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Digital rights management for ebooks is dead. Readers knew it couldn’t last. It was simply a matter of when publishers and retailers would realise it was unsustainable. Cutting edge Australian publishers like Pan Macmillan digital offshoot Momentum Books are leading the way by announcing they will remove DRM from their titles within months. It won’t [...]

It’s not hard to understand why some book publishers are keen on DRM (Digital Rights Management encryption software which limits the potential uses of the file). They’ve seen the music and film businesses struggle in the face of mass piracy. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that some 95 per cent of global [...]

How good are ebooks for instant gratification? Want to read a book now, right now, rather than heading to a bricks and mortar bookshop or library, or waiting till Christmas on the off chance that someone will buy it for you? Download an ebook. I loved libraries as a child, but in recent years have [...]

The Pottermore ship has landed. Or at least, it has been announced. For everyone who doesn’t already know, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series of novels, has finally announced her secret plans (based on rumours that have been bouncing around the internet for a while). They involve an immersive online game based on [...]

Whether it’s geo-restrictions, digital rights management (DRM), ebook pricing or ebook quality, it’s rare to hear a reader blame an author for the state of an ebook (unless it’s self-published, of course). And I can see why. Authors are the public face of what readers love about books. They are the creative geniuses behind all [...]

Piracy is the bane of the digital content business, whichever way you look at it. If it didn’t happen, content producers wouldn’t spend so much time and effort pursuing it in a fashion that is almost as ethically dubious as the act itself. And if producers didn’t go to such lengths to protect their content, [...]

If you’re reading this blog then you’ve probably got an interest in ebooks. If you do, then you may have already heard about Calibre. Calibre is a free, open source, cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) ebook reader, organiser and converter. If you’ve ever listened to music you downloaded from the internet, then you’ll probably be [...]

This is a two-part post. To read part one, please click here.   Reading Using Overdrive Booku ebooks are compatible with any reader that’s can read Adobe Digital Editions DRM. That means you can use it with a Sony eReader, a Kobo eReader or any other (and cheaper) brand that is compatible with Adobe’s DRM [...]

  Welcome to the new location for the Smell of Books. From now on you’ll find the blog over here at Booku. To celebrate the launch of the site at the new location, I’ll be giving away $100 credit in Booku Bucks. Read on to find out how.   What You’ll Need To buy a [...]

Read first part of review… Other software features and annoyances Other than the unique features above, the Google eBooks platform is missing some ebook reader features that some readers may consider standard. It does allow the user to choose the font, size, line spacing and justification of text, and includes a day/night mode (black text [...]

After much anticipation, Google eBooks (formerly Google Editions) launched this week in the US. Claiming to have over 3 million books available (most of which will be free out-of-copyright titles), Google is likely to be the first ebook store to compete with Amazon in terms of range and availability. And the best part? They are [...]

For my fiftieth post (yes, my fiftieth!), I’d like to revisit a topic close to my heart. Piracy. In the world of digital content, piracy has been around longer than most legitimate forms of digital purchase. Anyone who claims to have been reading ebooks since they had a Palm Pilot probably at some point acquired [...]

Speed reading for dummies – and rabbits! In this post I’m going to go through a few speed reading solutions that I’ve tried over the last couple of years. Some are so fiddly that you may as well just read normally, and others will give you magical powers to read books faster than you have [...]

One commenter on my last post raised an interesting point that I’d like to draw out as a follow-up post. A question – why are publishers ‘unlikely to stop using’ DRM, even if it doesn’t benefit them so much, as you indicate? I agree, getting rid of DRM is the way to go, but it [...]

The problem with new technology is that it costs a lot of money. Technology companies frequently spend years and years without making a profit, shaping their business model, trying to ‘monetise’ their creation. Amazon, for example, was launched in 1997, but didn’t become profitable until 2002. Facebook only became profitable last year, and Twitter still [...]

As much as I would like to review my brand new iPad for this column, I feel that I haven’t yet had enough time to wrap my head around it, so I’m going to start my series of ereader reviews with Amazon’s International Kindle. The Kindle has been around for quite a while now, first [...]

One of the first Australian ebooks I ever purchased legitimately through an Australian e-tailer was The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. And in order to read it I had to crack the DRM. DRM (digital rights management) is the extra bit of software attached to ebooks to stop people from copying digital products as they like. [...]

The NYT’s The Ethicist created some controversy this week with an article considering the ethics of downloading pirated copies of ebooks. Specifically it responded to the question of whether it is ethical to download a pirated version of an ebook (when it is not available legally) if you purchase the hardcover edition of a book [...]