Goodreads: a second opinion (Part 2)
A day after I drooled with admiration over the mission of social book reading site Goodreads and their not-as-sketchy-as-Amazon’s book reviews, Amazon swept in and bought them. Cue the speculation, lamentation, … Continue reading
Barnes & Noble in troubled waters
“It’s really scary for me that I covered the bankruptcy of a major book chain last year, and I’m kind of wondering if I might be doing the same thing next … Continue reading
Will the indies succeed in making DRM illegal?
Last week, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Fiction Addiction, and Posman Books—three independent bookstores who claim to represent “all independent brick-and-mortar bookstores who sell ebooks”—sued Amazon and the Big Six, … Continue reading
What’s a MOOC? (And why should publishers care?)
Though they sound like they might have been cooked up by Seuss, MOOCs have been a hot topic in academic publishing lately. These “massive open online courses” are jut what … Continue reading
San Antonio announces BiblioTech, a digital-only public library
Would you be inclined to take a trip to a digital-only library for your latest reading needs? This fall, perhaps residents in San Antonio will have that chance. Bexar County … Continue reading
Top news of the week
Google turns vacuum cleaner into book scanner. Via Wired: As if scanning those 7 million rare and out of print books didn’t ruffle the feathers of enough opponents, we at least know how they … Continue reading
The harder they fall? Amazon faces a succession of scrutiny as people draw snap judgments
If you’ve been following any of the publishing news stories lately, most likely you’ve seen quite a few stories that report missteps, mistakes, and mysteries concerning the giant e-tailer that … Continue reading
Top news of the week
DBW power rankings. Two notorious love birds top DBW’s list of top ebook publishers. Amazon is gunning for Netflix and Hulu. By raising its Prime prices? Aggro. Print is not dead! Fetishists say so. “Clicking to … Continue reading
President TK: Ebooks, elections, and the drive for currency in the digital environment
We live in an Internet era. Information is cheap, fast, and easy, available almost as soon as our brains can tell our fingers to Google it. But the ready availability … Continue reading
Our hero?: Penguin Random House confirmed
This week I joined most of the publishing industry in the water cooler buzz about the recently-announced marriage of Random House and Penguin. (Also, of course, the blogosphere/social media/Internet buzz.) … Continue reading
New age piracy: ask the right questions
Recently, one of the authors I work with was in touch with me because someone was torrenting his book. To paraphrase the email: “They’ve got my book on a site … Continue reading
Top News of the Week
AAP and Google reach settlement. After seven years of litigation over Google’s library book scanning, publishers have seen that “Google has kept on scanning and indexing—and the sky did not fall.” Microsoft and … Continue reading
How YOU doin’? DBW launches social media dashboard for top publishers
Digital Book World (DBW) launched its Discoverability and Marketing social media dashboard today that measures the social imprint of top publishers. While the project is a great start,
Kids tablets: Toys “R” Us announces Tabeo
After reading books to her son on her iPad, a friend of mine became so dismayed by her toddler’s absorbed trance and alarming affinity for the touch screen that she … Continue reading
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