Do you like free books? Do you like words?
We’ve just launched a Featured Author program on Bite-Size Edits, a wordish game that connects authors to fans and readers through the craft of writing.
Players get points for editing and commenting on random sentences from writers. High-scorers can win free books (!), and points earned in [...]
We’re starting a new feature here on Book Oven, a Friday interview series, every two weeks. We’ll be talking to people who are doing interesting things in the bookish space. Our first interviewee is Liza Daly, of ThreePress Consulting, and the woman who knows all about ePub. Liza, along with Keith Fahlgren, recently launched the [...]
Marion Maneker, columnist at The Big Money, responds to Penguin CEO John Makinson’s WSJ OpEd. He makes the point more clearly than I’ve yet seen it that the book industry suffers from “oversupply and too much risk.” It’s not digital per se that is the real problem; but digital just makes it easier for others [...]
There have been a host of complaints about the iPad – it doesn’t do this, it doesn’t have that, why can’t it, I wish it would, it’s closed … Even Hitler was disappointed.
But the iPad represents a fundamental shift in the metaphors and language of “computing.” Or rather it extends that shift that was tested [...]
On the Britannica Blog, Nick Carr looks at how digital is changing our relationship with text, and doesn’t like what he sees. We’re turning into debased computers, he thinks:
We’re rapidly moving away from our old linear form of writing and reading, in which ideas and narratives wended their way across many pages, to a [...]
My hypothesis is that DRM is bad for the publishing business, and hence the publishing business should ditch DRM for that reason. The people who are actually studying the impacts of DRM vs no-DRM – O’Reilly and Brian O’Leary leading the charge – seem to suggest that hypothesis is correct. For now, anyway. My read [...]
CBC Radio show Spark, hosted by the lovely Nora Young, has an interesting segment with indie game designer Cliff Harris, who asked “pirates” why they were pirating his games.
One of the top answers is: “Because of Digital Rights Management…”
It’s not scientific by any means, but I hope Brian O’Leary & others who *are* doing scientific [...]
California to force uni textbooks to come in electronic formats:
Companies that sell textbooks to California universities must offer electronic versions by 2020, under a new state law…
The law, Senate Bill 48, says any individual or company selling textbooks to the University of California, California State University or private colleges must make them available electronically [...]
I’ve got a “Publishing Year in Review” post up over at the BookNet Canada Blog, with a few predictions thrown in at the end:
I started off 2009 with a trip to London, to attend BookCampUK – an unconference about books. While there were big rumblings of fear and hand-wringing about the arrival of the digital [...]
On Saturday December 26, 2009 LibriVox cataloged it’s 3000th free, public domain audiobook title.
