Monday News: Bill Gates’s best books, Best Buy’s comeback, Netflix’s successful strategy, the British Library’s image library, and a classic library of vintage erotic fiction

JanetPublishing NewsBest Buy / best of list / digital publishing / erotica / public domain9 Comments

The Best Books I Read in 2013 – If you have any interest in what Bill Gates read this year, you will want to read his list of 2013’s best books. Marc Levinson’s The Box is his top choice — even though he says the books are not listed in order of preference — and the list is rounded out by Pau Sabin’s The Bet, which is actually a book about “the public debate about whether the world is headed for an environmental catastrophe.” Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any fiction on the list. The Gates Notes

Underdog Against Amazon, Best Buy Charges Ahead – Those of you who believe that Amazon is the evil empire take heart: Best Buy seems to be winning the electronics battle — at least for now. What makes this even more impressive is that Best Buy was continuing to sink, both in sales and stock prices, until they hired Hubert Joly as their CEO almost eighteen months ago. Although there was worry that the little known Joly was the only guy who would take the job, analysts and investors are now hoping he’s the man who’s going to help keep the marketplace diversified.

“Best Buy stock has gained nearly 240 percent so far this year, putting it among the top three performing stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Now every struggling chain, from J. C. Penney to Barnes & Noble, is scrutinizing Best Buy to figure out how the company did it.” New York Times

Unsurprising: Netflix Survey Indicates People Like To Binge-Watch TV – There are some interesting survey results here regarding Netflix subscriber habits, including the fact that 61% binge watch, while 73% perceive binge watching to be a positive, with 76% admitting that they watch more than one episode of a show at a time. More interesting than even these results, however, are the issues this survey raises about the Netflix model and its competitive viability in an increasingly crowded visual media marketplace:

“With that in mind, we could argue that Netflix’s approach is an effort to compensate for sub-par programming, but it’s really not. Some of their original shows, including Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, are on par with premium cable these days. They have the goods. They don’t need a gimmick to make people watch. But releasing this survey does indicate that they see the value in the approach they’re taking, and it’s putting them ahead of the pack in terms of how other networks and services release their content. “ Television Blend

British Library uploads one million public domain images to the net for remix and reuse – Another extremely cool example of digitized images for free, public use images, dating back to the 17th century, with an attendant crowd sourced application that will allow people to share availability of the images, as well as ideas for use and reuse.

“There are very few datasets of this nature free for any use and by putting it online we hope to stimulate and support research concerning printed illustrations, maps and other material not currently studied. Given that the images are derived from just 65,000 volumes and that the library holds many millions of items.” Boing Boing

Vintage Greenleaf Classics Books – Are you familiar with Greenleaf Books? Published in multiple lines between 1959 and 1975, 4,300 books were published by different companies and under different names, with tittles like Dead Heat to Degradation, The Flesh Collector, Virtuoso Virgin, Hornier Than Thou, Daddy and Me, and Bunny Hop Swap. Defending itself against obscenity charges, these imprints published a huge array of adult books that, in many ways, will seem familiar to those who are aware of much of the erotic fiction published today. In fact, this archive of titles and covers, which is searchable but still in progress, is a good reminder that nothing is ever really new. Greenleaf Classics Books

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

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