Capaneus at Capane.us figured out where to find the text files for Skyrim’s books from his own copy of the game, and then he formatted them into a single ebook file for reading on the go.

So, I took a look at how Skyrim actually stores these nuggets of incidental storytelling. By the 9, it was in plain text! I pasted the book text into separate docs, slapped on headings, created a table of contents and a cover, and just like that, I can read my copy of The Lusty Argonian Maid on-the-go!

According to his later comments, “Just like that” actually means about eight hours of work:

All the books are in plain text in a monolithic string file under //apps/skyrim/Data/Strings…in the DL string file. [Use an app like Notepad++ to open the file.] Start by copying and pasting the text of each book into a seperate .html file. Keep the filenames consistent with the title of the book, and add a number at the end of each book in a series. This will make table of contents building way easier.

I think this ebook approach is a cool way to repurpose some of the game’s content for personal use, but if you don’t want your own ebook version, you can read these books online in the Lore section of The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages.

Capane.us [Via Sidequesting]

Gnod’s literature section, Gnooks, includes a free service it calls a Literature Map: simply type in the name of an author who interests you, and Gnod will stop running human extinction scenarios long enough to return a nifty floating cloud of names. The closer two names are to each other, the more similar the authors are, and their proximity to your initial author indicates how closely they match his or her style.

Above is my test for sci-fi author Charles Stross. In my experience, Doctorow’s voice is nothing like Stross’, but I’m not a computer so I’m probably wrong.

Here’s one for Cynthia Ozick, who you may have noticed by now is one of my go-to names when I want to test something with a semi-obscure but highly respected living author:

And here’s another one for Charlie Huston:

Okay, so they’re not going to win any awards for visual design, but robots don’t need eyes. None of us will after the singularity, but that’s a downer of a note to end this post on, so let me close with the word “balloons.”

Update: If you want a more intimate recommendation—meaning just one author’s name instead of a cloud—you can try Gnod’s Suggestions page, where you enter the names of three authors and (hopefully) get back a fourth.

[via Publishers Weekly]

Right now it’s in public beta, which means you can sign up and start adding books, but be prepared for rough spots. For instance, the first book I searched for—”Foreign Bodies” by Cynthia Ozick—wasn’t in their database, even though it’s the most recent book of hers and was published in 2010. The mobile apps the service promises on the home screen don’t seem to actually exist, at least not on iTunes or Amazon’s Android app store. I also had some trouble with the rating system, where my star rating didn’t appear to be captured properly on a couple of titles, and I couldn’t find a way to delete books from my shelves once I’d added them.

If you already have an established presence on Goodreads, Shelfari or LibraryThing, I’m not sure you’ll be that intrigued by what BookLikes has to offer right now. Amazon’s Shelfari is the strongest direct competitor—not only is Shelfari beta testing a similar recommendation system, but it’s clear that some of BookLikes’ main user interface elements were “borrowed” from Shelfari. On the other hand, the one thing BookLikes definitely offers that Shelfari can’t is independence from Amazon, at least at this early startup stage.

The dilemma of a site like this is that as long as there isn’t a large community of like-minded readers to help suggest books, there’s not much point in joining—but if nobody joins then there will never be that community. I’ll check back periodically to see whether it comes into its own as more users sign up. (I won’t be checking back periodically after all—see my update above for why.)

BookLikes

Ebony writes that it took a long time to find the right book: “Too small and the edges would be brittle. Too large and it would just become a hassle.” I also think it takes a good design eye to find the right hardcover that adds a touch of character without becoming too jokey.

If you need more than just inspiration, here are detailed instructions on how to hollow out a hardcover book.

The project reminds me of the cases Rebindit makes (only for the Kindle 2 and iPad). Rebindit uses a machine-tooled die to cut the well into the book, which makes for a very clean finished product.

“Kindle book cover” [Elementalise.com via Business Insider]

Mutter writes that since last December Borders has been buying new books “following procedures familiar to retailers on credit hold”:

The struggling retailer has been using wholesalers, buying books shortly before publication, and paying the usual 30-day wholesaler terms. Many national accounts managers have been working with Borders through wholesalers on book buys.

Still, the company currently has over US $1.2 billion in debt, and owes between $20-40 million each to Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Random House and Harper Collins. It owes key distributors another $15 million. Update: Here’s a more extensive list of unpaid publishers.

As for customers, things like Borders Rewards will continue to operate as normal; the company is keeping nearly 500 retail stores as well as the website open for business as usual. Borders says “customers will be notified of closing stores in their general area” in the coming days. You can check this map to see if your local Borders is on the kill list.

“Borders Files for Bankruptcy, to Close 200 Stores” [Shelf Awareness]
www.bordersreorganization.com

(Photo: doortoriver)

I’ve wanted to see one of these machines up close for a while now, but I had no idea that a local indie bookstore had one. So I finished my coffee, hopped on the subway, and went to buy myself a print-on-demand book.

There’s not much I can write about the inner workings of the “big fancy robot,” as one of McNally Jackson’s employees calls it in the NPR video. It’s essentially three machines stacked together: a Xerox copier to handle the initial paper management; the custom plexiglass, steel, and blade contraption that handles the collating, binding and cutting; and a small color printer to handle the covers. (The interior pages are black and white only.)

Because this was an impulse trip, I hadn’t taken the time to scour Google Books for just the right awesome public domain title, so I had to settle for something I could find quickly that I knew wouldn’t otherwise be available in print. I chose “Jonestown Survivor,” a 2010 memoir self-published by a People’s Temple member who did not die in the mass suicide in 1978. It cost $16.95, the same as the online price at iUniverse. (The ebook edition was $9.99, grr.)

It took about fifteen minutes to print the book, although it appears that under ideal circumstances it would take less than ten: a minute to find the book through the EBM’s control panel, another minute to download the file, one more to adjust the paper, and then about five minutes to print, cut and glue the thing. You can hear and see the book coming together page by page through the plexiglass, and you can smell the glue as it’s heated up and applied to the spine. It’s sort of like a Build-A-Bear for grownups and/or nerds.

 

My copy came out with an off-centered spine. The operator, who after a month seemed to know the machine’s subtle inner workings the way a mechanic knows cars, said he’d realized that the alignment was off after the machine was too far in the process to stop it. He offered to toss it out and print a perfect version at no extra cost — in fact he encouraged me to demand this, which is one of those nice customer service touches that I think indie bookstores are good at providing — but I sort of like my book’s messed-up spine. It reminded me that this is a new application of technology, and customized sometimes means imperfect. (It also seemed too wasteful to reprint what was essentially an impulse purchase.)

He went on to say that the problem wasn’t with the file. Although the original manuscripts that customers bring in sometimes require lots of adjustments, the ones pre-formatted for the EBM by publishers are usually in good shape. In this case, the problem was that someone else had adjusted the machine since its last use, and he didn’t see this until after he’d started my book. To the person who prints the next book after mine and gets a perfect spine: you’re welcome!

I asked a bunch of questions about the size limits of the EBM, but rather than paraphrase them here I should just point you to the official FAQ, which has actual numbers. He said he’s printed stuff as short as 30 pages or so, or “essentially a pamphlet,” as well as incredibly thick books. He said Google Book scans in particular were all over the place in terms of size because of the wide range and age of the collection.

I’ll probably go back and do it again, simply because of how satisfying it is to have a print-on-demand book made in such an astonishingly short period of time. (If you called ahead, it would seem even more magical.) I think next time, however, I’ll print some old, public domain book that Google has scanned. I noticed all the sample Google Book editions had a generic text-only cover; the employee said it was possible to add your own cover (of something also in the public domain, of course) to your Google Book edition and bring it in for printing, but you’ll have to pay a $10 set-up fee.

If I ran a writing workshop in NYC, and especially if I ran one for kids, I think the workshop would end with me going to McNally Jackson and printing a very short run of an anthology of the stories created in the workshop. Aside from out-of-print and on-demand titles, that kind of personal customization seems just right for something like this.

 
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 up to the fact that the balance of power between consumer and company has shifted. If a company chooses to not support a known distribution channel or ignores a market, it’s basically asking consumers to find other ways to get at the content.

O’Leary’s statement comes from a great interview on piracy and DRM at O’Reilly Radar, where he points out two sad facts:
 

1. that we still don’t know whether piracy negatively affects sales; and
2. that the majority of publishers still refuse to collect the information that would be necessary to answer this question definitively.

Meanwhile, companies continue to treat the world like it hasn’t transformed in the past decade, and then wonder why their customers have jumped so far ahead of them in the marketplace. An article from last week in the Sydney Morning Herald points out how Australian readers shop elsewhere when local publishers delay publishing foreign titles for months:

“Publishers who think they are protecting their markets are mistaken: the keen readers who go overseas for their niche or advance books will justify the cost of shipping by also buying those titles they may have otherwise picked up at home.”

You know what else they do, all over the world? They open up accounts at the U.S. Amazon store. They check out library books. And they look online for pirated copies.

“What leads to rampant piracy is not meeting emergent demands.”

“Book piracy: Less DRM, more data” [radar.oreilly.com]
“Culture vultures forced go pirate” [Sydney Morning Herald]

(Photo: Corey Leopold)

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 in a Secret Santa office party. I drew the name of an older man who still typed his loan applications on a manual typewriter, and since I had no idea what to give him, I donated money to the Red Cross and bought him a copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

This was a mistake. I didn’t get fired or ostracized, but as soon as he unwrapped the little paperback and looked at it like a dog hearing a far off noise, all of my older coworkers fell silent, more out of embarrassment for me than for him, and I realized that you do not give books as gifts. At least, not without first making sure the recipient is a reader.

Oh, I just remembered another one! I gave my mom a book of Carl Sandburg poems when I was a teen. I think I’d just graduated high school, and I was obsessed with Sandburg and T.S. Eliot. For her birthday, I gave her a used volume of Sandburg’s poems as if that were a perfectly sane thing to do. To her credit, she was very gracious about it, and I never saw the book again.

Update: For the record, I like books as gifts, unless the book is by C.S. Lewis.

[Found via EvilReads]

Original post: Kobo Books is having a massive sale today only where you can take 50% off any of 183 books, many of them new releases, with the coupon code 1stbirthday. The discount is taken off the standard Kobo price (listed in green), so you can end up with some great deals if you choose carefully.

If you do all your ebook reading on a Kindle, you might want to skip this post and save yourself the heartbreak, because Kobo’s EPUB files won’t work on the Kindle–blame Amazon for that–and its web interface doesn’t display correctly on the Kindle browser. However, if you use an Apple device, laptop/PC, or an ebook reader that does support Adobe DRM (like the Nook and others listed on this page) then you’ll be fine.

Here are some of the better deals I found on the Kobo list this morning:

Under $4:
“Tinkers” by Paul Harding
“Unraveled” by Gena Showalter
“Let The Great World Spin” by Colum McCann
“Water For Elephants” by Sara Gruen

Under $5:
“Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins
“Decoded” by Jay-Z
“Entice” by Carrie Jones
“Decision Points” by George W. Bush
“Of Thee I Sing: A Letter To My Daughters” by Barack Obama
“The Autobiography of Mark Twain” by Mark Twain and others
“The Confession” by John Grisham
“Great House” by Nicole Krauss
“Packing For Mars” by Mary Roach
“Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart
“Mr. Peanut” by Adam Ross
“The Imperfectionists” by Tom Rachman

Under $8:

“C” by Tom McCarthy
“A Visit From The Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
“Kraken” by China Mieville
“Nerd Do Well” by Simon Pegg

And now a warning! Do not buy “The Lost Symbol: Special Illustrated Edition” from Kobo, even with this coupon code. It’s currently selling for less than $4 on the Amazon Kindle store, which is the lowest price I’ve seen anywhere.

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 with print.

These numbers are based off of several rough estimates: analysts are guessing that the Kindle’s CO2 footprint is around 168 kg, compared to about 7.5 kg for one book. The Kindle estimate doesn’t include any extra energy used to keep your ebook stored on a server or to display it, but Slate’s Brian Palmer notes that any such energy costs are likely very small compared to the primary Kindle number.

That’s for CO2. If you want to look at water consumption, Palmer points out that the printing of a book uses about 7 gallons of water, versus about 79 gallons for an ereader as well as 2 cups per ebook. (I like to imagine that the water is compressed into book/ebook form, because it makes this whole conversation even sillier.) Based on those numbers, you need to read about 12 ebooks on your Kindle before you can start outpacing the environmental impact of print.

Of course, if you don’t care about or are skeptical of environmental issues, you can still take comfort in the longterm cost savings. If you’re a heavy reader who doesn’t go to the library very much, an ebook device can save you quite a bit of money over the years, especially if you take advantage of freebies and promotional pricing. (I can’t believe how many free books I’ve acquired through the Kindle.)

“iPads and Kindles are better for the environment than books” [Slate/Washington Post]

(Photo: oskay)