LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Ebooks interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:53:50 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.lisnews.org/kindle_book_lending_now_available Amazon announced earlier this year that there would be lending available for some Kindle ebooks. The announcement came out yesterday that the feature is now active. Message from the Amazon Kindle Team: Today, we're pleased to launch Kindle Book Lending, a new feature that lets you loan Kindle books to anyone you choose. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle. Kindle books can be read on Kindle or using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Each eligible book can be lent once for a period of 14 days. Not all e-books are lendable - the publisher or rights holder determines which titles are enabled for lending. For more information on how to loan Kindle books, please visit www.amazon.com/kindle-lending. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 21:23:14 +0100 895856 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/e-book-review-honor-harrington-series-introduction/ I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution to do more e-book reviews. They’re fun to write, and they make a good change in pace from the e-book news that fills these pages. Plus, they make a good excuse to read e-books in new programs or devices. Lately, I’ve decided to go back and reread the entire Honor Harrington series and related works, by David Weber (and friends), in internal chronological order. A few more novels have come out since the last time I did this, with another scheduled for 2011, and it’s been long enough since I read the whole thing that if I just read the latest ones I know I’ll miss about half the story. And since I’m going to be reading them anyway, I figure I might as well review them here as I do it. (I will space them out and intersperse other reviews as well, for variety.) The Honor Harrington series is one of the Baen Free Library’s earliest successes—in fact, before there was a Free Library, the first Honor Harrington novel, On Basilisk Station, was given away as a “free sample” for Webscriptions. (That’s how I first read it, and got hooked, and probably the same is true for many other Honor fans.) The fact that it also became Baen’s most popular backlist title in paper was all the proof that Jim Baen and Eric Flint needed to form the library and, later, start giving away every e-book in that and other series on bound-in CDROMs. Since the complete Honor Harrington series thus far is available on one of those CDROMs (with the exception of one short story/novella anthology, due out in February), hosted publicly on-line at The Fifth Imperium, this means that any TeleRead readers who would like to follow along can read the stories as I do. The reviews will try to avoid major spoilers for the book or story being reviewed, but will almost certainly contain them for previous ones. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:06:37 +0100 895811 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/deer-in-the-headlights-by-brian-oleary/ A couple of years ago, I presented a print-on-demand workshop at what turned out to be the last iteration of BookExpo Canada.  At the end of the trip, severe thunderstorms stranded me in Toronto. After weighing my options, perhaps poorly, I decided to drive home rather than wait at the airport for another 24 hours (or more).  Most of the drive would take place at night, but I wasn’t tired and traffic was light. By 12:30 a.m., I had made it around the lake and was just outside Rochester, NY on the New York Thruway (their spelling, not mine).  I looked down to pick up a cup of coffee I had bought at the last rest stop, and I looked up to see a deer in headlights. Things got worse after that – I swerved, caught a guardrail, bounced off the road and landed deep in a marsh – but I missed the deer.  As I passed it (on my way to a date with the guardrail), the deer was frozen in the same spot, either uncertain what to do or hoping for the best. It’s the end of a year, so we’re waist-deep in retrospectives and prognostications.  Reading them, I’m reminded of the way that deer looked. A Mashable thought piece, “5 E-Book Trends That Will Change the Future of Publishing”, started me down the path.  Predictions like “The $9.99 e-book won’t last forever” (he didn’t think the price was high) and “Publishers will be more important than ever” were enough to make me swear off end-of-year reading. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop.  When the New York Times ran an obligatory roundup that might have been better titled “Big Trade Publishers Realize E-Books Are Popular”, this stopped me in my tracks: “My No. 1 concern is the survival of the physical bookstore,” said Carolyn Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need that physical environment, because it’s still the place of discovery. People need to see books that they didn’t know they wanted. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:44:22 +0100 895812 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/all-the-details-on-amazons-book-lending-program-a-how-to/ On time too — year end. This started as a preview of the new Kindle-book lending feature as described by Amazon. I tweeted this development, at about 3:45 PM PST after reading about it on the forums where it was already a busy message thread. That main Kindle Team Forum Announcement is at the Amazon Kindle Community forums, and I’m adding a bit more in this update with modifications to the earlier afternoon report . REMINDER: If your web browser (especially Firefox) drops you onto the Amazon Kindle Forum’s list of topics instead of bringing you directly to a forum thread, click on Refresh or Reload to get the message thread itself — or click again on the link here.  I don’t know why a ‘retry’ is often needed with the forums, but it is, in my case at least. Here’s the very brief announcement for the blog record: ‘                                                   Initial post: Dec. 30, 2010 9:16 AM PST The Amazon Kindle team says: (AMAZON OFFICIAL) Today, we’re pleased to launch Kindle Book Lending, a new feature that lets you loan Kindle books to anyone you choose.  The borrower does not need to own a Kindle.  Kindle books can be read on Kindle or using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices.  Each eligible book can be lent once for a period of 14 days.  Not all e-books are lendable - the publisher or rights holder determines which titles are enabled for lending.  For more information on how to loan Kindle books, please visit www.amazon.com/kindle-lending. ‘ As it is, there is quite a bit of good detail, with illustrations, at the main Kindle-book lending page. Kindle-edition subscribers: Do use the computer instead to see that very helpful, detailed Amazon how-to-page for loaning or borrowing Kindle books. Type in http://amzn. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:42:30 +0100 895813 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/new-free-ebook-about-the-cybook-opus-ereader/ This is a bit different so I thought I’d post it in full – and its free.  It should be of special interest to our European readers: My Cybook Opus Ebook Reader – Adventures of a New User is a free digital reading ebook by Paolo Amoroso of Nostromics. You are encouraged to freely download, use, distribute and share the book under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license. About the book The book tells the author’s experience in selecting, buying and using a Cybook Opus ebook reading device. The Opus is a popular digital reader manufactured by BOOKEEN. These devices are used for reading electronic books or e-books, i.e. publications in digital form suitable for reading on computers and other digital devices. This work, written from the point of view of a technically savvy user with no prior experience with ebooks, covers some topics about Opus features, operation and maintenance. It is a sort of user diary, a collection of notes of a user learning about the device and ebooks. It is not a comprehensive usage manual or an introductory guide. Download My Cybook Opus Ebook Reader is available for free download in the following file formats for the most popular e-book reading devices and desktop software: ePubDownload My Cybook Opus Ebook Reader in ePub format for BOOKEEN, Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and other devices compatible with the ePub format. You can download the ePub format and read it on desktop PCs with the following free software: Adobe Digital Editions for Windows and MacOS X. An ePub ebook is a ZIP archive containing other files. The ZIP archive you download should be directly opened with Adobe Digital Editions without further action, not unzipped and opened. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:06:54 +0100 895814 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/ipad-media-publishers-need-to-rethink-their-strategies/ More opinion pieces based on the reports of declining iPad magazine sales have come to light. One by Mathew Ingram on the GigaOM blog widens the scope to look not just at magazines but at all those who put out content for the iPad. Ingram quotes a blog post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who makes a very quotable point about the strange preoccupation some publishers have with getting their content onto the iPad: I don’t understand why anyone would ever think that adding a presentation layer on top of web based content would make it something people would want to purchase when they are not willing to purchase the same content directly on the web. In other words, if people aren’t willing to pay for something on the web, that they can easily quote, relink, and otherwise share with their friends, why would they pay for something even more locked down? (And certainly, why would they pay full cover price for it?) And many of these apps don’t even try to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities that the iPad offers: they simply lock their web content up and try to charge for it. On his “Reflections of a Newsosaur” blog, veteran journalist Alan D. Mutter makes much the same points. Discussing the Wired magazine app, to which 61% of those who purchased the most recent issue gave the lowest possible score on the iTunes store’s review chart, he writes: The app is little more than a digital dupe of the print product, with scant interactivity to leverage the power of this sophisticated digital platform. “That’s not Wired,” said an iTunes customer identified as byron246. “It’s tired.” And he also points out the magazines tend to be glitch-ridden, too costly, and unsubscribable. “In other words, the hassle factor is too high.” The iPad and its apps are good for some amazing things—games, social networking, and devouring content in freer form using RSS readers and Flipboard. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:15:00 +0100 895815 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/barmax-999-99-bar-exam-prep-e-textbook-comes-to-ipad/ Back in June I covered BarMax, the bar exam test preparation software for iPhone that is the most expensive title in the app store at $999.99. But this is no “I Am Rich”. In fact, it costs significantly less than other bar exam test prep software on the market. What’s more, it actually works: those who’ve used the software have been passing bar exams at well above average rates. And now, TechCrunch reports, BarMax is coming to the iPad, in a new version rebuilt from the ground up to look good on the bigger screen. It includes a number of e-book-related enhancements such as the ability to highlight text and make notes and bookmarks. From the screenshots, it looks like a great deal, and law students can buy it and an iPad together for half or less of the cost of its $3,000-$4,000 competitors. Currently the California version is the only one available, but presumably other states will follow. The company has already earned $200,000 in sales from California and New York versions of the iPhone software. (Which, of course, just means a bit over two hundred people bought it, but still it’s an impressive monetary figure.) Who would have thought there could be a legitimate reason to charge $1,000 for an iPad app? (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0100 895816 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/borders-delays-payments-to-publishers-faces-refinancing-crisis/ RTTNews reports that Borders is going to be delaying payments to some publishers as it tries to conserve cash and refinance its debt. After-hours trading saw the company’s stock price decline by over 12%. Borders is experiencing trouble after a third-party review resulted in a decrease in its inventory’s liquidation value. The shrunken assets resulted in lower borrowing power, and unless the company can find more money somewhere, it could be unable to make payments on its existing credit agreements. Things just don’t seem to be going well for the major e-book chains. First Barnes & Noble puts itself up for sale, and now Borders faces its own financial crisis. I doubt this is going to be the last big failure of a print-publishing-related industry. And those self-same publishers who have been trying to prop up print bookstores by pricing e-books higher must be feeling like their feeding hand has just been bitten. No matter how much the publishers try to protect bookstores against e-books, it’s not going to save them forever. If they don’t take a long hard look at how they can streamline their business model (it’s insane that their overhead calculations still include the cost of recalling and destroying sometimes more than half of the products they produce!) and help the bookstores do the same, publishers might just find themselves without many outlets other than Amazon to move their merchandise. (I was first alerted to this story by The Digital Reader.) (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:30:28 +0100 895817 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/editors-pick-of-the-week-29/ Ebook marketing still needs a lot of work Google ebookstore round-up By Gary Price TeleRead traffic doubles on Christmas day – a lot of ereaders as presents? Could computer games be the journalism of the future? by Chris Meadows R. Scott Raynovich on the top five online newspaper killers – and one from me Ebooks at year-end 2010 by Gary Price Helpful advice for new Kindle owners by Chris Walters First Google Books sales numbers are in for Munsey’s For new and old Kindlers wanting to do more with their Kindles by Andrys Basten Question of the year: does Amazon have too much power? by Rich Adin The online future of Australian journalism, as seen by the industry itself by Jason Davis Why I am a library traitor and love the Kindle, by Sarah Houghton-Jan Holiday travel update: gadgets, gadgets, everywhere! by Joanna (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:39:00 +0100 895763 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/the-e-ink-has-dried-on-kindle-lending-whether-authors-like-it-or-not-by-steven-lewis/ Amazon has turned on the Kindle book lending program, which allows book owner to “lend” books to anyone with an email address and a Kindle (or a Kindle app for another device). The conditions are that the loan offer email must be accepted within seven days. Once accepted, the loan lasts for 14 days. Presently only Kindle users resident in the US can initiate the loan. Residents of other countries can accept a loan provided the book is available on the Kindle in their country of residence. Personally I have no problem with the lending feature as it stands but its birth is further evidence that Amazon’s terms and conditions aren’t worth the e-Ink they’re printed on. That is, they’re binding on a user but Amazon can change them on whim to suit itself. As Chris Walters writes, the day before lending was turned on Amazon “quietly updated the terms and conditions for publishers who use its Digital Text Platform to publish to the Kindle Store. It added section 5.2.2, which explains how the Lending Program works.” “Ah,” says someone at Amazon, “we want to have lending for the Kindle but our terms and conditions don’t allow it. What can we do?” He doesn’t have to scratch his beard for long. He simply opens Amazon’s terms and conditions document, bashes out a new section and hits “Publish”. An approach that cavalier is alarming if you’re a user of the service because it means the ground can shift beneath your feet at any time. You could, for instance, find that all your titles are suddenly removed for a breach of the terms and conditions, some of which might not have been terms or conditions five minutes ago. Under the now dry but still malleable e-Ink of section 5.2.2, authors and publishers who are on the 35% royalty scheme have the option to opt out of lending (all books are opted in by default). Authors and publishers on the 70% royalty scheme have no choice: this is just another condition of being in the 70% scheme. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:54:43 +0100 895764 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/high-paper-prices-hurt-publishers-in-kenya/ From The Standard: It is back to school again, but the book industry in Kenya is reeling under the effects of skyrocketing paper prices in the world market coupled with low purchasing power for their book titles. Citing rising raw material costs for missed earnings, shrinking profits and frequent change of syllabus texts by the Ministry of Education, publishers are sending a cry to the Government to intervene by giving tax waivers on paper and inputs used to produce school books. Publishers warned that free primary and secondary education goal may be jeopardised by the prohibitive cost of books beyond the reach of many parents and students. But in this challenging environment, where Pan Paper Mills in Webuye , Kenya’s sole manufacturer of paper stopped production, publishers are struggling with strategies to protect their companies – without drastically raising book prices. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:46:26 +0100 895765 http://www.teleread.com/library/overdrive-traffic-and-ebook-checkouts-surge-over-christmas-holiday/ From Overdrive’s Digital Library Blog: If you need any evidence of the popularity of eBooks in the library, all you need to do is look at what happened over the past week. Despite some issues caused by a surge in activity, traffic, checkouts, and new user registration records were smashed over the Christmas holiday–all thanks to eBooks. For the first time ever, eBooks out-circulated audiobooks at libraries’ ‘Virtual Branch’ websites. Audiobooks are still very popular and increasing in circulation, but this momentum for eBook downloads shows that the format has gone mainstream at libraries. Library eBook circulation has steadily grown over the past month, starting on Nov. 26, the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday. (Like Christmas, many people had new devices, thanks to Black Friday deals, plus they had time to use them.) To show you what happened in one month, we’ve compared usage from Nov. 26-28 (around US Thanksgiving) to Dec. 25-27 (around Christmas). eBook checkouts increased a staggering 93% Visits to ‘Virtual Branch’ websites were up 60% Pageviews were up nearly 70% Needless to say, Christmas and the days following were the three biggest for library downloads ever. As a whole, 2010 was even more impressive. We’ll have the full stats for 2010 coming next week, so stay tuned. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:08:30 +0100 895766 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/62999 We're not suprised to read the following OverDrive blog post. Why? Here are four reasons. 1. If you follow the OverDrive Twitter stream you might have noticed several tweets from users about the service being slow. The company noted that downloads were booming and they're working to add more bandwidth. 2. In [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:28:00 +0100 895770 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/62991 + How To Lend Kindle Books (via Amazon.com) + "Amazon now lets you “Lend your Kindle books to others" (by Martin Bryant, The Next Web) + "Amazon’s new lending feature is probably going to anger some publishers" (by Chris Walters, TeleRead) + "How Many Kindle Books Can Be Shared?" (by Jason Boog, GalleyCat) [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:50:00 +0100 895720 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/people-will-pay-for-digital-content-says-pew-internet-american-life-project/ From the press release: Nearly two-thirds of internet users — 65% — have paid to download or access some kind of online content from the internet, ranging from movies to games to news articles.  Music, software, and apps are the most popular content that internet users have paid to access or download, although the range of paid online content is quite varied and widespread. In a survey of 755 internet users between 28 October and 1 November 2010, we asked the following question: “Please tell me if you have ever paid to access or to download any of the following types of online content?” And we found:·        33% of internet users have paid for digital music online·        33% have paid for software·        21% have paid for apps for their cell phones or tablet computers·        19% have paid for digital games·        18% have paid for digital newspaper, magazine, or journal articles or reports·        16% have paid for videos, movies, or TV shows·        15% have paid for ringtones·        12% have paid for digital photos·        11% have paid for members-only premium content from a website that has other free material on it·        10% have paid for e-books·        7% have paid for podcasts·        5% have paid for tools or materials to use in video or computer games·        5% have paid for “cheats or codes” to help them in video games·        5% have paid to access particular websites such as online dating sites or services·        2% have paid for adult content And 6% of internet users said they had paid for another kind of content that had not been mentioned in the list of 15 we queried. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:06:09 +0100 895704 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/nook-ereaders-become-biggest-seller-in-bns-history/ From the press release: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced that with millions of NOOK eReading devices sold, the line has become the company’s biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history. The new NOOKcolor Reader’s Tablet, introduced just eight weeks before Christmas, is the company’s number one selling gift of the holiday season. Barnes & Noble also announced that it now sells more digital books than its large and growing physical book business on BN.com, the world’s second largest online bookstore. With its growth across device and NOOKbook™ sales over the critical holiday selling season, Barnes & Noble has successfully established itself as a leader in digital reading. Demand for the critically acclaimed NOOKcolor remained high following the product’s introduction in late October through the holidays. Sales have continued to exceed the company’s high expectations. … (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:58:23 +0100 895705 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/amazons-new-lending-feature-is-probably-going-to-anger-some-publishers/ When it comes to Kindle features, Amazon tends to follow the aphorism that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. This strategy doesn’t always work–see the text-to-speech controversy–but it helps give Amazon the element of surprise in the marketplace. With that in mind, I have a feeling that some indie publishers are going to be up in arms about the new lending feature that was enabled this morning, because of how Amazon rolled it out. Yesterday, Amazon quietly updated the terms and conditions for publishers who use its Digital Text Platform to publish to the Kindle Store. It added section 5.2.2, which explains how the Lending Program works. In particular, it explains the following: all DTP titles have lending enabled by default; titles using the 35% royalty option must participate in the lending program; titles using the 70% royalty option may be opted out; any opt-outs are not retroactive, so anyone who purchased the title while lending was available will continue to have access to the feature. This means if you’re a publisher and you hate the idea of the lending program, you have to scramble today to go into your DTP account and manually disable the lending feature for each eligible title. While you’re doing that, anyone who buys a copy will still be able to lend it in the future. What’s not clear in this circumstance is what happens to all the customers who bought a copy before lending went into effect, since they’re not explicitly described in section 5.2.2. Do they also get to keep the lending feature? If so, then essentially any anti-lending publisher just lost control over lending for all previous purchases; if not, then some customers may find this feature suddenly disappearing from select indie titles. We’ll have to see what develops, and which group gets to angrily (and perhaps legitimately) denounce Amazon’s policies. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:22:51 +0100 895706 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/how-to-find-free-kindle-books/ CNET has an article with this title. They discuss Jungle-search.com. After they discuss free ebooks they go on to say: … But what if you want to see more granular lists–say, separating the public domain titles from the modern freebies? (Publishers occasionally give away older books in a series to hook readers on newer ones, for example.) Or what if you want to see only books in a certain price range–only those that are 99 cents, or $2 to $3? That’s where Jungle-search.com comes in. The search engine is designed to scour Amazon for all sorts of deals across a variety of categories. And that includes Kindle titles, which can be filtered by price. As of today, there are almost 17,000 free Kindle titles (see links below). Nearly all of them are public domain titles, including many of the same you’ll find on Google Books. The remaining 246 free titles tend to be Kindle games, or those aforementioned freebie promotional titles. Currently, it looks like romance titles dominate the top of the list, but you’ll find plenty of thrillers, and even some “Star Wars” books in there, too. (These titles tend to turn over pretty quickly, so it’s worth checking every few weeks or so.) (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:16:35 +0100 895707 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/spring-design-lawsuit-against-barnes-noble-moves-forward/ We first covered the lawsuit by Spring Design, maker of the dual-screened Alex e-reader, against Barnes & Noble back in November, 2009. Spring Design claimed that it had designed the Alex in 2006 and worked with Barnes & Noble since early 2009, and that B&N took advantage of this cooperation to copy features of the Alex’s design (notably, the addition of a color LCD panel to a greyscale e-ink panel) in the Nook. Now Reuters reports that Barnes & Noble has failed to convince a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge cited a “significant factual dispute” over whether the Alex had influenced the design of the Nook, and said it was premature to reject charges of trade secret theft. A pretrial conference has been scheduled for February 7th. I have to wonder whether, by the time it comes to trial, it’s even going to be a relevant issue. Like so many other e-reader manufacturers, the Alex is stuck in the two-years-back price bracket at $299, while its competitors are now going for less than half that. But perhaps Spring Design figures that if it can’t make a profit on its e-readers through sale, it can at least scoop up damages in a lawsuit. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:15:00 +0100 895708 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/finding-free-or-cheap-kindle-books-with-jungle-search/ CNet has an article looking at how to use Jungle-Search.com to find free or inexpensive Kindle e-books. The piece notes that Amazon has almost 17,000 free Kindle titles, though all but 246 of them (as of the article’s writing) were the same public domain titles that can be found on Google Books, Project Gutenberg, or elsewhere. There are also over 220,000 titles for 99 cents or less, and 125,000 between $1 and $5. This looks to be a very interesting search site even aside from e-books. One of the things that annoyed me about Amazon during my Christmas shopping was that there wasn’t any way to search solely on price. Paired with Amazon Prime, this could be a very fun way of finding cheap trinkets to keep oneself amused. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:15:00 +0100 895709 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/ipad-magazines-need-to-surmount-price-distribution-issues/ A couple of interesting pieces have surfaced looking at fallout from yesterday’s news of iPad magazine sales declining. On The Next Web, Alex Wilhelm suggests that the iPad might yet “save the struggling world of print,” but that some conditions still have to be met for that to happen. First, price has to be conquered; Wilhelm uses the e-book price debates as an example of how consumers feel digital editions of media should be cheaper than dead trees. Second, distribution needs to be streamlined considerably. “The idea of having 15 different apps constantly on my iPad screen just to occasionally read a single issue of one (or redownloading a magazine app just to get the one issue that I want to read that year) is impractical and cumbersome.” He also suggests that the decline in sales is linked to a decline in hype—people just aren’t pushing the magazine apps anymore; they’re no longer the “new new thing”. So interest has also declined. On a related note, Choire Sicha points out that magazines are, essentially, undercutting their own iPad apps because paper subscriptions are so much cheaper than the digital versions. Print magazines have to keep up their circulation rates so they can continue to charge high prices for the advertisements that are their real sources of revenue. As an example, the piece cites a subscription offer for Condé Nast’s Traveler of $10 per year—a discount of almost $50 from the cover price (and including a free gift subscription for a friend as well). It also notes that loyal print subscribers, who already pay for subscriptions, are hardly likely to shell out over and above what they already pay for print to get a digtal version, too. If anything, they’d think, they should be getting this for free, as long as they’ve already been paying for print. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:15:00 +0100 895710 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/barnes-noble-patent-filings-suggest-new-nook-devices-services/ PocketNow has examined patent filings by Barnes & Noble and has some guesses about what they might predict for the future of B&N’s Nook product line. The patent filings suggest future devices to be called “Nook Kids” (previously just the name of B&N’s children’s e-book store) and “Nook2” or “Nook 2”. They also note that B&N has changed from just describing goods in some of its patents (the devices themselves) to also describing services along with them (as in the case of “Nook Study”, “Nook Smart”, and “Nook Cook”). And B&N may also be readying an in-store/on-line customer service program called “Nooksellers”, which would provide customer service through in-store kiosks, telephone, e-mail, and a website (potentially with a Netflix-style recommendation engine). (Found via Engadget.) (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0100 895711 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/sharp-to-bring-galapagos-tablets-to-us-market/ Engadget has a report on another Japanese electronics vendor seeking to enter the US e-reader/tablet market. Sharp is going to be bringing its Galapagos tablets to the US in a retooled version that includes 3G data capability. It will also be changing its e-book format from its proprietary XMDF format to the more-widely-used EPUB. The tablet will come in 5.5” and 10.8” sizes, and Sharp is currently seeking content partnerships and plans to have its own e-book store for the US market. It is also reportedly planning to bring the tablets to China, India, and Brazil. Funny: the screen (presumably) from the e-book app depicted in the picture bears a remarkable resemblance to iBooks’s interface. Imagine that. The adoption of EPUB is a good sign, but it remains to be seen whether Sharp has a snowball’s chance of competing in the rapidly-saturating American tablet and e-reader market. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:01:05 +0100 895712 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/UVaiqn-XlP4/ Auch den “Blick hinter die Kulissen” kann man zum Thema eines Presseartikels machen. Die Bibliothek der TH Wildau wird mit ihrem Geschäftsgang in der Märkischen Allgemeinen vorgestellt. (Source: netbib weblog) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:39:52 +0100 895687 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/T1kw7Kq_Zvk/using-ebooks-ereaders-in-your-library.html The Creekview High School Library (a/k/a The Unquiet Library) staff in Georgia have been documenting the library's process of acquiring and lending Kindles and Kindle book editions on The Unquiet Librarian blog and in a series of YouTube videos, which... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895840 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/gS1gg5HxjkY/ebook-trends-that-will-change-the-future-of-publishing-sooner-rather-than-later-wexis-ebooks.html Philip Ruppel, president of McGraw-Hill Professional, identifies five eBook trends that will change the future of publishing: Enhanced E-Books Are Coming and Will Only Get Better The Device War Is Nearly Over The $9.99 E-Book Won’t Last Forever The Contextual... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Thu, 30 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895837 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/holiday-travel-update-gadgets-gadgets-everywhere/ I am on my way home from ten days in sunny Florida visiting my parents, and it was a gadget-rific Christmas. I saw my first Nook and Nook Colour, my first Kindle 3 (alas, out of stock, but I did play with a dummy model) and got stepdad’s iPad set up for him. More on that later—we had a few days alone thanks to a family emergency that had Mom flying home for a few days, so the iPad became our little All by Ourselves project—but I have some general comments on my gadget-rific holiday to tide you over in the meantime! 1) IT’S A GADGET WORLD The first thing that struck me about this holiday season was just how many gadgets there really are out there. I don’t travel much, so I was unprepared for the sheer proliferation of gadgetalia out there in the wild. I think every single person on my whole flight had a gadget of some kind, ranging from iPod Touches (most in the hands of children) to iPads, at least two Kindles besides my own, numerous fully loaded smartphones, a Sony and a few Chinese devices I could not identify. Two people in the seats beside me were even watching video on iPod Nanos! And I was not the only person who had more than one device with me, either! Of course, not all of these people were reading on them. But still, the potential is there. I spent an enjoyable afternoon playing iToys with my nephew, who is not much of a reader, and while we were evenly matched on the arcade stuff and perhaps spent more time than we had to playing with the talking cat, I have to admit that he held his own against me in even ‘intellectual’ games like Jeopardy and Family Feud. And I was happy to have something to do with him that bonded us a little. Small boys are a bit of a cipher for me, since his only interests seem to be hockey and baseball, so gadgetry is perhaps a welcome way into his world for people like me and his gadget-savvy parents. ... Thu, 30 Dec 2010 03:08:51 +0100 895608 http://www.teleread.com/library/scholarly-electronic-publishing-weblog-updated-for-december/ Ariadne, no. 65 (2010): Includes: “Developing Infrastructure for Research Data Management at the University of Oxford,” “Moving Researchers across the eResearch Chasm,” “Trust Me, I’m an Archivist: Experiences with Digital Donors,” and other articles. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 29, no. 4 (2010): Includes “Digital Archival Image Collections: Who Are the Users?” and other articles. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2011): Includes “Google Book Search and Metadata,” “Reclassification in Academic Research Libraries: Is It Still Relevant in an E-book World?,” and other articles. Collection Management 36, no. 1 (2011): Includes “Librarian Roles in Institutional Repository Data Set Collecting: Outcomes of a Research Library Task Force” and other articles. First Monday 15, no. 12 (2010): Includes “The Size Distribution of Open Access Publishers: A Problem for Open Access?” and other articles. IFLA Journal 36, no. 4 (2010): Includes “Non-users’ Evaluation of Digital Libraries: A Survey at the Università degli studi di Milano” and other articles. The Journal of Electronic Publishing 13, no. 3 (2010): Includes “Academic Search Engine Spam and Google Scholar’s Resilience against It,” “OA Repositories: The Researchers’ Point of View,” “Traversing the Book of Mpub: An Agile, Web-first Publishing Model,” and other articles. Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42, no. 2 (2011): Includes “Extending ArXiv.org to Achieve Open Peer Review and Publishing,” “Protocols and Challenges to the Creation of a Cross-disciplinary Journal,” and other articles. Krikorian, Gaälle, and Amy Kapczynski, eds. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:35:45 +0100 895609 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-exec-explains-why-company-does-not-release-kindle-numbers/ After playing with Quora for a couple of days, I’m starting to see the appeal of it. The format is clear and easy to use, but a bigger draw is that sometimes questions can be answered by people who actually have involvement with the issues. For example, one person asked, “Why does Amazon brag incessantly about Kindle sales but refuse to disclose specifics?” And a response came from none other than Vinay Kruvila, whose by-line states he has worked for Amazon for 5 years and is currently its Software Development Manager. He writes: Amazon is an incredibly data-driven company. Every strategic decision at Amazon is backed by a wealth of data, and is associated with precise, measurable goals. Even every day tactical decisions are largely data-driven. If you follow prices of items on Amazon, you’ll see how the discount on a book can rise from 34% to 37%, from one day to the next. When Amazon considers entering new markets, the sales metrics competitors have released (perhaps, foolishly) are a key data-point. When you work at Amazon, you realize how important the numbers are. Releasing Kindle sales numbers would only feed into the hands of Amazon’s competitors; there’s a big difference in knowing that the Kindle is the best selling product ever on Amazon and knowing that Amazon sold X million Kindles in 2010. Amazon believes in taking credit for the impressive things we do in ways that are subtle and sophisticated, without providing data that will help current and potential competitors. While I still wish Amazon would be more forthcoming with its numbers, at least this is one of the best explanations I’ve yet seen for why it is not. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:46:58 +0100 895610 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/uk-government-booktrust-announce-continued-funding-after-all/ I mentioned last week that the UK government had eliminated its funding for literacy charity Booktrust with the new budget that takes effect in April. In response to public outrage at this decision, The Bookseller reports that the government and Booktrust have released a joint statement saying that the government will “continue to fund Booktrust book-gifting programmes in the future.” However, critics are still skeptical. Labour leader Ed Miliband calls it only a “partial U-turn” (isn’t that kind of like being “a little bit pregnant”? A “partial U-turn” is just a turn!) and points out that the announcement is rather nonspecific, as it does not say anything about what amount of funding will be provided. Hopefully the government and Booktrust will be able to come to a satisfactory arrangement to keep allowing the program to give books to kids and help support child literacy. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:36:08 +0100 895611 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ScholarlyElectronicPublishingWeblogrss/~3/eC6Mm0oVw6U/ Ariadne, no. 65 (2010): Includes: "Developing Infrastructure for Research Data Management at the University of Oxford," "Moving Researchers across the eResearch Chasm," "Trust Me, I'm an Archivist: Experiences with Digital Donors," and other articles. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 29, no. 4 (2010): Includes "Digital Archival Image Collections: Who Are the Users?" and other articles. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2011): Includes "Google Book Search and Metadata," "Reclassification in Academic Research Libraries: Is It Still Relevant in an E-book World?," and other articles. Collection Management 36, no. 1 (2011): Includes "Librarian Roles in Institutional Repository Data Set Collecting: Outcomes of a Research Library Task Force" and other articles. First Monday 15, no. 12 (2010): Includes "The Size Distribution of Open Access Publishers: A Problem for Open Access?" and other articles. IFLA Journal 36, no. 4 (2010): Includes "Non-users' Evaluation of Digital Libraries: A Survey at the Università degli studi di Milano" and other articles. The Journal of Electronic Publishing 13, no. 3 (2010): Includes "Academic Search Engine Spam and Google Scholar’s Resilience against It," "OA Repositories: The Researchers' Point of View," "Traversing the Book of Mpub: An Agile, Web-first Publishing Model," and other articles. Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42, no. 2 (2011): Includes "Extending ArXiv.org to Achieve Open Peer Review and Publishing," "Protocols and Challenges to the Creation of a Cross-disciplinary Journal," and other articles. Krikorian, Gaälle, and Amy Kapczynski, eds. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:08:58 +0100 895591 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freerangelibrarian/~3/W7a2nEc5oIs/ "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" I was teaching a library-science class about a decade ago when a student snaked her hand into the air. “You know how no good deed goes unpunished?” she asked. “No,” I said, and continued lecturing. I knew where she was going with that question, because I knew her from another context, where she was the self-designated killjoy who approached every project confident of its failure–which, for the record, is an excellent way to ensure failure happens. She’s the one who will ask, “Just to play Devil’s advocate”–as if Satan needed any help. And we have all sat in meetings where this person  dwelled ad infinitum on every possible thing that could go wrong with a good idea that hadn’t even been launched, or itemized in exquisite detail the inevitable failings of any good idea in progress. There have been times when I have been this person (and will be again in the future), and for this I humbly repent. I was reminded of this moment recently when I read the (relatively mild) commentary on an article in Library Journal, “Netflix-inspired Pilot Program for Borrowing in California Library Languishes,” and then, reluctantly, prodded from a Tweet, turned my eyes to this post by the Annoying Librarian (yes, I know that’s not her real fake name). It was at that moment I realized why I loathe her: because I’ve suffered her kith and kin at nearly every library job I’ve ever had. Which leads into a response I’ve wanted to post for a while about what directors do for a living. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:48:34 +0100 895537 http://www.lisnews.org/why_i_am_library_traitor_and_love_kindle From the Librarian in Black Bless me, O Biblioblogosphere, for I have sinned. I have betrayed the trust of my librarian people by *gasp* loving my Kindle like I am told I would love a child if I had any interest in being a parent, which I don’t. But I do have an interest in reading digital content on a sleek, affordable, and easy-to-use device. Thus the Kindle. Later in the piece there is some counter language: Now that we’ve covered the pros, here’s why I detest the Kindle as a librarian Full blog post at the Librarian in Black N7M9ZX (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:18:47 +0100 895863 http://lisnews.org/why_i_am_library_traitor_and_love_kindle From the Librarian in Black Bless me, O Biblioblogosphere, for I have sinned. I have betrayed the trust of my librarian people by *gasp* loving my Kindle like I am told I would love a child if I had any interest in being a parent, which I don’t. But I do have an interest in reading digital content on a sleek, affordable, and easy-to-use device. Thus the Kindle. Later in the piece there is some counter language: Now that we’ve covered the pros, here’s why I detest the Kindle as a librarian Full blog post at the Librarian in Black N7M9ZX (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:18:47 +0100 895563 http://www.lisnews.org/read_kindle_book_nook_color Story at Teleread.com Yep, you are reading this right. It’s actually quite easy now to get Kindle books on Nook color and have both eBook stores available to you on a single device. This is possible because Nook Color is more of an entry level Android tablet than a dedicated eReader. As it comes out of the box it just happens to start the Nook application by default and not let users run anything else. http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/read-kindle-books-on-your-nookcolor/ (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:58:18 +0100 895864 http://lisnews.org/read_kindle_book_nook_color Story at Teleread.com Yep, you are reading this right. It’s actually quite easy now to get Kindle books on Nook color and have both eBook stores available to you on a single device. This is possible because Nook Color is more of an entry level Android tablet than a dedicated eReader. As it comes out of the box it just happens to start the Nook application by default and not let users run anything else. http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/read-kindle-books-on-your-nookcolor/ (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:58:18 +0100 895564 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/29/amazon-kindle-outsells-harry-potter Amazon's Kindle 3 ebook reader believed to have sold almost 8m unitsAmazon says that its Kindle 3 ebook reader has become the site's best-selling product ever, and that on Christmas Day more people activated new Kindles, downloaded Kindle apps and bought ebooks than on any previous day.The company announced that sales of the Kindle 3 had overtaken the previous record holder, the book of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, released in July 2007. That had seen 1m pre-orders online before it was published, and has sold more than 40m copies worldwide – though it is unknown what proportion would have been sold through Amazon.The company has not released sales figures for the Kindle, though sources within the company told Bloomberg this month that it will have sold about 8m Kindles by the end of this year. Bloomberg said the figures come from "two people who are aware of the company's sales projections".Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and chief executive, said: "We're seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet [referring to devices such as Apple's iPad], released in April … Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies and web browsing, and their Kindles for reading sessions ... Kindle's $139 price point is a key factor – it's low enough that people don't have to choose."The online retailer has always been reluctant to give a figure for how many Kindles have been sold, possibly because it does not want it to be compared with those from consumer electronics companies such as Apple and Sony. But the numbers provided are about 60% higher than analysts' forecasts of about 5m Kindles this year.By contrast, Apple is expected to about 12m of its iPad tablets this year, having begun selling them in April.KindleE-readersAmazon.comInternetE-commerceHarry PotteriPadTablet computersRetail industryCharles Arthurguardian.co. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:53:00 +0100 895570 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/question-of-the-year-does-amazon-have-too-much-power/ Amazon is probably the largest bookseller, dollar-wise, in America and the world. Certainly, it is the largest ebook seller in America. And Amazon has spread its tentacles so that it is not only a bookseller, but it competes with publishers as a publisher. Amazon has positioned itself so that, with the exception of the big publishing houses like Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Random House, authors and publishers believe their books must be available for sale on Amazon or they will never make it. I have yet to hear of anyone cry, for example, that the failure of Barnes & Noble or Sony ebookstores to carry their ebook is a crisis. But we do hear and feel that panic when it comes to Amazon. The result of this concentration of power is that Amazon is given the opportunity to censor. I grant that Amazon is free to decide what products it wants to sell or not sell; after all, it is not a governmental agency that must be neutral in the marketplace. But saying that begs the question because by agreeing with that proposition (i.e., Amazon is free to sell or not sell a particular book or genre of books), we are also saying that Amazon is free to dictate what an author writes, a publisher publishes, and a reader reads — at least if you are an author or publisher who believes that not being sold by Amazon is tantamount to writing death or a consumer who believes that the only place to buy a book is from Amazon. Amazon’s Kindle has changed the worlds of reading, writing, and publishing. Although the change has been largely for the good — more books are being sold (and hopefully read) — there is also a dark side to the Kindle world. The dark side begins with a proprietary format that is designed to lock the average consumer into buying books only at Amazon. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:34:19 +0100 895512 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/read-kindle-books-on-your-nookcolor/ CrunchGear is reporting that by rooting the NookColor you can install the Kindle reading application on the device. To root the device you need one of theAutorooter images andWin32ImageWriter for Windows or Mac OS/Linux tools to write the image to an MicroSD card. Then you upload the Kindle app from the Android store and rock out. This process also adds GMail, YouTube, and a number of other standard Android goodies to your previously stripped-down NookColor. The whole process is right here and it should be a fine ride. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:47:16 +0100 895513 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ibooks-no-itunes-when-it-comes-to-dominating-the-market/ Publishers Weekly has an overview report, with the above name, on the iBookstore and its place in the market. Here’s a snippet: Not everyone is embracing the iBookstore, though. At this time Oceanhouse Media — the leading publisher of children’s digital book apps on Apple’s App Store, with the exclusive right to make apps of Dr. Seuss’s work — is not planning to sell there. “We believe that in order to have an effective digital children’s book you need a level of interactivity that cannot be provided for with iBooks,” says Oceanhouse Media president Michel Kripalani. “Only apps can deliver this high level of interactivity, and much of the work is custom to each specific title.” Oceanhouse Media has sold more than half a million Dr. Seuss digital book apps since its first release (How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) just one year ago, says Kripalani. With 140 apps on the app store, it sells “many thousands” of apps per day, he says. One reason: they’re inexpensive compared to iBooks. “Personally, I believe that many of the books on the iBookstore are overpriced,” says Kripalani. “Why spend $14 on a static digital book when you can have a fully interactive Dr. Seuss, Berenstain Bears, or Mercer Mayer book for $1.99 to $3.99?” (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:42:13 +0100 895514 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/idate-releases-ebook-report/ European consulting firm, IDATE, has released its 130 page study of the ebook market for Japan, America and Europe for 2008-2015. The report costs between 2,900 and 3,500 euros, but they have allowed me to release part of their principle results (blockquotes omitted): By the end of 2010, the digital book market took off in all of the surveyed countries, albeit under varying scenarios. That year, the United States became the world’s largest market with a turnover from e-book sales reaching EUR 594 million, ahead of Japan, e- book pioneer country whose market is evaluated at EUR 527 million. European markets remain relatively modest, but are characterised by strong growth rates (around 80%). This digital migration concerns all literary genres, although some more rapidly than others (sentimental literature, science fiction & fantasy, detective stories) and a wide range of media (e-readers, PCs, mobile phones, game consoles, tablets, media players). • By 2014, the digital transition should not result in a global loss (or destruction) of book value. Certainly, sales of printed books have been declining for several years in the surveyed countries (except for France and Canada), and the emergence of a digital offer will only accentuate this trend, especially for the literary genres that are prone to this digital migration. However, e-book sales should offset the decline in printed book sales, and potentially even expand the book market thanks to the incremental sales effect (i.e., digital book sales which would not have taken place with printed books). By 2015, the future of the market will be shaped by factors operating at two levels: the degree of conversion of casual readers to digital media (who represent the bulk of the book market in terms of volume) and the impact of enriched books, hybrid multimedia products capable of attracting people who are not regular consumers of traditional books. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:36:06 +0100 895515 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/the-online-future-of-australian-journalism-as-seen-by-the-industry-itself/ I’m a journalist, and a member of the journalists union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (of which the Australian Journalists Association, the AJA, forms part). All members receive a monthly magazine with news and in-depth articles about the industry, but this year is special – it’s 100 years since a wily bunch of Aussie scribblers formed the AJA. So, a century into Australian journalism proper, the union has published a report of the state of the industry, and where it expects the future to lay. (SPOILER: online). The report is called Life in the Clickstream II (a similar report came out two years ago), and I thought I’d share some of it (less than 10% of course, to keep my copyright nose clean!) with you. Keep in mind that this is the industry talking (through the report) about where they are and where they are going, not me. The state of play It’s ugly out there right now. In the federal secretary’s foreword, he talks about the “carnage” that had been forecast for the industry, and how it has been mitigated slightly by the appearance of news apps for phones and tablet computers like the iPad. But the operative word is “slightly”. All the graphs are sliding downwards. In Australia, the industry is on better shape than in the US or UK, but that’s no great prize. Hundreds of journalists no longer have full-time jobs, but here they are finding themselves in part-time or casual positions. I guess it’s better than being laid off. In the US the drop in print newspaper circulations are roughly 30%, in the UK about 20% overall. In AU, the decline is about 3% – the second-best result behind Austria in the Western world. New Zealand fared worse, dropping 13%. So it could be worse. But all but two major metro newspapers lost circulation here, and corresponding sales falls mean that the industry knows it needs to phase in a Plan B. It’s already doing so. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:21:15 +0100 895516 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ipad-magazine-sales-drop/ According to WWWD Media: … Vanity Fair sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from its average of about 10,500 for the August, September and October issues. Glamour sold 4,301 digital editions in September, but sales dropped 20 percent in October and then another 20 percent, to 2,775, in November. GQ’s November edition sold 11,000 times, which was its worst performance since April (when the iPad was released) and represents a slight decline from its average digital sales of 13,000 between May and October. After Wired’s enormous debut month, the magazine averaged 31,000 digital sales between July and September, but even that fell in October and November, with sales coming in at 22,000 and 23,000, respectively. (For comparison, the magazine sold 130,000 total print editions for October and November.) Men’s Health, which averaged digital sales of about 2,800 in the spring, sold 2,000 times in both September and October. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:16:24 +0100 895517 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/interview-pete-abrams-sluggy-freelance-cartoonist-part-three-of-three/ In this third portion of the interview, I asked about the plotting process, plans for the future, and whether Pete had been inspired by particular sources. Previously: Part One, Part Two Me: You talked in the past about how the huge plot that you’ve woven together in Sluggy over the years has drawn toward a close. You said you didn’t want to start any new plot arcs until that was finished. What happens when it’s finished? Do you start another decade-long story arc? Pete: That’s the thing, I have the freedom to make the choice at that point. That’s why, every time I’m asked the question I’ve never said definitively I’m going to stop the strip. I basically have to see where I am when I get there, because there’s definitely more stories I could be telling. But at this point there’s so many things that are unanswered, I almost want to answer everything, wrap everything up exactly the way I want to, and then see from that point where it will continue. And if it will continue. But as I’ve also said, at the rate I’m going, it’ll probably take ten more years for me to get there. So it’s not going away anytime soon. Me: Something about Sluggy Freelance seems to be very polarizing in some ways. It seems a lot of people either love serious stuff and hate the broad parodies, or vice versa—so no matter what kind of story arc you’re doing, some significant fraction of your fandom is annoyed at any given time. Why do you think that is? Does it ever influence your decisions in writing scripts? Pete: Well, I can answer the second part of that easier. No, it doesn’t influence me at all. I have a good gut instinct for what I want to do and how I want to do things. And I’ve been doing that for ten years, and there’s never been any time I could point to where fan influences caused me to adjust them. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:15:00 +0100 895518 http://www.corrections.com/news/article/25312 (Source: Library Link of the Day) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0100 895495 http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2010/12/wayback-wednesday-digitization-101-2010.html As I do at the end of each year, I want to spent time looking back at the last 12 months with a few lists and more.I see four trends as I scan the horizon:Digitization is no longer an exceptional activity. While digitization is not a normal activity still for many organizations, it is much more mainstream that is was several years ago.  Look around...can you find a workshop on digitization or on scanning?  Yes, they still exist, but they are definitely not as prevalent as they were before.  Those that haven't jumped on the "digitization train" yet are finding themselves left behind.  (I should note that universities are offering courses on digitization, digital libraries, etc., which go into more depth and which are attracting a high number of students. These courses prepare the students for the growing number of digital library positions that are being advertised.) In the same vein, one thing to notice is that digitization is no longer in the news as it has been. It is no longer that shiny object that captures the media's attention.  For a while, Google Book Search kept digitization in the news, but even that story is no longer capturing headlines as the sides work toward an agreement. Digital preservation is where most of the action is in terms of conversations, conference sessions, research, etc.  This is true because we are a digital society and if we cannot ensure long term access to our digital content, we're doomed.  Losing digital content could mean losing the data and information that we need to run our governments, businesses, academic institutions, etc.  It could also mean losing our history.If you are not thinking about how to ensure long-term access to your digital content, please begin thinking about it now. You might even make it a New Year's resolution. (Yes, do jump on the digital preservation bandwagon. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895638 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Digitization101/~3/ZBLCRLdWjMs/wayback-wednesday-digitization-101-2010.html As I do at the end of each year, I want to spent time looking back at the last 12 months with a few lists and more.I see four trends as I scan the horizon:Digitization is no longer an exceptional activity. While digitization is not a normal activity still for many organizations, it is much more mainstream that is was several years ago.  Look around...can you find a workshop on digitization or on scanning?  Yes, they still exist, but they are definitely not as prevalent as they were before.  Those that haven't jumped on the "digitization train" yet are finding themselves left behind.  (I should note that universities are offering courses on digitization, digital libraries, etc., which go into more depth and which are attracting a high number of students. These courses prepare the students for the growing number of digital library positions that are being advertised.) In the same vein, one thing to notice is that digitization is no longer in the news as it has been. It is no longer that shiny object that captures the media's attention.  For a while, Google Book Search kept digitization in the news, but even that story is no longer capturing headlines as the sides work toward an agreement. Digital preservation is where most of the action is in terms of conversations, conference sessions, research, etc.  This is true because we are a digital society and if we cannot ensure long term access to our digital content, we're doomed.  Losing digital content could mean losing the data and information that we need to run our governments, businesses, academic institutions, etc.  It could also mean losing our history.If you are not thinking about how to ensure long-term access to your digital content, please begin thinking about it now. You might even make it a New Year's resolution. (Yes, do jump on the digital preservation bandwagon. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895589 http://cubgovpubs.blogspot.com/2010/12/gpo-announces-google-partnership-to.html The Government Printing Office announced on December 14 of this year a new partnership it has entered into with Google Books to sell -- "for the first time" -- "e-book format" versions of some of its more popular titles. According to the Press Release, the titles will appear in the Google ebookstore, "which can be searched, purchased and read on any connected device with a capable browser."Keeping America Informed. O RLY?Publications mentioned specifically in the Press Release include the following, with their current price at the Google ebookstore noted and linked in parenthesis:The Budget of the United States, Fiscal Year 2011 ($9.99)Remembering the Space Age ($7.99)Borden's Dream: The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC ($7.99)And this is the strange part: If you clicked on the links for these titles above you will quickly realise that there are freely and legally accessible electronic copies of these materials already available -- all of which are also able to be "read on any connected device with a capable browser." Which means that the GPO partnership with Google sells information that can be found freely online from GPO and other government sources, and in nearly identical formats.The Google ebookstore does not specify the file formats offered for these for-sale books, though the Press Release's qualifier implies strongly that these are PDF files locked into the Google ebookstore interface, or as Google likes to call it, "the digital cloud." Which means that if you download the freely available copies of these publications, you will actually have greater options for access (i.e., offline access, unattached to any specific account, and infinitely transferable) than you will if you purchase them. In other words, this partnership makes no sense at all. ... Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895566 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/deal-of-the-day-for-the-kindle-real-cheap-kindle-books/ Picked this up from a tweet by Stephen Windwalker. Amazon has a new page for daily cheap Kindle books. I just checked it out and all of the books listed are $2.99. I bought A Spy’s Diary of World War II: Inside the OSS with an American Agent in Europe, by Wayne Nelson. Amazon lists its “Digital List Price” as $24.99 and the print list price as $35.00. I guess I’ll have to bookmark this page. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:58:37 +0100 895403 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/smashwords-2011-predictions-for-book-publishing/ It’s annual prognostication time when folks like me stick out their necks and try to predict the future. I invite you to join in the fun. Brush up your crystal ball and share your publishing predictions for 2011 in the comments field below. Earlier today, Jeff Rivera over at MediaBistro interviewed me for my ten book publishing predictions for 2011. I’ll list five below, and then I encourage you to click over to Mediabistro for the full ten in his interview, Publishing Predictions for 2011 from Smashwords. If 2010 was the year ebooks went mainstream in the U.S., 2011 will be the year indie ebook authors go mainstream. We’ve already seen this start to happen with some tremendous indie ebook author breakouts in 2010. I wrote about Smashwords author Brian S. Pratt a few weeks ago. So here are five predictions for 2011: 1. Ebook sales rise, unit consumption surprises – Ebooks sales will approach 20% of trade book revenues on a monthly basis by the end of 2011 in the US, yet the bigger surprise is that ebooks will account for one third or more of unit consumption. Why? Ebooks cost less and early ebook adopters read more. 2. Agents write the next chapter of the ebook revolution – Agents, serving the economic best interests of the best-selling authors, will bring new credibility to self publishing by encouraging authors to proactively bypass publishers and work directly with ebook distribution platforms. Agents will use these publishing platforms for negotiating leverage against large publishers. The conversation will go something like this: “You’re offering my author only 15-20% list on ebooks when I can get them 60-70% list working direct with an ebook distributor likeSmashwords or a retailer like Amazon?” 3. More big authors reluctant to part with digital rights – Indie ebook publishing offers compelling advantages to the author. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:38:01 +0100 895404 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/62957 1. "Barnes & Noble fails to end Nook lawsuit" (by Jonathan Stempel, Reuters) 2. "Kobo Gains Instapaper Support" (by Chris Hall 148 Apps) 3. "KOBO Breaks E-Book Records This Holiday Season" 4. "Helpful advice for new Kindle owners" (by Chris Walters, TeleRead) 5. "iFlow ebook reader for iPad launches " [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:00:00 +0100 895438 http://www.teleread.com/library/why-i-am-a-library-traitor-and-love-the-kindle-by-sarah-houghton-jan/ Bless me, O Biblioblogosphere, for I have sinned. I have betrayed the trust of my librarian people by *gasp* loving my Kindle like I am told I would love a child if I had any interest in being a parent, which I don’t.  But I do have an interest in reading digital content on a sleek, affordable, and easy-to-use device.  Thus the Kindle. In true geek fashion I recorded my Kindle unboxing (complete with Space Invader wall clings in the background). Let me tell you why I love my Kindle so.  But before I gush like a schoolgirl in love with Edward Cullen, let me tell you that I feel guilty for loving it.  I boycott the Kindle as a librarian but love it as a consumer. Stellar User Interface Design: The Kindle has a gorgeous form factor.  It’s easy to hold in your hands — light, smooth, and perfectly sized for my hands anyway.  The user interface is easy and intuitive, end of story. Smooth Content Delivery: The simplicity and speed of getting content is amazing.  I’ve been using the Kindle app on my Android phone for months now, and it literally takes you 5 seconds to buy and start reading a book from the Kindle Store. How long does it take to start reading a library eBook from the point you decide to download it? On the Kindle itself it’s just as easy. Cross-Device Content Delivery: Amazon was brilliant in being the distributor for the device, the content itself, and the interface/software used to access the content. But they were doubly brilliant in offering the content & interface on other devices through Kindle Reading apps, so you can use your desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad, Android phone, etc. to access the Kindle universe of eBooks.  The Kindle device itself is secondary…they really covered their bases. Seamless Syncing: Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs up your library and where you left off in your books without you having to do anything. Not having to think is good, yeah?  Steve Krugwould be proud. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:22:46 +0100 895405 http://www.teleread.com/library/videos-and-other-material-from-why-books-conference-available/ The “Why Books?”Conference took place on October 28-29, 2010 at the Radcliffe Institute  for Advanced Study, Harvard University. “Why Books?” probes the form and function of the book in a rapidly changing media ecology. Speakers from a variety of disciplines—literature and history to sociology and computer science—will discuss the public-policy implications of new media forms and will explore some of the major functions that we identify with books today: production and diffusion; storage and retrieval; and reception and use. New: Videos of Opening “Conversation” and Three Panels Session Summaries and Site Visit Summaries Welcome, Intro and Opening Conversation: “Future Formats of Texts: E–books and Old Books” Session I: “Storage and Retrieval” Session II: “Circulation and Transmission” Session III: ”Reception and Use” Conference Speakers A selection of post-conference press coverage can be found on the conference homepage. Hat Tips: Peter Suber and Matthew Kirschenbaum Via Resource Shelf (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:21:32 +0100 895406 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/reeder-adds-readability-article-scooping-support-fails-to-stir-up-controversy/ I just got around to doing a software update on my iPad. Among others it fetched a new update to the Reeder RSS reader, containing a remarkably useful feature that I am extremely glad to have. Although I mentioned the Reeder vs. MobileRSS controversy last week at the time the update actually came out, the nature of the update escaped my notice until now. Reeder has added a Readability button to its user interface. When I encounter a RSS feed that does not provide the whole article (some feeds are especially obnoxious that way—most notably The Bookseller’s, which only provides the first seven words of the article), I just hit the button and it uses Arc90’s Readability to fetch and render it into an easily-readable text version within Reeder’s normal interface, indistinguishable from a full-feed RSS post. Which means I no longer have to bother visiting the site, waiting for it to render, and squinting at the page trying to read it. (Or just starring the article and going back to read it later on my computer.) Of course, this doesn’t help with feeds such as Techmeme or Google News that contain links to other articles rather than the text of the articles themselves, but for reading feeds like The Bookseller or Ars Technica, I’ll take it gladly. Of course, I doubt that Ars Technica is any more pleased with this innovation than it was with the similar Safari Reader (which also used Readability code). Ars’s Editor in Chief Ken Fisher was upset enough with the Safari Reader function only giving ad impressions from one page, but Reeder users now don’t have to see any ad impressions at all from the site. (Also, full text RSS feeds of Ars Technica are only available to those who pay money to subscribe—which Reeder now essentially bypasses. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:15:00 +0100 895407 http://www.teleread.com/library/the-masses-help-scholars-transcribe-manuscripts/ From a NY Times Article by Patricia Cohen: The painstakingly slow job of transcribing often hard-to-decipher handwritten documents from history’s lead players — not to mention a lack of funds — has meant that most originals are seen by a just a handful of scholars and kept out of the public’s reach altogether. After more than five decades, only slightly more than half of James Madison’s papers have been transcribed and published, while work on Thomas Jefferson’s papers, begun in 1943, probably won’t be finished until around 2025. Now the scholars behind the Bentham Project think they may have come up with a better way: crowd-sourcing. Starting this fall, the editors have leveraged if not the wisdom of the crowd, then at least its fingers, inviting anyone — yes, that means you — to help transcribe some of the 40,000 unpublished manuscripts from University College’s collection that have been scanned and put online. In the roughly four months since this Wikipedia-style experiment began, 350 registered users have edited 435 transcripts. [Clip] “It’s fairly astonishing,” Sharon Leon, a historian at George Mason University, said of crowd-sourcing’s potential. Ms. Leon recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to design a free digital tool — a plug-in — that any archive or library could use to open transcription to the public. Ms. Leon and her collaborators are working with 55,000 unpublished documents from the United States’ early War Department that have been collected, copied and reconstructed in the last dozen year. See Also: Sharon Leon’s Homepage See Also: Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) See Also:  OldWeather.org and a List of Ships Two Crowdsourced Transcription Projects From the UK Via Resource Shelf (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:49:54 +0100 895408 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/take-a-look-at-feedbooks-for-free-and-purchased-ebooks/ Feedbooks is a great resource and now The Gadgeteer has an excellent article on how to make the best of it. So I had this series all laid out in my mind. Start with borrowing current books, then into free books, and finally into sources for paid books. Thing is, Feedbooks has mucked it up by adding a store for selling e-books. I have been a big Feedbooks fan for years. They are a great source of public domain books formatted for your device. Once I found them, I stopped rolling my own from project Gutenberg. The site has continued to improve over the years, and now sells ADE DRM books. So let’s take a look at this source for e-books. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:24:53 +0100 895409 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/quora-the-future-of-blogging-or-something-else/ Robert Scoble has a post on his blog talking about answer-finding service Quora, and why he feels it is significant. He points to a tweet from venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar who believes that it is “the future of blogging.” Blogs may not be e-books, but they are on-line content and certainly that’s a form of TeleReading. I had never heard of Quora before today and was curious, so I went over to check it out. What I found was an answer-finding service, where you post your question and other users will answer it. I wasn’t sure how this was different from Mahalo and Vark, answer-finding services I had used already, So I searched Quora and found some answers people had already given. The problem with Mahalo is that its answers tend to be low quality, and it tends to attract random people who are interested in making money rather than experts. Vark (acquired by Google) uses social networks but isn’t actually social: each person answers individually, without being able to see answers from any of the other people (and possibly be reminded of or catch something that they missed). And though you can share answers or discussion threads, you can’t browse answers others have already given. But I still couldn’t see what this has to do with blogging. After all, a blog is when you periodically write about a topic of interest to you or others, whereas question services are more about getting or giving answers. Blogging—at least the sort of blogging I do—tends to be more structured. What was Scoble on about? So I went back to his post and read it through again, considering. Scoble’s point seems to be that Quora combines the best features of answer services with the best features of social networking, blogging, and wikis—and that it’s a lot of fun. Anyway, I find that there’s something addictive about participating over there instead of here on my blog. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:15:00 +0100 895410 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/5-e-book-trends-that-will-change-the-future-of-publishing/ Philip Ruppel, the president of McGraw-Hill Professional, has an article with the above name in Mashable today. His 5 trends are: 1. Enhanced ebooks are coming and will only get better; 2. The device war is nearly over; 3. The $9.99 ebook won’t last forever Amazon popularized the $9.99 price point for best-seller trade titles, driving the widespread consumer adoption of the Kindle and consumption of e-books. This has caused confusion among many consumers who simply think every e-book should be $9.99 or less. But the majority of titles offered on Amazon are priced above $9.99, especially those with unique interactive features. For professional and technical publishers like McGraw-Hill, our e-books cannot stand the low, mass market pricing some consumers think should be applied to every e-book. Our costs are invested in extensive product and editorial development of sophisticated and technical content; the cost of paper, printing, and binding are a fraction of the real expense. And for some very specific and technical subject areas, our markets are much smaller. We simply couldn’t afford to publish the work if it must be priced at the everyday low, low price of $9.99. The real opportunity for publishers will be to develop e-books that offer the kind of interactive features mentioned above. Our customers will demand interactive books that provide a much better, more informed and enriching experience. For them, the experience (not the cost) is often the primary driver. 4. The contextual upsell will be a business model to watch 5. Publishers will be more important than ever. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:14:54 +0100 895411 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/e-book-review-the-multiverse-series-by-david-weber-and-linda-evans/ I recently had the opportunity to pick up a pair of David Weber books I had not yet read. (Well, “pick up” in a figurative sense, as I read them as free e-books from the Mission of Honor CD on The Fifth Imperium Baen CD repository.) I found them to be quite exciting page turners, with only a few minor drawbacks. The books in question make up the “Multiverse” series: Hell’s Gate and Hell Hath No Fury. As with all Baen titles, they are available in multiple, DRM-free formats. The books are actually co-written between Weber and Linda Evans, who seems to be Baen’s designated co-author—apart from two singleton books, neither of which apparently sold well enough to merit a sequel (most frustrating in the case of one of them, The Far Edge of Darkness, which ended on a literal cliffhanger!), she has only co-written books with the late Robert Asprin, John Ringo, and now David Weber. The Setting The “Multiverse” books tell the story of the first encounter between two different human civilizations, both of which have been exploring chains of alternate universes connected via portals that have been forming from one earth to another. Most of these universes are bereft of any human presence, which makes them ideal for settling and exploiting natural resources (which are always in the same place from world to world, even though the portals open into different areas of each world—there will always be oil fields under the local equivalents of Texas or the Middle East, for example, but not every world has a portal open near there). ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:15:00 +0100 895412 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/for-new-and-old-kindlers-wanting-to-do-more-with-their-kindles/ CREATIVE USES OF THE KINDLE Well, pleasurable reading is good enough for most, but there is a lot more that can be done with the Kindle, as shown in the short list just below. (I recommend bookmarking this for quick access later.) 1. an old, continuing favorite forum thread about the more unique uses of the Kindle’s capabilitiesthought up by members of the Amazon Kindle Community, and I saw another idea added today. 2. a newer forum thread of favorite tips for new Kindle owners from Kindle oldtimers. NOTE: If your web browser (especially Firefox) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you to the forum thread, click onRefresh or Reload to get the message thread itself — or click on the link again.  I don’t know why a ‘retry’ is often needed, but it is. 3. The Kindle Chronicles This is a very informative, fun resource for Kindlers at http://thekindlechronicles.com, a weekly podcast hosted by Len Edgerly who, each Friday night, brings us a roundup of the latest news (with links), excellent tech tips, an interview with someone from the Kindle world at large and some from just outside it who are of course in the Kindle net then  Len also presents video reviews as well.  At the site are summaries of what is included in the latest podcast report.  Links are given there for items mentioned in the podcast. 4. the new Kindle book by Stephen Windwalker, who has been explaining what can be done on Kindles since the Kindle 1, and this just-released book that includes info for the Latest Generation Kindles is only $0.99, which is more than a bargain. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:45:17 +0100 895349 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/the-conundrum-of-the-user-unfriendly-appliance-interface/ At TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis posts an interesting meditation on how tricky most household appliance interfaces have become. Coffee makers, microwave ovens, even pepper grinders have become much more complex than they used to be—sometimes hilariously so: Many people received iPads and iPhones this Christmas, and because of Apple’s legendary intuitive and straightforward design, could pull them right out of the box and commence using. Not the case with a battery powered pepper grinder one of my relatives received at our gift exchange. It took three people to put together and when we did get it to work, we hilariously realized that it had a flashlight at the bottom, for no reason. Novel? yes. Productive? No. But far more often frustratingly so. She uses the examples of a coffee maker that she couldn’t figure out how to put the water in, and how much more complicated microwaves are than they used to be. Microwaves of old had approximately one control: a knob that controlled how long the device nuked the food for. (We still have some of those in the cafeteria/lounge at my work.) And to this I would add some of my own experiences doing tech support for ordinary, average people who call in with questions about their computers. Even the interfaces that designers think are simple and easy to understand are going to give somebody trouble. (The other day, I had to explain to someone how to open a Gmail message. Really.) And sometimes a lot of somebodies. Some of the biggest offenders are printers (how I shudder when the opening words of any call are, “I just got this printer, and…”) and wi-fi routers, but laptops are problematic, too—and one of the biggest problems is figuring out how to turn wifi on, something that should be dead simple but is not because no computer manufacturer ever makes the switch easy to find. (Easy to bump by accident, on the other hand, is another matter. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:15:00 +0100 895350 http://www.slis.indiana.edu/careers/view_job_specific.php?job_id=8998 State: Indiana Participate in all aspects of non-MARC descriptive metadata for digital projects within Cataloging Division: project development and planning, implementation, document preparation, training, creation of metadata using standard schemas; serve as non-MARC metadata resource person for Technical Services; provide full-level cataloging for monographs and CD-ROMs, including e-books, in English and West European languages, creating original cataloging records and enhancing cataloging copy. For complete list of responsibilities see: http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=1410. Qualifications: Required: M.L.S. from an ALA-accredited library school; minimum of one year relevant non-MARC metadata experience in an academic or research library system; minimum of one year original monograph cataloging experience in an academic or research library system; evidence of effective planning, implementation, document writing, and training of non-MARC metadata for digital projects; demonstrated working knowledge of cataloging rules, standards, and tools such as AACR2rev, LCRI, DACS, LC classification, and subject headings; demonstrated working knowledge of MARC (books format) and at least one other standard metadata scheme (e.g. TEI, MODS, Dublin Core, EAD). For complete list of qualification see: http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=1410. To apply: Review of applications begins February 1, 2011. Position remains open until filled. Send letter of application, professional vita, names/addresses/telephone numbers of six references to: Jennifer Chaffin, Director of Human Resources, Libraries Human Resources, Herman B Wells Library 201B, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. Phone: 812-855-8196. Fax: 812-855-2576. E-mail: libpers@indiana.edu. For more information about Indiana University Bloomington go to: http://www.iub.edu. Indiana University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:10:02 +0100 895332 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/wUD9ApnvecM/4468 This Christmas I got a Nook Color from my hubby and mother. I’ve been using it for a few days and I think it’s time to share my opinions. First things first, if you have an ebook reader you must download Calibre. Calibre is an open source ebook management application that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (a flavor for everyone). It’s a great way to convert files from one format to another, to manage all of your books and to download news from the web to your reader. I have started with a bunch of free and public domain materials (nothing purchased yet). I chose the Nook over other alternatives because it could open so many formats of ebook and it runs on the Android operating system so that gives me some options for openness should I decide to root the device (a practice that has recently been declared legal). However I have found some downsides to the supposed openness of the Nook. While I can read materials purchased or downloaded from other sites, these materials are treated like second class citizens on the Nook. What do I mean? Well my EPubs and PDFs can’t be mounted on the home screen. I can only access these materials by browsing my shelves or files. I also can’t use the built in social networking functionality on materials that are not from Barnes & Noble. Basically I can read these materials, but they’re harder to get to and not as functional. I’m reading The Art of Community right now and have just figured out how to highlight passages (a big plus). I can also access all of my highlights and notes in one menu. Now for the minus – I can’t find a way to download or share these quotes. If this were a Barnes and Noble publication I could share the quotes one by one with the ‘share’ function, but because this is a PDF (converted to Epub in Calibre) I can just highlight and that’s the end of it. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:21:38 +0100 895489 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/interview-pete-abrams-sluggy-freelance-cartoonist-part-two-of-three/ In this second portion of the interview, I asked about the ways Pete earns money from the comic, including Amazon and other referrals and his premium subscriber program, “Defenders of the Nifty.” I also asked about his feelings about or experience with e-books. Previously: Part One Me: How did you decide to start the Defenders of the Nifty program? Pete: There again, that’s been going on so long I can’t remember exactly how it started. I guess it just came from the idea of, instead of just offering donations, kind of giving a little bit back to people who donate because, with the way I do business, it’s very hard to have merchandise bring in that much money because, well, for one thing, I’ve been ages behind on books; I’m trying to fix that. And the shirt design, maybe it sells, maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t sell then I have two good designs to make up for the one that didn’t work out so well. It’s kind of tricky in that way. But with the Defenders of the Nifty membership, all the money goes straight to cover my expenses and pay me for the comic. The money doesn’t go to pay for the shirt materials, the merchandise, to put the stuff in the box and ship it—it all goes directly to the strip. So in that sense, it’s the single best way to support the strip and it’s been the biggest support. I think it’s like anything else in Sluggy, it just happened kind of organically. Just a concept that went through and worked really well. Me: So does Defenders account for most of your revenue now? Pete: Currently it’s most of my revenue. Of course, as I said I’m about seven years behind on books. Once I get some of those books out, maybe that would come into the running. Advertising has never really been a significant chunk of the money. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:15:00 +0100 895351 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/local-phone-books-in-cdrom-format-could-prove-handy-save-trees/ While I was out and about last night, I happened to notice a CDROM stand on the counter of a local print and copy shop. It was a free CD version of “Names & Numbers”, one of the local telephone directories. Curious, I picked it up and took it home to give it a run-through. Though I have only taken a cursory glance over it, I am actually fairly impressed. Though the device has a Windows autorun and installer built in, it can also be run off the CD without needing to be installed. At heart it seems to be implemented in simple HTML, meaning that it should be compatible with anything that has a CDROM drive and a web browser. Even the directory pages themselves are in HTML—not some encapsulated, DRMed format that can only be read or searched with an executable. (A far cry from some early PC phone book apps I played with back in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s.) They’re formatted to impersonate the look of a white pages or yellow pages page, but at heart they’re unencrypted plain vanilla HTML; viewing source reveals the names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone right there in plain text (albeit with a lot of HTML style stuff surrounding that text). The white pages and textual entries in the yellow pages could quite readily be data mined if someone wrote the right programs There is also a search box that lets you search the directory—it takes longer if you’re browsing on CD than if you install it on the hard drive, of course. It seems to work pretty well. In fact, it works better than the search function on Names & Numbers’s website, which couldn’t find my uncle’s number when I punched his name in at all whereas the one on the CD pulled it right up. I have a number of ordinary tree-killing paper phone books in my apartment—I can’t seem to avoid getting them; they get left on my doorstep every so often whether I want them or not.  And I’m not entirely averse to having them. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0100 895352 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/netbib/DFxV/~3/mPyk-acVndg/ Die ekz baut ihre digitalen Dienstleistungen für Bibliotheken aus, möchte man bei der Lektüre der Pressemitteilung meinen, welcher dieser Passus entnommen ist: Die ekz.bibliotheksservice GmbH erweitert ihr Portfolio im Bereich der digitalen Medien und erwirbt über ihre Tochterfirma “4Readers GmbH & Co. KG” die Soforthoeren-, Sofortsehen- und Sofortlesenportale der Firma Diderot Media KG im schwäbischen Rottenburg/Neckar zu Beginn des Jahres 2011. Ziel der Akquisition ist die Erweiterung des ekz-Know-hows für Bibliotheken im Bereich digitaler und mobiler Technologien. Bei der Lektüre des Interviews von buchreport.de mit dem ekz-Geschäftsführer jedoch klingt das ganz anders! Hier scheint es so, als ob die ekz mit dieser Erwerbung ins Endkundengeschäft einsteigen und Synergieeffekte vom bisherigen Bibliotheksgeschäft erzielen möchte. Vom bisherigen “business to business”-Dienstleister (B2B) zum Endkundenlieferanten (B2C)? Wer weiß? Das Interview endet ja gewiß ganz tröstlich für die Bibliotheken, wer weiß aber, ob sie nicht ebenso verschwinden werden wie Videotheken? Der Aufmacher eines Wirtschaftswoche-Artikels, der Videotheken behandelt, könnte da kritisch stimmen … (Source: netbib weblog) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:03:54 +0100 895546 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/mPyk-acVndg/ Die ekz baut ihre digitalen Dienstleistungen für Bibliotheken aus, möchte man bei der Lektüre der Pressemitteilung meinen, welcher dieser Passus entnommen ist: Die ekz.bibliotheksservice GmbH erweitert ihr Portfolio im Bereich der digitalen Medien und erwirbt über ihre Tochterfirma “4Readers GmbH & Co. KG” die Soforthoeren-, Sofortsehen- und Sofortlesenportale der Firma Diderot Media KG im schwäbischen Rottenburg/Neckar zu Beginn des Jahres 2011. Ziel der Akquisition ist die Erweiterung des ekz-Know-hows für Bibliotheken im Bereich digitaler und mobiler Technologien. Bei der Lektüre des Interviews von buchreport.de mit dem ekz-Geschäftsführer jedoch klingt das ganz anders! Hier scheint es so, als ob die ekz mit dieser Erwerbung ins Endkundengeschäft einsteigen und Synergieeffekte vom bisherigen Bibliotheksgeschäft erzielen möchte. Vom bisherigen “business to business”-Dienstleister (B2B) zum Endkundenlieferanten (B2C)? Wer weiß? Das Interview endet ja gewiß ganz tröstlich für die Bibliotheken, wer weiß aber, ob sie nicht ebenso verschwinden werden wie Videotheken? Der Aufmacher eines Wirtschaftswoche-Artikels, der Videotheken behandelt, könnte da kritisch stimmen … (Source: netbib weblog) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:03:54 +0100 895330 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/boy-saves-allowance-for-whole-year-helps-buy-brother-kindle-for-christmas/ From Reddit comes the heartwarming story of a 27-year-old man whose 13-year-old brother saved his allowance all year to chip in (with other members of the family) toward buying him a Kindle for Christmas. The 13-year-old is the only child of the family who still lives with his parents, and since his father suffered congestive heart failure and has to remain bedridden most of the time, the boy has to do most of the work around the house. The family has gone through financial hard time since then, due to medical bills. Money has obviously been tight, so my youngest brother often doesn’t get an allowance at all. He gets a few dollars every so often from my mom and he had managed to save about $30 in a year. My sister told me she got it in her head to buy me a Kindle for Christmas and my mom and 19 year old brother pitched in as well but they were still short. My youngest brother offered his entire savings to chip in so they could afford it. The post on Reddit has earned 60 comments, many heartwarming in their own right, and hundreds of views so far. I hope that Redditor does something extra-nice for his brother next year. (Found via eBookNewser.) (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 03:36:41 +0100 895353 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/boston-herald-reviews-nook-color/ The Boston Herald reviews the new Nook Color, not passing up the opportunity to make a pun with the headline saying that the device’s “intentions are hard to read”. As might be expected, the reviewer finds that loading the device with books is easy, but: The actual reading on the other hand, started off well, but the experience deteriorated over time along with my eyes. The Nook has a 7-inch, back-lit LCD rather than an easier-on-the-eyes e-ink screen. The screen is coated to reduce glare, and it displays sharp-looking text. But at the end of the day, it’s still a computer monitor. About a half-hour was enough for me. He calls the quality of digital newspapers on the device “awful”, saying that given the poor formatting and the cost he would rather have a PDF version of a printed paper. Magazines looked better, however, and Internet browsing worked great, albeit with some intrusive “quirks”. In the end, he found that $250 price was a bit steep for a device that wasn’t sure if it was a tablet or an e-reader (or could perhaps be better at both). (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:08:22 +0100 895354 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/j-a-konrath-tells-bedtime-story-of-his-self-publishing-success/ Joe Konrath has posted again about his successes with self-publishing through Amazon. (We’ve covered a number of such posts from him already.) This time he couches it in the form of a “bedtime story,” which is a bit cutesy but it gets the point across. Soon, Joe was making over $1000 a month on Kindle. Joe was shocked by this. He thought the only way to make a living as a writer was with the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper offered advances. The Gatekeeper did the editing and the cover art. And most importantly, the Gatekeeper controlled distribution. There was no way to reach readers without the Gatekeeper. But ebooks didn’t need to be distributed in the same way print books were. So the Gatekeeper wasn’t needed. It’s great that Konrath is having so much success with his Amazon self-publishing. My only problem with these blog posts is that they’re all starting to say the same things over and over again, as if he just has to keep repeating himself in different phrasing to refresh the story for the search engines every so often. But then, I suppose this sort of self-publicity is what earned him $22,000 in December, so it’s not as if I can blame him for continuing to spread it on. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:55:53 +0100 895259 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ebooks-at-year-end-2010/ From a NY Times Article (by Julie Bosman via Austin American-Statesman) E-books now make up 9 to 10 percent of trade-book sales, a rate that grew hugely this year after accounting for less than half that percentage by the end of last year. Publishers are predicting that digital sales will be 50 percent higher or even double in 2011 what they were in 2010. January could be the biggest month ever for e-book sales, as possibly hundreds of thousands of people download books on the e-readers that they receive as Christmas gifts. [Clip] But publishers have not yet figured out how to market e-books more effectively. Debut fiction and so-called midlist titles — books that are not large commercial successes — are particularly tough sells in digital form, said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company. “You can have all the availability in the world, but if people don’t know the book exists, it doesn’t matter,” Hildick-Smith said. [Clip] “My No. 1 concern is the survival of the physical bookstore,” said Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need that physical environment because it’s still the place of discovery. People need to see books that they didn’t know they wanted.” Read the Complete Article Via Resource Shelf (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:44:28 +0100 895260 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/helpful-advice-for-new-kindle-owners/ Here are some handy tips from actual Kindle owners to newcomers who just got one in the past few days. I cribbed most of these from this Amazon Discussion Forum thread, and although I’ve edited it down to the ones I personally vouch for, the whole thread is worth a look if you’re just getting started. Shopping Don’t feel compelled to grab every free book offer just because it’s free. At the same time, don’t hesitate on free offers that interest you, because a lot of deals are time-sensitive. Pressing Alt+Home will take you straight to the Kindle store on your device. Take advantage of samples to help curb your impulse buys. Use eReaderIQ.com to keep an eye on expensive Kindle titles, so you can be alerted if the price drops. If you share your Kindle account with others, or if you like to maintain a gift card balance just for books, consider setting up a second account on Amazon that’s reserved solely for the Kindle. The Device Learn which Kindle model you own, so you can troubleshoot it or look for accessories for it without confusion.Here’s a chart to help you out. If you only occasionally deal with damp places when reading your Kindle, try a Ziploc-style plastic bag that seals. However, don’t rely on it for higher-risk areas like pools or boats–invest in a waterproof case or bag. Instead of turning it off, put your Kindle in sleep mode when you’re not reading it, by sliding and releasing the power button. Only turn off your Kindle completely (by holding the power switch for 5-7 seconds) if you’re not going to use it for a week or more. To save battery life, turn off the wireless function if you don’t need it. You can turn this on/off under the main menu. Download Calibre and use it on your PC the way you would use iTunes–that is, to organize all of your ebooks. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:36:34 +0100 895261 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/adobe-support-the-weak-point-in-adobe-digital-editions/ According to Martin Hoscik, in an article in eBook Magazine, he has had an awful time with tech support for Adobe Digital Editions. This is the DRM that most ebook publishers are using today. As part of the Adobe regime you have to register your ereader with them and you are allowed up to register up to 6 devices. Well, according to the Adobe FAQ if you already have 6 devices registered you can contact Adobe customer service and increase this amount. Except, of course, when you try to do so you are told, as Martin was, that, after 4 days of emails, that this isn’t the case, despite what the FAQ says. Here’s the second one: he registered the new iFlow reader app for the iPad and then decided he didn’t want it. When he tried to de-authorize it from his account he was told that iFlow is not compatible with ADE and so it couldn’t be de-authorized! Of course, Adobe specifically lists iFlow as an authorized app (picture above). Way to go Adobe!! His concluding statement: I can see that Adobe’s main customer base – those who buy their industry level design and web development software – are computer literate power users. However, ADE users will inevitably be drawn from a much wider range of abilities and knowledge. Baffling, contradictory responses such as those I’ve received will only act as a barrier to ebook take up. Adobe are now the main gatekeeper of the ebook world, as such they owe it to retailers, publishers, authors and readers to ensure that when help is needed it’s provided accurately and in a way which even the least technical of users can understand. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:37:59 +0100 895262 http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/62932 From a NY Times Article (by Julie Bosman via Austin American-Statesman) E-books now make up 9 to 10 percent of trade-book sales, a rate that grew hugely this year after accounting for less than half that percentage by the end of last year. Publishers are predicting that digital sales will be [...] (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:36:00 +0100 895277 http://www.hsdl.org/hslog/?q=node/5901 Throughout the year, we at HSDL have brought you new and interesting reports and papers that explore the current Homeland Security debate. At the end of every year we like to step outside of the 'digital world' to give our readers some suggestions from the 'printed world'. However, with the rise in popularity of 'ebooks' many of the selected titles may be available in electronic format. The following is a list of selected titles that cover a range of current Homeland Security issues. Our special thanks to Greta Marlatt, a librarian on our staff, for compiling this list. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State by Garry Wills Pub Date: January 2010 Publisher: Penguin Pr ISBN-13: 9781594202407 http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Bomb-Power-The-Modern-Presidency-and-the-Nati... Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward Pub Date: September 2010 Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN-13: 9781439172490 http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Obama%27s-Wars-ISBN-9781439172490?isrc=-rd read more (Source: HSDL Weblog - On the HomeFront) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:23:22 +0100 895219 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/kobo-shows-record-growth-over-christmas-holidays/ From the press release: Kobo, the only pure-play global eReading service built on an open platform, today revealed its Holiday 2010 momentum. This Christmas, readers around the world received new eReaders and iPads and other eReading devices under their tree. Over a million people connected to Kobo, and hundreds of thousands of devices were activated each day since Christmas Eve, fuelling the highest eBook download rate in the company’s history. People around the world chose Kobo this Christmas, with the popular easy-to-use Kobo Wireless eReader, dozens of compatible eReaders, top-rated applications for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and one of the largest catalogues in the world with over 2.2 million eBooks, newspapers and magazines. “Earlier this month we predicted that Christmas would be a record breaker for Kobo, and we have exceeded our expectations driving several ebook downloads per second since Christmas Eve, or an equivalent number hardcover books stacked as high as 50 Empire State Buildings ” said Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo. “I would like to thank our customers for choosing Kobo to start building their digital library this Christmas. Our success this holiday season is a pre-cursor to a New Year with people reading more than ever thanks to eBooks and Kobo. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:14:46 +0100 895263 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/first-google-books-sales-numbers-are-in-for-mynseys/ Here’s a great article about the workings of Google Books from Munsey’s point of view. I recommend you go over and read the whole thing. It’s really the first thing I’ve seen about Google Books from a publisher’s perspective. A snippet: Hokay, Google’s bookstore, launched Dec. 8th or so, is now giving sales stats. Results are promising, at least v. B&N or Kobo, less per title than Apple, but still a good start. Some portions, like the “sold through retailers” thing, aren’t looking as hot, but Google did manage to sell 4 copies via third parties, which is about 4 more than I expected. Here’s why Google, and not B&N/Kobo/Sony/Apple/Agency/whatev, is the biggest ebook story of the year: They take away Amazon’s most powerful weapon against publishers. You can’t bury us in search anymore, Jeff. I’d been putting titles into Google, by pointing their uploader to a directory w/ all the .pdfs I created for LSI/CSpace, and then taking Dusty for a long walk past the swimming pool while it processed. Through this arduous process, I’ve got 699 books live, another 150 pending, and can double that amount in short order, maybe after the uploader better supports .epub format (I’ve got a thousand such titles that I’d already prepared for Kobo… whenever the uploader supports .epub. Google does say that’ll happen soon, though it has been a while.) The reason for going Google isn’t that I was so flush from ad revenue from Google Book Search; it’s that a book in Google’s search engine can, in many circumstances, be found, where it cannot be on Amazon . (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:20:30 +0100 895264 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/new-ereader-app-hits-the-ipad-iflow/ eBook Magazine is reporting on this ereader app. It’s been out for the iPhone for a while, but the iPad version is new: A new ebook app combining a bookstore for new purchases with the ability to import titles purchased from any retailer which supports epub files protected Adobe DRM launched earlier this month for Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. By mimicking the ‘buy anywhere, hear here’ approach of standalone ebook readers such as those from Sony, the free iFlow Reader app follows txtr and Bluefire in ending the segregation of books within vendor-specific apps. iFlow also offers readers to look up words and phrases on Google, Wikipedia, or dictionary.com as well as integration with Facebook allowing the sharing of excerpts and comments via the social networking site The iFlow website is here. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:04:15 +0100 895265 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/the-classics-coming-back-to-life-because-of-ereaders/ According to The Telegraph in an article about ereaders: Coupled with the proliferation of these devices, titles such as Pride and Prejudice and Treasure Island have shot to the top of the ebook charts. The most popular e-books over the Christmas period were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Even Homer’s The Iliad made it into Amazon’s top 20 of free Kindle e-books last week. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:57:14 +0100 895266 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/third-generation-kindle-now-the-bestselling-product-of-all-time-on-amazon-worldwide/ From the press release: Amazon.com today announced that the third-generation Kindle is now the bestselling product in Amazon’s history, eclipsing “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7).” The company also announced that on its peak day, Nov. 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 158 items per second. “We’re grateful to the millions of customers who have made the all-new Kindle the bestselling product in the history of Amazon — surpassing Harry Potter 7,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet. Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions. They report preferring Kindle for reading because it weighs less, eliminates battery anxiety with its month-long battery life, and has the advanced paper-like Pearl e-ink display that reduces eye-strain, doesn’t interfere with sleep patterns at bedtime, and works outside in direct sunlight, an important consideration especially for vacation reading. Kindle’s $139 price point is a key factor — it’s low enough that people don’t have to choose.” … On Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buyo nce, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history. … “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was the most purchased Kindle book on Christmas Day. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was the most gifted Kindle book on Christmas Day. Of Amazon’s top 500 most popular Kindle books, “The Dork Diaries” saw the greatest gain in popularity on Christmas Day. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:29:09 +0100 895267 http://www.lisnews.org/nook_ereader_servers_apparently_go_down_christmas%E2%80%A6again Story at Teleread about BN servers not working on Christmas. As the Teleread story reports the tech news outlets do not have this story but it is all over Twitter. I personally know someone that got a Nook for Christmas and I heard about this from them on Christmas day. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:30:44 +0100 895871 http://lisnews.org/nook_ereader_servers_apparently_go_down_christmas%E2%80%A6again Story at Teleread about BN servers not working on Christmas. As the Teleread story reports the tech news outlets do not have this story but it is all over Twitter. I personally know someone that got a Nook for Christmas and I heard about this from them on Christmas day. (Source: LISNews.org) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:30:44 +0100 895244 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/internet-writing-site-shifti-org-down-seeks-donations-for-new-hd/ Shifti.org, the on-line transformation story writing site I’ve written about and whose sysadmin I have interviewed, is currently down with a hard drive failure. As it is run largely as a personal project of its sysadmin, Daniel Hazelton, he depends on donations to keep the site running, and he had already been running a donation drive to pay the Internet bill. He’s going to need more money to fund a new hard drive, and there is currently a PayPal donation button on the site itself. I realize not many of TeleRead’s readers are necessarily fans or even readers of Shifti, but I figured it was worth a mention here just in case anyone wanted to kick in a few dollars. Until Hazelton can get a new hard drive, none of the stories on Shifti will be accessible to anyone. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:15:00 +0100 895268 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/interview-pete-abrams-sluggy-freelance-cartoonist-part-one-of-three/ It has taken me a while to get around to transcribing this, but better late than never. On May 28th, I sat down with Pete Abrams at the ConQuesT SF convention in Kansas City for an interview about his webcomic, Sluggy Freelance. Sluggy is a rarity in that it is one of relatively few webcomics that provides its artist’s entire living, and it has also been in operation for over 14 years (13 as of the interview). Abrams has been interviewed in a number of places already, and I tried to avoid covering the same territory as the others. Further, I wanted to get into how he was able to earn a living from giving his comic away free on the Internet when so few others have been able to do that. I will be running this interview in three parts, starting today. Me: So, for the first part of this interview: There’s this whole thing going on right now about paywalls in the electronic newspaper industry. Everyone’s complaining about how giving content away for free is killing the newspaper industry and so forth. You’ve made a living giving content away for free for over ten years. When did you first think that it might be possible for you to do Sluggy Freelance as a full-time, paying job? Pete: Well, when I started Sluggy Freelance, webcomics wasn’t anything like it is right now. I mean, there were very few strips in existance. So there wasn’t anyone else’s strip to compare myself to and ask myself if I could make a living doing it or how long it would take. When I started, I knew that most businesses took two to three years to become profitable—I heard that at some point. And when I started the strip, I made it daily and I treated it like it was my profession before it was paying me full-time. And sure enough, what happened was in about the third year I suddenly started making a profit and was able to support myself at that point, and it’s been growing in profitability every year since then. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:15:00 +0100 895269 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/e-books-and-the-economics-of-writing/ Karen Dionne, a novelist herself, has an article on Daily Finance looking at the new economics of e-book publishing in light of recent changes in the industry. She looks at J.A. Konrath’s success on the Amazon platform, and also at writer Nancy Cruz Coleman, who had written a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin called Rumpel but had no success shopping it around to big publishers. "I could have let Rumpel sit on my hard drive and collect dust," Coleman says. "But there is a wonderful community of fairytale-retelling aficionados on the Internet. The more I read about what they were looking for, the more convinced I became that my novel would find an audience, and not just among my friends and family. So far, Rumpel has been well received. I am hopeful that as more people learn about it, the book will gain momentum." Dionne does point out the traditional drawbacks of self-publishing, of course—the author has to either do his own or pay for someone else to do editing, covers, formatting, and publicity. But if there are problems, there are also opportunities for enterprising innovators to devise new ways of handling them. None of this comes as news to regular readers of this blog, of course, but I find it interesting that more and more news sources, including financial ones, are taking note of the new possibilities offered by modern e-publishing. How long will it be before it becomes even easier and more lucrative, I wonder? (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0100 895169 http://wulibraries.typepad.com/bionews/2010/12/biology-related-paper-books-added-dec-2010.html Click on the title for more info or to request Note: "In Process" titles may still be REQUESTED so the book will be held for you when it is available. You may also be interested in browsing an alternative listings of new books, by broad call number areas. See also: Best Sellers in History of Science, Feb.-Nov. 2010 I welcome your requests for book and journal purchases. You may email Ruth directly or use the web forms: Recommend a book for purchase or Recommend a journal purchase or cancellation. Thank you! > Aboveground-belowground linkages : biotic interactions, ecosystem processes, and global change / Richard D. Bardgett, David A. Wardle. Oxford series in ecology and evolution. Oxford : Oxford University Press, c2010. > Am I a monkey? : six big questions about evolution / Francisco J. Ayala. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c2010. > Annual review of cell and developmental biology, v.26, 2010. Also Available Online Palo Alto, Calif. : Annual Reviews Inc., c1995- > Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics, v.41, 2010. Also Available Online Palo Alto, Calif. : Annual Reviews, Inc., 2003- > Beyond cladistics : the branching of a paradigm / edited by David M. Williams and Sandra Knapp. Species and systematics v. 3. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2010. > Collective animal behavior / David J. T. Sumpter. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2010. > Fragile web : what next for nature? / edited by Jonathan Silvertown authors, Joanna Freeland ... [et al.]. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010. > Introduction to WinBUGS for ecologists : a Bayesian approach to regression, ANOVA, mixed models and related analyses / Marc Kery. Amsterdam Boston : Elsevier, 2010. > Modular evolution : how natural selection produces biological complexity / Lucio Vinicius. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895641 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/grimms-rapunzel-3d-interactive-pop-up-book/ (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:07:18 +0100 895170 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/mobipocket-will-end-publishing-for-distribution-in-the-kindle-store/ Steve Weber of Plug Your Book received the following email from Mobipocket on December 24: Soon, publishing for distribution in the Kindle Store will no longer be available through Mobipocket.com. Publishing and selling in the Mobipocket.com store and other Mobipocket partner retailers will not be affected, but the Digital Text Platform (DTP) will become the preferred path to publishing on Kindle. In the coming weeks, we would like to begin consolidating your titles into one location – DTP. We’re writing to remind you about our earlier message, and to again offer assistance with moving your Mobipocket.com titles to DTP. By making the move, you’ll be able to take advantage of the new royalty options and great features available only on DTP. You may already have a DTP account, but if not, please sign up today at http://dtp.amazon.com/ (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:03:22 +0100 895171 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/nook-e-reader-servers-apparently-go-down-for-christmasagain/ Last year at this time, I posted a story on a contrast between Kindle and Nook’s successes or failures over the holiday: Kindle sold more e-books than printed books on Christmas day, and the Nook’s servers collapsed for 24 hours. Now TeleReader Karen Mallinger posts: And yet, it has happened again. A year to the day. Servers down for 2 days now. Cannot download books, account locked up. An hour on hold waiting for Customer Service. I will be spending Monday taking back my Nook and purchasing a Kindle. To fall prey to the same issues and not learn the lessons is inexcusable in this day and age. Too many other folks waiting to take my money, which I’m happy to give as long as they understand the intricacies of customer service and basic “planning”. FRIGHTENING!! Oddly, a cursory search of Google News and Blogsearch doesn’t pull up any stories on this event (probably because most tech reporters are still sleeping off Christmas dinner), but it’s all over Twitter.  Not everyone is unable to download new books—some just report it being very slow, or say they finally got through—but there are enough tweets to suggest it is a widespread problem. “Apparently I wasn’t the only one to get a Nook for Christmas,” carlwatkins tweets. “Getting a ‘Server Busy’ message. Everyone get off so I can get on! ” Apparently there has been at least some trouble with Kindle, too, however. Searching on “kindle server” brought too many false positives, but “kindle servers” produced tweets of people having trouble connecting their new Kindles…but only two of them. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:18:07 +0100 895172 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/teleread-traffic-doubles-on-christmas-day-a-lot-of-ereaders-as-presents/ Now you tell me that this means. The graph shows Google Analytics data for December 23 to 25 (with the numbers deleted). Note that it gradually goes down as Christmas approaches and is at its lowest point on December 24. Now look at the huge spike on Christmas day. Almost double the numbers of the day before. The only thing I can think of is that a lot of people got ereaders for Christmas and started Googling around to find out more about them. Neat! (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:52:07 +0100 895173 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/Dbjx/~3/BBfnKNgAoyI/i-liked-these-links-weekly_27.html Need help with your new ebook reader? Here’s our newbie cheat sheet | Bookbee Ebooks Great diagram of readers and formats. tags: ebooks readers inn0vate QuoteURL - Share Twitter Conversations tool for embedding selected tweets tags: quoteurl twitter quotes tools embed inn0vate QuoteURL helps you group different Twitter updates from different people into a single page that has a permanent URL. So you can put it on your blog or send interesting conversations to friends. Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (Source: Innovate) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:30:39 +0100 895488 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/affordable-android-phones-could-take-off-in-2011/ In addition to looks back at the last year, this is the traditional time for looks ahead at the year to come, and Seth Weintraub has an interesting one in Fortune’s “Fortune Tech” blog. Weintraub predicts that, due to falling prices and improving networks, 2011 is going to be the year the smartphone (particularly the Android smartphone) really takes off, bypassing traditional computers as the way the majority of the world’s population accesses the Internet. In terms of price, Weintraub points to new and forthcoming chipsets from Broadcomm that should allow Android smartphones to retail for under $100, possibly even as low as $75. These prices could move many feature phone users over to smartphones. Weintraub is mainly looking at the developing world, where the price of smartphones currently puts them out of reach of any but the elite, but he also points out that it could have implications for the US phone market, too. Perhaps more importantly, at $100, many first-world shoppers will forgo the subsidized two year contracts and instead choose month to month plans.  That price point takes the power away from the carriers.  If T-Mobile is having a special and I can just take my AT&T phone over without being hit with early termination fees, the carriers are much more likely to compete for customers. This would in turn put pressure on the carriers to drop data plan prices, which could bring substantial change to the mobile phone market. The new Broadcomm chips could bring considerable market growth to Android devices, changing smartphones from an expensive dalliance to a reasonable budget purchase. As Weintraub notes, this could shove the iPhone back up to the standard Apple market position—high-end hardware for those willing to pay extra for the Apple aesthetic, while everyone else buys something cheaper that works just as well. And of course the implications for e-books cannot be ignored either. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 21:46:21 +0100 895099 http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/eff-reviews-predictions-for-newspaper-book-issues-in-2010/ Over the last few days, the EFF has been looking back at predictions it made at the beginning of the year to see how they have played out. Most of these have relatively little to do with e-reading (though the one on hardware hacking does touch on it orthogonally with mention of the exemption created for jailbreaking iPhones), but one of them looks specifically at books and newspapers. At the beginning of the year, the EFF noted the increasing complaints of publishers and publishing magnates such as Rupert Murdoch about the effect the Internet was having on their bottom line, and predicted that 2010 would feature publishers “attempting to […] break the fair use doctrine by lobbying to change accepted copyright law, challenging it in the courts, or by placing other pressures on intermediaries.” In fulfillment of this prediction, the article points to copyright troll Righthaven’s activities in suing a number of bloggers and websites that quoted from or reposted its articles. “As with the music industry’s failed ‘sue the customers’ gambit, this one has done nothing to help the newspaper industry, but has already caused damage to free speech and fair use.” Though the EFF made a similar prediction about “battles around user control” arising around e-book readers, it notes that 2010 still saw early market growth, especially involving the introduction of the iPad. It expresses disappointment that the use of DRM in the publishing industry continues, but notes that it took some time for the music industry to give up on DRM so it may take publishers a while to come to the same conclusion. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 21:17:22 +0100 895100 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/how-digital-technologies-affected-magazines-in-2010/ On PBS’s MediaShift, Susan Currie Sivek has a great article summing up the effect that the iPad and other digital technologies had on magazines in 2010. She starts by looking at magazine apps for the iPad: Zinio, Wired (which sold 105,000 copies in June, but was down to 32,000 by the month of September), and more. A number of these magazines are only showing 1 to 2 percent of newsstand sales for their apps. Users have been by and large unimpressed by iPad selections, calling the reading experience only “somewhat better or about the same” than print or computer editions, and balking at higher prices. Users of iPad magazines have also criticized what they see as a lack of creativity and technological savvy in designing usable, intriguing magazine apps for the iPad. Today’s magazine apps tend to be dull, clunky replicas of print magazine pages that don’t let readers share content via social media or even email. Despite being designed only for the iPad, even Project, the much-anticipated iPad-only magazine from Richard Branson’s Virgin Digital Publishing, was disliked by some readers for its awkward interface and its insistence on re-creating the print page experience. Civek also brings up the lack of subscriptions as a major drawback, and mention the efforts of major publishers to develop their own digital newsstands in competition to Apple. But the iPad is not the only digital issue affecting magazines. The article also brings up the Cooks Source incident, which we covered in several pieces here, and a similar, less-reported incident in which another small magazine used blogger content without permission. Another issue affecting magazine credibility is the use of paid sponsor blogs along with regular magazine content, potentially confusing advertising and content. And finally, the piece covers the rise of “magazine-like” digital content, such as social network reading app Flipboard. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:57:23 +0100 895101 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/electronic-device-use-coming-to-house-of-representatives/ In a follow-up to a story I mentioned several days ago, the New York Times has coverage of the new rules propositions for allowing electronic device use on the House floor. It seem these propositions will just formalize the way that people have already been using their devices—rules or not, Representatives and Senators are often seen furtively whipping out their gadgets to check messages. The new rules are not meant to allow let congressmen listen to music or play games, though undoubtedly some will find less serious uses for the devices. The intent, [Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the Republicans] said, was to let lawmakers look up the text of a bill, check a fact or keep up on the news of the day. Their advisers could also send them important messages. And, especially with the iPad’s bigger screen, lawmakers could abandon paper copies of bills in favor of electronic versions. Or they could use Google on their smartphone to check the accuracy of something a colleague had just said. The article also points out other politicians’ uses of mobile device technology, such as Obama’s ubiquitous smartphone—and, amusingly, the adoption of a Blackberry by the wife of Obama’s predecessor. “I had not used a computer in the eight years I spent in the White House, and I didn’t know a thing about BlackBerrys,” [Laura] Bush told Advertising Specialty Institute Radio. “And now, like everyone in the U.S., I have one in my hand every moment. I’m addicted to it.” The Senate still does not allow open mobile device use, though a leadership aide said that the rules might be loosened at some point. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:20:28 +0100 895102 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/uk-news-corp-papers-issue-promotional-christmas-day-ipad-editions/ Robert Andrews at PaidContent has a brief piece on News Corp’s UK papers The Times and The Sun getting excited about using the iPad to “break with a century-old British tradition of not publishing an edition on Christmas Day,” in the hope of catching the attention of Christmas recipients of new iPads. But these iPad editions were, Andrews points out, little more than self-promotion vehicles, containing largely Christmas stuff and editorials about how awesome the iPad and paywalls are. What little news content they did contain was often outdated by the newspaper websites, which were updated throughout the day whereas the iPad edition was not. As Andrews says: Their editors excitement about belies the reality that proprietors see these iPad editions as analogous to print, not to their other digital activities – despite the UK’s Christmas Day print shutdown, newspaper websites have long been published through the day on skeleton staff. It continues to be odd to me that papers and magazines insist on pinning their hopes on these dedicated tablet editions when the web versions are better suited to the way most people want to read (and share) news, and are just as readily available on connected devices. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:44:53 +0100 895103 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/homeless-newspapers-help-some-homeless-afford-homes/ As much attention as e-newspapers are getting for threatening the livelihood of printed newspapers, there are some areas where selling e-papers just won’t do. One particular case is that of “homeless newspapers,” papers written by and sold by homeless people. NPR’s All Things Considered carried a story on these papers a couple of days ago, and points out an interesting dichotomy: if homeless people do well enough by selling homeless papers to afford homes, should they be entitled to continue selling homeless papers? Homeless street vendors buy the papers at cost and sell them for $1 each, as an alternative to panhandling. Papers such as Nashville’s The Contributor give the homeless jobs that earn them a little money and help them find a way out of poverty. And some of these papers are doing pretty well; The Contributor sold out of its 75,000-issue print run in November. The NPR report notes that vendors will collectively make almost $1 million this year. There are some remarkable success stories here. Vendor Cory Paul sells 1,600 copies of the paper per month, making about $3,000 per month including tips, (I wish I made that much in my day job!) This has enabled him to clean himself up and get some decent clothes. But the flip side of this success is that some people who buy the paper have started to get turned off by “homeless” people making more money than they do. One woman emailed The Contributor last month saying she’d no longer buy the paper because her regular saleswoman got a French manicure. “I don’t feel sorry for them if they can afford luxuries I can’t,” she wrote. But some homeless paper vendors have felony convictions or insufficient educations to find a job in today’s climate—things that can keep them from being hired for regular jobs. Homeless paper sales may be the only job these vendors can get, even if they make enough money by doing it not to be homeless anymore. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:11:30 +0100 895104 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/BLHURKQw1PA/e-boeken-een-gids-voor-beginners.html Het origineel is te vinden op Gliffy. @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 14:04:00 +0100 895106 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/17246 Posted on behalf of Greg Williams, <gwilliams-ySO5qXNhEWZYx4ufuVR0v+1ftBKYq+Ku< at >public.gmane.org >. Roy ------------------------------------------------------- Hi all,   I¹m giving a conference presentation on the EPUB ebook format early next year, and I¹m planning to include some discussion of how the EPUB format (both as implemented by the current 2.0.1 specification, and the upcoming EPUB3 specification) might be utilized/leveraged by libraries now and in the future, and what implications the format might have for future library services.  Of course, being neither omniscient nor precognitive, I¹m keen to hear my colleagues¹ thoughts on the subject!   Since EPUB is, at heart, a web-based content format, I¹m posting to this list first (I¹m thinking y¹all likely have some experience with speculating about/innovating with web-based content) .  If you¹ve got ideas for using EPUB (even if it¹s a ³10-years-down-the-road-if-at-all² type of idea), or thoughts on how the format might impact future li (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895121 http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/could-computer-games-be-the-journalism-of-the-future/ Michael Humphrey has an interesting blog post on Forbes where he posits the use of video games as a method of conveying current news and events. He points to the CEO of Activision comparing the Call of Duty franchise to Facebook, pointing out that media is evolving, and the latest CoD game has already racked up 600 million hours of play time in just six weeks. And he talks about a new book called Newsgames: Journalism at Play that looks at the idea of combining gaming and journalism. While Humphrey is a bit critical of the way the book sometimes plays fast and loose with the concept of journalism, he suggests that there is a place for genuine old-school journalism to exist within computer games. If games were to practice journalism as a discipline, and advertise itself as such, it would have to be very much the same kind of journalism that newspapers, television and journalistic Web pages offer. If not, then call it something else. But I think these standards can be applied in most entertaining ways. Even though the game development process can take years, he suggests, if a game was developed based on an ongoing issue (such as the politics or warfare of a given area) then updating it to keep pace with current events could be much easier. Indeed, this could be done with gaming systems that exist now. City of Heroes has an “architect” system that allows players to create their own missions or chains of missions, which they can do fairly quickly and easily. Other games, such as Star Trek Online, are implementing similar systems. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine someone creating didactic missions incorporating references to the latest events in such a game. An entire game built from the ground up around these events could work even better. ... Sat, 25 Dec 2010 06:13:52 +0100 894940