The Open eBooks initiative: How well is it working? - TeleRead News: E-books, publishing, tech and beyond

"Digital Book World has just shared an interview with Dan Cohen, the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America (DLPA), about the Open eBooks initiative, already covered in TeleRead. There, Cohen gives some (alas very anecdotal) evidence about responses to the initiative so far, and some more insight into its founding motivations and goals ... One really heartening item from the interview is what Cohen describes as 'issues that ended up not being issues. We researched the availability of devices in low-income households and we discovered that that problem is thankfully starting to disappear.' Although, the problem is 'not gone totally,' he adds, 'we found in recent surveys that 85 percent of households within the poverty line own a device that’s able to host the app. This is a population where ebooks have started to take off as a supplement rather than replacements for physical books.' My own very slightly – and very personal, dose of skepticism about the Open eBooks program (and this is nothing like a TeleRead house view), is that the linkage to the White House’s K-12 ConnectED initiative opens it to other influences besides the Obama administration’s very laudable support for early learning and literacy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is just one instance of the very many inroads and lobbying efforts that Big Media has made into the Obama administration, and U.S. government in general ..."