Reports out the last few days point to Barnes and Noble looking at ways of selling some or all of their Nook line of eRedeaders.  The problem is an odd one.  By most measures the Nooks have been successful products.  They competed effectively with other eReading devices, and the Nook Color almost singlehandedly defined a new niche in the tablet category of computers.

The bottom line, however, is that the sales success has not been translated to B&N’s bottom line:  the large book chain has not found  a way to sell their fancy new devices at a profit.  Development costs are high, as are the costs of keeping the products up to date in a fast-paced technology industry. 

B&N is said to be looking at two options:  The first is to sell the brand to another firm that could afford to continue developing the Nooks and to promote them in American and international markets.  It is understood, apparently, that these products need further development and to be promoted more than they are now if they are to become profitable.

The second option would be to sell a large percentage of the products to another firm but keep  a minority interest.  This would allow B&N to reap some of the expected profits from the line as it reached critical mass.  And it would free them from the need to raise additional capital.

Lurking behind the issue is that B&N is not currently profitable.  Furthermore, if they sell or drop the line of eReaders, what they are left with is a dinosaur brick and mortar book chain that is steadily losing ground to the same digital markets that the Nook has helped define.

Some analysts feel the Nook is doomed and will eventually disappear.  The price pressure applied by Amazon is simply too much for each of their products, the e-Ink Reader that sells for $100, the Nook Color for $199 and the Nook Tablet for $249.  At these prices, there is no margin left for profit and not enough money coming in to continue their development efforts.

If there is to be a buyer it must obviously be one with deep pockets.  Microsoft and Google qualify as having deep pockets.  But do they have the compelling interest?  It is hard to see Microsoft blowing itself up even beyond their present size to take on such a different breed of cat.  It is not an area in which they have much of a proprietary interest.  They are not hardware manufactures at their core; neither are they book sellers, electronic or otherwise.

The case for Google is better.  They have an electronics bookstore, although it is not doing particularly well.  And they make the Android OS that runs many of the eReaders, both e-Ink and LCD types.  They would have better bargaining power with the publishers for the electronic titles they would sell.  Perhaps a partnership would be possible for them.

It also seems that Sony could be interested.  Their selection of electronic titles lags B&N and Amazon, so they would gain traction in an industry that is not in their wheelhouse.  They make eReader hardware now, so there would be some duplication in picking up the Nook line.  However, Sony could use the Color Nooks to enhance their offerings in the 7-inch segment of the tablet market.  Furthermore, Integrating these two sides of the Pacific might me more than Sony could do given their current state of struggle in the computer market.  This makes them a longshot, in my view.

12/21/2011:  Fire Fixes Flaws

From David Pogue: “Animations are sluggish and jerky — even the page turns that you’d think would be the pride of the Kindle team. Taps sometimes don’t register. There are no progress or ‘wait’ indicators, so you frequently don’t know if the machine has even registered your touch commands. The momentum of the animations hasn’t been calculated right, so the whole thing feels ornery.”

+A software update, sent out over the air on Tuesday, fixes these balky characteristics.  According to reviews, the carousel stops spinning on a dime; it takes only one tap to open an application, and one tap opens something much faster than before. and page turns are faster and smoother.

There was one enhancement, too.  The user can control which apps are in the home carousel.

A good fix for the Fire that makes a significant difference in user satisfaction.

12/19/2011:  Lenovo Has Quad-core 10.1-inch Tablet in The Oven

A report from DigiTimes, a newspaper based in Taiwan that keeps a close eye on electronics manufacturers in that island nation, says that Lenovo has a quad-core tablet ready to begin production in January.   It will be called the K2, which will be an update of the existing K1.  The new device will feature an  NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, up to 2GB of RAM, and Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

12/17/2011:  7-inch iPad Coming in Late 2012?

DigiTimes, an infamous reporter of random rumors strikes again with a report that Apple is buying oodles of 7.85-inch displays from LG and Aupotronics.  Presumably these purchases are intended for use by the Cupertino firm, and it probably isn’t for a new laptop.  More likely it would be for the often speculated 7-inch tablet, a sort of mini-iPad. 

The rumor would put delivery close to the end of 2012.  DigiTimes has been right in some of their reporting, given the close relationship they have with the Taiwan firms that actually manufacture many of the world’s laptops.  But, they have also been wrong, so there is no way of knowing yet.

RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook  sold about 850,000 units for the three quarters since its introduction.  %00,000 weere sold in its first quarter, 200,000 the next and now, 150,000 in the last quarter that ended November 26th.  RIM has been working overtime trying to get sales going on their tablet.  They have sent out multiple OS fixes, and they promise a much improved model in February.  But, the main emphasis for boosting their sales has been to lower the price to $200.  this has helped, and it is rumored that after Christmas selling season is over they will keep the $200 price point as permanent.

This will make it hard for other 7-inch tablets to get more than $200, with the Kindle Fire selling at that price, too.  This is good news for those who are considering a 7-inch model to supplement their digital experiences.

12/12/2011: Kindle Fire to Get Software Update

Amazon will push an update to Kindle Fire owners before the end of the year, according to a report in the New York Times.  The new software will offer better performance, improvements in multitouch navigation, and the ability to edit the list of recently used items that show up on the home screen.

All of the enhancements are in response to consumer complaints that have been documented in reviews posted by the early adopters of the new 7-inch tablet.  Nearly 33% of early buyers have given the Fire three star or less ratings.  This compared with only 11% of the first Kindle buyers some years ago.

12/08/2011:  The Nook Tablet Ships a Million

It is clear now that the 7-inch segment of the tablet market will never be the same since Amazon and Barnes and Noble brought out their 7-inchers at prices that translate to roughly half the prevailing prices at the time.

Amazon’s success with the Kindle Fire has been widely publicized, and now Barnes and Noble is said to have shipped a million units of their Nook Tablet since its mid-November debut.

Neither the Fire nor the Nook Tablet are as full featured as their competition from Samsung or HTC, to name a couple, but the pricing at that end of the market will never again support a $400 price, much less the $500 price point at which they were initially offered.

An example is offered by RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook.  Even at the deeply discounted price of $199, they are expected to have sold only about 150,000 units for the entire quarter.  Admittedly the $199 price point was not in effect during the entire quarter, but with Amazon selling four to five million since mid November and Barnes and Noble at least taking shipments on a million units, this can spell only disaster for the PlayBook.  I wonder if it can be fixed.

The sales of Samsung 7-inch tabs and HTC are not yet known, but it cannot be expected to be much.  Altough HTC has reduced the price on their 7-incher to $199, I wonder how much they can sell.  The original Galaxy Tab is now selling for $200 with a 3G contract.  It is hard to see that the newer models of the same size will sell much at their $400 price points.

12/01/2011: Electronic Reading Continues it Rapid Growth

Electronic reading continues to grow at a fast pace as it continues to grab a larger slice of the book sales pie. Amazon reported today that they now offer over 900,000 eBooks in English and other languages, all offered for sale through their website.

Following this announcement, Juniper Research, a firm that follows the industry, released a report which foresees sales of electronic books to reach almost $10 billion by 2016. Sales for this year are estimated to be about $3.2 billion.

Juniper attributes the rise to the growing inventory of eBooks and in the number of eReading devices on the market. They also say that the spread of eReading to smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices is expected to contribute to the growth. The research firm expects that tablets alone may account for as much as 30 percent of eBook downloads by 2016.

Posted via DraftCraft app

The ability of electronic devices to morph from one form to another is a source of confusion in the minds of consumers. For decades there were tablet computers, but there were no electronic readers. Then electronic readers were introduced, and within a few years browsing capabilities were added, more or less as an afterthought but not done well.  But, the distinction between these two categories was blurred just a little.

Then the tablet computer morphed from a very expensive pen-centric business device that was a sub-category of a laptop into a hand-held device that is now a category of its own. It wasn’t long before Amazon and the other eBook sellers developed reader applications that allowed these new tablets to read eBooks, too. When you put a Kindle reader on an iPad, the iPad becomes an eReader, even though it was an afterthought of the designers.

Now we have two categories of devices that have inched closer to each others’ afterthoughts. The old distinctions are gradually melding into a commonality that makes it hard to make meaningful distinctions between them.

This confusion is not only demonstrated by the buyers of these devices. It is also on display by the blogs and eMagazine sites that keep track on the industry. As an example, notice what the data below shows how differently the different blogs and eMagazines treat this distinction.

PC World: Single category: Tablets/E-Readers.

Engadget: Separate categories: (1) E-Readers, (2) Tablet PCs. The Nook Color, by the way, is reviewed under the E-Reader category, although it could just as well be classified as a tablet.

Computer World No classification of either device

ReadWriteWeb No classification of either device

ZDNet Three categories: (1) iPad, (2) Tablets, (3) E-Books and E-Readers

Crunch Gear No specific classifications. They use “Mobile” and “Gadgets.”

Laptop Magazine Separate categories for Tablets and eReaders

Cnet Separate categories for Tablets and E-Book readers as a sub-class of Tablets

Tabletreaderinfo Single category: Tablet/eBook Readers

Sometimes our classification system fails us. And recently the original eInk providers, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, have introduced what are in fact tablets, but were designed and promoted as eReaders as their primary function. They also include tight integration of the eBook seller’s sites and all the electronic media capabilities. Still, they are tablet computers underneath and eReaders by heritage.

I don’t have a solution for this failure to clarify. Although there are two clear divisions between these categories: eInk vs not eInk. But, this is not convenient terminology for anyone, although it does describe the difference fairly accurately. We will probably have to live with this confusion for a while until one or the other either disappears or does some more morphing closer to the other.

On my site I find that I spend more time lately reviewing the eReading capabilities of tablets than I do reviewing pure, eInk readers. The market is clearly moving away from eInk, although it could make a comeback. But, I can’t see how. It is a hassle to carry two devices with you when one is enough, and the way the technology stands today, the clear winner is the tablet with eReading software. I almost never use my old Kindle anymore. My 7-inch Galaxy Tab or iPad has taken over this function.

Nevertheless, there are many avid readers who prefer their old eInk devices, and they are the best way to read if you are out of doors. But I don’t see a bright future for this old technology. I am most curious as to how this plays out.  But confusion will reign for a while longer.

9/28/2011:   Kindle Fire in the 7-inch Tablet Market

The most surprising announcement from Amazon was that their new 7-inch tablet will retail for $199.  It weighs in at 14.6 oz and features a new, advanced browser named Silk.  Silk uses some advanced cloud techniques that will speed up the browsing experience.

 This will blow the doors off the 7-inch market.  For now the only competitor, the Nook Color, has been selling well at $250, and it is slower and has less capacity than the Kindle Fire.

An up-grade to the Nook Color is expected next month, so I expect prices on the original model to come down to $100 or less in order to clear out the inventory.

On the downside, the Kindle Fire has no camera, no 3G connectivity and no microphone.  But these do not sound like killer omissions.  The iPad didn’t have a camera, either.  Although I find the one on my Galaxy Tab 7 handy at times, I do not think it essential.

New Kindle Touch also announced.  Similar to the Nook and Kobo touch screens, the new Kindle Touch uses an infrared screen system to “feel” the touch strokes, meaning that the screen readability will not be affected.  No physical keyboard, Tap on the right to turn to next page, the left side to go back and the bottom for menu.  The new model will sell for $99 and it includes a major new feature, X-Ray that adds information similar to the definition look-up but is greatly expanded in terms of the subject matter.

There is also a Kindle Touch 3G coming at $149.  No contract for the 3G, no monthly cost regardless of use.

For users who don’t want touch screen ability, a touchless screen Kindle will sell for $79.

9/27/2011:  Tomorrow the new colorful Kindle Fire, will, it is said, be introduced at Amazon’s press conference.  From TechCrunch comes the latest rumor, based on strong evidence.

First the new tablet will be more like the RIM BlackBerry Playbook than the Nook Color. 

The mockup shown below was created by one of the staff members of TechCrunch based on a description of one who got to use it for an hour.

The insides of the Kindle Fire will also be more like the Playbook.  It is use a dual-core OMAP chip of an ARM design byf Texas Instruments, perhaps running at over 1 GHZ,.  Its speed would be much faster than the Nook Color’s single chip 800 MGZ design.

Furthermore, the rumor states that the new tablet will not be available until the second week of November—about the same time that Barnes and Noble will unveil their Nook Color 2, running on a similar chip as the Fire.

The operating system will be based on Android 2.1, but one will not recognize it because Amazon has written their own user interface, and it will tightly integrate all of Amazon’s store shopping features, including eBooks and streaming video.  They are also said to be beefing up their movie selection.

5/18/2011:  New leaks about Amazon’s tablet plans are now circulating.  The latest, tied in to the post here on 5/15 get more specific.  There are two tablets coming, possibly one 7-inch model that will be configured with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, code named Coyote.

The second tablet will be powered by an ultra quad-core processor known as the Tegra 3 which could run graphics up to 3 times faster than today’s popular Tegra 2.  This machine is code named Hollywood.

The second tablet, Hollywood, would push the cutting edge of tablets and would have to be ready soon after the Tegra 3 ships.  This would put Amazon in the leading position for power and graphics for all existing tablets.  However, Amazon will not be the only producer to bring out a model with the new generation processor. 

5/15/2011:  The latest spate of rumors about Amazon’s tablet are making the rounds in the blogosphere.  The current one focuses on two sources:  the first is a casual remark from Jeff Bezos himself that there will be an entire family of Android devices rather than on single device. 

The second rumor comes from Taylor Wimberly by Andoidandme, who has good contacts within the world of Amazonia.  Mr. Wimberly insists, through personal leaks from those inside the industry with direct knowledge of the project, that there will be new products coming from Amazon in the fall of the this year, and that one would be a direct competitor with the iPad.

Other rumors about this project insist that the new tablet will be a competitor with the iPad, but that it will be a Kindle-specific product—something that sounds much like the Nook Color.  In other words, the new tablet will be an Android device but one that is oriented primarily toward eReading but that has general surfing ability with Android apps capability.

Another interesting idea is that one of the new devices will be an Android phone.

The screen of the new tablet device is rumored to be everything from Pixel Qi to Mirasol.  The processor will most likely be an ARM device, but it could be anything from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm or others.  No one seems to think it matters much as to which processor is adopted.

The consistent trend, though, is that the new tablet and other devices are coming.  Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring.

5/3/2011:  The rumors are now beginning to filer in from the up-stream suppliers of Amazon’s new color tablet/eReader.  One of the sources of the new rumor is DigiTimes, a sometimes-reliable supplier of rumors about American contracts with Taiwan’s manufacturing sector.  They predicted last year that Apple would come out with a 7-inch iPad.  It turned out that Taiwan manufacturers did receive contracts to manufacture 7-inch devices, but they were not for Apple.

DigiTimes is now reporting that Quanta Computer has received a large order for tablets from Amazon.  The order numbers in peak season are to be in the 700,000 – 800,000 a month and are expected to begin deliveries as early as the second half of 2011—which means June or July.

Quanta Computers also manufacturers the RIM Playbook and eReaders for Sony Corp.  And Quanta is also reported to be in the running to manufacture the Le Pad for Lenovo.

And interesting side note in the rumor is that Amazon’s Kindle eReader continues selling well, but only in the American market.  Amazon is supposedly working on a plan to further reduce the price of the Kindle to make it more attractive to schools and other institutional buyers, so it will keep the Kindle in production in addition to their production of the new color tablet.

There has been some speculation that they would go to Mirasol type display, but this rumor insists on an LCD with Fringe Field Switching technology.  This technology comes from the manufacturer of e-E-Ink displays.

First Rumor:

There is no argument that Barnes and Nobel beat Amazon to the punch when they brought their Nook Color to market last year.  The device has been popular and it has given B&N new life in the electronic books market.  It is also a fairly decent Android tablet.  If B&N would juice the speed up a notch it would be even more so.

It is no surprise, then,  to learn that Amazon is working on a Kindle color tablet.  The credibility of the rumor has ratcheted up a few notches when it was reported by Peter Rojas of gdgt that he was 99% certain that Samsung will produce a device of Amazon’s design.

Speculation is rampant about what the new device will cost and what it will look like.  No one who knows is talking, so none of those talking know.

Given the importance of this event—when Amazon does something in this space it deserves attention—I am posting this first installment of Amazon’s Rumor Central.  I will keep this post updated with each new rumor that seems credible, so check back here for a summary of the rumors as they surface.

For the complete article by Mr. Rojas Click Here.

Further speculation by ZDNet, James KendrickClick Here.

Stay tuned for further developments.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about eReading on the various operating systems that power many of the new tablets coming to market this year.  Some fear that the larger screens and new operating systems will not be able to read electronic texts of the major vendors.

Each of the major new tablets is reviewed below for its ability to read Kindle, Nook and Sony electronic formats.

Android Tablets

There are four Android tablets that are either out now or will be soon.

· The Motorola Xoom is on sale now at Best Buy and at Verizon stores.

· The LG G-Slate is expected this month.

· Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn’t have a date set, yet.

· Acer has its Iconia Tab A500 set for a date sometime in April.

All are slated to run Android 3.0, the Honeycomb version, and the first Android system made for large screen formats. The new version of Android is a source of much of this confusion. Earlier versions of Android were written for cell phones with their 3 and 4-inch screens. It appears that some believe that the new software will not work with the older eReader applications that were written with small screens in mind. The pictures below show the Kindle apps that Amazons offers its customers.

Note that the second icon from the left, the Kindle for Android, is depicted as a smartphone. This is probably the origin of some of the confusion. Android versions from the first through version 2.2.1 were written for this size screen. However, the new Android 3,0 scales these apps to larger screens with good results.  The problem of clunky graphics that plagued the iPad for apps that were brought over from the iPhone, are largely avoided by Android. (Update 4/23–Amazon announced a few days ago that they were re-writing their Kindle App for Adroid 3.0.  So any problems with the larger screens will be addressed with the new release. RH)

The Galaxy Tab 7 uses the older version Android eReading apps, and the Kindle eReader works well on it. The same is true for the new Honeycomb versions of tablets. I checked Motorola’s Xoom yesterday and the Kindle app scales well on the larger 10.1-inch screen. I can say the same for an independent eReading app from Aldiko. The reading page looks fine on both apps and all the font and brightness controls available on the small-screens  work as they are supposed to.

The only drawback to the scaling is that when the Xoom is turned horizontally, neither the Kindle app not the Aldiko switches to a dual-pane display—this feature isn’t available to the small-screen versions of eithr reader.  I suspect that Amazon will make this adjustment quickly, however. They made it for the iPad within the first month it it going one sale.

I mention this because on wide screens a dual- pane division is helpful to the reader. Long lines are hard to follow, and a dual pane window solves the problem nicely.

The absence of a dual-pane switch tells me that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will most likely rewrite their reader software for the larger Android screen.

The picture below is of devices for Nook eReaders.

They match up well with Amazon with the exception of a Windows Phone 7 app, but that will probably have one soon. The scalable properties of the Nook are the same as for Amazon and Aldiko, so Nook owners need have no fear of buying an Android tablet.

Other Operating Systems: HP’s WebOS and BlackBerry’s QNX

Kobo is the only eReader app available for the Palm/HP WebOS. The Palm Pre is shown on the far right in the picture below.

The Pre runs the Palm OS that HP now owns.  HP has enhanced the OS and blown it up for the larger tablet screens. It isn’t known how the older apps will scale to the new 10.1-inch dimensions of the HP Touch Pad’s. But I cannot imagine HP not taking care of this issue before releasing their new tablet, scheduled sometime in the summer of this year.

I feel confident that HP’s new WebOS will have a full complement of reader apps when the time comes for them to go on sale. HP has too much credibility in the industry not to be able to convince Amazon and others to build reader apps for its tablet and smartphones.

RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook has several options of bringing their existing eReaders to the new seven-inch platform. First, with their huge installed base of BlackBerry smartphones, no book seller is going to be caught without a new app ready for it the day it is introduced. (Rumor has it that April 10^th will be the day).

RIM has also said that the Playbook will be able to run legacy apps from its earlier OS days, so existing apps from Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, for example, would be able to run on the new OS. There is also the real possibility that the new OS of BlackBerry will be able to run Android apps. Company executives have dropped the hint that they are considering making it compatible with Android —their hardware inside the tablet is certainly capable of being programmed to do it, and I would not be surprised to see it happen.  (Update 4/23–the only eReading app ready on the day of its release was Kobo.  I noticed the Kobo icon on the home screen when I checked the Playbook out at my local Best Buy store.  Kobo will read ePub files, so early adopters of the Playbook will have plenty of reading material available from day one.  RH)

Windows Tablets

On the few tablets that run Windows, all of the major booksellers already have software for it.  If it runs on your PC, it will run on a tablet.

This is not true for Windows Phone 7, however.  The eReader apps will have to be re-written, but that is already underway. Kindle had their app pre-installed on Windows Phone 7 smartphones the day they were introduced. Also, there are no expectations that this new operating system will be ready for a tablet until sometime in 2012.

Whether they will be as easily scalable as Android, though, we cannot know for certain until Microsoft steps forward with more details.

Overall it looks good for those who enjoy reading on electronic devices. The options are growing daily, and many of the new tablets have features that exceed what we have come to expect from laptops and the iPad. With the syncing ability of the major vendors of electronic titles, it is easy to switch devices without losing your place and without having to buy new copies.

As more magazines and newspapers become available in an electronic format, we can expect more and more time spent reading our favorite material whenever and wherever we happen to be. This is the liberating power of the new technology.

For those whose reading life encompasses electronic reading materials, life keeps getting better. We have had Gutenberg and Amazon for some time, and when Barnes and Noble decided that electronic delivery of books was in their future, our options were expanded once again. Border/Kobo was too little too late, but even so, it continued the expansion our options to acquire new reading material.

There have been many independent offerings of eBooks on the internet, but I have no way to keep up with all the sites where one may buy electronic titles. Few, however, offer the wide range of titles that Amazon and Barnes and Noble have.

Now, however, things have changed with Google’s entry into the market with Google Books. Google claims 3 million titles available, although many if not most are probably associated with the Gutenberg Project. On the other hand, it is not difficult to get contracts with the major publishers of electronic materials, and Google has done exactly that. Their new site is designed to be fully competitive with the established sellers.

Google has a difference with Amazon and Barnes and Noble: their eReader is web-enabled rather than app-centric. To visit their new site, Click Here.

The Google site is well organized and makes it easy to buy a book, and their search classifications are handy to zoom in to your area of interest. One feature I like is when you mouse over the cover, a popup window appears with a brief description of the contents. Barnes and Noble has the same feature, and Amazon could use it, too.   The screen shot below is of their home page.

For prices, Google are about the same as the other major retailers.  Many $9.99 books, but some are higher and some are lower.  Importantly, Google has a fair selection of the classic titles for free.

Google doesn’t sell any hardware for eReading, so they made their books readable on the web. If you log in to their site with your Google ID, then your reading is accomplished as a webpage rather than a specific standalone app that Kindle and Nook use. This also means that all the storage of your library is done in their cloud storage system. Barnes and Nobles does something like this with their multiple platform software and syncing. Amazon allows you to shift your local books to other registered devices. Both systems have their advantages, but I prefer to have my storage done locally. That way you do not have to have an internet connection when you want to read.

Another feature that will be handy for many is the ability of Nook and Sony Readers to read Google docs. Amazon, with their proprietary format, does not allow this. Having it available would allow Kindle owners to take their Google library with them, but Amazon seems to be adamant about not opening up ePub files on their system. As a convenience it would be nice, but not, apparently for Amazon.

I have downloaded about eight books from Google, and I find that regardless of the device I am using, I can read them. They have specific apps for Android, iPad, iPhone and iPods, and I am confident that a WebOS and Windows Phone 7 app will be forthcoming soon. BlackBerry has already been observed being able to use Android apps on their up-coming new OS, so it won’t be long before all hands are on board.

It looks as if Google is ready to claim a share of this new and growing market, and their approach is appropriate for their vision of web-centric services. For readers of electronic texts, it is all for the good.

Ray Hendon

For those who recently acquired an eReader one of your first urges is to load it up with new books. Understandably, this urge is strong and eBooks stores are happy to help.

However. before jumping into paying for current titles, be aware of the availability of tens of thousands of books that are absolutely free of costs–all of them available for virtually any device, regardless of the brand. Even better, many if not most of the free titles are among the best books ever written.

In the United States, for example, books published in 1922 and prior years are no longer protected by copy-write restrictions and are free of fees to publishers. Before electronic reading began its growth stage, many publishers would print these old titles and sell them at significantly reduced prices in paperback format.   T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman are a few who come under this rule.

In Europe it is about the same, so we have available, free of charge, the high quality novels, poetry and essays of some the world’s greatest writers. Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Wordsworth, Blake, Pope, Flaubert, and thousands of others are available.

Printed copies of these titles are still being sold, but a major new wrinkle in publishing came along when the Gutenberg Project was begun. The Gutenberg Project takes as its mission in life to scan the huge library of copy-write-free books into a digital format and then give them away to anyone who asks. The internet has made this dream a reality, and the development of compressed formats of electronic titles made it easy and fast to download.  Regardless of your device, you can download a huge volumes of works to a PC, Mac or proprietary electronic reading device—Kindles, Sony Readers and Nooks, e.g.

Now there are hundreds of sites that either feature these free classic titles or at least carry many of them along with their regular for-sale inventory. Below you will find some of my favorite free sites.  Don’t forget, most of them have a variety of formats available. If you have a Kindle, you simply ask for the Kindle format. For most other eReaders, ePub and PDF formats are also available.

Gutenberg: Click Here. : The original site has a great selection of about 33,000 titles. Their site is not as slick in layout and user-friendliness as others, but once accustomed to its clunky interface, it is worth the effort. The main thing here to lookout for is that their search engine is not sophisticated in guessing what you are looking for. Spelling and precise names and titles are required to bring up a hit. Many of their titles are also available as audio books, wonderful for blind readers and others who prefer being read to.

Manybooks: Manybooks.net is much more civilized in its web page layout, and it boasts over 35,000 titles, all free. Many of the titles will be the same as Gutenberg, of course, but they have many of their own. The file formats available for download are many—all the usual suspects plus many you may have never heard of. This is almost always my first choice when looking for a classical title. Their search engine is also unimaginative, so be precise with titles and authors, or use their browsing by category system or browse alphabetically by author.

Inkmesh: Inkmesh has no inventory of its own, but will search sites for you to see if your title of choice is available and if so, where. It is also handy for fee-type titles if you want to compare prices. They also have classifications that you can browse by: adventure, romance, business, etc. It is a handy site to have available.

Amazon Free Books: Amazon has a rich library for free books, but they are not easily found. This link will get you directly to their free book section, but expect to have to fiddle with it some. Also, be careful and observant on their title searches. They will often bring up a range of options for any title, and many of the titles have fee versions as well as free. You may end up paying 99₵ or more for a title that may also be free if you look further down the list.

Barnes and Noble Free Books:  Everything I said about Amazon is true for Barnes and Noble. They have a good selection of free books, but the only file format available is ePub.

Kobo:Kobo has the ePub format, so Kindle users need not try. But Kobo has many free books. Finding them, though, is not easy. Usually, searching by a classic title will bring up paid and free versions of the title.

There are other sites, but this list should last for the first few thousand titles. Also, if you have an iPhone or Android smartphone, all the reader apps for Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo (Borders) are available. This way, you can download to your Nook, for example, and have the same library available on the iPhone or Droid. This is handy for short waits that allow you to read your current selection for a few minutes of productive fun.

There is a new use of eReaders that is fueling a boom in electronic readers and books:  A Kindle can serve as a brown paper bag for madam’s trove of racy romances with embarrassingly provocative covers.  “One Wicked Night is shown at right.

Hot romance titles are not a new genre in American lliterature.  They have been a staple of paper-back books for as long as there has been paper-back books. 

It turns out that holding one of these fast reading romances with a hot and happy ending exposes the lurid art on the cover to others.  This exposure is not welcomed by the women who read these kinds of books, and their solution is increasingly found by buying the electronic edition and read it on a Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader.  The readers don’t want their husbands to know of their taste for this steamy literature—similar to a husband who hides his Playboy from his wife.  And they don’t want others to see it either. (“Just for Tonight” shown at left.

According to industry statistics from Bowker, a research firm for the publishing industry, romance is now the fastest growing segment of the eReading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction

“Romance,” said Matthew Shear, the executive vice president and publisher of St. Martin’s Press, which releases 40 to 50 romance novels each year, is “becoming as popular in e-books as it is in the print editions.”

The NY Times article also reported that  “. . .at All Romance, an online retailer that sells only romance e-books, sales have more than doubled this year, and the most sought-after titles are usually the raciest.”

These lustful lasses are an exceptionally profitable niche for publishers because of two characteristics:  they are fiercely loyal to an author, often willing to buy everything a particular author has written, once discovered.  And, secondly, they buy, on average, three books a month. 

An idea of the growth of this segment of the business is provided by  Sourcebooks, an independent publisher in Naperville, Ill.  In the first quarter 8 percent of total romance sales at Sourcebooks were from e-book sales. By the third quarter that number had gone up to 27 percent.

Another astonishing statistic is that nearly 75 million people read at least one romance novel in 2008.

The overall demographic of this group of mostly women  is they are between ages 31 to 49, something of a maturing, pre-menopausal group. They read voraciously, going through a book or more a week. 

Click here for the entire NYT article

Google has opened its eBooks store at http://books.google.com/.  The site is functional on a PC, but it is still not working properly for my iPad.  I haven’t tried the Android app yet.

The tale of the iPad is interesting, and the way it unfolded hints that it may be working before long. 

The site itself is typical Google: utilitarian and sparse in design, and somewhat confusing about what to do next.  For now, once on their shopping site (http://books.google.com/ebooks) the book availability section is organized like Netflix, with four or five color presentations of book covers with right and left facing arrows to indicate more selection of each category.

With your first arrival at this section, the top of the page looks like this:

except the length is full screen and one can read each entry.  From the green icons on the left, which is for Android apps, the blue is iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and the yellow is the web.  The red icon is for Nook and Sony.  However, if you don’t select one of these icons soon, they are replaced with color ads for various things.

The Web app works, and it is the first one I was successful in installing, and buying a book to read.  I chose Alice in Wonderland because it was only 32 cents—no financial sacrifice is too great for the benefits of my readers.

I then went to my iPad and attempted to download the iPad version, but the processes forced me to iTunes and then it failed to complete the process.  I have a feeling that this part of the application process has yet to be completed.  When I searched the App store for Google Books, nothing came up. I then tried to read my Web App book I had just purchased by directing the iPad to the web site.  All went well until I clicked on the “Read Now” button.  The process failed with the single notice on the iPad screen that it couldn’t complete the operations.  Clearly, something else remains to be done.

Back to the reading experience.  Once I downloaded the book on my PC it was available in my Google library, so I clicked on its icon to begin reading. It worked fine, and I was greeted with the following snapshot of the screen:

The screen shot above is actually only half the page, since it displays a two column layout, but I can’t show it large enough to be meaningful on my narrow format here.  Notice the left arrow in the left margin.  Their page looked and felt much like Kindle and Sony, but it is a web based experience, written through the browser rather than through the operating system.

I hope Google gets the problems with Apple fixed.  It would be a fine addition and competition for the other sites. (See Update below)

One other note: I found no listing of free books on their site.  I will search it more carefully during the coming days, but I am disappointed at their lack of facility in getting at the Gutenburg Project books and other sources that are free.  Being the cheap guy that I am, this is of paramount importance to me.

UPDATE 12/07/2010

Today the Google eBooks site has a working iPad app, and it is in the iTunes store.  It downloads correctly, and I was able to sign to my Google eBooks account and read my $.032 book.  The app is written for both the iPhone and the iPad, and is displays only in the portrait mode.  I hope this is corrected soon. 

From engadget, the following quotation: “About a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said he believed general-purpose gadgets were the future, and dedicated devices such as the Kindle were on their way out. Early numbers suggest he may be right.”

A marketing research firm, ChangeWave, tabulated results from the 2,800 people who responded  to their survey of eReading.  The results, shown in the graphs below, indicate that the iPad is rapidly gaining on Kindle as the eReader of choice. 32 percent said they used an iPad as an e-reader, while 47 percent said they used a Kindle.

If the survey results are truly representative of all those who use eReaders, the iPad is headed for domination of this market by the middle of next year.  This is a phenomenal rate of a market shift in response to the iPad and, probably, by implications, all color multipurpose tablets.  E-Ink, again, if these results are a true indicator of the buying public, is soon to find itself relegated to the back burners.

ChangeWave also asked their respondents about their plans for purchases of eReaders within the next  30 days: 42 percent said they were likely to buy an iPad, while 33 percent said they’d probably buy a Kindle.  These results are graphed in the second chart, below.

The story doesn’t end here, though.  The repercussions for the sale of eBooks, supposedly what they all are aiming for, promises to help sooth the pain for Amazon.  Its eReader software for the iPad and Android devices continues in widespread use, so the sale of eBooks by Amazon will probably continue prospering, regardless of the fate of its E-Ink reader.  According to research firm Cowen, Amazon sales through the eBook store were on track to grow 195 percent to $701 million this year.

The evidence on the side of Amazon’s eBook software, however, is clouded by the revelation from ChangeWave that 60% of iPad customers whom they surveyed are downloading apps through the iBooks store while only 31% go for the Kindle app.

This particular statistic may or may not be stable over time.  New owners of iPads are likely to use the iBooks store and its eReader more at first, but as they gain experience, and sample the virtues of Amazon’s larger library and well-functioning reader app, they may migrate more to Amazon’s side.  At least anecdotal evidence supports this interpretation of the maturing process of eReading on the iPad.

According to the AllThingsD, “Credit Suisse analystSpencer Wang predicted earlier this year that Amazon’s share of the e-book market will shrink from 90 percent to 35 percent by 2015.

There are a couple of other factors to consider before jumping to any of these apocalyptic conclusions.  First, the survey was carried out before the advent of the Nook Color and many of the current crop of color tablets hit the market.  This dynamic is unaccounted for in their results.

Secondly, the study was done before Google announced its intentions to bring their eBook site live in December of this year.  That would probably indicate a further eroding of Amazon’s market share of eBook sales.

One conclusion I draw from this research report is that the eReading market is undergoing a rapid change in response to new technology.  Any firm that stays too long with its tried and true solutions will likely find the market quickly moving away from them.  In this industry, what was true yesterday is likely to be untrue tomorrow.