Find eBook Readers Blog   Reading in the Digital Age

Amazon has just announced a new version of the Kindle DX ereader that will be priced at $379 and will have a new e-ink display with higher contrast.  The new DX has a graphite colored body – that alone should give an apparent boost to the contrast.  It looks like the white version will also be available if you prefer.

EDIT:  Only the graphite model is the new DX.  The white Kindle DX,which is still available at a lower price of $359 is the older model.

Amazon says the new display is 50 percent sharper than the present DX ereader.

The display size remains the same at 9.7 inches.

Pre-orders for the new Kindle DXare being taken now, and the new Kindle DX will be released and begin shipping on July 7, 2010. Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis. The new DX can also be shipped to customers outside of the U.S.

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Kobo has announced a firmware update that should be available over the next week or two depending on your location and where you purchased your Kobo eReader.

Some of the new firmware features:

• The ability to resize fonts for any ePub file, no matter where it comes from.
• Improved battery management
• The ability to hide/show the preloaded free classics
• Charging lights that make sense (red/violet when charging, blue when finished)
• Sleep Mode: eReader will go to sleep if inactive for more than five minutes

For more details and instructions to obtain the update sooner see the Kobo Blog.

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Amazon is having a sale on a selection of Kindle covers. The discount is up to 50 percent and most of the covers on sale are from Cole Haan as well as a few from Timbuk2 and others.

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Color Kindle coming sooner rather than later?  Pocket-lint, in a brief article covering a demonstration of Mirasol display tech and the coy comments of a Qualcomm spokesperson does absolutely nothing to dampen hopes that we may see a color Kindle with a Mirasol display by the end of the year.  Some nice photos are included as well.

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Copia, which will sell both ebooks and pbooks and will have a strong emphasis on social networking is set to launch in July.  The company also has been planning to launch six different ereaders – four with 6-inch and two with 9-inch e-ink displays – with varying feature sets.

Publishers Weekly quotes Copia senior VP Anthony Antolino as saying that Copia has reconfigured its ereader lineup and will be selling a 5-inch color LCD model for $99 and a 10.1-inch touchscreen LCD model for $299.  It is not clear from the article if Copia will be completely abandoning its e-ink based devices.

The new ereaders have not yet made an appearance at the Copia website.  It really never made much sense to me that Copia would have so many different ereader models, and it makes even less sense now in the current market. 

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Baker & Taylor, Inc, which makes claim to being the world’s largest distributer of books both paper and digital, is also one of the powers behind the Blio reader.  B & T recently announced that they have entered into an agreement with F+W Media to bring that company’s rich, highly formatted content to Blio.

F+W Media publishes full color, richly illustrated instructional titles for graphic designers, artists, craftsmen, woodworkers and others.  Baker & Taylor has announced similar agreements to bring graphics-rich content to Blio from other publishers, including John Wiley & Sons and Elsevier.  The latter is a leading publisher of medical, scientific and technical books.

I’m looking forward to having Blio on the iPad; I saw the Blio demo at CES and it was impressive.

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Amazon’s previously announced 70 percent royalty option for its Digital Text Platform (DTP) goes live today.  Amazon also announced some feature improvements to make DTP more convenient for authors and publishers: a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step publishing process.

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The New York Times is reporting that Google is close to reaching a deal with the American Booksellers Association which would make Google Editions the main source of ebooks on the websites of most independent booksellers.

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Amazon’s Kindle will be sold at some airports around the US.  HMSHost has signed an exclusive deal with Amazon to sell the 6-inch Kindle at its shops in the following airports:

• Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International: Simply Books
• Charlotte Douglas International: Simply Books
• Dallas Ft. Worth International: Simply Books
• George Bush Houston Intercontinental: Simply Books
• Miami International: Simply Books
• Minneapolis-St. Paul International: Simply Books, Authors Bookstore
• LA/Ontario International: Authors Bookstore
• Salt Lake City International: Simply Books
• San Diego International: Authors Bookstore
• Mineta San Jose International: Authors Bookstore
• Tampa International: Authors Bookstore

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