Monday Round up Links: A New Kind of Book Tour

JanePublishing NewsAmazon / Ebooks / Espresso Book Machine / HarperCollins / iPhone / Library / New-York-Times / Newspapers / Print-on-Demand6 Comments

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All About Romance has launched its annual readers’ poll.

Author Stephen Elliott wrote an editorial about his very different book tour. Instead of going to bookstores, Elliott booked appearances in people’s homes. Sometimes the group would stay up very late to talk about the book and issues the book brought to readers’ attention.

They asked interesting questions about murder and confession and the moment the lie mixes with the truth like red and yellow paint, becoming orange, the original colors ceasing to exist. Afterward people went back to talking, grabbing another drink or a snack. Leaning against the kitchen counter, I thought to myself that they weren't a standard literary audience: they were better.

I loved that statement “lie mixes with truth like red and yellow paint…the original colors ceasing to exist.”

Xerox has partnered with Espresso Book Machine to provide on demand books for consumers. Espresso used to use a machine from Kyocera but the Xerox is supposed to provide better quality and faster output.

The Espresso Book Machine can produce paperbacks in variable combinations of trim sizes between 4.5″ x 5.0″ and 8.25″ x 10.5″ for a production cost less than one cent per page and can produce a 300 page book in about 4 minutes

I really love the idea of the on demand book because it can use digital technology to deliver books to those who want print and there are definitely opportunities for customization (choose your own cover) and personalization (inscribe a line for a gift).

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) released an iPhone App that uses Occipital’s barcode scanning technology. Take a photo of a book’s barcode and the OCLC iPhone App will bring up whether your local library has a particular book and whether it is on the shelf or checked out. It will also provide you with places to purchase the book in case you don’t want to use the library services. That’s pretty awesome.

The Times is going behind a paywall which means we won’t be reading as many stories like Elliott’s without paying for it. Times knows that there will be a steep dropoff in readership but the possible revenue is worth it.

What makes the decision so agonizing for Sulzberger is that it involves not just business considerations, but ultimately a self-assessment of just what Times journalism is worth to the world. ..Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership.

A game developer posted on slashgear asking why people pirated. He’s trying to see if there are ways in which to modify his behavior to make the product less attractive to pirate and more attractive for legitimate purchasers.

The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports that HarperCollins is in talks to bring ebooks to the Apple Tablet rumored to be announced later this month.

HarperCollins is expected to set the prices of the e-books, which would have added features, with Apple taking a percentage of sales. Details haven’t been ironed out.

The article suggests the ebooks will be enhanced editions and if so, that would mean a very meager catalog for Apple so I have some doubts about the veracity of the entirety of the article, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see ebooks as part of the Apple catalog. Of course, you can still get the Amazon app on the Apple iPhone and thus, likely on the tablet. Therefore, pricing would need to be competitive. The article speculates that the pricing for “enhanced ebooks” would be $14.99 to $19.99. Frankly, publishers are barely doing ebooks right let alone delivering value added enhanced versions.

Jane

Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty. You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

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