A recent article in the New York Times suggests that Amazon is now moving straight towards an even bigger goal. The company announced that it will publish 122 books in the fall of 2011 in “both physical and e-book form”.

According to the article Amazon is currently wooing top authors to publish their books directly on the shopping site. This puts publishers in a miserable position. They have to work with Amazon to sell books online but at the same time have to find a way to compete with the company as a publisher.

The move effectively eliminates the middle-men, the publishers and agents, and makes Amazon the jack of all trades. Amazon will do the editing, promoting, printing and selling. Regular Amazon users should not confuse Amazon Publishing with Amazon’s self-publishing platform CreateSpace. The former is the new division of Amazon while the latter allows everyone to publish their books on Amazon.

Amazon as a company will obviously benefit from this model. But what about authors and people who buy books? It is difficulty to say when it comes to authors. Amazon has not published any information about the deals that it struck with authors. Will authors make more money? The ones that Amazon is wooing most certainly will. It is likely that authors will get a bigger part of the pie considering that Amazon has to convince them somehow that it is worth to self-publish books.

Consumers on the other hand will likely not see a big difference. Amazon on the other hand has more control and leeway in the pricing which could be beneficial to customers.

Considering that Amazon has not shops in all countries of the world, it is likely that the Internet giant may need to cooperate to bring books to countries they do not have a shop in.

What’s your take on this? I personally think that this could shake things up quite a bit. Authors certainly find the option beneficial as it gives them more choice. Consumers on the other hand will likely be on the receiving end. Before Amazon Publishing they had the option to buy local or online. With Amazon Publishing, they can only buy on Amazon.

We have taken a look at price comparison add-ons for Firefox (see Firefox Price Comparison or Price Comparison With Invisible Hand For Firefox for starters) and Google Chrome (View Item Price History Of Amazon, Best Buy And NewEgg or Top Google Chrome Shopping Extensions) in the past.

BookInfoLine is a userscript that is currently only compatible with the Firefox web browser. The userscript concentrates on book price comparison. It supports several of the largest book retailers in the world and concentrates largely on the English book market. It checks for instance on various Amazon stores, eBay, Walmart, Google Books, Barnes and Nobles and Abebooks. The userscript furthermore checks for audio and Kindle editions as well.

How does it work then? You simply visit a store page that lists a book. The userscript displays an overlay window at the top right, which, when pressed, displays pricing information from all supported online stores.

Links point directly to the book page on the shops that carry the item. All it takes is one click on the shop of choice to load the page and read up on the details. The userscript does not include shipping and handling costs in the price that is fetched from the online book stores. This means it is still up to the user to make that calculation to come up with the best price.

It is possible to save lots of money on book purchases if the userscript is used for price comparison. Then again, it is mostly of use for users from the US and UK, and not so much for users from countries where English is not the primary language.

Firefox users can install the BookInfoLine userscript directly from the userscript.org website.

Every Wikipedia user who creates an account and switches from the standard interface to the beta interface can create books from Wikipedia articles that are then offered as pdf and Open Document Text documents or for a modest price as printed books.

The following guide explains how to create a Wikipedia book directly on Wikipedia.

Start by creating an account at Wikipedia. The account creation takes less than a minute and requires no email address or verification. Now switch from the standard interface to the beta interface. This enables the beta features of which we will select the book creator.

This displays a small control bar on top of every Wikipedia page that can be used to add the current page to the book, show the book and its pages or to get page suggestions from Wikipedia.

Every internal link will also display an option to add the page to the book. The option appears after hovering the mouse over the link for a short time.

A book can contain a maximum of 100 Wikipedia pages which – obviously – translates to a very large book considering that most Wikipedia page consist of a lot of information, images and footnotes.

The Manage your book page displays all the Wikipedia articles that have been added to the current book. It is possible to create chapters and sort the articles before the book is downloaded as pdf or Open Document Text or ordered as a printed book at PediaPress. An example book that I have created had a size of more than 55 Megabytes and 477 pages. Ordering a print copy of the book would have cost less than €20.

Wikipedia has created a help page that describes the functionality in detail. There are also options to edit the standard template.

All pdf books created this way are available under the Creative Commons License. The books are furthermore stored in the user directory so that they can be edited at anytime. (via Labnol)

What Should I Read Next is an online service that can suggest new books to read from a single book title entered into the form on the service’s website. The book recommendation service works with book titles and ISBN.

If the book title is not precise enough a list of possible matches is displayed of which one needs to be selected by the user of the recommendation service.

This will then lead to the loading of the result’s page that lists book authors and titles that are related to the book entered.

It is obviously difficulty to judge a book by its author and title alone. The service links to the book’s pages at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk where the site visitor can get additional information about the selected book. This is without doubt linked to an Amazon affiliate account.

It would have been nice of the service would provide a short description of each title in the results which would make the selection process easier.

The results are not always that related. If you search for the Holy Bible for instance you are presented with results that include stories by Edgar Allan Por or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which are not related to the search.

What Should I Read Next might still be an interesting service for some users who have enough time to look through the result’s listing.

A similar service is Taste Kid which is not limited to books but provides recommendations for music and movies as well.

The biggest benefit for searchers is that the full text is available at the website. The text can either be viewed online or downloaded in pdf format to a local computer system instead.

Books that are available completely for online viewing and downloading are marked with a green full view text. A search for classics like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet or Faust will reveal search results that include full versions but also books with limited or no preview. It is however safe to say that most classic books are provided in at least one full view edition.

The advanced search parameters can be used to search only for books or magazines that are available completely on the website. A few thousand books are usually available in full view if the name of a mastermind like Goethe, Schiller or Shakespeare is entered. Modern books on the other hand are usually not available as full versions.

The model behind Lulu is that you write the book, upload it in a suitable format, select lots of options and then save it as a book. You can create commercial grade hardcover illustrated books, the tech behind it is really flexible, your imagination is the limit. There are no costs involved anywhere. The “catch” is that it will cost you more to print a book than it would if you would take it to a publisher to print 10,000 copies. The reason is purely economic (economies of scale), printing a few copies of a book is relatively more expensive than doing a large amount.

These costs are deducted from the sale of your book, so it’s all good, since you don’t actually see the cost, after one successful sale you still get money. You can set your own price for the book, Lulu will deduct its own costs, and you get the rest. They also offer lots of tutorials on creating the document for the finished version of the book, and for once they really are helpful, even for people who’ve dabbled in this before.

Overall, I love Lulu, I used it to create a book, and I will be sending myself a copy soon. If for nothing else, you can create a really great gift for your friends & family!

It may seem like a timely process, but software can quickly hasten the process and if you’re willing to pay $10-$20, you can buy hardware which will further minimise the needed time.

You must initially decide how you will input your possessions into whatever software you choose to own. Naturally, you can input the product’s details but this can be timely. Other options are to buy an inexpensive barcode scanner or some software even allows you to utilise your webcam as a barcode scanner.

With regards to software, there are options for every platform.

The de facto official cataloguing software for OS X has to be Delicious Library. Delicious Library allows you to search Amazon for items, through keywords, barcodes, titles, authors, directors etc., and then import the data, including the current price used versions sell there, straight into the software. Items can then be displayed in a number of ways, including an aesthetically appealing ‘shelf’ mode which shows the picture of each item on a shelf and is at the item’s size. One can also rate items inside the software. Supported input modes are typing, scanning barcodes with the iSight camera (to varied degrees of success) or using their Bluetooth barcode scanner (which costs over $100!). It also allows libraries to be shared over a local network. It costs $40.

MediaMan is similar software for Windows. It too grabs data off Amazon, displays it in a ‘shelf’-like view. It supports USB barcode scanners and webcams too. It works on XP and Vista, and also costs $40! Basically, it’s like Delicious Library for Windows!

GCStar is free and open-source cataloguing software, for Linux, BSD, OS X and Windows. The software can grab data from a host of sources.

I use a CueCat Barcode Scanner, which when modified works with all of the above software. It simply converts barcodes into keystrokes. You can pick one of these up for around €10, but ensure it’s modified or it won’t work.

In the early days, the only way a student could find a cheaper textbook was to buy a used copy from someone who had taken the same course earlier. Now, with the internet, you can search for textbooks online and buy them from the online store. However, if you want to score a good deal, it’s best to use a service like Campusbooks.

For people who have no time to scour multiple websites or don’t know all the resources for buying textbooks online, Campusbooks is extremely helpful. When you look for a book, the site searches multiple sites like Amazon, AbeBooks, eBay, and other similar sites. Then, the search results are neatly displayed so you can check whatever interests you. Once you select a book, you are directed to the online store to make the payment.

Users can search for a book by name, author, keyword, or ISBN number. Additionally, they can browse by category. When search results are displayed, a summary of the lowest prices is shown first. The next two sections in the results page are the lowest prices for new books and used ones. Search results include international editions as well, which are often cheaper than books in the US. A search for a biochemistry book showed a 100$ price difference between the US and the international versions.

Campusbooks has a lot of other services. Users can sell their old textbooks to other sites or go one step further and donate textbooks. The site also offers to alert a user when the book he’s looking for becomes available at a particular price. With Campusbooks, it’s easier to find the cheapest textbooks available.

Have you ever used Campusbooks? What do you think of this service? What other sites do you know of to get textbooks and other school supplies cheap? Let me know in the comments.

Wikipedia has enabled the ‘Book’ extension to MediaWiki, the content management system it utilises. This adds a ‘add page’ link to every page, allowing users to compile a book. This book can then be sorted by the user into chapters. Afterwards, it can be shared with other Wikipedians. Currently, only logged-in users can utilise this tool.

Wikipedia has a built-in rendering engine which will grabs the pages, fetches the images and parses them before they are given to the user as a PDF or OpenDocument text. The user can also use PediaPress to have the book professionally bound and printed.

The ‘Book’ extension has a number of features for ‘expert’ users. For example, the user can elect to only include a certain version of an article. This could pose useful if the article being covered has reached ‘Featured’ or ‘Good’ quality, as they are sure information in the version which reached that standard is reliable and accurate.

Books can be made on any topic, or combinations of topics, on Wikipedia (or other projects with have enabled this extension, such as Wikibooks). There are some restrictions on what can be printed, as PediaPress are based in Germany so German law applies.

It is an amazing display of quite how big Wikipedia is. I made a book about the European Union, comprising about 45 articles, and when I sent it to PediaPress, it totalled a massive 2444 pages (3 volumes!). I shan’t be buying this, as it will cost me about €80! Prices for smaller books start at $8.90 for 100 pages. A fraction of this is donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. These books are black and white and measure 8″ x 5.5″ (about 20cmx14cm).

The books (from the preview I’ve seen) and the PDFs are well laid out. The PDFs are all selectable and are easy to navigate. It also contains links to the images’ pages. Amusingly, to maintain GFDL compatibility every editor to the article has to be mentioned! I, for example, are credited for writing a minute amount of the article on the Czech Republic.

I question how popular this will be though; as convenient as books may be, I would imagine institutions like schools would rather buy published textbooks than volunteer made ones.

It is worth emphasising that Wikibooks contains resources written as textbook entries, rather than articles. Perhaps that will be a practical application of PediaPress and this new move.

More information is available on the Wikpedia help page.

TechCrunch has also covered this story, but I simply found it through browsing Wikipedia!

A better alternative would be the software program Google Books Downloader which can be used to download parts or entire books in pdf format. The process requires some manual work on part of the user. Books and magazines are identified by an unique ID which is displayed in the address bar. That unique ID has to be copied and pasted into the software. Everything else is done automatically by the software. The program will scan all pages of the selected book or magazine and display all pages in its interface.

Each page can be selected for download separately which is useful if only selected parts of the book or magazine should be downloaded. The other option available is to download the full book or magazine right away to the local computer.

google books download

Only the scanned magazine or book pages are downloaded and included in the pdf document. The size of the pdf document depends on the number of pages of the book or magazine. Google Books Downloader provides an excellent way of downloading books and magazines from Google easily.

Update: The program appears to be no longer available. You can check out some of the alternatives that are still working. First the userscript Google Book Downloader and then How To Download Google Books Ebooks.

I never quite understood why most people shy away from going to a library. After all, 9 times out of 10, the information you are looking for is available at your local library. In fact, libraries have an excellent collection, not only of books but also CDs, DVDs, scientific journals, etc.

One common reason people shy away from libraries is that they cannot find what they are looking for. The solution to this problem is to use Worldcat. It is a publicly accessible online interface that lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and around the world.

Worldcat lets you search for books, CDs, DVDs, audio books, journals, and just about anything that a library stocks. The best part is that you can search all the libraries in your area at one go. Just type in your search query and your pin code and voila! a list of all the libraries in your neighborhood with the item you searched for.

Depending on your library’s access rules, you may even be able to check out a book directly. If you want to further involve yourself, you can register for a free account. It allows you to build lists, write reviews, and even purchase items from Amazon. Proceeds from the sale go towards supporting your local library.

Worldcat currently searches libraries in 112 countries. I don’t know how many people here visit libraries but I would give Worldcat a try. After all, you never know when you might need it.

Have you ever used Worldcat? What do you think of the service? Do you know of any other similar websites? Let me know in the comments.

The basics are the same. Fnd your books, add them, share them, indicate if you want to read a book and so on. However you can add your books using inline editing. With Library things you add a book, a page is loaded, you edit, then have to go back. With Goodreads there is a sort of inline popup box allowing you to add books much quicker. I owe about 40 Terry Pratchett books, so this made my initial set up much easier.

There is also a cool book compatability test which shows you, based upon your reading of a lot of books, which books would be best for you. This, and other friendly features make this more appealing to me, while basically there is not much difference between the two. If you’ve alread set one up extensively perhaps you’re better off there, but if you are ust starting I suggest going with Goodreads.

LibraryThing, a great online book catalog essentially, helps you a lot because it allows you to manage your bookshelf virtually, but also to give and get recommendations and a whole lot of other info. LibraryThing of course knows all the default things about each book, writer, title, ISBN, publishing info and so on, but it ads  an extra layer by providing social information.

People can review a book, tag it, and even have conversations about it, making book choosing much more productive. Actually this time, you may not spend less time, since this is such an absorbing experience, but at least you will choose a good book every time.

LibraryThink also supports group creation, private and non-private groups, bookstore info with GoogleMaps integration and a load more. I’ll be cataloging my book collection soon, and I hope to find the most awesome books, interacting and sharing my knowledge. I think I’m going to spend a lot more time here than I thought…

ThisOneNext or TON if you please is an extension of the already popular What Should I Read Next site. Both sites are the brainchild of a group of people called Thoughtplay Ltd. The working of the site is simple. You type in the name of a book, music artist, or movie. The site asks you to confirm your selection and then proceeds to give you a small list of recommendations you can try out next.

How does this work? Well, the site produces its lists purely on the basis of something called collective taste. This means that when people input the book or movie you are searching for into their own favorites list, you get to see their choices. This means the more your movie is in someone’s list, the more recommendations you are provided with.

I typed in names of a few movies and books and was fairly impressed with the recommendations of the site. Another nice part of the site is that the recommended titles have links to Amazon, where you can purchase the movie you want to see. A small percentage of your purchase goes back to the site to help its running.

You can contribute to the site as well. Simply register with them and you can enter in your own favorites and help out other visitors to the site. Registration is free and only needs an email address.

Overall, the site is interesting and quite helpful when you are stuck with making a choice. I’d love to see how the site grows in future as I think the concept has great potential. Do you know of any similar sites? Do you agree with the recommendations? Let me know.

It’s a simple book stand that has an easy to use mechanism for turning the pages. You still need to do this yourself, so this is not yet perfect, but it is much simpler than lifting the laptop, turning the page (adding half a pound of grease to the book), carefully positioning the laptop back and resuming the lovely meal.

The handy tool is small enough to put in your pocket (although you will look a bit weird) and is sturdy enough to hold most books. It is available through Cool Tools for a quite attractive $15. I really am thinking of placing an order, if someone has used one of these please do share your thoughts. (Found through Lifehacker)

He can either download the books to his computer and transfer them afterwards using the normal means of connecting his mobile phone to the computer or he can connect with his mobile to the Internet and download the books directly. The second option is probably only advisable if you have a free data contingent.

The books are optimized for mobile phones, some of the features are:

• Adjustable font size settings. Make the letters bigger or smaller according to your personal preference.
• Night-vision mode. Makes it easy to read in a dark room.
• Chapter navigation. Navigate the book by chapter.
• Pause & Auto-resume function. Automatically pauses and resumes to accommodate incoming calls.
• Auto-bookmark. You never have to remember where you’re up to in the book.

I would say the books are mostly classic literature books from authors such as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Joseph Conrad and Sir Walter Scott. All books are out of copyright in the United States which means it is perfectly legal to download those books to your mobile phone.

Two versions are always offered. The first offering a better reading experience but requires a modern phone while the other does work on older phones as well. I would try the first version and see if it is supported by the phone and only if it is not supported I would download and use the second version.

Read More:

Books in my phone

It should also be noted that there is a difference in quality. Human readers are of course capable of narrating the story in a higher quality than a computer reader can ever achieve. The following websites offer high quality Audiobooks that can be downloaded for free to your computer. I try to list some of the most remarkable books from those sites next to the link to give you an impression about the content that they offer:

Thought Audio – good collection of mostly classic novels such as Metamorphosis from Kafka and Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche.
Free Classic Audiobooks – offers Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Treasure Island by Stevenson.
Pink Geek Audio – If you like Sherlock Holmes you have come to the right place. Has a large concentration of Sherlock Holmes books.
Simply Audiobooks – The Waste Land by Eliot and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Just some books but good quality.
Podiobooks – Podiobooks are serialized Audiobooks that are offered in Podcast format. You won’t find classic books here but only books from unknown authors.
Voices in the Dark – Large collection of Audiobooks from authors such as H.G. Wells and Edgar Allen Poe.

Do you know more sources for free Audiobooks that are read by humans ? Let me know, always looking for more.

Now i don’t know how many readers work with websites, but maybe some of you can use this link. It’s an article on how to speed up sites using .htaccess file. It is quite a read but it looks promising, and the comment discussion there can also prove to be quite useful.