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Amanda Hocking, the writer who made millions by self-publishing online | Books
When historians come to write about the digital transformation currently engulfing the book-publishing world , they will almost certainly refer to Amanda Hocking , writer of paranormal fiction who in the past 18 months has emerged from obscurity to bestselling status entirely under her own self-published steam. What the historians may omit to mention is the crucial role played in her rise by those furry wide-mouthed friends, the Muppets . To understand the vital Muppet connection we have to go back to April 2010. We find Hocking sitting in her tiny, sparsely furnished apartment in Austin, Minnesota. She is penniless and frustrated, having spent years fruitlessly trying to interest traditional publishers in her work. To make matters worse, she has just heard that an exhibition about Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, is coming to Chicago later that year and she can't afford to make the trip.
Om ett bibliotek ska “låna ut” e-böcker – vilket visserligen är omöjligt, men ändå – finns det i grunden två sätt att betala bokförlagen. (Vi utgår nu för enkelhets skull från att alla e-böcker kostar pengar, trots att detta är ett oerhört inskränkt synsätt.) Enligt den ena modellen betalar biblioteken för varje simulerat utlån .
Biblioteken och e-böckerna: två modeller, lika orimliga
I spoke earlier today at Tools of Change in Frankfurt. The short version is that many of the things we think about ebooks are wrong: but they are very interesting. The future of the book lies in its aura not in its copies, and that’s why I’m launching Open Bookmarks . For the longer version, read on… (As ever, far more was said on stage than these notes, but there you go). 4 things: introductions and what I do; the form of the ebook; bookmarks etc.; and an announcement.
Walter Benjamin’s Aura: Open Bookmarks and the future eBook
Det är många som går runt och funderar på bokens framtid nuförtiden. De som imponerar mest på mig är knappast de stora förlagen, nog inte heller biblioteken… Erik Stattin
Hur åldras en e-bok? | Biblioteksbladet
Doppletext unites original text with a literary translation – available on the web or on your ereader
By Paul Biba Now this looks really innovative ! Got this email from Igo Kogan: You and your readers may be interested in a new kind of dual language ebooks available at www.doppeltext.com . We have developed an algorithm for aligning literary works and translations at sub-sentence level.
At the end of April, Tor Books, the world's largest science fiction publisher, and its UK sister company, Tor UK, announced that they would be eliminating digital rights management (DRM) from all of their ebooks by the summer. It was a seismic event in the history of the publishing industry. It's the beginning of the end for DRM, which are used by hardware manufacturers and publishers to limit the use of digital content after sale.
Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers | Technology
Gör egna böcker med iBooks Author
Går du och drömmer om att publicera en egen bok men har dragit dig för det eftersom det verkar så krångligt? Tack vare Apples nya program iBooks Author är det möjligt för nästan vem som helst att skapa och publicera e-böcker för iPad. Tidigare lösningar för att skapa e-böcker har antingen varit på tok för krångliga eller för dyra. iBooks Author är både enkelt att använda och kan laddas ned helt gratis från Mac App store. Programmet är dessutom på svenska och finns på: http://mw24.se/10f. Installera programmet För att komma igång krävs det egentligen bara två saker. Först måste du ladda ned och installera iBooks Author från Mac App Store.“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out
Calls for big-six publishers to drop DRM have increased in recent weeks, coinciding with the DOJ price-fixing lawsuit. Many observers fear that the lawsuit will actually reduce competition in the e-book marketplace by cementing Amazon’s role as the dominant player — and they wonder whether DRM is simply another weapon in Amazon’s arsenal , keeping customers locked to the Kindle Store. Here at paidContent, independent e-bookstore Emily Books ‘ Emily Gould and Ruth Curry have argued that DRM is crushing indie booksellers online.
Why smart authors are cutting Amazon out
The recent anti-trust suit against the big five book publishers reminds me of the scene in the movie Titanic where the lifeboats are pulling away from the gasping survivors in the water. We all know what’s going to happen and it’s painful to watch. What surprises me is how little discussion there is about what happens to the authors in all of this. For sure, advances are going down. Way down. But that has been happening for a while.
It's Not About Libraries, It's About Amazon
When Douglas County (Colorado) Libraries decided to put "Buy this book" buttons on their online catalog pages ( example ), the response was strong. In just 11 days, the buy buttons had garnered almost 700 clickthroughs. According to Library Director Jamie LaRue, the library is putting buy links direct to publisher-supplied urls when they are provided (often to Barnes and Noble ). Of the 700 clickthroughs, 389 went to Amazon and 262 to Tattered Cover , the independent bookstore with 3 locations in the Denver area. In isolation, this data seems to be strong support for the notion that a digital presence in libraries can support sales of books.The Myth of the Bookless Library
Ten years ago, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper published a nifty book about how and why people use paper in their workplaces. The Myth of the Paperless Office reported ethnographic observations of people struggling to do things with computers that they were used to doing on paper; sometimes there were good reasons why paper was so persistent. The title reminded us that the “paperless office” we were promised decades ago is a joke - on us. We use more paper than ever and manage to have disorderly desktops both literally and digitally. That's a funny kind of progress.Digital Underclass 2: The future of books and libraries (PODCAST)
Click to listen to the related podcast with Jason Perlow and Andy Woodworth (45 min.) A year ago, I wrote an article entitled "Digital Underclass: What Happens When the Libraries Die." The article had a wide-ranging impact on the library community, and brought in opinions from both sides of the spectrum. Some library scientists agreed with me that the eBook is indeed threatening the existence of the Public Library , while others such as notable library blogger Andy Woodworth were in firm disagreement, that libraries were still alive, but were entering a transformative phase. I thought that it might be a good idea to take a look at the situation a year later.The Death of the Book has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Tech pundits recently moved up the date for the death of the book, to sometime around 2015 , inspired largely by the rapid adoption of the iPad and the success of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. But in their rush to christen a new era of media consumption, have the pundits overreached? I’m calling the peak of inflated expectations now.Lend Me Your E-books (Part 2)
Yesterday, in Part 1 , Erik Christopher looked at the e-book models offered to librarians by the United States’ two largest e-book retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Today, he considers the model offered by Overdrive and the future of lending as seen by the Open Book Alliance’s Peter Brantley. By Erik ChristopherToday, in the first half of a two-part series on library e-book lending, writer Erik Christopher considers the models offered to librarians by the United States’ two largest e-book retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. By Erik Christopher The digital age has complicated things, especially for libraries. Not only do patrons want traditional services, like books and reference materials, they want them digitally as well. That means libraries have been confronted with the challenge of how to lend e-books.