The Second Floor Librarians

I just got back from the BEA conference. It  was great seeing the publishers, all the new books coming out and hearing what is going on with ebooks. There were intensive conference sessions for three days plus an immense vendors area with 1500 booths of publishers, distributors, writers, illustrators and other industry types. The word at the conference was that not only are ebooks here to stay, but the publishing industry is really at the point of embracing the EPUB format.

Not only are the publishers moving fast to embrace the ebook, but hardware & software developers are going at it full speed too. iPhone users should look into Lexcycle’s Stanza, ereader software. The demonstration I saw looked like it was a very versatile app for ereading on the go.

Another case in point is the coolest ebook device I have seen yet!
The COOL-ER!

These things are being touted as the iPod for ebooks. From my few minutes with one, I was really impressed! I knew what to look for since I was an “early adopter” of the Sony PRS-500. The COOL-ER touts some fairly substantial improvements over my 2 year old dinosaur! They are lighter weight than their competitors (mainly the Sony PRS series and the Kindle) and display all the popular ebook formats including TXT, RTF, PDF and EPUB. What’s more, they play MP3 files and have an SD slot for additional storage. The 8 color gray scale e-ink screen is really sharp. With adjustable font size and type that would make them great for people with low vision.

I don’t think we will ever get to the point of  being a “paperless society” but ebooks are certainly a force to be reckoned with! Heck, go out right now and download a free romance novel from Harlequin! They have 17 to choose from.

Posted by Christopher & Clifford
(Clifford is the one in Red)

P.S. Here is a review of BEA in the LA Times.