Sharing Books has been featured on the video podcast SmibsTV this week, if you have a moment go check them out! It is not to long, only a few minutes, and it features me ( Marcus ) chatting with Peter Urban from Smibs about Sharing Books, the publishing industry, and the fantastic people here on Sharing Books.

A big thank you to the Smibs team for driving down to Calgary Alberta from Edmonton Alberta to do the shoot. The roads and weather were typical Alberta in the winter, and they zipped down on the Red Arrow bus ( which apparently has wifi internet for all us mobile computing junkies ).

Labels: business philosophy, media coverage, publishing, SmibsTV

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