Computer Support Blog

Authors do not generally have a chance to receive direct feedback from readers during their writing process, especially in regards to e-books. Most e-readers only include fully completed books, and fans of an author rarely see a work in progress.  There are also very few apps or services sharing books from independent writers.  BookieJar is different, combining the typical services available from any website or mobile platform offering e-books with several additional unique features. Read more »

While many people consider reading books to be a solitary activity, that doesn’t always hold true in reality.  For lots of readers, books are as social of a hobby as anything else.  People create book clubs, use social media and engage in events such as author signings and Q&A sessions just to meet other avid readers and discuss the nature of their favorite texts.  Conversations range from speculation about character motivations to complex academic discussions about story themes.  Now, a cool product in technology wants to harness this social aspect of book reading for profit.  Bookmate lets readers take notes, leave questions, and copy quotes in every book that they read with the app and then share all their notations with all of their friends on social media.  Users can read their friends’ notations within a certain book as they read it on Bookmate and then engage those friends on social media to discuss how they felt about those notes.  Bookmate integrates with popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter so people can even share their notes with friends who don’t use Bookmate.  Anyone who cannot connect his or her Bookmate account to Twitter or Facebook should get help from a remote computer support provider. Read more »

Reading can be an expensive hobby.  Hardcover books often cost between fifteen and twenty dollars and many paperback books hover around the ten-dollar area at bookstores across the United States.  However, avid eBook readers know that going digital can save people a significant amount of money.  While eBooks aren’t often cheaper than their physical counterparts upon initial release, digital bookstores provide readers with free and heavily discounted books far more than physical retailers do.  However, readers have to dig through the depths of different eBook stores like Amazon’s Kindle Store, Google Play, Apple iBooks, and Nook’s digital store to find these deals.  Most companies do not heavily advertise these discounts, especially in niche genres that have many digital readers.  Cool person in technology and entrepreneur Josh Schanker wants to make it much easier for eBook readers to find these deals.  In fact, with his company BookBub, he wants to make it completely effortless.  Schanker’s company provides a service that both curates specific eBook deals for its customers and automatically delivers the deals via email.  Anyone who has trouble receiving email will obviously need to contact a remote tech support company for help before using BookBub. Read more »

Speed-reading is a highly sought after skill.  Thousands of people have purchased books and taken online courses in the hopes of finding ways to consume text more quickly.  While some do improve their abilities, just as many never significantly increase their reading speed.  Speed-reading methods work differently for each individual and are dependent on hours of practice, meaning that there are never any guarantees with these methods.  However, a new technology startup has researched a new way to help people read faster.  This cool product, named Spritz, uses technology and science to speed up the way people consume text automatically.  Spritz “streams” written content one word at a time at a predetermined pace, which avoids the time consuming nature of moving one’s eyes over different lines of text.  It sounds simple, but the process has proven to be successful for many people.  Even better, it requires no extra training or special methods that require extensive practice.  Anyone interested in using Spritz who has difficulty installing new applications on their computer should call computer tech support for help. Read more »

There are many corporatized reading experiences available on mobile devices.  Amazon’s Kindle platform, Barnes and Noble’s Nook platform, and even Apple’s iBooks all offer eBook solutions that connect the shopping and reading experiences for users.  However, none of these platforms has successfully combined the mobile reading experience with the advantages of social networking.  Cool person in technology Henrik Berggren has set out to create such a platform with his company Readmill.  Readmill produces an app that works as both a mobile eBook reader for either iPhones or Android devices and lets book readers interact and discuss what they read in the manner of a social network.  Berggren lets readers review and comment on books they read on his app.  Readmill users can then share those reviews publicly with the rest of the Readmill community.  Users can also comment on others’ reviews to promote discussion around specific books.  This social aspect sets the Readmill app apart from other eBook experiences, which focus almost entirely on the purchasing and personal reading aspects of the experience.  While Berggren is entering a somewhat crowded area with Readmill, he does so while filling a gaping hole in the market—a socially connected eReader app.  Any user who has trouble downloading the app to their phone should have mobile PC support services try to resolve the problem. Read more »

Crowdfunding has deeply affected the way many people look at their entertainment and the artists who create it.  Where popular art, fiction, music, and even games once only came from monolithic institutions that had a disproportionate amount of say over what the public got to consume, now Kickstarter, Indiegogo and its brethren have made it so the public can access and fund any work they want to see or hear, independently of larger industry trends.  Still, most people consider crowdfunding solely as a way to fund the actual creation of a project, not to directly compensate creators for their work.  This is why most art that people fund on sites like Kickstarter are projects that take large amounts of cash to complete such as albums, movies, comics, and video games.  However, cool product Unbound wants to use the crowdfunding model as an alternative to the book industry and, even more significantly, want to use it to compensate authors directly. Read more »

Anna Lewis left her government job as a policy advisor in 2008 to pursue her personal interest in entering the publishing world.  However, this cool person in technology didn’t take the traditional path and apply for jobs at major book publishers or even small presses.  Instead, she used technology to tackle book publishing from a different angle and launched CompletelyNovel, her first tech startup.  CompletelyNovel provided authors a platform for communication, advice, and self-publishing—all via the web.  Lewis worked on CompletelyNovel with her business partner Oliver Brooks for several years, expanding the site’s features and user base before deciding that what they were doing wasn’t enough.  Lewis apparently wasn’t satisfied with just changing how people publish books with the web, but also how people purchase and read eBooks online.  That’s why she founded ValoBox in 2011, a company that allows users to pay for cloud-based eBooks by chapter or even by page if they so desire.  Those who have ever needed a computer data recovery to retrieve lost eBooks on their hard drive will see the possible benefits of the ValoBox service.  Both of Lewis’s startups leverage the Internet to provide new models for the book industry on both the publishing and consumer sides.  Read more »

The video entertainment industry has seen a massive shift in its business model over the last several years thanks to the success of subscription-based streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon.  Following these changes, music-streaming services like Spotify and Rdio also grew rapidly and proved the subscription model works for music as well as video.  However, there is one form of entertainment that until recently was still untouched by the purely digital subscription model: books.  Cool product Oyster wants to change that with a monthly subscription model for eBooks.  The team at Oyster has seen that the market proves that subscription-based entertainment is a viable business model and they want to prove that eBooks are the next form of entertainment that can benefit from this system.  Currently, they offer a monthly subscription where users can access any of their library of 100,000 books on any iOS device as often as they want.  If you have concerns about using your Apple products to read books, find Apple tech support to learn more.  Read more »

One of the key aspects of marketing a book has always been holding book-signing events.  These events help to create hype a writer’s work and allow authors to connect directly with their biggest supporters, which increases the chances that those supporters will spread the word about their favorite author’s books.  Book signings have always been an effective way for authors to communicate and promote their books to their readership.  However, with eBooks on the rise over the last several years, traditional books are taking up the less of the market.  This introduces a serious problem for authors: how do you continue to promote your work through book signings when more and more content is digital in nature?  Cool product Autography provides a solution to this conundrum.  Autography has created a system for the digital signing of eBooks.  With new advances in technology, Autography allows authors to personalize eBooks for their readers and attach digital signatures and individualized messages so readers can receive personalized copies of books just as they would at a physical book signing.  Read more »