by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
I just read over on Pocket PC Thoughts that FictionWise has aquired eReader from Motricity. eReader has a long history, originally starting as Peanut Press. It was aquired by Palm and renamed Palm Digital Media (at the time Palm did not sell Windows Mobile devices) and later renamed to eReader and sold to Motricity.

(Here is an interesting tidbit. I believe even to this day the books you buy from eReader are in an encrypted version of the Palm database format, indicated by the *.pdb file extension. If you aren't familiar with Palm, in the earlier days all the files on Palm were stored in the PDB format so eReader's file format shows their original roots of first being available for Palm OS handhelds.)

Next to Audible.com, eReader may well be the most popular electronic book publishing firm, and their success is due in large part to a straightforward DRM implementation that allows for moving ebooks to difference devices. The books that you buy are encrypted using the credit card number that they were purchased with as the key, and you can share books so long as you are willing to share your credit card number. They keep an electronic bookshelf of all the books you purchase, and you can download them at any time. If you change credit cards it is pretty simply to enter a new credit card and have new encrypted copies of the book generated, though of course you would need to download them to your device again.

Over the years I have probably spent a couple hundred books or more on books from eReader. Next to eWallet, it is probably the second application that I install on any new Pocket PC that I get. When I learn of a book that I am interested reading I check eReader first and either buy it or put it on my wishlist. Ed Hansberry thinks FictionWise, who has been selling ebooks on their own for some time. I don't know whether FictionWise's catalog overlaps with eReaders or is the same, but if they have titles originally not available that will be a bonus. My fear is that the continued reselling of eReader is an indication that the ebook market really hasn't matured, hopefully time will prove my fears wrong.

Labels: 2008, ebooks

posted by Frank at 9:20 AM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Amazon's new eBook device, the Kindle, has been creating a buzz on the Internet. My first personal reaction when I saw pictures of the device is that it is ugly, and many of the reviews that I have read have listed numerous flaws around usability. Most praise the integration with Amazon that allows you to buy books from Amazon and download them to the device, as if that is the first time one could buy ebooks that way, but they are wrong. As I have written, Windows Mobile users can download a free update to eReader Pro that enables one to buy and download eBooks directly on their device. It even works with the bookshelf so that it is easy to download books you either buy from your PC, or have boughten previously. I think that eReader may have more ebooks available than Amazon/Kindle, so I personally recommend that if you are a Windows Mobile owner you consider not using Kindle and checking out eReader.

Labels: 2007, ebooks

posted by Frank at 12:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I've been a customer of eReader ever since they have been known as Peanut Press, which needless to say is a long time. This is an ebook reader that started on the Palm OS platform and expanded to Windows Mobile once it became popular. To this day books are still stored in an encrypted *.pdb format, which I believe indicated a Palm database as the Palm OS doesn't really have a file system.

eReader is popular because of the huge number of titles available. Pretty much any book that you could want is available, though in most cases the book prices are at or slightly below retail. Up until just recently shopping for an ebook was a process of logging in to the web site from a PC, download the book you bought on the PC and then transferring it to your device.

For a while now you could buy a professional version of eReader, which had more features, or use a free version that I always found to be good enough. Recently the professional version became free for Windows Mobile users because the online store has been integrated into the device. In short, you can now purchase and download ebooks directly on your device.

eReader has a couple of features that I like: online bookshelf and wish lists. The online bookshelf is a record of all the books that you buy. If you switch devices or accidentally delete a book, you can always go to the online bookshelf and download another copy. You may need to re-enter the the DRM credentials, which is a combination of your name and the credit card number that you used to buy the book. eReader's DRM is very sensible to me, and is based on the assumption that people will not freely give their credit card numbers to others. If you transfer a book to another device you have to reenter the credentials. I really wish that Apple provided a similar type of "bookshelf" for the music that you buy from iTunes, which would provide a level of security from losing music if you should have a hardware failure.

The new professional version of the reader provides access to your bookshelf, so if you switch devices all you need to do is install the new client then access the bookshelf and download the books you want to read or reference. Unfortunately, eReader does not provide the same for the other feature that I like, wish lists.

I use a wish list to keep track of the books that I want to buy in the future. Since this is a feature of shopping, I think it is curious that it is not included because any book that I would want to download from a wish list is a new purchase, unlike the bookshelf which are books I already purchased. Hopefully in the future eReader will add wish lists to the client, in the mean time I'll just have to go to my wish list on a PC, purchase the book, then access the bookshelf from my handheld to download it.

If you like reading books, and haven't tried eReader, I highly recommend it. I find it particularly handy for carrying a number of books with me, and most Pocket PC screens are very readable. I am particularly happy that my Tytnn II has a job wheel on the side, which is handy for turning pages.

Labels: 2007, ebooks

posted by Frank at 6:50 PM 0 comments Links to this post