Ebooks, and other labors that'd make Hercules work up a sweat

Ebooks? Just when you think you've got the little darlings all worked out, one jumps up and bites you on any part of your anatomy that's close enough to reach.

We did quite a lot of research into the various formats (Palm, Pocket PC, Sony, Iliad...) before we relaunched the whole range of Keegan titles as ebooks about six months ago. We missed one vital bit of information ...

The iLiad has memory problems ... hit it with too much, and the device "crashes."

The culprit was TIGER, TIGER, which as you might know came illustrated with a gorgeous selection of Jade's artwork. However, the handheld screenreaders are problematical with large files ... right. Okay. Understood.

Back to the drawing board, to produce an art-free version of TIGER, TIGER specifically for the iLiad. Right now we're in the test phase, and of this works out, the plan is to release the iLiad version of TT as a separate entity. Users of the iLiad will get a ZIP file containing the PDF, and a cache of artwork in the form of wallpapers.

I know a lot of writers and self-marketing publishers who read this blog fairly regularly will be interested in this info, because iLiad is an interesting part of the marketplace. It's a hell of a nice gadget, from a company called iRex Technologies. I drool over this gadget myself ... but it's US$699 -- well over A$1,000, before they import it into this country. Importation always doubles the price of anything, so ...!

There's a new ebook reader out there, incidentally. I keep an eye on these things. Have you heard of something called the BEBOOK ...? A$399, and they're already in the country. I'm looking seriously at it.

Very seriously.


Very tempting, isn't it?

Ciao for now,
MK