Classic Novels Make Comeback as EBooks

Thanks to things like the Kindle, the Nook and the other ebook readers, that classic books have been making a huge comeback. Some reports even say that Kindles were the biggest selling products this Christmas. This news was confirmed by Amazon just this week.
So what books are the most purchased for ereaders? Well the free ones, of course. Thus, classic novels made by people like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen are enjoying a renaissance. Even if people never read the books, they are downloading them to their Kindles and other ereaders, because they are free to do so.
People who own ebook gadgets like the Kindle or the iPad can simply snap up all of these works without paying a penny. People are able to carry a whole collection of classic books on their ereaders. Some people said that they put these books on there just to make it appear as if they are sophisticated and enjoy classic books.

Access the kindle store here.

MegaReader 2.0 for iOS - iPad Native eBook Reader

Inkstone Software has announced MegaReader 2.0 for iOS, an update to their best-selling, customizable iOS eBook reader that gives users access to over 1.8 million free books on the Internet. Updated, it is now a universal app, ideal for running native on iPad's large screen. Featuring in-app connectivity with such book catalogs as Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Baen Free Books, Smashwords, and the Internet Archive, both classic and modern books may be downloaded free and stored indefinitely.

Week 50: Amazon Kindle Bestsellers top5

1. John Grisham: The Conession

"The Confession is the kind of grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story that demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible. But it's also a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle....Brilliant"--Washington Post

"Grisham is the master of the legal thriller."--USA Today

“The secrets of Grisham’s success are no secret at all. There are two of them: his pacing, which ranges from fast to breakneck, and his Theme—little guy takes on big conspiracy with the little guy getting the win in the end.” —Time magazine



2. Laura Hillenbrand: Unbroken - A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.

It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.


3. Tom Clancy: Dead or Alive

  For years, Jack Ryan, Jr. and his colleagues at the Campus have waged an unofficial and highly effective campaign against the terrorists who threaten western civilization. The most dangerous of these is the Emir. This sadistic killer has masterminded the most vicious attacks on the west and has eluded capture by the world's law enforcement agencies. Now the Campus is on his trail. Joined by their latest recruits, John Clark and Ding Chavez, Jack Ryan, Jr. and his cousins, Dominick and Brian Caruso, are determined to catch the Emir and they will bring him in...dead or alive.

4. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

As the finale to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - a familiar evil lies in wait for Lisbeth Salander, but this time, she must do more than confront the miscreants of her past; she must destroy them. Much to her chagrin, survival requires her to place a great deal of faith in journalist Mikael Blomkvist and trust his judgment when the stakes are highest. Larsson's mastery of the unexpected is why millions have fallen hard for his work.








5. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 
This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. 

eBookIt.com Opens

Say goodbye to the days when a handful of publishing giants dominated the book industry, and say hello to an industry where any author can inexpensively make his or her book available to the world, through a new generation of giants -- online retailers of eBooks. But even this new world of eBooks has it’s own set of challenges that keeps the majority of authors and small to medium-sized publishers away from the booming eBook market -- until now.

eBookit.com was create by entrepreneur, programmer, and author, Bo Bennett, who realized a major need for this kind of full-service business after struggling with converting his own print book to eBook format in the summer of 2010. “I started out with a leading service that offers free conversion and publication, promising it’s both ‘quick’ and ‘easy’. Before I could upload the book, I had to format it to the company’s exact specifications, following a very lengthy style guide. It took me several days to finish the formatting. I attempted to upload the text of the book several times, only to find the conversion failed the validation tests each and every time, as I had missed some obscure formatting point,” says Bennett. “I tried multiple online tools and services that promised acceptable conversions, but none of them produced a converted file that looked presentable. I was continually plagued with errors, inconsistencies, and funky formatting. If a tech savvy author like me had this much trouble, what hope is there for the typical author who may or may not have a technical background?”

Bennett’s eBook conversion nightmare is not an isolated one. The top retail eBookstores are filled with poorly converted books. Many authors will use automated tools that attempt to convert their source book file into the required eBook file format, not realizing how sloppy the converted file looks and how much of the text or images in the book failed to make it in the converted file. This results in returned eBooks, and worse, negative customer book reviews on the retail sites. “As an eBook lover myself, I may be ‘sold” on the content of a book, but if customer reviews report the eBook is not reader-friendly, I’m not going to waste my money,” says Bennett.

“I created eBookIt.com out of my conviction that an author should have an inexpensive, simple, and truly fool-proof way to get their book converted to eBook format, and submitted to the major online retailers fast, so they can start capitalizing on the exploding eBook market,” says Bennett.

For $149, eBookIt.com converts books to all required eBook formats, and submits the converted eBook to all the major retailers of eBooks including Apple’s iBookstore, Amazon.com, Sony ReaderStore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Borders, the new Google ebookstore and Ingram Digital, which makes the book available to over 32,000 smaller online retailers to sell.

“eBookIt.com combines hands-on review and formatting of the author’s title and the best of automated conversion tools to ensure an overall conversion of the highest quality. We provide peace of mind to our authors and publishers by checking each title on multiple e-reader devices to ensure the eBook looks beautiful,” concludes Bennett.

If you would like more information on eBookIt.com, or to schedule an interview with Bo Bennett, please call 978-440-8364 or e-mail bo at ebookit dot com.

Oprah's New Book Club Selections Free on Kindle

The 65th Oprah Book Club pick is a Charles Dickens double-header reports the Amazoniacs. The selections are "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," and Amazon.com have announced that  announced that both are available on Kindle for free, along with millions of other out-of-copyright works. These free Kindle books can be read on the bestselling $139 Kindle (www.amazon.com/kindle) with new, high-contrast Pearl e-ink or on iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, BlackBerry, Android-based devices, PC, and Mac using free Kindle reading apps (www.amazon.com/kindleapps).

"We've found that customers love to discover--or rediscover--classic books on Kindle and we're sure these Dickens books will find new readers as an Oprah's Book Club selection," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "Millions of free, out-of-copyright books are available to read on Kindle, including these two classic Dickens books."

There is also a Penguin edition available in the Kindle store for $7.99. The Penguin edition includes illustrations of 18th century fashion and culture in Dickens' Victorian world, information about the early reception for both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," a filmography of Dickens' novels, further reading about the author as well as what informed the thematic elements of these classic novels.

ASUS Eee Reader DR900

the Asus Eee Reader DR900, the 9-inch device, is expected to be available soon.

Asus promises that the Eee Reader will be a highly portable travelling companion that can be taken on any journey. Its 2GB of internal storage (expandable via SD Card) can store up to 5,000 ebooks and the two-week battery life is long. The screen supposedly stays clear even in broad daylight.

The Eee Reader’s 9-inch capacitive touch-screen also removes the need for a physical keyboard and delivers a simple and intuitive user interface. Still it propably won't like sticky fingers, so better watch out if you like to enjoy good books with chocolate.

Google will enter into the ebook market at end of year

Google has confirmed that its own ebook store, Google Editions, will be up and running by the end of the year, potentially transforming the ebook landscape.

Google Editions will let people buy ebooks from Google or from the websites of independent bookstores, which are still struggling to compete with the two larger rivals, the Kindle by The Amazon and the iPad, and with Barnes & Noble, which has its own "Nook" ebook reader.