Update November 4, 20113: Try the new Kindle Paperwhite for $119. Read about it.
Sony’s electronic book reader is up against the Amazon Kindle. The key to the Kindle’s success is that it is paired with the largest book store in the world, where most people likely to buy an electronic book already have accounts.
Sony fights back by using the open ePub format and pairing with Google who is offering one million public domain books in the ePub format.
With the Sony Reader you can also “check out” any ePub book from libraries, starting with the New York Public Library, for free for 21 days.
Sony’s strategy is to sell the readers, encouraging anyone to sell electronic books in the open ePub digital book format. Amazon’s strategy is the opposite: to drive sales of ebooks on Amazon. Not surprizingly, the Amazon Kindle does not support the ePub format.
Source: Sony And Google Try To Take On The Kindle With Open Books
Interestingly, seniors are the largest group of users of the Kindle. (Source: bookbusinessmag.com)
The LDS Church hasn’t yet published any content in electronic reader formats, but is preparing the entire gospel library of scriptures, manuals, magazines, and other Church publications in XML format. Simple Web services could easily convert that XML into ePub or any other reader format. What if members with technical skills coded the conversion routines for various e-readers and they were made available on LDS.org? Then anyone could simply click on the format they wanted, and could download their favorite magazine, manual, or other materials to their e-reader at will? Get the free LDS Gospel Library mobile app.
How would you like to see it work? How could members help make this happen?
This is a great idea. However, as an end user for windows mobile (pocket pc) I would have to say that I am THOROUGHLY disappointed in the selection of church literature LDS.org offers. Example is the YancaeyWare Reader. There are A LOT of gospel library books offered at http://www.thecoffeys.net/ebooks/ website. However, LDS.org barely offerers any of those available books. What about offering members with the skills to make different packages of books available for download for all the different readers they use. I would love to see a healthy selection of different libraries to chose from for the phone/PDA rather than these open books.
This (http://scriptures.byu.edu/) site is the best I have seen for referencing the scriptures with conference talks and so forth. Could you create an interface similar to this for the reader?
Regarding the requests for more content from lds.org. I think it’s important to recognize the Church (i.e., Intellectual Reserve, Inc.) doesn’t hold copyright on everything you might find at Deseret Book, Seagull Book, etc. To get that material published, you’ll need to check with the individual publishers and /or authors. Perhaps the church could share its XML schema with other publishers and see if this becomes a defacto standard.
Let’s look at (at least how I understand it) what the IT folks at the Church offices are trying to do: In both the genealogical domain as well as in the gospel library context, the Church is trying to provide an infrastructure that others can build on. If the church provides the XML encoded data for the entire gospel library (scriptures, manuals, magazines, etc.) then conversion to your favorite reader format (something that runs on Windows Mobile or an iphone, or a Sony reader, another cell phone, etc.) can be done once somebody writes an appropriate translator.
What I’m really excited about and (and I have questions regarding) with this technology are the potential mash ups that will result from this kind of work. Individuals will be able to build web applications that serve up weekly curriculum resources to a single page. For example, a ward curriculum applications can serve up the Sunday school and priesthood reading assignments and primary lessons as well as related media content (images, songs, etc.) from the library that support those lessons. Gospel doctrine students will be able to take advantage of mapping mashups to get a geographic feel for the locations of church history events and revelations, as well as occurrances in the old and new testaments. If the scripture references in conference talks are encoded in the xml files, it becomes easier to create an experience similar to scriptures.byu.edu.
The great thing is, the limited IT staff at Church Offices doesn’t need to develop these applications alone. Once the infrastructure is laid, members will be able to work on these projects (probably through forums like tech.lds.org).
With all this potential, is the church going to provide guidelines for repurposing the gospel library content, or are we going to see a “let’s make this available to the members and see what they do with it” approach?
This has significant ramifications for the family history effort too. FamilySearch could do things with the Historical Book Collection that could not be done on other readers right now. Google Books is full of family history and genealogy books, and other books of interest to the family history researcher as well.
As far as lds.org goes, this will allow more content in a more timely manner, and easier to use also.
But given the scale of what is available for free, I learned that Amazon is not too happy about it, in fact they are suing Google and Sony over this and their alliance, calling it ‘anticompetitive’. Just a ploy to boost its own sales, there really hasn’t been any viable option to the Kindle until now, although others are coming.
In what way is the ePub format “open?”
I own a Sony Reader 700 series, and I love it. Everyone I meet on the bus or train that uses a Kindle tells me they wish they’d bought the Sony once I show them mine. Sony was smart enough to make their’s to read .doc, .txt, .rtf, and .pdf besides their own ePub format. I can create files on my home computer and load them to my Sony.
When I bought my Sony I wrote to the Help address on the SCRIPTURES CD and asked if the Church had the scriptures in a compatable format – they wrote back and told me to cut and paste from the CD, so that’s what I’m doing, and I’m posting the files on my website as I complete formatting each volume – if you have a Sony, please download and enjoy. I have other files of interest to the LDS reader as well.
My wife bought me a Sony Reader for Christmas and now I find there is almost no Church materials available for it. Should I wait until it becomes available or return it for a Kindle??? Thanks for your suggestions…
The Church is aggressively looking into ways to provide the Gospel Library on mobile devices. Don’t know how soon it will be or how extensive availability will be for the Kindle or Sony Reader. Sorry I can’t be of more help.
I am looking into buying an eBook reader and I would love to be able to get the scriptures, lesson manuals and other LDS books in a format that is somewhat navigateble like I have on my Palm handheld. The only way to do it now would be to have a pdf or text file. Unfortunately, I will only be able to read the books page by page, not bad, but a little slow if I am looking for a specific passage.
Problem solved. On the LDS website you can download an ereader version of their publications such as manuals and magazines. This comes in a .pbd form. Next if you download the free conversion software at http://calibre-ebook.com/ this software can convert the .pbd form into an .epub form that the sony reader library can access and read. I’ve done it and it works perfectly!
I created an EPUB version of the OT, NT, BoM, D&C and PoGP with dual-layer navigation which work great on the Sony eReaders (only one I can test on). This was designed for my PRS-300 model which I purchased in January 2010. This model does not have screen touch navigation. The dual-level navigation is essential for being able to move around as fast as the reader will technically allow. You can access these for no cost on my website at: http://www.icentricity.net/My-eBooks.aspx
ENJOY
Now have the Standard Works (Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) as separate books and also have a Triple Combination Version (BofM, DC, PofGP) and The Holy Bible (OT, NT) version and thanks to some help from a colleague with interest (Grant Farnsworth), have a Quad or combined version. Have upgraded to the Sony PRS-350 this year which makes the speed and navigation even better. The books follow the EPUB standards. I have received feedback from most other mainstream brands of readers that these all work just fine. Still free for the downloading and reading. http://www.icentricity.net/my-eBooks.aspx
These do not have the LDS Dictionary or Concordance…that effort has proven too large at this point for this technology.
Greg, thanks for your reply. I’m forwarding it along to those in charge of creating epub files.