ENTRIES TAGGED "digital books"

PDF is still “better”

Until eBooks are redesigned exclusively for the screen, print and PDF will continue to provide a better user experience

A few weeks ago, I surprised myself. I had decided to learn a new code language, and O’Reilly of course has a great little book about this particular language, so I pulled up the eBook files, and almost without thinking, I loaded the PDF onto my iPad, rather than the EPUB. And my brow furrowed as I tried to figure out why I had made that choice, because as an eBook developer—as a CSS and web technology devotee—shouldn’t I also be a devoted EPUB user?

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Pictures that propel prose

Pictures that propel prose

How illustrations and a clear path can enhance a story.

A clear reading path isn't always a bad thing. Here's an example where imagery advances the narrative and guides the reader along a defined trajectory.

Open Question: Are we at the ebook tipping point?

Open Question: Are we at the ebook tipping point?

It's official — Kindle books are outselling print books.

Not only have Kindle sales increased by a factor of three year over year, the digital copy sales have overtaken the combined sales of hardcover and paperback book sales. Is the ebook tipping point upon us?

At TOC: A Different Way of Doing Booth Books

At most of our conferences, we sell books from our booth, and last year's TOC Conference was no exception. This year we're trying something a bit different — including a way to browse those books virtually: Test drive the Espresso Book Machine. Near the O'Reilly booth we've arranged a very special debut of the 2nd-generation EBM, and pre-loaded it with…

Safari Books Online Goes Mobile

Mobile SafariLike much of the publishing world, I’m eager to hear about Amazon’s latest version of the Kindle. But that’s not the only news today. I’m sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he’s showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it’s fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter.

iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season

Conventional wisdom suggests that when choosing pilot projects, you pick ones with a high likelihood of success. It's hard to argue that iPhone: The Missing Manual was a reasonable choice for testing the iPhone App waters. But while we knew it would do well, we've been quite pleased with just how well: If the iPhone App by itself had been…

New Tech Mixes Book Experience with Sensors

A new form of hybrid book is coming on the market — and the inventor consults with Apple. From the Guardian UK: Lyndsay Williams — who has already developed the PC sound card, SmartQuill, and SenseCam — is now working on SenseBooks, and the first of a series will be published next year. SenseBooks are a hybrid of paper…

The Analog Hole: Another Argument Against DRM

No matter how strong the encryption, digital rights management can't block "analog hole" piracy.

Storytelling Through Book Spines

The Sorted Books project puts book spines to work as storytelling devices: The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book…

News Roundup: The Crowdsourced Cat Book, Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book, EBay vs. Amazon (Round 2)

The Crowdsourced Cat Book Amazing but True Cat Stories is a 38-page coffee table book born from the combined efforts of Mechanical Turk contributors. The creator/editor of the book, Björn Hartmann, describes the genesis of the project on his blog: The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours…