E-Reader advice

You need to look at it from a trend perspective. It's not about "going digital" overnight. Publishers, like any company, are constantly keeping abreast of market trends and where to expand. If the market moves towards digital, that opens up opportunities to make money. It starts small at first, and then it grows. This means that for some publishers it may be a good idea early on, while it may not make sense for others. As the market grows, there is more opportunity for sales and other publishers may follow.

If you compare sales between traditional publishing and digital, you may see that growth is much higher in digital than it is in traditional. You may also notice that traditional growth is flattening out in some areas and is muted in others. This is partly because the digital is cannibalizing the traditional. If consumers of textbooks as a percentage begin to increasingly consume digital products exclusively, cannibalization is unavoidable. This happens in trade publishing as well. People don't tend to buy both digital and paper-bound versions of books unless they come as a package.

The market grows, and either you follow it or you find yourself selling something that you can't sell enough of.

Sure the risks are there with digital textbooks and piracy, but with the proper stakeholders working to make the best of it, there is much more to gain than lose.

A set of paperbound Encyclopedia Britannica is a much tougher sell these days than it was twenty years ago. That's why they "went digital." And yet they still print despite the fact that 60% of their revenue comes from online operations. What was the alternative? Wither?

 

They sell paperbound encyclopedias still in emerging markets following the same model as before, you get them and pay for them in installments.

 

That makes sense. It's still interesting to see, however, just how digital they went.

Dictionaries are another thing. I still use a paperbound one, but I know there are excellent dictionary services out there.

 

I'm not sure whether any of the current tech has found a solution yet, but poets are generally disappointed with ebooks and how they fail to maintain the integrity of their art: Poetry And eBooks: Will Poems Ever Work In eBook Formatting? Huffington Post

 

the kindle app has some extra requirements for that over the air sync.

Use Aldiko as an android reader and calibre will work without any issue.

 

If you are referring to what page you are on each book, no only kindle app delivered things seem to work that way.

 

from my ipad to ipod touch it does work in this manner.

 

Yes it uses iCloud to manage that magic trick. The difference is that it works for any and all books placed into iBooks, unlike Kindle which only synchronizes Amazon purchased books.

 

It's been a few Versions lemme try it.

 

Okay, I got it updated on the ipad/ipod touch. I didn't transfer it via usb or cable because it's a pain in the ass to do that. I usually just email it to myself and then open it in Kindle app or iBooks. In this case I did Kindle. The names of the author came out fine.

The sync pages did not. Nor did the books, meaning that I had to install the books on both devices. Usually I just put it into iBooks and it transfers them to all apple products associated to the account.

I'll keep trying it to see if I can't replicate your issue.