The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef’s troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults ... more >
Australian readers – take note – I think I reported on the Australian Parallel Importation situation not too long ago, but with this recent rant from Jay Kristoff, it might be time to do so again. Kristoff rehearses the argument that allowing parallel importation will dilute the Australian book market, open the ... more >
eBay Platform Exposed to Severe Vulnerability – Despite the fact that Check Point contacted eBay with evidence of a HUGE and dangerous security flaw on their platform, it appears that eBay is ignoring it, possibly because they think it is necessary to allow active content??? An attacker could target eBay users ... more >
Hachette Tries Selling Books via Twitter – So Hachette is experimenting with new ways to sell books direct to readers, and its collaboration with Gumroad to sell books on Twitter is set to launch this week, beginning with books from Amanda Palmer, Chris Hadfield and The Onion. This is apparently ... more >
S&S Expands Library E-book Lending – Simon and Schuster will now be providing both front and backlist books to all libraries. This is a change over their previous policy, which was to allow only those libraries that were part of it’s “Buy it Now” program, where the borrower would have ... more >
We’re all familiar with the assertion that books are “special,” and therefore deserving of different treatment than other commercial products. I used believe it myself. Until, that is, folks like Jon Sargent and Authors United started using it to justify crap like agency pricing and the shunning of Amazon. To ... more >