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Announcing “Read an E-Book Week 2007″

February 9th, 2007 by Martyn

Read an E-Book Week runs from 4th to 10th March 2007.

This is a good opportunity for us all to put in a concerted effort to promote ebooks to the world, and to concentrate our efforts during the same week. Here are some suggestions from the Read an E-Book Week official site on how you ebook aficionados can spread the word about your favourite way to read a book:

As March approaches, talk to your friends about e-books, especially good books you’ve read… there is no surer way to get others to check out e-books than from a friend’s recommendation. Also, look for ways to introduce the concept of e-books to others. Library events, reading clubs, and literary groups are excellent places to start. If you have something to show them, such as an e-book on a dedicated reader, or a handheld computer, by all means show them off, and demonstrate how easy it is to read and use.

Is there a kid around? (Hint: Tilt your head downward.) Remember, children are always interested in new things, and are not yet ingrained with previous generations’ love affair with paper. Show e-books to children. You will find they are quite comfortable with the idea of reading on digital screens and manipulating electronic devices. They are the readers of the future, and the sooner you get them on the e-book bandwagon, the sooner their parents will be buying their first e-books for them, reading e-books to them, and eventually checking out e-books for themselves.

And most importantly, support e-books yourself by buying them! Seek out your favorite authors, and see if they have e-book versions of their books available. Look for new authors and material… you’ll be continually surprised at how much there is out there. Don’t be afraid to try new authors, new genres, and even new writing styles… this is a new medium, and it’s still finding its sea-legs. Don’t be afraid to contact those new authors, either… they’d love to hear from you, and they can use the support.

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Review: Time Ablaze by Michael A. Burstein

December 4th, 2006 by Martyn
This science fiction novella is a gentle time travel tale of a disaster and the inability of the time traveller to avert it. The story nicely conveys the ability of a young woman in 1804 Manhatten to understand the time traveller’s description of twenty-first century technology and time travel, and her struggle to understand why she must not attempt to prevent the disaster and save her family and friends. Burnstein eloquently and clearly discusses the time-traveller’s dilemma (the Grandfather Paradox) in an entertaining story. Highly recommended. (16800 words).

Public Domain science fiction

November 27th, 2006 by Martyn

There is a fairly complete list of out of copyright science fiction titles at The Thunder Child. All the books are available from Project Gutenberg, but unless you know what you are looking for they are hard to find there. This list does the job for you. Authors include H G Wells, Jules Verne, H. Beam Piper, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Victor Appleton, Samuel Butler, Andre Norton and Murray Leinster, and a few others.

Posted in Free eBooks, Science Fiction | No Comments »

Hello eBook world!

November 19th, 2006 by Martyn

Welcome to eBook Information, where you will find information about reading ebooks, particularly if you reside in the UK (although almost all the information on this site will be relevant to a worldwide audience too).

There seem to be very few independent resources about ebooks that are aimed at the reader. Most are preaching to the converted, are highly focussed on one small area of ebooks, or are aimed at libraries or publishers.

Many of the ebook reading devices are only available in the USA, Japan, China or Thailand, so I won’t be talking about these unless their arrival in the UK is imminent. I will only talk about the ebook reading options available to UK readers.

Sometimes we may need to convert ebooks from one format to another so that we can read it on a different device, and I will be exploring the best methods of doing this.

It is also my aim to help us Brits find ebooks to read that are relevant to us. Many of the ebook retailers that we are able to buy books from are US owned and run, and so more often than not the books that they push tend to be either written by North American authors, or are interesting only to North American readers. For example, in the last couple of weeks, there have been major promotions at many ebookstores for Halloween and Thanksgiving, but nothing that I could find that promoted Guy Fawkes or bonfire night. There are many exceptions, of course, and there are many excellent authors who aren’t British, so I will in no way be ignoring offerings from elsewhere in the world.

There are a few ebook retailers in the UK, and I will be reviewing them all — looking at ease of use, range of titles, their choices of titles that appear on their front pages, and so on.

I will also be looking at the various options for reading free ebooks. Although most of these are not based in the UK, it doesn’t really matter because a) they are free anyway, and b) they are mostly the classics and these tend to have universal appeal, which is why they are classics. Again there are exceptions — some contemporary authors are giving their books away.

Although I have lots of ideas for this website, I would love to receive your questions, ideas and suggestions, so please leave a comment below.

Please remember, you don’t have to live in the UK to benefit from eBookInformation.co.uk :)

Disclaimer: I am a partner in Mushroom Publishing, a UK publisher of books, maps and ebooks (under the imprint Mushroom eBooks). I will endeavour to keep eBookInformation.co.uk independent. If I ever feel the need to promote my business on this site, I will add a disclaimer.

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