Win a Sony Reader from OverDrive!

Do you check out downloadable eBooks and eAudiobooks through OverDrive, available from the Troy Public Library? If so, you have a chance to win a Sony Reader! All you need to do is take a short survey about your OverDrive use. The survey is available by going here, and then clicking on the "We want your feedback!" link along the right-hand side. the survey takes only 5 minutes to complete.

If you haven't tried downloadable eBooks and eAudiobooks before, now is the perfect time. For more information about downloadable material available from the Troy Public Library, visit here.

Amazon Releases Kindle for PC Application

Competition for ebook readers has been heating up.

Sony has introduced new versions of its Reader. Barnes and Noble's new device, the Nook, will be shipping soon. Instead of a new device for the holidays, Amazon has launched a new, free, application that allows Kindle books to be more accessible. Kindle for PC joins the Kindle for iPhone app that allows Kindle books to be read on devices other than a Kindle, like on your home computer.

Still a beta release, Kindle for PC, like the Kindle for iPhone app, features Whispersync technology which keeps tracks of your place in a book when you switch between devices. It is currently only available for Windows, but a Mac version is promised.

For some reviews, check out this story at wired.com and this review from PC World.

EBook Readers Compared; Selection Grows

Amazon made news last month when it released its Kindle 2 ebook reader.

Though the best known, the Kindle isn’t the only ebook reader out there. Here is a roundup of the pros and cons of seven of the most popular readers available today, from Wired.

On a related topic, Sony – one of Amazon’s main competitors – has reached an agreement with Google to offer 500,000 public domain titles available from Google Book to Sony’s ebook users. This is the largest collection of any kind available for any ebook format.

E-book Sales Still Small, But Growing Quickly

Recently, The Tech Desk has been covering the switch from print to digital format in the news business. Whether or not you are ready, more and more media are reducing or eliminating print and moving to all online, electronic publications.

But what about the book publishing business? Will book readers really forgo their paper texts for digital ones, viewable on Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, or one of the dozens of other devices now available?

Well, increasingly, evidence shows that they will. According to a recent article in The New York Times:

“For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold…

Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it… and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.

So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.

Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by [Oprah] Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.

So you want to give electronic books a try? The Troy Public Library has e-books that you can download to your computer. Visit our website at www.libcoop.net/troy, and click on Downloadable eBooks, Audiobooks and Videos in the left side frame. From here, you’ll be able to access our OverDrive and netLibrary collections, each of which has hundreds of ebooks for you to download and view.

Let us know what you think.