If you’ve ever spent any time in the game Skyrim—or its predecessors Oblivion or Morrowind—you’ve probably noticed how insanely detailed the legends, histories, and religious traditions can be, and not just for a game but for any sort of fantasy entertainment. What makes this detailed world-building even more striking, from a game level, is that [...]
books
Literature Map from Gnod uses fancy robot math to suggest new authors to you
From what I can tell by the intro paragraph on the home page, Gnod is an experiment in creating a self-aware deathbot who will someday enslave us all. But until that day it’s a fun way to discover new authors you might enjoy. Gnod’s literature section, Gnooks, includes a free service it calls a Literature [...]
BookLikes first impressions: an undercooked indie version of Shelfari
BookLikes is yet another free service for book lovers that promises to make quality recommendations to you based on what others are reading. Unfortunately, it’s not quite ready for public consumption.
Here’s another hand-made hardcover case for the Kindle
I know I just posted a link to 50 assorted ideas for covering your Kindle, but this one from someone named Ebony is worth the extra attention. His approach definitely requires patience and an eye for detail — you have carefully cut out each page individually, then glue them all together and smooth out the [...]
Borders files for bankruptcy, will close 200 stores
As expected, Borders has filed for bankruptcy. John Mutter at Shelf Awareness says the bookseller plans to close about 200 of its 639 stores over the next couple of weeks. Update: Here’s a map of which stores are closing. Mutter writes that since last December Borders has been buying new books “following procedures familiar to [...]
My experience with the Espresso Book Machine
I was in midtown NYC earlier today when I stopped to have a coffee and catch up on my RSS feeds, and I saw a couple of blog references to a video of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) posted over on NPR’s Science Friday blog. The video is a short, lighthearted overview of an EBM [...]
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 [...]
A reminder that not everyone likes to receive a book for a gift
That Kindle holiday ad now running on U.S. television warms me like a cup of hot chocolate, but I suspect it’s something of a Christmas miracle. For contrast: Once, while I was working at a mortgage company back in college (this was before the industry destroyed America–we actually verified incomes), I was forced to participate [...]
Kobo holding 50% off ebook sale today
Update – 3pm ET: Kobo’s description of the sale has changed since this morning when it first went live. Now the retailer explicitly states that you can use the coupon code for one title only, not for multiple titles. It’s still an okay deal, but nowhere near as post-worthy as earlier, since Kobo frequently tosses [...]
After 23 books, Kindle goes green
Want to know how to make your Kindle environmentally friendly? Read at least 23 books on it, says consulting firm Cleantech. At that point, you’ll have caught up with the carbon emissions from print books, and each ebook you read after that will add a smaller amount to your carbon footprint than if you’d stuck [...]
New source of reviews for Smashwords books
Smashwords is a terrific resource for low cost ebooks to read on your Kindle. Unfortunately, since anyone can publish there, it’s no better than Amazon at protecting you from badly written nonsense, and digging through its collection for the good stuff can become tiresome. What we need are more independent reviewers who will find the [...]
Author Nick Spalding launches indie book recommendation blog
Nick Spalding, author of the experimental written-all-in-one-sitting novel Life…With No Breaks (readers on Amazon seem to either love it or hate it), announced yesterday that he’s launched a new indie author blog called Spalding’s Racket: I’ve created [it] to promote books written by independent authors. It’s a place for you to find out about new [...]