Read and E-Book week 2010 will be held from March 7 to 13.  This initiative started in 2004 by Rita Toews and friends is now in its sixth edition.  While E-Books were still a novelty in 2004, they are rapidly becoming  mainstream.  When Fortune magazine makes E-reading the cover of its current issue, you know that E-Books have become a major publishing form.

Sharing-Books was conceived as an E-Book publisher from day one.  We believed that readers would separate the concept of book from "paper".  Books are a collection of thoughts expressed with words.  Whether these words are printed on paper or displayed electronically does not change the story or ideas the writer is sharing. 

As a baby boomer I remember fondly the smell of a new paper book.  By contrast today's kids will remember discovering the features of their new electronic devices.  When we wrote our original business plan in 2007, we envisioned delivering children E-Books to gaming devices like the Nintendo DS.  A little over 2 years later the humble Nintendo becomes an E-Reader. 

We are entering a new and exciting phase in the deployment of the e-reading industry.  The devices are becoming much better.  The industry is grouping around a few distribution models, closed store/device systems like the Kindle that mimic the very successful ITunes/Ipod combination, open e-readers that accept a variety of format and allow sourcing of books from any vendor, and in our opinion the biggest market will be multipurpose devices like the IPhone acquiring e-reading capabilities.  I started reading E-Books on my first smart phone, a Palm Treo, in 2002, so I am partial to the phone/PDA/e-reader combination.

What is more interesting to us is how the E-Book publishing business will look like in years to come.  There is a consolidation play by giant channels like Amazon and Google.  There is price point resistance from large  books publishers like MacMillan and the Murdoch empire who want more money for their content.  Small publishers like us welcome their initiative as it protects the value of the E-Books we publish.  So we are optimistic that we will be able to realize more value for our book creators.

E-Books offer greater value-add possibilities than paper books.  It is much easier to vary the format of an E-Books than a paper book.  New free software like Blio will make it easier to move E-Books across software and hardware platforms and to transform E-Books into audio-books or other forms friendly to the visually challenged.  Children E-Books will become especially fun as book creators master how to insert in their books hyperlinks to sites that add to the e-reading experience.  Book creators will also learn to add short videos and sound effects that will make E-Books a richer learning experience and become an interesting alternative to the video-games children have in their hand held electronic devices.

So let's celebrate E-Book Week as we can all benefit from the emergence of this new way to share stories and ideas.

Labels: children books, children's ebooks, digital publishing industry, e-books, e-readers

In honour of Family Literacy Day here in Canada, we are publishing the 1908 edition of Anne of Green Gables. It is a powerful story about an orphan, who is mistakenly sent to the Cuthbert brother and sister, who were hoping for a boy to help out with the farm. Anne takes on the challenge admirably, and through her chatter and her wonder wins the hearts of her adopted family and community.

Over the last hundred years, this Canadian book has become an enduring classic for many cultures. The book was given to Polish soldiers in WWII, as a gesture of friendship and encouragement. A little later, Green Gables was preserved, becoming a popular historical site for many young girls to visit, especially the Japanese. More recently, a movie trilogy directed by Kevin O'Sullivan and Stefan Scaini was released, receiving an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

We hope this book inspires you to read a chapter with your young friends. Perhaps at bed time, or during quiet time. For your younger listeners, you can even encourage them to draw pictures of Anne or her new home. Either way, you will be inviting them to imagine characters and settings, as they expand their vocabulary and wonder of faraway places.

For the artists in our midst, perhaps you would like to illustrate the story and upload it for publishing at Sharing-Books. We look forward to seeing your interpretation of this Canadian classic. These are just a few of the ways you too can participate, and we encourage you to join us in celebrating Family Literacy Day.

Labels: Anne of Green Gables, children's books, e-books, e-readers, Family Literacy Day, Lucy Maud Montgomery, orphan

Some of you have asked what it is like to be a book fox. Recently, we had an opportunity to go in search of books along Portobello Road in London UK. A posh part of London, Notting Hill regained familiarity with the release of Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

From Notting Hill Tube station, it is a 20 minute walk, crossing cobbled streets, and sniffing floral holiday wreaths now available for sale at local market stalls. At 2 pm on a Friday afternoon, the market is a press as mothers push strollers, their toddlers all bundled up in bright fleece toques. There are cafes and pubs with funny names, like The Fat Badger - a remarkably fitting site to stage a scene from the classic Wind in the Willows. And of course there was the obligatory sausage shop featuring all kinds of yummy edibles for our tummies.

We returned to the street to begin our quest. We weeded through one stack, only to begin another. Just where will we find this one book with that particular illustrator? Will this one book matter to one child or thousands? Moving to the next stall, one vendor was kind enough to show us his collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales that was illustrated by a spooky 20th century artist. Another offered to help us search for additional classics via estate sales. Meeting these people and unearthing chapter books and picture books in varying conditions is, for us, akin to an archeological dig at the base of the Egyptian pyramids! Despite the dirty pages and the cold November air, the process is oh so thrilling!

In the end, we found some beautifully illustrated books, courtesy of a renowned jeweller. It turns out their family had been collecting them for years. We would like to take the time to thank the jewelers Cox & Power and invite you to shop at their Marleybone High Street location. Tony, Vicci and Rachel will be more than happy to help you.

Labels: children's ebooks, Cox and Power, e-books, entrepreneurs, jewelry, Portobello market, sausages

We are delighted to note that we have delivered over 20,000 e-books to children around the world. By our own (very unscientific) estimate, each book averages 5 readers when we include the classrooms where they are used. So we believe that over 100,000 young readers around the world have enjoyed the work of our book creators.

We are thankful for our book creators who believe in what we want to accomplish and who join us with their creative work. The joy we have each time we read new books submitted by our creators make all the effort to put this project together worthwhile.

Labels: children books, children's ebooks, e-books

The beauty of a web 2.0 site is that your users innovate with the tools you give them.

We originally saw the site as a book publishing tool. But Jennifer Poulter, an educational author form Australia, saw in Sharing-Books a tool to publish one page books that she calls poster-poems as classroom aids to help students learn poetry and/or help teachers introduce discussion topics relevant to their classes. The form of the poster-poem has been received well and Jennifer's work has been used in classrooms around the world. One of our authors, Urs Dietrich, who wrote Miki Makes a Promise, reported that on his last trip to Odessa, he visited a classroom where Jennifer's poster-poems were used to teach English.

Now it is author Timothy Schenk who published last week a surprise he had hinted was coming. Timothy has previously illustrated two poster-poems written by Jennifer. He also wrote and illustrated My Pretty Pointe Shoes that won the second prize in the July 2009 Simone Woods Awards. This time Timothy published our first talking book: Fan of Halloween.

Fan of Halloween demonstrates Timothy's technical know-how as he took advantage of a new feature Adobe introduced to PDF files, the ability to insert flash files. So as you download what looks like a normal and relatively small PDF file, you also download a little movie and a recording of Timothy reading his poem. When you click on the image of the pumpkin on the page, the pumpkin moves in as Timothy reads the poem.

This is very exciting and very promising. We deliberately limited the file type of our books to PDF so that universal distribution would be easy and that given the small size of the files, our books could be downloaded in low bandwidth regions of the world. Obviously this limited the books in being two dimensional. Now we can see the form of the e-book developing new and valuable attributes. Imagine a PDF e-book where a child can click on a cow and hear it go Moo! Or have an alphabet book read to them or having technical details added to a science book.

We thank Timothy for innovating with this first book and showing the way to one more imaginative use of Sharing-Books.com

Labels: children books, digital publishing industry, e-books, Halloween, J.R. Poulter, new features, picture books, publishing, teaching english, technology, Timothy Schenk

A.A. Milne, Creator of Winnie the Pooh, published in 1927 a series of poems in Now We are Six.
While Christopher Robin is older than Sharing-Books, we are delighted to be one year old. This year has introduced a host of authors and illustrators from around the globe to you, the reader. In fact, we have received such attention that Sharing-Books is likely the largest publisher of new children's books in Canada.


There has been plenty to celebrate and we did so, bringing together those in the local area. Sharon Davis of Room to Read, Vancouver Chapter joined us and Pierre Lapointe, CEO turned our minds to the coming year. Of course, as any child will tell you, the most important part of the evening was the cake! Lit with sparklers and iced with lots of gooey icing, it was a grand way to celebrate our first year live, giving us plenty of sugar to fuel our plans for the future. So do join us in singing Happy Birthday and stay tuned for upcoming features to enhance your child's reading experience!

Labels: children's ebooks, e-books, e-readers, ebooks, Sharing-Books

With the recent film release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we feel it is only fitting that we make available one of the suggested influences to J.K. Rowling's successful series to our "Potterfiles".

Many parallels have been made between Harry Potter and Tom Brown's School Days, which both depict growing up in English private schools. Only a century separates the stories but both address the issue of bullying. Harry has Draco Malfoy as his nemesis while Tom has Flashman. In Harry Potter, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is where the action happens, while it is at Rugby where you meet Tom and his nemesis. Tom and his classmates are introduced to the games of football and rugby, while it is in the very fast game of Quidditch where Draco takes on Harry.

As you read on, more similarities between the two books will come to light. We look forward to receiving your input on one of our latest additions to the Sharing-Books Classics Library.

Labels: bullying, classics, e-books, ebooks, Harry Potter, Hogwarts, School Days, teacher resources, Tom Brown

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Susan Cunningham, a Registered Child Educator, and Childcare Supervisor of Sheridan College's Mississauga Civic Centre Day Care Centre. She is frequently interviewed by the Today’s Parent magazine, and in our time together, she shared these insights on how to engage children in the process of reading.

Why is reading important to children?

Reading is so important for brain development. In fact, children need to see and hear words before they can begin to read. Importantly, when a parent or grandparent reads to them as the child sits on their laps, studies have shown that children begin to build a template that fosters closeness. Eventually, when a child is ready, they will go from 3-4 words in their vocabulary to 2000 words in a very short period of time. You can see how key it is to respond to your child’s request to be read to. By developing reading skills, in turn they will also develop concentration skills.

It is difficult for new readers in the beginning, so don’t be surprised if after you read to them, they will want to ‘read’ it back to you. They may not be reading it quite yet but they will remember what they heard about the pictures. When a child wants to read the same book, it helps them to build patterns around words. So despite you as the parent or grandparent wanting to groan at another reading of the same book, rest assured that you are indeed helping your child’s development!

How do you encourage children in your centre to start reading?

At our Centre, we provide books in abundance. There are books on display everywhere, in baskets and facing outward on shelves so children can see the cover page. Children don’t get bored if a book is within easy reach. Reading is particularly good for calming children down, so we often read before nap time.

Ms. Cunningham highly emphasizes the importance of taking time to create a rich text and image environment. If your child lives in one, your child will read when they are ready. If the home is absent of them, their growth will be delayed, if not stunted.

When you set up their room, be sure to provide crayons and pencils. Perhaps write their name and your name. When you draw a cat, write the word ‘cat’ beside the image. Repeat the process again on the same page. Label things around the house, like the cookie jar, or the bath tub, a door or the shoe rack. Children will associate the images with the text. As children grow up, I recommend taking children to the library. Help them to select four or five books, because they do like quantity.

Another way we encourage children to read is to host a Literacy Day where just the fathers, uncles or grandfathers join us. It is crucial that children hear the male voice as well as the female voice, and in our society, men often don’t involve themselves in their child’s reading. This way, the act of reading and being read to builds bonds of closeness between our children and key male role models.

What qualities do you look for in a book when selecting one for your classroom?

When selecting a book, it is important to remember that reading for children is very age specific. For example, for those under two years of age, it is key that the images are of everyday life, and not impressionistic. Over time, they will develop an ability to understand different image styles.

Not all stories need to rhyme. Find stories about different family mixes, cultures and different celebrations. If your child is going through temper tantrums, find a book where they can see how a child of their age group handles one and then they know how to handle it.

As for other topics, their and your choices will depend on the child’s interest. If you have plans to take them swimming, find a book about children swimming in a pool or a lake. If your child is nuts about dancing or soccer, find them a book with children participating in those activities. The children will begin to approach life knowing that they can turn to a book when they want to learn something new.

How much do you spend on books for your children care centre per month?

Each month, I make a point of taking advantage of school discounts so that I spend about $30 per month. Titles include information books and picture books. That doesn’t include frequent trips to the library. If something grabs my attention, I buy it. When a book wears out, I don’t hesitate to buy it again.

One great feature about Sharing-Books is that you can download the same book as often as you like, and the titles are always available. In book stores, because of the limit in space, book titles come and go so quickly that I don’t know when I will see it again.

Labels: child development, children's books, e-books, e-library, early reading, ebooks, library

Larry Low has contributed seventeen different short stories to Sharing-Books.com. His stories reflect his passion for words. In addition to writing he invests a lot of his time helping students improve their command of the English language.

S-B: Larry, each time one of us reads one of your books, your rich vocabulary puts a smile on our face.  Where does your love for interesting words come from?

LL: That's an interesting question.  I know exactly where my love of words comes from.  My grandfather was the best read person that I ever had the privilege of knowing.  He was a pilot for the B.C. Pilotage and as such he had lots of time to read when a ship that he had been in charge of on the West Coast, especially on the way to Anyox or Prince Rupert, was anchored waiting to go through Seymour Narrows for example.
 
S-B: How long have you been writing and what got you started?

LL: I started writing seriously on the Saturday that Prince Charles was born.  I spent all of Sunday quizzing my mother about what it would be like when the Prince became King.  The next day at school our grade five teacher read my rendition of the future king's probable adventures to the class and I won a prize.  As time went on, I was somewhat thrown aback by how the royal experience was somewhat different than I had imagined it would be. That's when I discovered that fiction was a better bet than historical accounts were.
 
S-B: What keeps you writing?

LL: Writing is like any other habit.  The longer you do it, the more entrenched you become in repeating the process.  I always knew that I could write quite well but I would not admit it to myself. There were lapses when I did not produce any stories at all.
 
When I started tutoring English Second Language students, I kept hearing a common phrase.  You are the writer. Show me how to rewrite this.  Gradually I began to believe what I heard.  Praise alone does not work but results do.  Every once in a while, I have an experience that reinforces my eagerness to get back to writing.  

When I was teaching school in the Australian Outback, I began writing stories for children but they were dreadful.  When I came back to Canada after eight years away Down Under, I started in writing for my ESL students and gradually taught myself to write kid's stuff.  By that time however, I was much more confident.  After all is said and done in the time that I was away from Canada I managed to publish material in twelve countries.
 
S-B: You help a lot of young people enrich their English vocabulary.  How do you make them love the discovery of a new word?

LL: Let's start with a word that is unknown to my student.  I tell a story about it.  It goes something like this: Monsoon comes from the Arabic for season.  The word in Arabic is mausim.  In the tropical world there are two monsoons.  A dry monsoon and a wet monsoon. 

By the time that I have finished the story about the word of the day let's say, my student(s) will never forget it.
 
S-B: Share with us a few of your favourite children books and why you loved them?

LL: Robert Louis Stevenson was my favorite author when I was young.  I liked Treasure Island and Kidnapped because they were gritty and scary and also full of suspense.
 
S-B: What advice do you have for new writers?

LL: The first thing I have to say about new writers is that they need to go through a learning curve of their own.  The second thing is to read some of the better writers.  Short stories by Somerset Maugham would be one of my first choices. My favorite line in a SM short story is about a French speaking man who is on a steamer during the days that there was a French Indo China.  The Narrator, Maugham, says, "If my French were not so good, I would have a lot of trouble understanding his English."

To tell you the truth I cannot remember the title of the story.  However, I do remember that one sentence.  I read the story to a student in grade eight.  He said, "My grandmother does the same thing.  If my Mandarin weren't so good, I wouldn't be able to understand her English.

The moral of the story is try to write at least one telling sentence in every story you write.
 
S-B: Is there a question you wished we’d asked and how would you answer that question?

LL: What would you be doing if you were not writing? I do not have a clue as to what I would be doing.  I hope that the answer would be found in the word - rewriting.

Labels: children books, e-books, Larry Low, Vocabulary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: Ann Harrison, Benetech, 415-637-5262, ann.h@benetech.org
Maggie Kerr-Southin, Sharing-Books.com, 250-595-0136, Maggie@artemispr.com


May 5, 2009, Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare and Shared Books Ltd of Vancouver BC are pleased to announce a partnership that will expand the availability of children books in the Bookshare library. Shared Books, which operates the Sharing-Books.com website, has agreed to allow children’s books published on Sharing-Books.com to be added to the Bookshare collection. This initiative will increase the number of children’s books accessible to readers with print disabilities and provide an opportunity for authors published on Sharing-Books.com to offer their works to a new group of valued readers.

Schools around the world have signed up their qualified students for Bookshare and many parents have registered their children with qualifying disabilities for individual Bookshare memberships. The number of new Bookshare school and student members increased tenfold in 2008. More than 47,000 people with print disabilities now subscribe to the Bookshare library.

“The children’s books provided by Sharing-Books.com will be available to Bookshare members worldwide,” says Bookshare CEO Jim Fruchterman. “This partnership will allow Bookshare to continue to expand its collection of books for young readers who remain a critically important group within our membership. Sharing-Books.com is on the forefront of providing these texts in a digital format.”

“Having some personal experience with technology that serves the visually impaired, I was thrilled to see our authors being able to contribute content to Bookshare’s impressive library,” said Pierre Lapointe, CEO of Shared Books. Our team’s enthusiasm for Bookshare is unanimous. We want more people to read more books. Technology has an important role to play in reaching all potential readers.”

About Bookshare

Bookshare is operated by Benetech, a Palo Alto, CA-based non-profit technology organization. Bookshare offers people with print disabilities more than 47,000 books and 150 daily periodicals in accessible formats including Braille, large print and synthetic speech. People with print disabilities include readers who are blind or have low vision, learning disabilities or a mobility impairment that prevents them from reading a traditional printed book. In 2007, Bookshare received a $32 million five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to give all U.S. students with qualifying print disabilities free access to the Bookshare library.

About Sharing-Books.com

Sharing-Books.com is an innovative business model combining private enterprise and social goals. Sharing-Books.com authors receive a third of the revenues of the company as royalties. Another third of Sharing-Books.com revenues are given to Room to Read, a charity that equips developing nations with literacy resources. The company operates an ultra lean virtual business model with the other third of its revenues. Sharing-Books.com disrupts the traditional publishing cycle by giving new authors and new books an immediate publishing venue. The Sharing-Books.com model identifies promising books and characters for the paper publishing, gaming, movie, and toy industries.

Labels: Bookshare, children books, e-books, Visually Impaired Children

I recently posted a long reply to a good question posted on the Children Books Insider site. This is a frequent discussion for us so I thought I'd post my reply here. Hopefully it will help those of you pondering the question.

"First a disclaimer: I am with www.sharing-books.com so I am biased in favour of e-books.

However it does not mean that we believe paper books will completely disappear. I think it is Bill Gates who said that we overestimate how fast a new technology will change the world but we underestimate how big the change will be. In the mid eighties I worked in the cellular telephone industry, few of us dreamed that one day young people would not even consider having a land line phone. It never crossed the mind of our adult children to have a home line in their appartments. Yet we still have a land line in our home because my wife likes to use it (though I never use it being the family geek).

I am writing this note from a home office with walls and floor covered with paper books. Yet I believe that e-books will inexorably replace most paper books over the long term. Other than artfully created books which will remain with us, most paper books printed today are simply information containers. We have to make sure we do not confused content and container.

PCs and most new mobile phones can contain books and provide a decent reading experience. The development of e-readers is accelerating. Most units available today are still expensive and not completely satisfactory due to either format or proprietary closed distribution systmes for content. Similarly, the first cell phones were limited in functionality and cost $5,000 and up. One thing is sure - the e-readers will keep improving and become as convenient and affordable as today's cell phones.

The wild card we see is the gaming consoles adding reading applications. This is what today's children have in their hands today - not paper books. Some industry estimates report over 15 million Nintendo DS sold in the US in 2008. Add the other gaming devices offered and you see sales totals indicating a change as profound as the cell phone. When we researched the market before founding Sharing-Books, we searched photos of children holding gaming devices. We could not help to remark that most photos showed young boys and that most of them were forwning and looking rather tense as they played the game.

We believe that we have a collective responsibility to offer e-books that can be read on these gaming devices. The devices are ready. Gaming devices can browse the web and most can display e-books. What we need is content adapted to these new containers so that children can have the reading/imagination experience we all had to complement their gaming time. Hopefully our stories can be compelling enough to have them read more and play less.

As we consider e-books, we need to remember Marshall McLuhan's famous quote "the medium is the message". New technology transforms the content. Cell phones made us mobile but their digital capabilities compared to land lines made texting possible. Our children rarely answer their phones - to confirm a family dinner time it is more efficient to text them. Similarly e-books will change how we write and read books. We can lament the change but it will not stop it from happening. We believe it is best to embrace the new possibilities offered by e-books.

Publishing will change. A site like Sharing-Books offers speed publishing. Upload your book, it will be reviewed by our volunteer librarians for appropriateness and usually published within 48 hours. This is highly disruptive for a slow and methodical industry. It shocks elitists that we let the public decide what is a quality book. The truth is that the public always votes with their purchases as to which book has the most real value. What we built in is the ability to upgrade a book rapidly. If a book creator want to edit a book, they can simply upload a new version replacing the previous one. In the web world we use agile development - publish your site, get it out as fast as possible and keep fixing it and improving it. We see a similar process happening to book publishing.

More creators than ever will publish. Universal access to the web and speed publishing sites will unleash an enormous amount of creativity. Removing industry barriers to publishing will permit new authors and books to be read and discovered by millions. Clay Shirky talks about an enormous cognitive surplus. People wanting to create rather than just consuming information. In a few months, without any publicity, Sharing-Books has published 140 books, making it the second largest publisher of new children books in Canada. At this pace we will be a major publisher in North America by the end of the year.

Legal rights will change. We do not believe that Digital Rights Management (DRM) will ever really work to the satisfaction of all parties or that they will resist hackers. Lawsuits like the music and movie industry are engaging in will eventually alienate the audience - especially the younger audience that has grown up with unlimited access to free information. Fighting to maintain the old publishing models will be futile. We chose to offer our books free of DRM and in a widely available format PDF to maximize the exposure our book creators get. We also chose to leave the copyrights in the hand of the book creators.

New business models will emerge. The real challenge is how to make money at this new game. We are exploring some innovative approaches. No one has the right answer yet. But we know that new models will emerge that will transfer a higher portion of the revenue directly to the creators (1/3 in our case). News writers feel very threatened as the sale of news papers decline rapidly. I don't think the news writers are at risk. There will always be demand for good reporting. What will disappear is the inefficient industry of printing, distributing and recycling millions of tons of paper daily when every thing can be instantly distributed for free on the internet. This is an industry that has lost its economic value.

Printing fewer books is better for the environment. We will see on-demand paper printing becoming the norm. Paper books will be eventually printed only when really needed and because of that they will be valued and cherished more. The team at Read an E-book week researched extensively the amount of paper and ink saved by not printing. The potential ecological benefits are enormous. This consciousness is now part of our culture, especially with young people.

The users will find new uses for the new technology. As texting spawned Twitter and novels written entirely on cell phones in Japan, e-books creators and readers will invent unanticipated uses for the technology. Children e-books offer new possibilities for illustrators. For example, the images are backlit rather than needing reflected light, this opens up new illustration techniques. For the new digital arts graduates e-books mean a very fast production cycle. As touch screen become the norm we expect a new generation of pop-up e-books to be created. At Sharing-Books we have extrapolated a number of future applications by examining how people use technology, yet we have already been surprised by our users. Jennifer Poulter, one of our book creators came up with the idea of a one page book - poster poems as teaching aids. Teachers from around the world love them.

I hope these comments help.

Pierre Lapointe

Labels: DRM, e-books, e-readers, gaming consoles, publishing

We had to interrupt our Easter egg hunt to watch the books downloaded counter tick towards 5,000. 5,000 books downloaded is another exciting milestone for Sharing-Books. We thank all the book creators who believe in this project and we are glad that thousands of children from over 70 countries have enjoyed their books.

This milestone is for us a confirmation of the value of our publishing model. We can now claim to have delivered a solid proof of concept and we are ready to advance the development of new features to enhance our book creators' and readers' experience.

I personally want to thank our Sharing-Books team members who persevere in our mission with dedication and passion. When you count all the book creators, the various technical colleagues led by Marcus Riedner, our investors and our executive team, you have a surprisingly large number of people who have committed time and resources to this idea.

Onwards to 10,000 books!

Pierre Lapointe
co-founder

Labels: children books, e-books, ebooks

We are pleased to note the 4,000th download of a Sharing-Books. We missed the exact screen capture and had to settle for 4,001 as things are happening faster. It took:

• 4 months to reach 1,000 downloads
• 2 months to reach 2,000 downloads
• 1 month to reach 3,000 downloads
• 15 days to reach 4,000 downloads

This momentum is rewarding as it demonstrates the value Sharing-Books' authors deliver to our readers. We thank all our contributors and all our visitors who enjoy our site, and who have taken the time to refer new visitors to Sharing-Books. We appreciate your support for this project.

Labels: children books, e-books

I woke up today to find an email sitting in my inbox from Mark Gladding letting us know that there were some posts up on eBooks Just Published about Sharing Books. I am always excited to see anything that mentions our company, particularly when I'm not mentioning it.

eBooks Just Published is a real find, they trawl the internet to bring people ebooks that are new, fresh, and DRM-free. And they do it every day. For any of our authors, take note, this is exactly the type of site you want to discover your work. We already have one book from our roster, recently published Scatsby the Bear, show up on their site. I'm hoping down the road we see more of our authors showing up on eBooks Just Published, since it is definitely a place to spread the word about your work.

While poking around on the site I found an interesting article on eBook readers for children. There are some interesting points here, mainly revolving around what the reader needs to look and be in order to work for children. While I completely agree, the device describe in the post would be an absolutely fantastic computing device, not just an ebook reader for kids, I do think that there are current devices that can bridge that product gap.

I think that the real targets for children's ebooks is not some down the road technology, but rather the tools that exist today. Things like the Leapster, the iPod Touch, the Nintendo DS, the Playstation Portable ( PSP ). These are all existing products with high market penetration, and they all support some form of ebook reading. The iPods and Nintendo DS are particularly attractive, since they support DRM free file formats such as PDF. Kids are already using these devices for all sorts of things, from browsing the internet to reading to playing games. All that needs to happen is one decent bit of software marketed towards children, and the nut is cracked.

Some may argue that the Nintendo DS is too small for children to enjoy the books, or to use before a certain age. I do tend to agree on an aesthetic stance, the DS has a small screen and small controls. That being said, I've seen 4 year old children pick up a DS and start playing a game. I see no reasonable barrier to usage that can not be solved with proper interface design. Same goes for an iPod or PSP.

I honestly feel that technology devices are converging, that computing power has reached a point where it makes more sense to build devices that let you play games, surf the internet, read a PDF, listen to music, etc. Certainly there is a place for illustrated ebook readers as a specific market product, but when it comes down to it, if I am spending $300-500 on a device for my kids, I'll lean towards one that has functionality they can grow into and with, rather then a one-use product. Though I really do want a nice tablet computer, about A4 size.

Labels: discussion, e-books, media coverage, news, technology

Sharing-Books is an e-publisher so you know how we answered the question. However I think it will be of value to current and future authors pondering whether to e-publish or not, to share some of the reflections that led us to spending quite a bit of time and money building an e-publishing engine for children books.

First let me confess that I am a paper book fanatic. Our home (and our garage) is full of paper books. I love the smell of ink and glue that tickles your nose when you open a new book. It is just like when you smell that your favorite dish is in the oven. So if I love paper books so much, why am I an e-book publisher?

Simply e-books are inevitable. Paper books will remain with us for a long time but their importance will diminish. Fortunately for us we can look to the music industry to see our future. (Along with the cases of books in our garage you will find boxes of vinyl LP's.) Although many have resisted, no musician today would think of not releasing new music as digital files.

So as a writer and an illustrator you have to adapt to this new medium. First you must start by separating the content from the container. Your book, your story is the content and it is the part that matters whether the container is made out of paper or electronic bits and pieces. However this new container offers new and different possibilities even if we lose some of the features we are romantically attached to.

Some of these changes will be challenging, like how to promote your book. The music industry used to have quite a packaging surface with the LP to create eye catching covers. Then the packaging shrank by three fourths to the size of the CD cover, and now in digital format all you see is a thumbnail picture. There are numerous similar unexpected changes that will come as the book industry goes digital.

Let me examine the key changes that we have identified. Hopefully it will help you embrace this new way to publish knowing what to expect from your efforts as an author. As you will notice, many of these changes have to do with what we call removing the friction is the business model - making things happen much faster and at an insignificant cost. These changes will disrupt the publishing industry as we know it the same way that the music industry has been.

• Paper books have limited distribution due to geographical constraints like transportation costs or duties and taxes. E-Books are instantly available world wide at no cost. This means that if your paper book failed in a region it is unlikely that it will be offered elsewhere. On the other hand, your e-book can fail in one region and be immensely popular in another region at the same time.
• Paper books are made from dead trees and chemicals. Now that there is a more eco-efficient alternative, it is just a matter of time before paper books become an issue with environmentalists . While the electronic devices we use to read e-books do have a certain environment cost in their manufacturing processes and recycling, each device can hold thousands of books and therefore they are far more eco-efficient.
• Another environment element is that there is no wastage with e-books. Paper books require long print runs and often the unsold books are either liquidated as remainders with losses to the publisher, and hopefully they eventually get recycled.
• A paper book is passed from reader to reader one person at a time. An e-book can be passed from one person to hundreds or thousands of people at a time. Going from one to one to one to many means that the popularity of an e-book is achieved much more rapidly.
• While a strong person can probably carry 50 paper books, a weak person can carry thousands of e-books. We use to go to the library with our kids and come home with a pile of books. With e-books the entire library comes to you or your child.
• A paper book can be easily damaged and can't be repaired. Electronic devices become more rugged with each generation and if you damage one you can easily replace your e-books in a few minutes.

By now you should see the irresistible efficiencies offered by e-books. Paper books will not disappear but their relevance will decline. Like any transition to a new technology this change has some challenges that must be pondered and planned for.

• Your first challenge as an author publishing an e-book will be the resistance of the industry. You will not be recognized as a "real" writer by older paper published authors or publisher. Many will cling to their status and put down this new technology that threatens the status quo. Accept it. You won't change them. On the other hand with e-books you might have the joy of Andrea Azevedo, our first author, whose two young sons exclaimed "Mom! You are famous! Your books are on the Internet!"
• The most difficult change to adapt to and to understand is how this affects copyrights and piracy. Physical media like vinyl or paper offered much greater protection for your intellectual property. The music industry has tried everything it could to protect digital files with software referred to as Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM has failed. There has not been one version that was not been rapidly broken by hackers who took pride in their feat.

At Sharing-Books we decided to offer the books without DRM and to accept that this is now a fact of life. We simply need to create new business models that take advantage of the speed of distribution of e-books. We plan to have the books sponsored and if a book is copied and emailed a thousand times, it simply means more value for the sponsor. Some of you will be scandalized at the idea of sponsoring a children book. However, we are talking about sponsoring not advertising, something that is done for every play you attend. You will also find it interesting if you shop for antique children books to find many that were sponsored in the same fashion a hundred years ago.

• E-books present different challenges for illustrators. They will likely be read on a screen that does not offer the same resolution as paper. Colors will be displayed differently depending on how a reader has set up his/her screen. The screen sizes will vary greatly. From PCs with great screens to black and white e-readers to cells phones and to gaming devices. You will find e-books everywhere. Our job at Sharing-Books is to make our authors e-books available on as many device types as possible. The illustrator's challenge will be to draw in a way that is flexible and adaptative.
• E-books present different opportunities. Paper children books sometimes have pop-up features or pull features that work for some time and then are usually damaged by the children. E-books will offer more flexibility for the creative mind. Click on the cow in the picture and see information about cows or hear the cow moo. We are excited to see what our creators will come up with.
• E-books can become paper books. On demand printing will be the norm and the reader will be able to customize the printed copy. No waste and a great marketing opportunity.
• E-books offer great opportunities for teachers. E-Books are free or at least they save money. The majority of teachers end up spending their own funds to supplement school materials. As we advance Sharing-Books will be able to offer teachers tools to integrate books, questionnaires and lessons in coherent programs that will use the capabilities of the devices the children use to read.
• E-books offer great opportunities for students. E-books are free. Voracious readers will never run out of material to read.
• E-books are much easier to convert into formats friendly to the visually impaired or the learning challenged.
• E-books' world wide and free accessibility will help bridge the knowledge gap between developed and developing nations. This means that we will also have better access to literature form authors from developing nations and that they will be able to benefit from their exposure to developed nations markets. This will be the literature version of free-trade coffee.

We do not have complete answers to all the changes described above but we prefer to see them as opportunities for imaginative solutions and innovations.

Already after only a few months in business, we have seen one of our authors Jennifer Poulter come up with the idea of the one page book. Jennifer collaborates with illustrators to create poster-poems that can be downloaded and printed by teachers who get an instant vocabulary lesson for their class. Jennifer received a number of testimonials from enthusiastic teachers.

We have a number of our own innovations in development but we are anticipating that our authors, illustrators and users will continue to come up with great ideas - many better than our own.

Indeed the answer to the question to E or not to E, is to E.

Labels: children books, content, e-books, marketing, publishing, reading