Nov 29 2009
I’ve been a long proponent of authors giving away their content as a way to seed new readers. Publishers tend to agree with this concept giving away free digital books or even masses of free paper books. The idea is that the author’s own words is the best promotion. One thing I’ve noticed in the [...]
Nov 21 2009
TBIResearch believes that Amazon is losing quite a bit of money on the ebook market as it tries to drive down prices of books. Publishers are trying hard to maintain a higher price, but researchers and retailers believe that consumers will not pay a high price for ebooks. The good news according to the research [...]
Nov 13 2009
Over at Library Job Postings, there is a gallery of repeated images on covers. Oh, the dangers of using stock photography. Via SmartBitches. **** Gawker mocks Newscorp in its fight against Google. Murdoch plans to stick it to Google by selling his content to Bing, the Microsoft search engine. It reminds me of publishers. They [...]
Nov 4 2009
Grand Central Publishing has these November deals. If you haven’t tried Elizabeth Hoyt yet, it’s a safe bet at $1.99. Even if you don’t like it, you haven’t spent too much money on the try. Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman for $1.00 The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin for $1.99. To Taste Temptation [...]
Oct 29 2009
Amazon filed for and was recently granted a patent to change words in a book in order to track down the source of pirating. John Scalzi called this a stupid idea because it violates his creative control over the work. I think Amazon has the right idea. A change to the html css stylesheet, for [...]
Sep 27 2009
These images are the covers to ebooks from Random House, Pocket, and Berkley. I’m a big champion of ebooks, obviously, but there are all kinds of problems with ebooks from the expensive hardware to the ridiculous number of formats and DRM encryption schemes. Those are issues that publishers may not be willing to address right [...]
Sep 23 2009
In non shocking news, while first day sales of the Kindle version of The Lost Symbol were strong, digital sales represents only about 5% of the 2 million copies sold so far which was in line with what I thought last week: Over time, obviously, the digital version cannot outsell the print version because of [...]
Sep 20 2009
Reading will hurt my eyes. eInk technology is designed to alleviate eyestrain. Because it refreshes only when the page is turned, there is no constant motion as there is with a computer screen to cause eye strain. It can be easier on the eyes than a paper book, particularly the thin pages of the mass [...]
Sep 18 2009
First up, the good news. Kresley Cole is releasing the first story (PDF link) in her Immortals After Dark series titled “Warlord Wants Forever.” It’s one of my favorite works of hers so if you’ve been wondering what kind of writer she is, you can download this FREE PDF copy of the book that ordinarily [...]
Sep 14 2009
While not book related, it was an article that was too cool not to share. A couple of MIT students assembled a camera equipped with GPS that was sent into space, to an altitude of about 18 miles, where the camera took photos of space and the curvature of the earth and the appearance of [...]
Sep 13 2009
The laments I hear about ebooks is the loss of the book culture. There is the loss of the smell and feel of books. There is the loss of the interpersonal connection of books. There is the loss of the cultural signal of book covers. Some see value in the actual turning of pages, as [...]
Sep 6 2009
Last week, I wrote that publishers had sacrificed the quality of the printed book in order to preserve their margins reducing the shelf worthy quality of hardcover, trade and mass market fiction. Because of the decreased quality of the printed books, it’s no real sacrifice to move to digital books. <—-this is the first of [...]
Aug 30 2009
Those devoted to paper in publishing houses worry that digital publishing will lead to the loss of the art of publication. The sad fact is that the art of publication has been subsumed in mass production long ago. With increased paper costs, distribution costs, lowering margins, publishers have cheapened the physical book to the point [...]
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