereik en meer verkoop. Ware mijn naam Herman Koch, dan was ik waarschijnlijk wat minder enthousiast over googles nieuwste speeltje. De ‘beveiligde’ pdf van mijn nieuwste bestseller staat namelijk natuurlijk binnen het uur op elke torrentsite van Nederland!   [Koch is sowieso genaaid, leert een korte zoekactie op ‘downloaden Zomerhuis met zwembad’: hoog in de resultaten torrentdownloads.net en limetorrents.com, en op bol.com kost zijn e-book wel 0.01 eurocent...]   Google eBooks is de nieuwste ambitie binnen het megalomane project om élk boek in élke taal online zo niet beschikbaar danwel doorzoekbaar te maken (een rechtenkwestie). Dankzij de doorzoekbare inhoud komt een boek sneller naar boven als de consument op Google een zoekwoord intypt. Elk boek van Google eBooks is deels te in te zien. En van kijken komt kopen, denken ze bij Google. Op 7 december 2010 is dit idee werkelijkheid geworden in de VS. De eBooks van Google zijn beschikbaar via ‘Cloud Computing’. Je boek vind je via Google zoeken en koop je bij een retailer naar keuze. Je aankoop verschijnt in je Google wolkje en je kunt er via je Google account op elk moment en met elk apparaat bij. In een vorm die bij het apparaat past: je wilt op je smartphone de tekst kunnen vergroten, en op je netbook gemakkelijk door de hoofdstukken kunnen bladeren. Dat onderscheidt Google van bijvoorbeeld Amazon, wiens bestanden alleen met de Kindle werken. Philippe was natuurlijk niet voor niets in Nederland. Hij zoekt partners: uitgevers en verkopers. Hij vertelde van zijn deal met onze Haagse KB, om maar liefst 10.000 boeken waarvan het copyright is verlopen te digitaliseren en in te lijven bij Google eBooks. Boeken zonder rechten zijn geheel en gratis beschikbaar, en de rest is volledig te doorzoeken, deels door te bladeren en gemakkelijk te kopen.   In Amerika hebben consumenten inmiddels meer dan 2 miljoen titels, uitgekomen tussen 1750 en 2011, in hun wensenwolk staan. Elke dag komen daar 40.000 titels bij. En uit eigen ervaring kan ik beamen, dat de stap van verlanglijstje naar aankoop klein is. Zelf heb ik zo’n lijstje op bol.com, momenteel gevuld met 16 boeken. Bij het digitale aanschafproces van een boek dat ik echt nu wil hebben, klik ik vaak ook een of twee titels uit m’n verlanglijst aan.  Van de eBooks die de Amerikanen daadwerkelijk in hun bibliotheekwolk hebben staan, bestaat ongeveer de helft uit betaalde boeken. Ook al zo fraai in balans is de mix tussen feit en fictie en de verhouding bestsellers en vergeten boeken. De eBooks worden het meest gevonden op een computer, maar de meeste pagina’s worden gelezen op apps (iPhone, iPad, android). Je ziet dat mensen nog moeten wennen aan het idee van een online boekenwolkje, want er wordt veel gebruik gemaakt van de optie om het eBook toch ook als (beveiligde) pdf te downloaden.  Dat zo allemaal aanhorend, hopen wij dat ons e-book, dat als extraatje gratis te downloaden is met een code in het papieren Colombiaans Carnaval, gauw in de wolken van Google raakt. Of is dat naïef? We horen het graag van u op onze facebook!