February 2012
34 posts
“The eBook isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about an ‘exploration,’ and...”
– children’s book illustrator Jon Skuse
“It’s true that our owning the object—War and Peace or Moby Dick—and organizing...”
– E-books Can’t Burn - Tim Parks (via boredomismentaltorture)
Huffington Post: Are We Suffering from eReader... →
Sue Little of Jabberwocky in Newburyport, Massachusetts, one of New England’s longest-running indie bookstores agrees. “People who love books are feeling fiercely protective of their books and booksellers.” Her customers travel from farther away than ever, she adds, because they’re seeking that unique bookseller’s experience. “It’s like people wanting to pay farmer’s market prices not only...
“Every Time You Call a Proprietary Feature “CSS3,” a Kitten Dies”
– LEA VEROU
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/every-time-you-call-a-proprietary-feature-css3-a-kitten-dies/
“The media tycoons have a huge stake in old media by which they monopolize the...”
–
Marshall McLuhan
See this 1923 critique of everything that’s wrong with modern media in a media equation where the “circulation manager” (once of newspapers, now of pageviews) has replaced the editor.
“The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the...”
– E-books Can’t Burn – Tim Parks in defense of e-books in, of all places, The New York Review of Books. An excellent, intelligent, articulate read. (via curiositycounts)
Paris Review's History of the Librarian Sex... →
Porn books and librarians have always had a passionate, mutually defining relationship—it was, in fact, a prudish French librarian in the early nineteenth century who coined the word pornography. So it comes as no surprise that the sexy librarian, a fixture of the pornographic imagination, is most at home in books. ..
4 tags
Real eBooks: Are We Still in the Stone Age? →
beatwritersbane:
((By John Moushon))
So when will we start to see REAL ebooks appear on the market? You know the ebooks that take advantage of their digital environment. Ebooks that have been rendered to improve the reader’s ebook experience. As the number of ebook devices explodes into the book reader’s world, the readers are going to expect more. This statement is especially true with the...
Ursula K. Le Guin wonders why are people so... →
Finally a reasoned response from and author on technology and ebooks.
Why is it that if you say you don’t enjoy using an e-reader, or that you aren’t going to get one till the technology is mature, you get reported as “loathing” it?
Basically Ursula K. Le Guin says grow up everyone.
7 tags
Is This Dedicated Cooking Tablet The Future Of...
The QOOQ tablet is the first tablet designed for and marketed towards serious chefs and foodies for whom cooking is not just a lifestyle but a skill that you attack like you are training for a UFC Cage Fight. This dedicated tablet is designed to be Kitchen proof with durable moist proof screen that can be wiped with soap and water and used with wet hands. The tablet lays slightly off the ground...
25 Things I Learned From Opening A Bookstore →
12. People buying books don’t write bad checks. No need for ID’s. They do regularly show up having raided the change jar.
Another argument for no need for DRM…
TOR to publish mini ebook of it's digital only... →
Tor has collected a few of their favorite stories they have posted on their website and are making a mini ebook that can be pre-ordered at Amazon. Tor has been at the leading edge of publishers transitioning to digital content delivery with their excellent website as curated content magnet. More consumer faced than most other publishers Tor has even won a Nebula Award for the short...
3 tags
“There’s another name for what happens when people start to make money out of...”
– The self-epublishing bubble | Ewan Morrison | Books | guardian.co.uk (via thoughtshrapnel)
NBC Publishing Wants to Prove a TV Company Can... →
seetheglossary:
"The Stump" - a handy little eReader stand →
January 2012
55 posts
A Singularity: Video: TEDTalk: Storytelling →
asingularity:
This one is only four minutes long and it is well worth watching.
I do wish he had manage to work in comics but there are plenty of other storytelling formats he glossed over so I can’t claim discrimination. I can point out that when he uses the word…
“Fact: most American communities do not have the luxury of an indie bookstore and...”
– Heather McCormack—Editor, LJ Book Review—takes on libraries’ role in helping connect readers (and consumers) to books in “A Most Optimistic Unconference: Publishers, Libraries, and Independent Bookstores at Digital Book World 2012.” (via libraryjournal)
iBookstore is Not Even the Second Most Popular... →
interactioned:
From Julie Bosman’s article in the New York Times on how Barnes & Noble is trying to stay alive is this interesting tidbit:
A bit of good news for the company is that, thanks to the Nook, it’s been grabbing e-book business from Amazon. Mr. Lynch said Barnes & Noble now held about 27 percent of the market, a number that publishers confirm gleefully. Amazon has at least 60...
Ebooks Encourage Authors To Stare At Their Shoes... →
seancregan:
And hot on the last post’s heels, this piece from the mighty @suw.
Nur, was da steht: Jonathan Franzen warns: Ebooks... →
I think that the main concern Franzen has here is that the impermanence of ebooks make him seem like a whinny blogger.
frankwehrmann:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm3yuWEvCgw
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-9ltqGa4lw
This article titled “Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values” was written by Alison Flood, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 30th January 2012 11.50 UTC
...
The Kindle Monologues: Amazon →
thelibrarianontherun:
I just love how much Amazon is getting crap from all ends right now. Love it. Where were you guys about a year ago when I was standing on my soapbox screaming about ‘em because they were the only e-format that didn’t support EPUBs? The library ebook format of choice?
Now, that’s not an issue anymore - but still. I love that they are taking some heat. MUHAHAHAHAHA! How’s...
“The making of a book, with respect to its flowering totality, begins with the...”
– The Book: A Spiritual Instrument (1895) by Stéphane Mallarmé
eBooks vs real books: a mythical publishing tale
On Mount Kyllini the Publishing Gods were in filthy moods. Sales were down, bookshops were closing and worse, they’d been called together to consider a membership application.
‘What’s the applicant’s name?’ asked the God of Hardback, unable to hide his boredom.
The Goddess of Paperback leaned back in her chair, causing her spine to crack noisily. ‘The form says eBook.’
Sat on a rock, the...
“Fuck them is what I say! I hate those eBooks; they CANNOT be the future. They...”
– Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report (via daniefofanny)
