As I wrote previously, my current position on the books-in-the-cloud business model is that it’s deeply anti-consumer, because it takes away all concepts of ownership and passes the control upstream to the retailer and/or publisher. I’ve been surprised (but happy) to see so many others join in the conversation — even Joseph Pearson, the guy [...]
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What Neil Gaiman likes about the Kindle, and why you should care
Hopefully you don’t need a Famous Author to validate your purchasing decisions, so I’m not posting about Neil Gaiman’s opinions on the Kindle just to make you feel better/worse about your new ereader. Instead, I thought it might provide some useful things to think about when you shop for your next device, or when you [...]
Why it’s sometimes good for writers to build on each other’s work
Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon writing out my idea for how fanfic and other writers could theoretically use digital technology to bypass copyright roadblocks. What inspired me was the recent story about an unauthorized sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye” that Salinger managed to quash in the U.S. before his death. Now [...]
Dehydrated books, or how to make money off of fan fiction and unauthorized sequels
Imagine that this evening I follow a friend’s link to a new Harry Potter book, one that essentially replaces “The Sorcerer’s Stone” in the canon with a Year 1 adventure that’s darker and closer in tone to the final few books, but that wasn’t written or authorized by J. K. Rowling. The link I follow [...]
When publishers won’t sell, piracy emerges
“I think what leads to rampant piracy is not meeting emergent demands.” – Brian O’Leary That is the most concise statement I’ve read so far about an issue that constantly bothers me, which is that content companies create their own piracy problems. They do it by not moving fast enough, or by not waking [...]
Wow, this new Patton Oswalt book from Scribner sure has a lot of mistakes in it
Click to view full size. Those are the ones I caught once I decided to keep track, but I’m sure there are more. I had a big rant typed up, but I think the images are fine on their own. And I want a dollar back, Scribner; a half-assed edition does not warrant a $10.99 [...]
The New Yorker book blog pretends it’s 2008, trashes ebooks
It makes me cringe when The New Yorker stumbles, even if the accident happens on one of its blog divisions and not within an actual issue. Maybe I’m hero-worshipping too much, but I like to think the writers and editors there hold themselves, and their readers, to a more stringent standard of reasoning, which means: [...]
Amazon's 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 [...]
Incest! Or, Amazon reminds us that it's only a retailer
I never really expected to write about the topic of incest on Booksprung, but thanks to Amazon now I shall. Yesterday, the news broke that Amazon removed several incest-themed erotica novels from the Kindle store. The reason? According to the author, Selena Kitt, Amazon told her that it “may, in its sole discretion, at any [...]
Why are big publishers ignoring interactive picture books?
Yesterday Scholastic listed 10 trends in children’s lit for 2010, and #6 is in alignment with an October New York Times article on the decline in picture books. From the Scholastic list: “Publishers are publishing about 25 to 30 percent fewer picture book titles than they used to.” From the Times article: “Picture books are [...]
How to predict what Amazon will announce next
It should be clear by now that the only time Amazon likes to announce a feature is when a competitor–usually Barnes & Noble–has something to announce. The Kindle 2 price cut this summer happened a few hours after B&N’s price cut. The long-requested (and long-denied) feature of gifting Kindle books was announced the same day [...]
Give Project a break, it's no worse than any iPad magazine
Oh my dear goat lord, WHAT IS WRONG with people? This week the fairy of stupidity came down and sprayed IdiotGlitter all over a bunch of people who tried out Virgin’s new magazine app, Project. They all hate it. They hate the navigation. They hate the file size. Did I mention they hate the navigation? [...]