Top authors to go digital with ebooks

I spotted this last week in the Sunday Times in the UK. The two biggest publishers in Britain are to offer dozens of likely bestsellers to read on a hand-held screen this autumn in a sign that, after many false dawns, the electronic “ebook” may finally have arrived. Random House and Hachette, which together control just over 30% of the British book market, are to offer downloadable versions of titles by authors ranging from Delia Smith to Ian McEwan and Michael Parkinson. Every other major publisher is drawing up plans to follow suit, pitching the books at just below the price of a hardback. The publishers have made the move to ebooks to follow the launch of two rival devices due to come on sale in Britain over the next few months – Sony’s Reader and Amazon’s Kindle. They allow hundreds of novels to be downloaded from publishers’ or retailers’ websites into a lightweight, pocket-sized device costing about £200. Pages are turned by touch rather than by fiddling with buttons, and words consist of black chemical “e-ink” showing through a white surface rather than light glaring from an ordinary computer screen. Click here to read the rest ……