Now firmly placed as a mainstream item, ebooks have grown in popularity enough for many libraries to have started making digital versions from their catalogue available for lending.

The only thing you’ll need, except your eReader and an appropriate library card, is an Adobe ID (see below).

Most libraries that do provide ebooks are using the Adobe DRM protection system, which also means that most dedicated eReaders (Sony, Kobo, etc) and several eReader apps (Bluefire, OverDrive) can be used to read these DRM protected library ebooks.

I’m going to write three very short tutorials on how to get your library ebook onto your eReader/App. One of these three options should give you enough information even if yours is not actually covered here.

Adobe ID / Activation

As libraries are using the Adobe DRM protection you will first need to create an Adobe ID before you’ll be able to read those borrowed books. If you don’t already have one, then please visit the Adobe website and complete this form.

Adobe Digital Editions (ebook reader)

Unless you are using the OverDrive iPhone/Android app (see below) you must install Adobe’s Digital Editions Reader so that your library books can be activated before they are transferred to your ebook reader.

Download Adobe Digital Editions here.

The first time you run DE, you will be asked to activate it with the Adobe ID and password you created previously.

With DE installed, you don’t even need a digital reader as you can read EPUB books on your computer directly from within Digital Editions. If you do have a digital reader, then read on.

Bluefire eReader App for the iPad and iPhone

Bluefire has become a very popular app as it was the first eReader to allow Adobe DRM EPUB files to be added no matter where you bought your books from, which also makes it perfect for users wanting to read library books on the iPad.

First, download the Bluefire Reader app from iTunes (available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch).

Before continuing please activate Bluefire with your Adobe ID; start the app and on the “Library” page click the “Info” icon, located at the bottom. Here you will see the button for activating your Bluefire reader.

Next, visit your library’s website, checkout an eBook, and click the download link – when asked to save or open, select “Open with Digital Editions”.

Using iTunes we will now transfer the book to the Bluefire app;

• Connect your iPad to a computer and start iTunes.
• Select your device (iPad/iPhone) and click on the “Apps” tab.
• Scroll down to the “File Sharing” section and click the “Bluefire Reader” icon in the Apps section.
• Click the “Add…” button.

At this point you’ll need to browse to where Adobe Digital Editions has stored your eBook. By default they will be saved to one of these locations;

On Windows: your-home-directory/Documents/My Digital Editions
On OSX: your-home-directory/Documents/Digital Editions

The EPUB book will then transfer to Bluefire where you can then start reading.

Library Books on a Dedicated eReader (Sony, Kobo, etc.)

Dedicated ebook readers often have their own software for adding books, but we will stick with using Adobe Digital Editions to get your library ebooks on to your eReader.

I’ll be using the Sony Touch Edition for this example, but it should be the same for all devices that support EPUB with Adobe DRM protection. This procedure will be very similar to the way you do it when you purchase ebooks from a store, so please refer to your documentation for more detailed help. Otherwise here is the brief outline.

• Connect the eReader to your computer and start Digital Editions.
• Unless you have already done so, you will be shown the “Device Setup Assistant” – you will need to authorise your reader.
• Visit your library’s website, checkout an ebook and download to DE.
• From within DE drag the book(s) to your reader – In my case I dragged them to PRS-600.

And that’s it.

Overdrive eReader App for iPhone and Android

OverDrive are a digital distribution company who provide ebooks to all libraries. They also have their own app which is available for both Apple and Android devices.

As I don’t have an Android device I’ll be doing this tutorial with my iPod Touch, but the procedures should be the same on Android systems.

Download the “OverDrive Media Console” app from iTunes (or Android Market Place).

Once downloaded;

• Launch the app and click on the “Get Books +” button (top right).
• On the next screen click the “Add a Website +” button.

You’ll then be taken to the OverDrive website where you can search for your library. In my case, I searched for “Manchester Public Library” – searching for “Manchester UK” or “Manchester Great Britain” generated no results, so if you don’t find your library on the first go, try a different search.

• Select your library from the list.
• Clicking the link under the “Library Systems” heading – you’ll be taken to that library’s website.
• Sign in to your library account, find a book to checkout.
• When you click the download button you will be taken back to the OverDrive app.

As this will be the first time you’ve used OverDrive, you will be asked to sign in with your Adobe ID. Once done, you can proceed with the download and start reading your new book.

The OverDrive app is perhaps not the best eReader out there, but the fact that it makes getting books from a library to your device very easy, it can be a better option for many people.

I hope this tutorial helps and if you come across any issues that need sharing, please leave a comment and I’ll update the article.

Today, Nicolas Gary from the French website www.actualitte.com contacted me about their exclusive first look at the next generation Bookeen eReader, the ORIZON. As the article is in French, Nicolas has kindly written a short overview in English.

Bookeen is introducing a new eBook Reader called ORIZON, supporting ePub files (with or without DRM) of course. It comes with a 6 inch touchscreen display, WiFi and Bluetooth (Have fun! This is the first Reader in France with a wireless connection!) What else? An accelerometer, so you can read in landscape or portrait mode.

Weight : 226g for 12.25 x 18.5 x 0.75 cm and we know a few specifications like the resolution, 167 dpi and 16 levels of grey.

Bookeen says there will also be a new version of the Boo Reader software.

And about the Opus…just few new colours…

If your French is up to scratch you can read the full exclusive over at actualitte.com.

When I was at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, Michaël Dahan from Bookeen did mention there would be a new 6 inch reader this year. I was very impressed with the Bookeen Opus when I reviewed it in November and said to myself at the time that if they had a 6 inch version this would be my choice of eReader.

For the last few months I’ve been using the Sony Reader Touch Edition and although I think there are many amazing features, that dark shiny touch screen really does bug me. The shininess I could live with, but I really do hope the Orizon’s screen brightness doesn’t suffer from the addition of the touch screen like the Sony does.

At the moment there are a multitude of eReaders coming onto the market (all supporting EPUB it seems :- ) but I get the feeling the Bookeen might be one step ahead of most of them.

I’ve had a crazy old time since I returned home from the Frankfurt Book Fair last week so this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write a little about my time there, and an interesting time it was.

I again had the pleasure of having lunch with IDPF Executive Director, Michael Smith. There was no real agenda, it was just a chance for us to have a good chin-wag about ePub, how things are moving for the format and such other things. This year the IDPF held three sessions but due to my day job duties in London I only managed to attend one of his sessions; missing what I’m sure was an extremely interesting ‘EPUB Update and Tweaks and Tricks for EPUB on Devices’ session presented by Keith Fahlgren from O’Reilly – I’m wholey dissapointed about that.

Still, I did manage to attend the ‘New and Updated eBook Reading Devices’ which was rather interesting.

For this session there were four speakers; Michaël Dahan (Bookeen), Neelan Choksi (Lexcycle Stanza), Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies) and finally Richard Siegersma (ECO Reader). All the speakers had some interesting things to say but a couple of points stuck out.

Michaël talked about their user statistics; 35+ age group consisting of 60% female, 40% male and that digital reader users are mainly for “heavy” readers. Michaël also told us that Bookeen will be releasing their Gen4 6” reader mid-March 2010.

Willem told us that iRex will also be releasing a new reader in mid-2011 which will be full-colour! I presume this is the reading screen itself and not a secondary screen like that of the new Barnes & Noble “nook”.

Networking Events

On the Thursday evening there was the IDPF Networking event which I have to say was much busier than last year, just goes to show how much the digital market and support for ePub has grown over this last 12 months.

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with several members of the Linkedin Ebooks, Ebook Readers Group hosted by Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks). Only a handful of people attended but all were great people and we even had the pleasure of Margaret A. Harrison and the charismatic Steve Potash from OverDrive attending.

eBook Digital Reader Reviews

One of my goals for Frankfurt this year was to do a good bit of smooching with those digital reader people to procure some for review purposes – the results we actually quite positive.

My first meeting was with Phil Wood from Interead, where I had my first hands-on moment with one of their COOL-ER’s – man is that thing light! I also spoke with Royal-Line, who will be bringing the NUTT reader to Europe, iRex, and I also stopped by the Bookeen stand to check out their new Cybook Opus. I have to say the Opus does seem to be a very cool device indeed.

Phil agreed to send me one of their COOL-ER’s, Royal-Line gave me one of their NUTT readers there and then and Bookeen said there might be a possibility of sending me an Opus – from what I saw of the Opus, I do hope this is possible.

Along with the Sony Touch Edition, which I received just last week (a self purchase unfortunately), I will have three (possibly four) new reader reviews on the site before the end of November.

Digital Content is on the Rise

Anyone who’s been around the eBook world during the last 12 months can certainly confirm that we’ve seen a great increase in the interest of eBooks and digital readers and this was certainly reflected at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. There were more, bigger and better digital reader and content provider stands than ever.

All the talk round the net is that 2010 will be the year of the eBook – I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like at next year’s book fair, but I’m going to be there to experience it first hand!

If you didn’t already know, I come from the UK, so you can imagine my delight when I saw that the two new Sony Readers (Pocket Edition & Touch Edition) are on pre-order over at Waterstones UK and W.H.Smith.co.uk. I fully expected that us Brits would have to wait another year before being able to buy them, but it seems that Sony have done the right thing!

For those of you who have not already heard, Sony are releasing three new eBook Readers. They are all e-paper devices that can read ePub books. The Pocket Edition has a 5″ screen. The Touch Edition is 6″ like the PRS-505, but with a touch screen. The Daily Edition, which was announced just today, has a 7″ tall touch screen and wireless connectivity via AT&T. At the moment the Daily Edition looks like it will only be released in the U.S.

The costs of the readers over at Waterstones is £179.99 for the Pocket Edition and £249.99 for the Touch Edition. Keeping in form with the PRS-505 prices, these are yet again much more expensive than our U.S. counterparts can get them for; $199 (~£120) and $299 (~£180) respectively.

Waterstones does not have the Daily Edition reader for pre-order and I wouldn’t hold much hope either that it will be released in the UK this year; Sony would still need to find a mobile provider who would allow them to piggy-back on their cell service. The general assumption is that Amazon have been trying to arrange this on their Kindle for quite sometime, without success.

Although news on the release of the COOL-ER eBook reader isn’t new, what is interesting is that the makers have struck a deal to sell this in the Argos stores.

For those of you who are not from the UK, Argos are a household name — if a Brit hasn’t bought from Argos, you know their neighbour has!

The BookSeller.com article also states that the COOL-ER book store has 3/4 million titles (although not all in the ePub format).

I don’t have a one of these readers myself – I can’t justify spending £189 when I already have a Sony 505 – but as it uses the Adobe Digital Editions, any ePub books you download from epubBooks.com or buy from one of the many book stores around, should render the same as they do on the Sony Reader.

For me, the importance of this Argos/COOL-ER deal shows that eBooks (including the ePub variety) and the digital readers for viewing them are finally entering the mainstream.

This evening a friend of mine pointed me to the Sony annoucment of the PSP and the new PSP Go over on cnet news. Why did I find this interesting enough to write about? The article also mentioned that the PSP’s will be getting their own “Digital Reader”…!!! The article says,

The PSP will also be getting a Digital Reader in December with various comic book publishers onboard to offer content. Marvel will be providing Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four comics to start, with Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk all to follow. Compatibility with other Sony readers and more digital comics publishers will be announced soon.

The initial focus will be on comics, but that paragraph also mentions “compatibility with other Sony readers”. Is that a reference to the Sony Reader? The Guardian also makes mention to the Sony Digital Reader annoucement but again nothing beyond the comics angle.

This annoucement comes just days after Sony announced that they will be dropping their propriety BBeB format and their eBook store will start selling ePub books exclusively (Adobe DRM flavour) by the end of 2009. I can’t imagine that Sony will not open their PSP reader for use with the Sony store.

With over 50 million PSP’s already sold and many, many more once the new PSP Go is released, this could be a huge boost for both the Sony eBook store and the ePub eBook format!

Sony could be making those few hundred thousand Kindle’s seem positively niche.

I was just over at Bill McCoy’s blog (Adobe) reading his latest post about the current number of dedicated eBook readers which support the Adobe DRM’d EPUB format. Of course there are a number of other reading devices, such as the iPhone that can read non-DRM EPUB eBooks, but it is still surprising how many there actually are.

The Adobe Digital Edition Devices page has a little more details on each but here’s a very quick run down;

• EZ Reader
• EZ Reader Pocket Pro
• Mentor
• BeBook One
• BeBook Mini
• Cybook Gen3
• Cybook Opus
• Cool-er
• Elonex eBook
• Hanlin V5
• Hanlin V3
• iRex Digital Reader 1000S
• NUUT2
• Sony Reader PRS-300
• Sony Reader PRS-505
• Sony Reader PRS-600
• Sony Reader PRS-700

Have you heard of all these?

Bill himself seems suprised, saying, “this is faster take-up than even this optimist had hoped for, given our launch less than six months ago of the enabling Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK that’s been integrated into all of these products.”

Whether you believe DRM is right or wrong, the positive side of this is that we are seeing more vendors supporting the one eBook format.

We are however still waiting to see if the Amazon Kindle’s will start supporting EPUB; will they use their own DRM – will they use any DRM at all. Let us also not forget Apple, what formats will they support on their upcoming tablet.

This last week has proved to be quite a week for the EPUB eBook format with announcements from Google, Sony and Project Gutenberg on their support for the EPUB format.

Project Gutenberg EPUB Books

Over at Project Gutenberg, Marcello Perathoner has been working hard to convert all the Gutenberg titles into the EPUB format. At this time these versions should be considered experimental, but after trying several different titles, they are all more than readable.

The books are converted where possible from the HTML version in the Gutenberg archives and for those titles without a HTML version, Marcello uses the plain .txt book. The plain .txt files at Gutenberg are notoriously inconsistent in their layout so converting these accurately is extremely difficult — I know this myself only too well. Perhaps it’s time Project Gutenberg embraced a Master Format.

What makes this special from the other news (see below) is that all the Gutenberg books go through a proofreading process and so the accuracy is very high. This is why so many other eBook project are based on the Gutenberg archives.

Google and Sony partner to release 500,000 Public Domain EPUB Books

Over the last few years Google has been scanning bo0ks by the million, making them available on their book search, but this is the first time they have any of them available to an eBook reader. All the titles are in the public domain (pre-1923 titles only) and once added to the current Sony Reader catalogue, brings the total available titles to around 600,000, far surpassing Amazon Kindle’s 240,000 catalogue. Amazon still use their own propriety eBook format and do no currently allow EPUB files to be read natively – conversion is needed first – but as the Google EPUB books all come DRM free, there are many tools out there that will allow you access to these on a Kindle or other reading platform.

As the press release states, “the publishing industry has more or less united on EPUB for e-book distribution”, so c’mon Amazon, let’s see some native EPUB support!

Don’t have a Sony Reader?

Although this announcement is aimed at Sony Reader owners, you don’t need to own a PRS-505 or PRS-700 to read these Google EPUB books. Just download the Sony “eBook Library” software to search and download. Paul Biba’s article over at TeleRead shows how to access the books without owning a Reader.

No access for non-U.S. based PRS-505 owners

Yet again, this is a U.S. only release, at least if you already own a PRS-505. You can only access the Google books via Sony’s “eBook Library” software, but in my UK version we don’t have access to the Sony Book Store as we are only pointed to the Waterstone website. When I tried to install the new version (2.5) it tells me it cannot install in my region! I believe it is because I already have my UK reader registered and if I were to install on a second computer I would then have access to these titles.

If there are any non U.S. PRS-505 users out there who have succeeded in accessing the archive, please let me know.

Google EPUB Quality?

As Google does not proof read their scanned books, relying completely on the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to produced the digital characters, the quality of the text themselves is not as good as archives like Project Gutenberg or websites that take their books from PG, such as Feedbooks.com. Then again, were are getting 500K free books with the potential to access another million Google books in the future.

All in all, this has been a good week for the EPUB format.

Back in September I wrote about my epubBooks development; a project to convert the .TXT ebooks from Project Gutenberg into the IDPF’s EPUB format. After many months of hard work I’e finally finished the conversion tools and I’m now preparing development of the website itself, which will allow anyone to download my EPUB books, and all for free.

Although I’m happy with the current formatting in the EPUB files, I wanted to turn to you, the ebook community and ask for your feedback, in the hope that the improvements you submit will make these EPUB ebooks even better.

EPUB Book Features

• Linked Footnotes – each footnote number is a link, click on this to see the footnote (I’ve actually made them all endnotes). Clicking on the notes number takes you back to the original page.
• Images – Some titles will include images.
• Nicely formatted titles, subtitles, etc.
• Paragraph indents – Except on first paragraph of a chapter/section – as is usual in paper books
• Block Indents – Small left/right indents on block quotes, letters of correspondence, songs, etc.

This is just a small selection for some of the formatting features I’ve implemented.

Please Note: As certain systems enforce their own stlying by defaults, various features will display differently. UPDATE (2011): This isn’t as prolific as it used to be.

Test the EPUB

The title I’m making available as a pre-release download is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – this has many features which show off my conversion. As this eBook contains images it is quite large, weighing in at over 5MB.

The test book has now been removed as you can find the final release here;

Gulliver’s Travels (Final)

All comments, on both the frontend formatting (indents, italics, etc) and the underlying code (OPF, NCX, HTML markup) is very much appreciated.

This ebook can be read using Adobe Digital Editions, Stanza (desktop and iPhone version), Sony Reader (PRS-505 and PRS-700), BeBook and the FBReader.

Enjoy!

I was very lucky this year to be able to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair. As it was only going to be a one day affair for me I choose Thursday, the day of the Digital Lunch: Digital Publishing and the EPUB Standard’ seminar.

Before the session got under way I had a quick look around the ‘Digital Market Place’ Hall and came across the iRex Digital Reader stand where they were showing off their DR1000 model. Along with having a basic reader they also have two models with a Wacom touch screen and one of those with Wi-Fi. All models have a 10.2 inch display (1024×1280 pixels) – so no need to go zooming in on your PDF files now. This looks a great piece of equipment. After checking out the iRex stand I then made my way down to the IDPF session.

There were four speakers at the Digital Lunch, Michael Smith (IDPF Executive Director), Michael Vantusko (Overdrive – unfortunately Steve Potash could not make it), Fionnuala Duggan (Random House Digital Group UK) and Robert Nell (Sony Reader).

Mike Smith got things started with an outline of the IDPF and the ePub format. He discussed the amazing sales figures we’ve been seeing in the eBook world and the uptake of the ePub standard from publishers and conversion houses.

Then Mike Vantusko from Overdrive talked a little about the challenges of being the first distributor to offer ePub formatted books. He was also was very positive on the uptake from stores such as Waterstones, Borders and W.H.Smith from the UK.

Fionnuala Duggan from Random House UK was very positive toward ePub although she did have some reservations regarding piracy. This seems a common issue among publishers and although I agree that the one-click piracy that digital content offers makes it easier, with or without official digital versions, piracy happens. We all saw what happened with the Harry Potter books.

Random House are now working on having core user formats of both ePub and PDF. Fionnuala also mentioned that as from 2009 they will simultaneously release both Paper and eBook editions of all their new titles.

If you’ve been keeping your eyes open then you would of heard recently that Sony made an unprecedented move by relocating their entire eBook division from Japan to the U.S. to better promote the Sony Reader. Robert Nell talked very emphatically about the future of the Reader and told of their expectations for tens of millions of Readers being sold – Sony is serious about eBooks!

“Two years ago there was no [eBook] standard…now there is a standard, the IDPF ePub standard” – Robert Nell

I managed to grab a few moments with Robert after the seminar in the hope of getting some juicy details about the Readers future, but as one would expect, he was very careful not to give anything away. I asked about a release date for the upcoming Wi-Fi features and even when I offered up an October 2009 date, to tie in with their current one model per year schedule, he calmly said nothing. :)

Neither would he give a release date for the PRS-700 in the UK, although he did confirm that it would be released. I got the impression that we won’t see the PRS-700 in the UK until the latter half of 2009 – very likely September or October. If you’re from the UK and were holding off buying a Reader in case a PRS-700 release was imminent…I wouldn’t wait. So get along to SonyStyle.co.uk (or Waterstones UK) and buy yourself a PRS-505 – I’m sure you won’t regret it.

For their big push into Europe, Sony is continuing their partnerships, such as they have done with Waterstones in the UK. In France from the 23rd October, the PRS-505 will be sold at fnac and Germany will get theirs early 2009 in partnership with Libri GmbH.

Later in the afternoon I met up with Michael Smith for a couple of beers and had a great chat on all things ePub. Mike showed a real interest in ePubBooks.com so it was nice to get some positive feedback on my project. I very much got the feeling that as well as supporting the large publishers and conversion houses, the IDPF are also very encouraged and supportive of what is happening in the community with projects such as ePubBooks and Feedbooks.

In the evening we headed down to the Jazil Bar for more drinks, as did a number of other people.
Hadrien Gardeur from Feedbooks was hoping to make it to the fair, but unfortunately he didn’t show. I did meet Andrew Savikas from TOC O’Reilly, though only briefly, which was a real shame as it would have been great to have a good chat with him – alas I had my train to catch.

The big message I took from the fair was that publishers, conversion houses and distributors are serious about the ePub format. Everyone is getting excited about the growth of eBook sales in general and publishers seem to be almost relieved that we are now seeing an eBook standard developed, which in the long term will save them money and be better for the end consumer.

If you’re lucky enough to live in the U.S. then you have plenty of options when it comes to a dedicated eBook reader. For those of us from Europe however, the pickings are much slimmer. That is until now!

In case you’ve been living under a log – come this Thursday we in the UK will have our very own Sony Reader Digital Book (PRS-505)!!

According to the SonyStyle.co.uk website; they will start shipping the new Readers on the 4th September 2008. The regular shipping takes 5 working days but pay an extra £13 and you’ll receive it within 24 hours. Just think, you could be reading on your very own Sony Reader this weekend!

What do you get for your £199 (+ shipping)

I’m sure you all know the details by now so I’ll be very brief;

• 6″ E-Ink paper like reading screen
• Space enough for 160 books (10,000+ if you use the memory slots)
• 6,800 continuous pages turns (avg. users may charge just once every 2 weeks!)

And What About Books?

• Tens of thousands of bestsellers from the Sony Book Store and Waterstones (plus many others websites.)
• 100,000+ Free public domain books via sites like Project Gutenberg (H.G. Wells, Jane Austin, Alexandre Dumas, etc.)

Now, if you’re thinking about ordering a Reader from the Sony website why not use my link below. By clicking on this link I will get a chance to win my very own PRS-505! Yep, those great people at SonyStyle.co.uk are running a competition and for me to be in with a chance of winning, I just need to place their link on my website and hope some of you lovely people will click it before ordering.

If I do win, I will however be putting the Reader to good use – I am currently developing tools to convert the Project Gutenberg txt eBooks to the ePub format and expect to start releasing them for free on ePubBooks.com before the end of the year. Having a Reader to test them on will be a big benefit! So…[link removed]

What About Other European Countries?

As the title of this post indicated, it seems the UK is not the only country that will be receiving a Reader release this year. MobileRead.com user doctorow posted on the site that perhaps Germany will also be getting their own Reader before the year is out. According to Spiegal.de (written in German) they have spoken with Sony Germany and there are plans for a release there. Perhaps an announcement will be made during this year Frankfurt Book Fair.

There is also speculation that France will follow suite before the year is out.

UPDATE: We’re now hearing that Waterstones book shops in Amsterdam and Brussels will be stocking the Sony Reader.

This could be an interesting year for us Europeans.

A few days back one of the MobileRead forum members contacted Fictionwise and asked when they will start selling ePub formatted books. As they noted in the post, BooksonBoard are currently the only online bookstore that are selling commercial ePub books.

UPDATE: We should not forget that O’Reilly have a small selection of titles that come as an eBook bundle, included in that bundle are books in the ePub format.

Fictionwise replied by stating that “We are currently making our plans for epub compliance over the coming months.”

However, it seems that one of the biggest hurdles for them is how to encrypt their titles, “each vendor is currently using their own proprietary encryption scheme for epub.” DRM isn’t going to go away anytime soon so it’s understandable that they need to work out these issues before they can move forward.

An interesting point they made was that there are still very few publisher supporting ePub at this time, yes more will follow suit, but until they do the number of available titles will be limited.

Things are moving forward, both Penguin UK and HarperColins UK will be releasing several thousand titles this September and when the UK Sony Reader is released on the 4th of September, the UK’s biggest book store, Waterstones, will have over 25,000 ePub formatted books for the PRS-505.

ePub books may be hard to come by for now, but over the next 12 months we are likely to see many more titles become available. We just need to have a little more patience!

Very early this morning, 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time to be precise, TeleRead.org broke the news that Sony are officially releasing a firmware update allowing the Sony Reader Digital Book PRS-505 to read the IDPF ePub formatted books – available from their website today.

The ePub standard has seen great interest of late from both professionals and amateurs alike but this is the first time were are going to be able to read ePub formatted books on a dedicated eBook device such as the Sony Reader.

The new firmware allows the Reader to view both DRMed and non-DRMed ePub/PDF files, which also means Sony users can now purchase books from vendors other than Sony itself (Fictionwise, O’Reilly, Penguin UK, etc). A short time ago we had confirmation from several publisher that they will start to provide ePub formatted books – Penguin UK announced they’ll have plenty of ePub books available from September 2008.

Waterstones/SonyStyle to sell Sony Reader in the UK!

For those of us who are UK eBook fans, Sony have partnered with the Waterstones book store in the UK to start selling the Sony Reader, available from 3rd September 2008, they will have over 25,000 titles available when they go live! You can also Pre-Order your Sony Reader UK (PRS-505) from SonyStyle.co.uk. The eBook titles to be made available at Waterstones will be released in the ePub format.

It was anticipated that both these pieces of news would be big, but the response around the net has been just huge. There’s been a lot of activity and hype surrounding the Amazon Kindle recently but this news shows that Sony are by no means going to play the underdog.

All-in-all,  this has been a great day for the Sony Reader, Waterstones and of course all of us who wish to see the ePub format succeed.

I only have the PRS-500 myself so I’d love to hear from any readers out there on how easy it is to update, transfer and read ePub books on the Sony Reader.

Good news for all British Sony Reader (PRS-505) fans! According to theBookseller.com, it’s believed Waterstones have signed a deal with Sony to stock the Reader when it is released the in the UK later this year.

As a Brit myself this is great news. I bought my Reader from the U.S. in December 2006 but have to live with reading public domain titles or buying PDF versions from sites such as eBooks.com and so fighting with Sony’s inferior PDF viewing quality. Let’s hope once it’s released I’ll be able to use their services, even though my Sony is a U.S. model.

It looks like eBook readers are going to have a good time this year in the UK, I’m sure the rest of Europe won’t be too far behind for Sony or the Amazon Kindle.

Although we’re still waiting for Adobe’s Digital Editions to be released for the Sony Reader, once this happens, all those ePub titles being released by Penguin and HarperCollins will give Sony’s PRS-505 a huge boost over the Amazon Kindle. No doubt Amazon are aware of this so let’s hope they react and make the Kindle read the ePub format natively.