March 2012
94 posts
E-Books 'Democratize' Publishing : NPR on Tools of... →
bookologist:
NPR: Not known as a hotbed of experimentation, the world of publishing has been slow to embrace the transition from print to e-books. This past week in New York, however, the Tools of Change digital publishing conference attracted entrepreneurs and innovators who are more excited by, rather than afraid of, the future.
It was the kind of crowd where some were more inclined to say...
“There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written...”
– Marshall McLuhan (via libraryland)
“Books are a hardbound drug with no danger of overdose. I am the happy victim of...”
– Karl Lagerfeld (via thechopinist)
“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
– ― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head (via bookaddict24-7)
February 2012
60 posts
Reading the future: Digital books and what's to... →
vikingpenguinbooks:
Far from killing off the physical page, the rise of ebooks has enhanced our understanding of the written word and the people around it, says Gaby Wood
… things are settling to a point where the physical and the digital have a much more co-operative relationship. For instance, it’s a commonplace that people no longer print their family snaps because everything is taken on...
If I've ever said a bad word about Ebooks
hugmetilyoudrugmehoney:
Which I probably did…
I take it back. They just saved me $270. I mean I do still prefer reading the actual thing than trying to get comfortable with an ipad, but now I can download all these stupid contemporary American books and just print them out!
Fuck the system!
The Kindle Monologues: OverDrive to supply Harry... →
thekindlemonologues:
I assumed this was a given, to be honest. Like it or not, OverDrive has become the ecosystem of choice for libraries, so it makes sense Rowling & Pottermore would partner with them.
Charlie Redmayne, Pottermore CEO, said in a statement, “We are keen to support public and school libraries, and…
3 tags
“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If...”
– Judy Blume (via thelifeguardlibrarian)
This might be a useful quote for J K Rowling to have in her arsenal as she embarks on her adult novel.
6 tags
Don’t want to be bothered while reading? Try one... →
Yes, these are book covers, but I think this would be a great idea for eReader covers. I’m going to try to turn one or 2 into a cover for my Kindle. M-Edge offers a service that makes custom covers based on images you provide. It’s called MyEdge, and fun covers like the ones above are exactly why it was
The book covers are available for download as PDFs, so I’ve downloaded them and then...
3 tags
“Should we have had more of a business plan? Probably. But then the publishers...”
– Barney Rosset
3 tags
The Pen and the Paintbrush: ePublishing Industry A... →
thepenandthepaintbrush:
Hi everyone.
I am at the Alaska Library Association Annual Conference right now, and earlier today found out that the epublishing industry is a mess. Publishers of ebooks and etextbooks haven’t decided what they are going to do with the digital-rights management of their books yet—which…
3 tags
The state of the eBook, early 2012 →
likelyinstore:
by John Timmer
It’s easy to forget that it’s only been five years since Sony and Amazon first started targeting consumers with dedicated eReading hardware. Over the past few years, the painfully slow eInk screens have gotten much faster, while the hardware itself received a touch interface, active color screens, and is now facing tough competition from tablets that let users do a...
4 tags
Getting Your Money's Worth: Notions of Value and...
tealeavesdogears:
Vince Flynn’s new book in the American Assassin series (yeah, me neither) Kill Shot came out this week, but Flynn’s fervent fans are furious*at the fact that the Kindle edition ends at 71%, to be followed by ads and excerpts from previous books. The page count hasn’t changed, but Kindle’s content gage raises interesting questions about how publishers attempt to assign real...
Reading the future: Digital books and what's to... →
vikingpenguinbooks:
Far from killing off the physical page, the rise of ebooks has enhanced our understanding of the written word and the people around it, says Gaby Wood
… things are settling to a point where the physical and the digital have a much more co-operative relationship. For instance, it’s a commonplace that people no longer print their family snaps because everything is taken on...
“The eBook isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about an ‘exploration,’ and...”
– children’s book illustrator Jon Skuse
4 tags
“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...