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By Mark Gladding
As you may have realised, eBooks Just Published has been out of action for the last month or so.
As the site has grown in popularity I’ve been unable to keep up with the steady stream of new ebook announcements.
Therefore I’ve started working on a new application that will allow authors to create and publish their own ebook announcements on this site without requiring me to spend time editing and approving each announcement. This will give authors the advantage of being able to publish an announcement immediately and free up a lot of my time.
I will still be monitoring ebook announcments to ensure the site is not spammed and hope to be able to spend more time writing ebook related articles for the blog section of the site.
I apologise to everyone for the break in service and my complete unresponsiveness to email – I’m also in the middle of a major house renovation!
I’ll let you know as soon as the new application is available.
By Mark Gladding
Vicki Tyley, author of the highly acclaimed Thin Blood has kindly sent me a coupon code that allows readers of this blog to download Thin Blood for free. Use the following coupon code to get Thin Blood for free instead of the regular price of $3.99. It’s valid until the end of April.
Coupon Code: TS67M
I’ve just finished reading Thin Blood and can highly recommend it. It has an excellent twist at the end that is both unexpected and yet highly plausible. I particularly liked the fact that it was set in my home town Melbourne, Australia. It was fun spotting all the local places.
Vicki was recently featured in Suspense Magazine. They had this to say about Thin Blood
Suspense Magazine Review on “Thin Blood”
Every once in awhile a reader comes across a book that takes over their life, captures their thoughts and forces them to contemplate nothing else but the characters and actions occurring upon a page.
“Thin Blood”, the debut novel by Vicki Tyley is one of those incredible, thrilling reads. I came across this book almost by accident and I am so thankful for chance circumstance.
Discovering Ms. Tyley on www.goodreads.com, I looked at her website and took a quick glance at her book. The prologue was captivating; I couldn’t wait to read more. I turned the pages (online, because it’s an e-book) quicker than I have turned pages in quite some time.
Obsessed with an old murder case, the book’s main character Jacinta is clueless, yet incredibly smart. She is intriguing and simply put, good. She is a character I can imagine an entire series created around because she is that great. As a journalist, Jacinta finds herself jobless due to company cutbacks. Determined to do freelance work, she digs into crimes of the past and finds herself absorbed in the murder of Kirsty Edmonds. The young wife had gone missing, many years ago and her husband was the only plausible suspect. Her dead body had never been found and two juries failed to find Craig Edmonds guilty therefore leaving the case cold. Jacinta’s sudden interest however, seemed to change it all.
Page after page of twists make this novel a smashing success. The characters are multi-faceted and complex and the reader never knows whom to trust. It wasn’t until I read the very last page of “Thin Blood” that I exhaled. I was stunned and you will be too.
Download Thin Blood for Free
Thanks Vicki!
By Mark Gladding
Alan Hutcheson, author of the recently announced Boomerang has kindly sent me a coupon code that gives readers of this blog a 50% discount. Use the following coupon code to purchase Boomerang for $2.49 instead of the regular price of $4.99. It’s valid until the end of May.
Coupon Code: YW35H
Purchase Boomerang
Thanks Alan!
By Mark Gladding
I can’t believe I’ve overlooked this incredibly useful service for so long. I’ve know about Feedbooks for a long time but thought it was just a publishing platform for ebooks. I assumed the name Feedbooks referred to providing an RSS feed describing new releases published on the site or some sort of place where you could satiate your feeding frenzy for books.
It turns out Feedbooks provides a service that will turn any RSS feed into a downloadable ebook. You can then transfer the ebook to your e-reader and read it offline. Alternatively, you could convert it to an audiobook and listen to it offline. Using this service you can read your favourite blogs or news services offline. You can convert an RSS feed to ePub, Mobipocket/Kindle or PDF ebook formats.
How it works
Go to Feedbooks and click on the News link at the top of the page. It’s interesting to note that apart from this link (which I initially interpreted as ‘News about Feedbooks’) there is no mention of this service on the home page. I assume they really want to position Feedbooks as an ebook publishing platform and downplay the news to ebook service.
You can see there is a list of Popular Feeds listed down the right hand side. You can click on one of these links and download the resulting ebook in any one of the supported formats mentioned above.
The real power comes by entering your own RSS feed URLs. There is a input field on the left which will let you enter the URL for any RSS feed on the web.
For example, to create an ebook containing the latest posts from the blog ZenHabits , enter the following.
1. Copy the ZenHabits RSS feed URL (e.g in IE, right-click and select copy shortcut).
2. Enter the URL of the RSS feed you wish to convert into the Feedbooks News service.
3. Download the ebook in the format of your choice.
4. View it in your e-reader of choice.
By Mark Gladding
I’ve just released two incredible new text to speech voices for use with Text2Go. They are called Amy and Brian and have been developed by IVONA Software. I really think they’re amazing – certainly the best I’ve ever heard. You can read the press release on the Text2Go blog or better still listen to the press release as narrated by Amy or Brian.
Listening to ebooks aloud has never sounded so good!
By Mark Gladding
Successful authors connect with their readers through a blog, website, myspace or facebook page, twitter, etc, etc. Over time they will have built up a loyal following of fans.
When you release a new ebook, it’s very easy to contact this existing fan base. However you will also want to reach new readers and hopefully convert them into loyal fans. One of the best ways of doing this is to announce your ebook on sites like this and publish your ebook on sites like Smashwords.com. This will put your ebook in front of new readers.
The problem is, how do you grab their attention? What makes your ebook stand out from the crowd?
The answer is genuine reviews from loyal readers. As soon as you launch your ebook on a new site, you need to mobilize your fans and let them know your ebook has appeared on the new site. Readers love to share a good book with others and introduce them to their favourite authors. You won’t need to explicitly ask your fans to leave a review on the new site. They will do it spontaneously.
Therefore whenever you launch your ebook on a new site, make sure you blog and tweet about it.
Like everything, this needs to be done in moderation. If you announce your ebook on hundreds of sites all over the internet and then expect your fans to leave a review on every one, they’ll very quickly get tired of it. Therefore choose a few, reputable sites that are likely to connect you with the most readers.
This tip is very similar to the practice of coordinating a large number of readers to purchase your book from Amazon on a specific day in order to promote your book up the Amazon sales charts.
Good luck!
By Mark Gladding
Here are 10 of the best ebooks announced this year on eBooks Just Published. They have been chosen based on user reviews, star ratings, and uniqueness. Price was not considered compiling this list – it just so happens that 8 out 10 are free. Use this list to find some interesting reads for the holiday season.
By Mark Gladding
We’ll probably look back on 2009 as the tipping point for ebooks. eBook sales have experienced phenomenal growth this year, a swag of new ebook readers have been released, including the Kindle 2 and the recently released Nook from B&N. In addition to the dedicated ebook readers, netbooks and the iPod touch and iPhone have become very capable and popular e-reading devices. There’s also been an explosion in the number of ebook sources, ranging from offerings by independent authors and publishers to those from major, traditional publishers who are finally making their bestsellers available in ebook format.
Despite this rapid progress things still have a long way to go before ebooks replace print to the same extent that digital music players have replaced CD players.
So is it a good time to purchase an e-reader? Yes, but only if you’re prepared to upgrade in 18 months or be stuck with a seriously outdated device. The competition in e-reading devices is hot and all manner of new devices are appearing on the market. Consumers have more choice and the strong competition is driving innovation.
Unfortunately, offsetting this positive innovation is the sad fact ebooks are still be sold wrapped in proprietary DRM. This means there is no guarantee the ebooks you buy today for your state of the art Kindle 2 will be able to be read on the next whizz-band e-reader from Sony or company XYZ.
Not only will you be stuck with an inferior e-reader, you won’t be able to move your library to a new device.
Thankfully not all ebooks are encumbered with DRM, thanks to publishing platforms such as Smashwords.com and other independent DRM-free publishers, so wherever possible you should buy DRM-free ebooks. DRM-free ebooks (especially those ebooks in the open ePub format) have the huge advantage of being able to be read on any e-reader, not just those available today but those to come in the future. It’s a bit like buying chicken at the supermarket – you should always try to buy free-range as it’s more ethical and better for you long term. However if you’re starving and there’s nothing else on offer, that battery farmed chicken sure looks tempting.
At some point I hope there will come a time when you’ll be able to guarantee that the ebook you buy today will be able to be read on all e-reading devices and the e-reader itself will have evolved to a point of refinement where they have become the norm for reading rather than the exception.
Until that time comes, you have a number of options. If you don’t mind reading from an LCD screen, then using an existing general purpose device such as a netbook or an iPhone/iPod makes good sense. Many actually prefer this reading experience to that provided by the e-ink displays of dedicated e-readers.
Another option is to convert your ebooks to audiobooks and listen to them on your iPod or MP3 player. This option has the advantage that you can listen to audiobooks at times when it’s impractical to read, like when you’re driving meaning you can pack a bit more reading time (or a lot if you have a long commute) into your day.
Finally, print is still a good option, unless you need to move house like we did last month. Then you’ll be amazed at how few books you can pack into a box before it becomes too heavy to lift and realize that advances in ebook technology cannot come quick enough!
By Mark Gladding
New ebook announcements on this site will now include an audiobook link wherever possible. e.g.
Convert to Audiobook
When this link is clicked, the ebook will be downloaded to your PC and converted to an audiobook using text to speech. The text to speech conversion is done using the program Text2Go. If Text2Go is not already installed, the reader will be prompted to do this first. As Text2Go is a Windows only application, this will only be available to readers with PCs.
Once the ebook has been converted to an audiobook, the reader can listen to it on an iPod, iPhone or any other portable device capable of playing MP3 files.
The following tutorial on the Text2Go website explains the process -
Converting an eBook to an Audiobook Tutorial
Why would you want to listen to an audiobook?
The advantage of an audiobook is it can be listened to during the day when reading is impractical or impossible. For example, you can easily listen to an audiobook while driving to work, going on holiday, out walking or in the gym.
An audiobook can be listened to while doing some other mindless activity, so It feels like you’re getting something for free. This is especially true when you find yourself stuck in traffic. It’s a great way of negating the frustration that threatens to overwhelm you in such situations.
Finally, the audiobook format is ideal for the visually impaired.
Details
- There must be an ePub version of the original ebook available.
- If the ebook being announced isn’t free, the audiobook link will link to a free sample where possible.
- If the ebook already has a companion audiobook or podcast, this will be linked to instead.
- Text2Go is a commercial application that can be used for freely for 30 days. After that time, the reader must purchase Text2Go ($US25 or $US45 including a high quality voice) if they wish to continue converting ebooks to audiobooks.
- I will be adding an audiobook link to existing announcements when time permits.
By Mark Gladding
Recently I’ve become a regular at the Collins St Dymocks bookstore in Melbourne during my lunchbreak. I like to browse the new releases and then grab a coffee or occasionally a bite to eat at the in-store cafe.
The other day I realised that although I’m a regular visitor to the bookstore, I haven’t bought a book for a while. Instead I’ve spent the equivalent of several bestsellers on food and coffee over the last few months.
Do authors realise that this is where their money is being diverted? Should bookstores offer a loyalty card that gives you a free book after every 20 coffees purchased?
Is this another advantage ebooks have over print – there’s no danger of buying a virtual coffee while browsing an online bookstore.
Food for thought.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist just one more cheesy pun.
By Mark Gladding
In a previous post, I asked ‘Where are all the DAISY ebooks hiding?‘ I was looking for some sample ebooks in the DAISY DTBook text only format to test Text2Go’s ebook to audiobook conversion. At the time I could only find one sample ebook in the DAISY DTBook format. I needed a wider selection of ebooks to be confident Text2Go could handle all the various elements of the DTBook format.
Thankfully, Varju Luceno, Communications and Marketing Specialist of the DAISY Consortium provided an extensive list of links to various DTBook sources and Paul Biba over at TeleRead.org also re-posted my plea which netted me a couple more sources.
This has allowed me to dramtically improve the DAISY DTBook support in Text2Go and I’ve just released a new version of the Text2Go 4 beta. I still don’t believe it’s perfect, so I’m offering anyone who finds a bug in Text2Go’s DAISY DTBook support a free Text2Go license. Just use the Support command built into Text2Go to send me an email describing the problem. If I can reproduce the problem I’ll send you a free license.
Note: There are a couple of types of DAISY DTBooks.
- Many DAISY ebooks already come with an audio track that’s synced to the text. There is no point in using Text2Go to generate speech for these books as they already contain an audio track, often narrated by a real person, rather than synthesized speech.
- There are text-only DAISY ebooks. These require a specialized reading device or a software application like Text2Go to turn the text into speech. It’s this type of DAISY ebook I want to support.
By Mark Gladding
Slashdot has an interesting post on a patent filed by Amazon that describes a technique for digitally watermarking passages of text. It does this by substituting one or more key words within the text with synonyms for those words. These synonyms are stored in a database and each key word may have more than one synonym. Using this technique it’s possible to deliver a unique version of the text to each requester. Not only that, the specific combination of synonyms used can be stored in a database against the requester’s details. If that particular except is ever misused or illegally distributed it will be possible to track it back to the original requester. The beauty of this technique is the reader is none the wiser that the text has been modified from the original. It’s the textual equivalent to watermarking a digital image by subtly adjusting the colour levels of a small proportion of their pixels.
The main purpose of the patent seems to be uniquely identifying excerpts of text from a copyrighted work that is served digitally to a number of readers. It also specifically describes how synonym substitution would make it difficult to automatically reconstitute an entire document by successively requesting adjacent excerpts. The patent states that if the overlapping region of two adjacent excerpts was populated with different synonyms then this would confuse the program trying to stitch the two back together. I seriously doubt this would work in practice. The number of synonym substitutions required to confuse a program with even some basic smarts would make the original work unrecognisable. You’ve only got to look at how well photo stitching software can line up two images to know that matching two excerpts of adjacent text is going to be a trivial task, with or without synonym substitution.
What is exciting to me about this technology is it could be used as a very effective and unobtrusive form of social DRM for ebooks. Because the identifying information is hidden within the text itself, the text can be packaged in an open format such as ePub or HTML. The reader is free to store it on any device, print it, use text to speech to speak it aloud and save it to any private storage medium. Because it contains unique information that identifies the reader they are discouraged from sharing it with others.
There are however a couple of downsides to this technique. The first thing I thought when reading about the technique was ‘An author’s choice of words is sacred. I don’t want to read a book that’s been tampered with, no matter how subtly’. After thinking about it some more, I believe I could live with it for most titles. The immediate exception that springs to mind would be something like Shakespeare. Not only is his prose so clever and precise, it’s so well known and widely quoted, that to tamper with it would be an abomination. The longer the work, the better the technique would work as there is more information in which to hide your identifying information. In a large work, only a very tiny fraction of words would need to be changed.
The other downside to this technique is it seems like it would be very easy to circumvent. To identify the words that have been substituted with synonyms, you would just need to download two copies from separate accounts and use a textual diff to see which words have changed. No doubt only a small percentage of the entire set of substituted words would vary between two copies. However you could imagine a group of people getting together to download and compare a large number of copies. Once you know the majority of words that have been substituted, you could substitute your own synonyms, obliterating the identity of the original requester(s) and perhaps inadvertently assuming the identity of some other luckless customer.
Nevertheless it’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t heard of before. I’d be interested to hear what authors have to say about having their work modified.
By Mark Gladding
DAISY is an XML-based e-book format created by the DAISY international consortium of libraries for people with print disabilities. DAISY implementations have focused on two main types: audio ebooks (digital talking books) and text ebooks. DAISY text ebooks are similar in many ways to the ePub format. DAISY uses the DTBook XML document type which provides a rich set of tags for marking up various elements of a book, making it easy to navigate and accurately convert to spoken audio using text to speech.
I’ve been working on ebook to audiobook conversion for the next release of Text2Go,which is now in beta. I’ve provided support for ePub and was hoping to include support for DAISY DTBook. The DAISY specification is freely available and there is a sample ebook in DTBook format. I’ve created a simple DTBook reader which will read the sample DTBook available. However I need to test this with a large range of DTBooks from multiple sources before I can be confident that I’ve provided a bullet-proof implementation.
This is where I’ve run into problems. I just can’t seem to find a good source of ebooks in DTBook format. Are there free or even paid sources of such ebooks on the Internet or are they only available through libraries or sites catering to the visually impaired? Perhaps I haven’t hit on the right keywords to use in Google? It’s a real shame as I would like to provide first class support for the DAISY DTBook format as it’s been designed specifically for text to speech applications.
If you’ve discovered any good sources of DAISY ebooks, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
By Mark Gladding
It was interesting to read over at TeleRead.org that the Los Angeles Public Library won’t buy e-books in a format for Adobe Digital Editions until ADE software supports text to speech, according to Library Journal.
This is a good decision by the LA Public Library as there are a number of thorny issues surrounding ePub, DRM and Text to Speech.
The first is that DRM protection and text to speech do not sit well together. Why? Because as soon as you offer text to speech you introduce a major security vulnerability into your elaborate DRM mechanism. This is why I believe that many ebooks in PDF format are shipped with text to speech disabled. Granted, in a number of cases, the publisher may not have the audio rights to the work but I suspect the majority of the time they don’t want to subject their works to this vulnerability.
To understand the security vulnerability you have to understand a little of how the text to speech process works. The following is specific to Microsoft Windows. I’m not familiar with text to speech on Linux or MacOS but I assume they have similar mechanisms.
Microsoft Windows supports text to speech using SAPI, the Speech Application Programming Interface. This interface serves two functions. It allows any Windows application like Adobe Reader, Microsoft Excel, and my own Text2Go to pass a string of text to the API and have it converted to speech. This speech can be output directly through the PC’s speakers or saved to an audio file (in .wav or mp3 format for example) for later playback. The actual conversion is done by a computerized voice. Windows XP ships with the atrocious sounding Microsoft Sam voice. Windows Vista and Windows 7 ship with the marginally better Microsoft Anna voice. Thankfully there are a number of 3rd party voice providers who sell a huge range of high quality, natural sounding voices in multiple languages and accents. Voices can be registered through SAPI and made available to any application that wants to provide text to speech functionality. Applications can then use SAPI to discover which voices are available on their system and let the user to choose a voice to use.
This brings us to the security vulnerability introduced by text to speech. In order for an ebook to be converted to speech, the entire text must be passed through one of the installed voices. For a normal voice this is not really a problem. The text will be spoken aloud through your speakers. But what say we created our own voice that didn’t convert the text to speech but instead saved it to a file. This would give you the means of instantly creating a plain text copy of an ebook. The only downside would be you’d lose all formatting information.
Such a voice would be very easy to develop. Microsoft even provide a sample voice as part of their documentation. Applications such as Adobe Reader or Adobe Digital Editions would have no way of knowing if your voice was a genuine text to speech voice or a text to text file voice.
The only way to guard against this would be for Microsoft to introduce a certification process for all SAPI-compliant voices. Voice vendors would be required to submit their voices to Microsoft for validation. Once verified, the voices would be digitally signed to identify them as being certified and to ensure they were not later tampered with. Applications could then choose to only use these certified voices for text to speech.
If you’re thinking this is a little far fetched then you may like to know that this is precisely the process Microsoft requires Vista-compatible video drivers to go through. This was to prevent the user from installing a video driver onto their system that pipes the video output from a DRM-protected HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc directly to an unencrypted file. Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland has conducted an interesting analysis of the Microsoft Vista DRM.
Closed, proprietary systems that don’t allow you to install your own software, such as the Amazon Kindle, will be less vulnerable to this approach.
As ebooks gain in popularity it will be interesting to see if Microsoft introduce a validation system for text to speech voices. In the meantime I’m sure publishers will continue to demand control over whether their works support text to speech on a title by title basis.
Which brings us back to the lack of text to speech in Adobe Digital Editions. Even if Adobe do add text to speech support, it’s still not much use to readers if publishers persist in disabling text to speech for the majority of their titles. The LA Public Library need to insist that not only does ADE support text to speech but all supplied ebooks also have text to speech enabled.
This confusing state of affairs makes it difficult for the ebook purchaser to answer the simple question ‘Can I convert this ebook to speech?’ prior to purchase. One of the great benefits of the ePub format is that you know there are no hidden restrictions on what you can do with your ebook. It can be read on any device with an ePub compatible reader and text to speech will always be possible. However now there are ‘DRM-protected ePub ebooks’ around, once again the consumer is left needing to ask a hundred questions to determine their rights for each individual title.
The real deception here is continuing to call ‘DRM-protected ePub’ ebooks ePub. As soon as an ePub ebook is wrapped in DRM it loses all the advantages of an open standard that come with ePub. I’m sure publishers recognise that ‘DRM-protected ePub’ is quite a mouthful and the tendency will be to shorten it to ePub.
I find this muddying of terminology particularly frustrating as I near the release date for a major upgrade to Text2Go which will support converting ePub ebooks to audiobooks. I would like to be able to say in my marketing material that ‘Text2Go supports ePub ebooks’ without having to add a caveat such as ‘except those protected by DRM’. A statement such as this means nothing to people outside the industry and all of a sudden you’re having a technical discussion on ebook formats, DRM, its restrictions and why is it necessary. By the time you’ve finished, if the customer hasn’t fallen asleep or fled, they’re going to be highly confused or suspicious of ebooks.
To my mind once an ePub ebook is wrapped in DRM it should not be allowed to use the name ePub. Perhaps instead they could be referred to as eSnub – the format publishers use when snubbing the rights of readers and the format readers should snub if they know what’s good for them.
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For those interested in participating in the Text2Go ebook to audiobook beta, drop an email to markgladding at ebooksjustpublished.com and I’ll send you a prerelease copy as soon as it’s available.
By Mark Gladding
Dan Holloway, author of the highly rated Songs from the Other Side of the Wall informed me that Smashwords had experienced an outage for several hours over the weekend. He was concerned the timing was particularly bad as it coincided with the time our weekly email digest of ebook releases gets sent out.
I asked Smashword’s founder, Mark Coker what had happened. Here is his response.
We had two separate outages Sunday, each caused by the same problem, though it took the second outage for us to verify the exact cause (a single author’s attempt to publish a bad file caused Meatgrinder to go haywire, causing a crash on each of her two upload attempts). The author was probably not as badly affected as they think. Despite being down for a just over 50% of the day’s hours, the site’s traffic dropped only 18% from the previous day, according to Google Analytics. I think the impact was mitigated because half the downtime occurred while the US was sleeping, and by around 2pm Pacific the problem was resolved.
Smashwords has always been a very reliable service. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of any serious outage.
On the positive side, Smashwords have just announced a distribution agreement with Sony, allowing Smashword authors to publish their works at the Sony eBook store. This comes just 4 weeks after a similar agreement was reached with Barnes and Noble.
By Mark Gladding
With squirrel mania currently sweeping the Internet, what better time to announce a free novel by award-winning author Jon Evans. Beasts of New York is an urban fantasy about the wildlife of New York City, starring a squirrel protagonist who has to find his way from exile back to his home in Central Park, rescue his mother, and win a war.
If you haven’t heard about the squirrel that photobombed a Canadian couple’s holiday pic, you can read about it in the Examiner. Then use the Squirrelizer to add a cute squirrel to any pic on the Internet.
