Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re still balking at the cost of download-to-own e-books, and would rather stick to the tried-and-true library lending system, then this Hachette news is for you. Come next Wednesday, the entirety of Hachette’s ebook catalog — over 5,000 titles — will be made available to nonprofit libraries throughout the US. The announcement and finalized pricing model follows two years worth of pilot testing, during which the publisher examined ebook consumption and lending habits at select libraries. Under the currently set terms of sale, e-books that bow in tandem with print editions will run three times the price of their physical counterparts for “single-user-at-a-time circulations, ” with prices falling to just one and a half that of the hard copy one year later. By Hachette’s own admission, this pricing scheme is not entirely set in stone — the company plans to continually reevaluate the model on a per-year basis. So, there’s hope yet the publisher will gouge libraries a bit less for the perks of e-borrowing.

Comments

Tim Waterstone is the founder of Waterstones, a retailer of print books and other items in the UK. Waterstone is looking to launch a new digital book business that hopes to become something akin to music service Spotify only for books. The project is called Read Petite.

Read Petite will specialize in short stories and serialized content. Serialized content was big in the 19th century with novelists like Charles Dickens and others publishing novels chapter by chapter in newspapers and magazines. The problem for authors today is that short stories are hard to sell in physical formats.

However, Waterstone believes that short stories and serialized content would be well-suited to people who commute or don’t have time for a full-size novel. Read Petite will only publish content from authors that were already publishing with traditional book publishers. However, the material offered via the Read Petite service might be previously unpublished.

The Read Petite service is expected to launch towards the end of 2013. The service will carry a monthly fee of somewhere in the area of £5 and £12 per month. Waterstone will act as chairman of Read Petite, which was cofounded with three other people including Peter Cox, Neill Denny, and Martyn Daniels. The venture is currently seeking additional investors.

[via Telegraph]

Waterstones founder to launch Spotify-like service for books in 2013 is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Darrell Steinberg, California Senate President pro Tem, has introduced a bill that would require public colleges and universities in California to give credit for online courses taken at 3rd party providers. Steinberg stated that the bill would ensure that California students will not “be denied the right to move through their education because they couldn’t get a seat in the course they needed.”

The bill would ensure that MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Course providers) like Cousera, EdX, and Udacity would be able to offer introductory courses to students for full college credit. The courses will only count if the students are unable to get into the classes they need. There will be 50 introductory courses offered by MOOC’s that will be pre-determined by a faculty-led panel.

Steinberg stated that California has 112 community colleges, and that each college had an average of 7,000 students who were on wait lists for classes. At the California State Universities (CSU), there are over 420,000 students enrolled across the 23 CSU’s, but only 16% graduate within 4 years. With the increasing budget cuts, even more classes are cancelled and more students are being waitlisted. Tomorrow, students from the City College of San Francisco will be rallying together to combat the downsizing of their campus.

The passing of this bill would ensure that more students would be able to get the courses they need to graduate from college on time. Students won’t have to try quarter after quarter (or semester after semester) to get into the classes they need. There’s no guarantee that this bill will pass, but it is being viewed positively. The bill’s main opposition would be universities. Rhee-Weise, an Innosight Institute researcher, says that the bill will be controversial. “These low level courses are really the largest source of revenue for the university because they’re large classes often taught by grad students and few instructors.” However, a student’s education should outweigh “revenue” in this case. We’ll keep you posted about this bill.

[via VentureBeat]

Bill could require colleges to give credit for 3rd party online courses is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Xbox hacker and EFF Pioneer Award winner Andrew “bunnie” Huang has waded into the Aaron Swartz controversy, making his ebook Hacking the Xbox free to highlight the important role tinkerers and explorers play. The book, which details Huang’s exploits of the original Xbox console, and subsequent legal battle with Microsoft, was first published in 2003, and had a troubled release with the first publisher pulling out at the last minute over fears of courtroom reprisals.

It’s that arduous legal process that has motivated bunnie to release the free ebook in association with No Starch Press. Swartz, who committed suicide in January, was the target of a lawsuit around computer hacking, and faced a potential $1m in fines and up to 35 years in prison.

“Without the right to tinker and explore, we risk becoming enslaved by technology; and the more we exercise the right to hack, the harder it will be to take that right away” Andrew “bunnie” Huang

The threat of the lawsuit was widely believed to have contributed in no small part to Swartz’s suicide, though the US Attorney strongly denies pressuring the code expert. For Huang, the issue is made particularly personal by the involvement of MIT, accused of hanging Swartz out to dry in the courts, and something he himself had experience of when Microsoft took issue with his console hacking.

“In this book, you will find the story of when I was an MIT graduate student, extracting security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox” Huang writes. “You’ll also read about the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft.”

Physical copies of Hacking the Xbox remain on sale, but the free ebook can be downloaded in PDF format. Huang suggests the EFF, Demand Progress, and GiveWell as suitable donation recipients should readers want to reward his generosity.

Xbox hacker “bunnie” Huang makes book free in Aaron Swartz tribute is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week Amazon has unveiled Kindle book rentals in an extremely quiet fashion, opting to test it out with the public before doing any sort of press on the topic – but you can try it out right this minute if you wish. What you’re going to be doing here is renting a title for a certain amount of time, with the price going up based on how many months you’d like to keep it around. Thirty day increments appear at the moment to be the turn-over for how much you’ll be paying, 30, 60, 90, and 120 day periods being available for less than a dollar difference.

If you’re paying for a digital book, you have the right to look at that book as much as you’d like – and in most cases, download it to a limited number of devices at any one time. Here with Amazon’s Kindle rentals, you’ll be doing the same – but instead of your limits stopping at the amount of devices you can download to, you’re limited to time. The price being significantly less for these limited amounts of time may just be the ticket to those of you out there that have steel trap memories and tight pocketbooks in the e-generation.

If you have a peek at one of the very, very few titles available with rentals thus far by the name of Theories of International Politics and Zombies (courtesy of tipster Karen at Zats Not Funny, you’ll find that the Buy Price is (as it usually is) a little more than half of the price of the list price. The rent price, then, is less than half that cost – 80% off the original list price. Of course that’s the price to rent a digital copy for 30 days instead of owning the original print book forever, but the price difference is extremely important to the author in the end.

Is this the future of literature? Will we be working with Spotify services for books before too long where authors are compensated for each read? Maybe that’s better for the author than the print process – who can tell? One way or the other, you’re going to be able to rent books with your Kindle tablet or Kindle-capable mobile device immediately if not soon – have a peek and see if you can find any titles with the ability!

[via Engadget]

Amazon Kindle ebook rentals take the time out of reading is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.