IMPORTANT NEWS! THIS BLOG IS ABOUT TO MOVE TO A NEW HOME

I am now in the process of moving all of these posts over to their new home in a Blog which is based on a different system, which will enable me to make things more interesting for you, and much easier to navigate around in, I hope.

I shall be posting all the posts that are here, over a period of a couple of weeks, and also adding completely new posts daily, so please come and visit the new Blog in its shiny new home as soon as you can........

Here is the link you will need to follow to get to it:

www.ebookanoid.com

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT! A CHINESE LANGUAGE eREADER.

The Chinese company Aigo have produced an eReader that is aimed at the Chinese market, which if it takes off will be selling in HUGE numbers - there are after all 1.3 billion people in the PRC, not to mention all the Chinese in the diaspora all over the world who would probably welcome an eReader that supports Chinese characters.

THE AIGO EB 6031 - EXCITING NAME, ISNT IT?

SCREEN:

It has a 6" e-Ink display, so conforms well with the world standard for screens in this respect (Other Chinese eReaders seem to favour LCD screens, sadly).  I can find very little information on this eReader on the net just now, but I imagine more will appear in time, so I can revisit this eReader later.

MEMORY:

It has 2GB of on-board memory, which is ample for a huge collection of books, so no problems there, even though it doesn't have the possibility of using memory cards of any sort.

WiFi SUPPORT:

Simple, it doesn't have it, which is curious, as other Chinese eReader manufacturers are selling machines that can use the Chinese 3G network to download books, so I have no doubt that Aigo will add this to later models before long.  One thing that the Chinese know about is how the markets work, and  they hate missing any tricks!   They have 5000 years of practice after all.

NAVIGATION:

As you can see in the picture, this eReader comes complete with no end of buttons all over it, sadly I have no information about what they all do (Duh!), but obviously they have decided to give it every conceivable navigation possibility, especially for the left handed among us obviously.  Is this a subtle political comment?

SUPPORTED FORMATS:

Apparently it supports all the standard eBook formats, so our Chinese brothers and sisters will be able to access Chinese books on all the better online book sites, especially ones such as Gutenberg, who have Chinese texts available.

COST:

I only have information about the price in China just now, which is about 2500 RMB, which at current exchange rates equals about 360 USD, so it is not cheap, but equally not too expensive, and from my experience in China, no one will pay that price for it.... they all bargain like mad things.

Sadly this Blog cant be seen in China, as the government there blocks all Blog Spot Blogs for some reason, but in a matter of weeks I shall be transferring this whole Blog to a WordPress host, which can be read in China...

LEGAL AND COPYRIGHT PROTECTING CONSIDERATIONS FOR eBOOK WRITERS

When you sit down and write a book that you want to have published as an eBook (either self-published or via one or other online eBook publisher) there are a number of things you need to consider to avoid loss of income and other problems arising from lack of adequate copyright protection for your book.

There are of course other more or less legal matters you need to consider, but in this post I will restrict myself to copyright, and deal with the others in later posts.

The reasons that you should seriously consider copyrighting your book is that it has all too often occurred that books uploaded to less than reputable online publishers have suddenly appeared as work by someone else (normally someone who works on that site), or if you have posted it as a downloadable eBook on your own website and if  you haven't copyrighted your book before uploading it, it suddenly appears on the web as the work of another person, and you don't really have a leg to stand on, and all your work was for nothing.

Also sadly not unheard of is for people to download your book and then simply republish it as their own work

You could of course protect your work by locking it with a password or some similar bit of technical trickery, but this in no way stops someone simply retyping your book and going ahead and publishing it as his own work.

So, the best form of protection is to copyright it, you can then at least always prove that the book in question was in fact written by you.  This enables you to take legal action against anyone who in any way infringes your copyright on your work.  Still not fun, and can be very tedious, and of course contributes handsomely to your lawyer's income, but worth doing....  It is a jungle out there Folks!

This is a rather tricky issue as copyright laws vary from country to country, but there is a simple way to protect yourself that apparently works most times.  This is to submit your book to the copyright authorities in your country, and have it properly registered before you either post it on your own website, or submit it to an online publisher.

It is then of course up to you to be vigilant and do your best to discover any possible copyright infringements, not easy I know - the internet is huge, but you will need to do this, especially if your book seems to be popular!

Obviously it is beyond the scope of this blog to give you contact details of all the World's copyright offices (should you live in Angola, where on earth do you find such a thing?)  But in general it should be easy enough to find your nearest copyright office and do the necessary, and by and large it isn't too expensive either.

There are quite a lot of specialist websites that give useful advice about how to go about all of this, so I would recommend that you spend some time checking them out, especially if you can find ones that know the law in your particular country.

Here is a link to one such, in this case, American.  CLICK HERE

Good luck!

SHARE WITH US:

If you have had any experience of copyright infringement on your work, I would appreciate it very much if you would let us know about it, and what - if any - action you took to deal with it, and whether or not you were successful.  Also, if you can recommend any particular websites that gave you real and useful advice on this problem.

Also of interest to writers - how on earth did you discover this infringement?

SCRIBD - A RATHER WONDERFUL SITE FOR BOTH READERS AND WRITERS OF eBOOKS

SCRIBD:

In spite of its rather strange name (my spelling checker is going mad with it!), this is in fact a rather good site.  its main thrust is to help authors get their works published, and this they do by the simple means of publishing them on their own website.  Thus, here you may find all manner of literary treasures that have been uploaded by aspiring authors.

GROUPS:

This core activity aside, they also consider that writing should be put into the context of a community, thus writers and readers can discuss books, papers and other forms of writing that they and others have uploaded to this site.  This you do by subscribing to forums that people create for themselves, in which writers can discuss their writing with others by means of threads....   The ones I have checked out are surprisingly active, and the discussions about particular points in a given book are interesting, and often surprising.  In many ways it is a wee bit like a sort of Literary Face Book, in which writers have their own pages, and others connect with them there.  Worth a wander around to see for yourself.

GROUPS FOR COMPANIES AND ORGANISATIONS:

Apart from an truly staggeringly large collection of work uploaded by members, this site also hosts a wide range of groups associated with large companies and organisations (Ford Cars, IRCC, Lonely Planet, Boston Tribune, Simon and Schuster, Harvard University Library... a very long list of groups of this sort .  

So for example, one can read articles from the various Lonely Planet books here... and comment on them too, or one could have a look at  the Ford Motors group in which they have published all manner of documents relating to the vehicles they produce, and energetic discussions happens there too. Or one could.....  Its a long list, go have a look for yourself and see what a superb range of groups there are there.

BOOKS AND OTHER FORMS OF WRITING TO DOWNLOAD:

They appear to have literally hundreds of thousands of books, papers, comics, documents and just about any other form of written or drawn work here, some you can download for free, others you have to pay for, though the prices seem very reasonable.

I have wandered all over the site, and been astounded by the range of material on offer there, it is truly astounding, just about every sort of book, learned paper, handbook, comic, travel guide and so on... in profusion! 

FORMATS:

Sadly they don't supply these in ePUB format, but in PDF, DOC, Power Point, Excel, TXT and Postscript, so it will be necessary to let Calibre lose on the files once you have downloaded them to make them acceptable to your eReader - but we are all used to doing that by now, unless we are Kindle owners,of course, and stuck out there on the edge of all this wonderful stuff.  (Question to self...can Kindles read PDFs?)  

GENRES:

This is simple, they have every sort of literary genre here, no matter what sort of books you enjoy reading, you will find them here, and as I have said in other posts, the books here will mostly be written by people you have never heard of, so every time you download a book from here you are setting out on a voyage into the unknown, which can be incredibly rewarding, and often very surprising.  The one sort of book you wont find here are the tired old classics that thousands of online eBook stores offer.... no Jules Verne, no Dickens, no Tolstoy, just tens of thousands of new, fresh, unknown books to wallow happily in.

UPLOADING YOUR MASTERPIECE:

This couldn't be simpler, you merely cut and paste it into the Upload window, and send it on its way......  They will look after the rest for you.

SELLING OR GIVING AWAY?

You choose whether you prefer to sell your writing, or to let people download it for no charge.   If you choose to try and sell it there, they charge 20% of the price on every copy sold, thus you get 80%, which seems a pretty good deal to me!

STATISTICS:

The numbers of books, papers, words and so on that this site hosts is incredible, I can do no better than to quote from their own website here.......

• Tens of millions of readers every month
• 10 million documents published
• 35 billion words
• 5 million Scribd document reader embeds
• 90 different languages supported

I had forgotten about the languages that they support.... like everything else about this site, they seem to offer books and publications in just about all known languages.....

CONCLUSIONS:
This site is an absolutely superb one, so worth signing up with and then downloading, downloading and still more downloading.  As you may be gathering, I am very impressed by these people and what they have created.   More strength to their elbows, say I!

LINK TO SCRIBD WEBSITE:

SHARE WITH US:
If you visit this site and find any treasures there (You will!!!) please share these with us here, so others can have the same enjoyment from your finds as yourself.