E-books

Three in ten Americans read digital books. Whether they’re accessing online textbooks or checking out the latest bestselling e-book from the public library, the majority of these readers are subject to both the greed of Big Publishing and the priorities of Big Tech. In fact, Amazon’s Kindle held 72% of the e-reader market in 2022. And if there’s one thing we know about Big Tech companies like Amazon, their real product isn’t the book. It’s the user data.Major publishers are giving Big Tech free rein to watch what you read…

Last week, Apple revealed what could potentially be the future of smart wearables with its $3,500 Vision Pro headset, but you can’t buy one just yet. What you can buy, or at least, pre-order, is a pair of goggles that take an entirely different approach to immersive entertainment,letting users block out everything but the written word, and only for 4350. Tiffany & Co. Released NFTs (and They’re Ugly)The Sol Reader had a low-key reveal at CES 2023 earlier this year, with just a handful of people getting the…

Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends Kindles are cheap, long-lasting, and easy on the eyes. Depending on the variant you pick, they can even fit in your jeans pocket, just like a phone. Amazon’s e-reader owns a lion’s share of the market with a diverse hardware choice and a rich portfolio of titles in its digital library. It’s a dream device for bookworms that can carry thousands of books in a package that is just over five ounces. But the Kindle comes with its fair share of pitfalls, and over time, you start craving the…

A lesson I learned early in life: never piss off a librarian. Apparently District Court Judge John G. Koetl skipped out on a formative traumatic-shushing experience, because his recent ruling against the Internet Archive, a beloved digital library nonprofit, has riled up the biblio-archivist community. Some brief background: During the early days of Covid lockdowns, the Internet Archive launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Since library closures had ripped millions upon millions of books out…

Pop quiz: which big company was the first to popularize electronic paper e-readers with consumers by making it easy to find and load ebooks and other digital documents? If you answered Amazon, we’ll see you in summer school, because Sony’s e-readers outdated the Kindle by years. Unfortunately,the company will soon be out of that business entirely as it plans to finally shut down its Reader desktop software as well.Although the Rocket eBook and the Sony Data Discman were handheld devices created for the sole purpose of…

"The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible," said Schickler, a salesman in Rochester, New York. "I thought 'I can do this.'" Using the AI software, which can generate blocks of text from simple prompts, Schickler created a 30-page illustrated children’s e-book in a matter of hours, offering it for sale in January through Amazon.com Inc's self-publishing unit. In the edition, Sammy the Squirrel, crudely rendered also using AI, learns from…

Until recently, Brett Schickler never imagined he could be a published author, though he had dreamed about it. But after learning about the ChatGPT artificial intelligence program, Schickler figured an opportunity had landed in his lap."The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible," said Schickler, a salesman in Rochester, New York. "I thought 'I can do this.'"Using the AI software, which can generate blocks of text from simple prompts, Schickler created a 30-page illustrated children's e-book in a matter of hours,…

Starling believes Findaway has misused the material that authors and narrators entrusted it with. “This is immoral and illegal,” Starling told WIRED, “Rights holders have the copyrights for the audiobook production only, but no claim on the narrator’s voice.” She’s pausing the release of three upcoming titles she planned to distribute via Findaway.Interest in automating the art of book narration has grown in recent years for business and technology reasons. Audiobook revenue has continued to grow even as book and ebook…

Photo: Andrew Liszewski | GizmodoDespite the growing popularity of e-note digital notepads over the past few years, the Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s first E Ink device with stylus support for annotating documents and taking notes. But instead of pulling ahead of the competition with an e-note device packed full of innovative features and functionality, the Kindle Scribe feels more like Amazon making a timid first step into unfamiliar territory.Although it wasn’t the first E Ink device to work with a stylus, the original…

Image: AmazonIn recent years, the Amazon Kindle has only seen minor updates, getting advances like sharper E Ink screens and a welcome switch to USB-C charging ports, but today Amazon announced a major upgrade in the new Kindle Scribe, which turns the e-reader into an e-note device with an included stylus that never needs charging.Although Sony beat the company to the punch, Amazon’s Kindle was arguably the E Ink device that finally popularized ebooks and e-readers with consumers. And although many predicted the death of…