A visit to a Borders bookstore, closing because of the bankruptcy, reveals what people aren't reading, stacks of Nicholas Sparks, and Tom Clancy. Bill Morris on the detritus of the book business.
by: Bill Morris
Anthropologists eager to study the trappings of a dying culture should head straight to the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street in New York City. There, in the windows of a doomed Borders bookstore, egg-yolk yellow signs shout EVERYTHING MUST GO! and 50-70% OFF!
And so every day the scavengers come to pick the little meat that's left on the bones of this store, one of 226 that will be closing nationwide in the wake of the February bankruptcy filing by America's second-largest bookstore chain.
Inside the store, clerks move in a sort of underwater daze while shoppers paw through the remaining merchandise—books that are hard to give away even at a 70 percent markdown, a sinking ship's bilge water, its bad bets, its worst-sellers, a big part of the reason why the company is bankrupt and the industry is in such disarray.
By the front door there are still whole racks of Tom Clancy's latest cinderblock, Dead or Alive, priced to move at $9.99 but not moving an inch. Back in the literature section there are a dozen copies of The Brave by Nicholas Evans, proof that, contrary to publishing industry wisdom, even the author of a megaseller like The Horse Whisperer cannot automatically make lightning strike again and again. And way down on a bottom shelf there are many, many copies of a pink-jacketed confection called Starlit by Lisa Rinna, who, when she wasn't composing immortal English prose, could be seen on Days of Our Lives, Melrose Place, and Dancing With the Stars. Having her write a novel must have seemed like a good idea to somebody once upon a time. But not today.
Nicole Jacobsen, a nursing student, decides to pass on Starlit. She has paperbacks by Tony Hillerman and Lisa Scottoline tucked under her arm. "I think it's really sad that Borders is closing," Jacobsen says. "I like being able to see and touch a book I'm going to buy. In a store you get to interact with people and hear about what's good, hear about a writer you've never heard of before. And you don't get that online. This is where society's going—people just stay in their apartment and go online to do everything. It takes away from the purpose of life, which is to interact with people."
Brittany Jackson has been working in the store since she earned a degree in English from the University of Florida in 2008. A serious fan of Southern Gothic fiction—Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote—she lowers her voice to talk to a reporter, but only slightly. She seems to be telling her bosses You can't fire me, I've already been laid off.
"Places where knowledge is exchanged are disappearing, and it's awful," Jackson says. "Our culture doesn't support the local bookstore anymore. It's all about who can give me the best deal. When this sale first started in February, discounts were only 20 percent but we had so many people who bought just because stuff was on sale. It was almost like the way sharks' eyes go black when they feed."
Unfortunately, as Jackson sees it, most of the sharks were feasting on drek. "It's discouraging. I'll have someone ask me what I'm reading. If I say Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat, it's a collection of modern folk tales from Haiti—they don't want to read that. They want a Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks book, which to me is just a prototype for Lifetime movie network. I will say that all of our Louise Erdrich sold out, which is a good thing."
Downstairs in the non-fiction section, two clerks take turns answering the phone and telling customers that the computers are down and discounts are now between 50 and 75 percent on all stock and furnishings and, no, they don't know for sure when the store will finally close. (It will disappear by the end of April, according to Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis, who says employees will then have the chance to apply for exciting career opportunities at the surviving 407 Borders stores. "The closings have nothing to do with the quality of the store staffs," Davis adds. "It's about economic viability.")
When they aren't busy working, the two clerks discuss the day's astonishing news that McDonald's plans to hire 50,000 workers in a single day. One clerk wonders how such a thing is possible in this economy. The other, speaking with an air of authority, attributes it to the irresistible deliciousness of the McRib. Who's to argue with him? Anyone who has witnessed failure at such close range is surely qualified to have an opinion about what makes a business a success.
It's irresistible deliciousness, obviously, not fare like Starlit and The Brave and Dead or Alive.
Bill Morris is the author of the novels Motor City and All Souls' Day. His writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, the (London) Independent, the Washington Post Magazine, L.A. Weekly and the online literary magazine The Millions. He lives in New York City.
from: Daily Beast
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Reading as teenager gets you a better job
Teenagers who read for pleasure are much more likely to get a better job when they become adults, according to an in-depth and long-running sociological study.
by: Harry Wallop
Of all the free-time activities teenagers do, such as playing computer games, cooking, playing sports, going to the cinema or theatre, visiting a museum, hanging out with their girlfriend or boyfriend, reading is the only activity that appears to help them secure a good job.
This is one of the conclusions of an Oxford University study into 17,000 people all born in the same week in May 1970. They are now grown up and in their early 40s and the sociological study has tracked their progress through time.
At the age of 16, in 1986, they were asked which activities they did in their spare time for pleasure. These answers were then checked against the jobs they were doing at the age of 33, in 2003.
Mark Taylor, the researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford found that there was a 39 per cent probability that girls would be in professional or managerial posts at 33 if they had read books at 16, but only a 25 per cent chance if they had not. For boys the figures rose from 48 per cent to 58 per cent if they read books.
The results of the study are being presented at this week's British Sociological Association’s annual conference in London.
Playing with computer games – or at least the versions that were around in 1986 – harmed the children's prospects. Playing computer games regularly and doing no other activities meant their chances of going to university fell from 24 per cent to 19 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 14 per cent for girls.
Playing a musical instrument or playing team sports, activities that careers teachers often implore children to do so that it improves their CVs, were completely unconnected to whether they landed a good job or not.
He said: "Obviously reading is in itself a good thing. But we don't think that is the main reason why they ended up going to university and securing good jobs."
He explained that reading, and the chance it gives the child to sound eloquent and knowledgeable, is likely to have impressed interviewers when it came to landing a good job. However, curiously, reading at the age of 16 is not connected to actually being paid a better salary.
Mr Taylor explained that this was down to two possible explanations. At the age of 33, many highly desirable jobs such as being a doctor or architect have required many years of training and though the individuals will end up earning better money, the discrepancy is not apparent at this relatively young age.
He added: "And of course sounding knowledgeable in an interview does not mean that when you actually start working, you have the skills to do the job well and be promoted."
from: Telegraph
by: Harry Wallop
Of all the free-time activities teenagers do, such as playing computer games, cooking, playing sports, going to the cinema or theatre, visiting a museum, hanging out with their girlfriend or boyfriend, reading is the only activity that appears to help them secure a good job.
This is one of the conclusions of an Oxford University study into 17,000 people all born in the same week in May 1970. They are now grown up and in their early 40s and the sociological study has tracked their progress through time.
At the age of 16, in 1986, they were asked which activities they did in their spare time for pleasure. These answers were then checked against the jobs they were doing at the age of 33, in 2003.
Mark Taylor, the researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford found that there was a 39 per cent probability that girls would be in professional or managerial posts at 33 if they had read books at 16, but only a 25 per cent chance if they had not. For boys the figures rose from 48 per cent to 58 per cent if they read books.
The results of the study are being presented at this week's British Sociological Association’s annual conference in London.
Playing with computer games – or at least the versions that were around in 1986 – harmed the children's prospects. Playing computer games regularly and doing no other activities meant their chances of going to university fell from 24 per cent to 19 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 14 per cent for girls.
Playing a musical instrument or playing team sports, activities that careers teachers often implore children to do so that it improves their CVs, were completely unconnected to whether they landed a good job or not.
He said: "Obviously reading is in itself a good thing. But we don't think that is the main reason why they ended up going to university and securing good jobs."
He explained that reading, and the chance it gives the child to sound eloquent and knowledgeable, is likely to have impressed interviewers when it came to landing a good job. However, curiously, reading at the age of 16 is not connected to actually being paid a better salary.
Mr Taylor explained that this was down to two possible explanations. At the age of 33, many highly desirable jobs such as being a doctor or architect have required many years of training and though the individuals will end up earning better money, the discrepancy is not apparent at this relatively young age.
He added: "And of course sounding knowledgeable in an interview does not mean that when you actually start working, you have the skills to do the job well and be promoted."
from: Telegraph
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Books, the New Prozac?
by: JeannieVanasco
A friend gave me Sylvia Plath's “The Bell Jar” at a sleepover for my fourteenth birthday. After the other girls fell asleep, I stayed up and read the entire novel. A likely choice for a moody teen-ager already contemplating the inexorable passing of her youth.
So when I heard that a study published this month had found that reading books improves the moods of adolescents, I became curious. Did the study’s authors take the types of books into consideration?
“We noted the titles of books,” Dr. Brian Primack, the lead author of the study, said, “but there are so many ways to examine some of those titles. It’s unlikely many teenagers in the study have been exposed to ‘The Bell Jar’ or books that are purely happy. The books that a lot of young people are reading these days are all of these weird vampire things. A lot of them are kind of creepy.”
Primack and his research team examined six types of media—television shows and movies, video games, magazines and newspapers, music, the Internet, and books—and concluded that major depressive disorder is common among pop-music-listening teens and drastically less common among their bookish counterparts. But the study has less to do with the content of books and more to do with the act of reading. It doesn’t claim that well-read teen-agers don’t become depressed.
“People who are very depressed might not be able to read a book,” Primack said. “Reading takes a lot of mental energy.”
A depressed teenager is more likely to seek out emo music or watch a mindless television show than read a book, which requires more creativity, Primack said. Or, in my case, absorb one of the world’s ten bleakest books.
from: New Yorker
A friend gave me Sylvia Plath's “The Bell Jar” at a sleepover for my fourteenth birthday. After the other girls fell asleep, I stayed up and read the entire novel. A likely choice for a moody teen-ager already contemplating the inexorable passing of her youth.
So when I heard that a study published this month had found that reading books improves the moods of adolescents, I became curious. Did the study’s authors take the types of books into consideration?
“We noted the titles of books,” Dr. Brian Primack, the lead author of the study, said, “but there are so many ways to examine some of those titles. It’s unlikely many teenagers in the study have been exposed to ‘The Bell Jar’ or books that are purely happy. The books that a lot of young people are reading these days are all of these weird vampire things. A lot of them are kind of creepy.”
Primack and his research team examined six types of media—television shows and movies, video games, magazines and newspapers, music, the Internet, and books—and concluded that major depressive disorder is common among pop-music-listening teens and drastically less common among their bookish counterparts. But the study has less to do with the content of books and more to do with the act of reading. It doesn’t claim that well-read teen-agers don’t become depressed.
“People who are very depressed might not be able to read a book,” Primack said. “Reading takes a lot of mental energy.”
A depressed teenager is more likely to seek out emo music or watch a mindless television show than read a book, which requires more creativity, Primack said. Or, in my case, absorb one of the world’s ten bleakest books.
from: New Yorker
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Spanish Start-Up To Launch “Spotify For Books”
by: David Roman
A Spanish company is hoping to do to books what Spotify has done for music; give readers access to a library of content to be streamed to their computer or mobile.
24symbols, a Spanish start-up created all of nine months ago, is online in beta mode since March 31, with 10,000 testers that have signed up to check out some books, mostly novels.
The website combines freemium content—allowing users to read and browse books for free, as long as they put up with ads, or pay for ad-less reading—with a cloud-only model. It involves no downloads of titles into reading devices of any kind, but allows reading, via the website, through a variety of devices. The paid-for model is provisionally priced at €9,99 a month, €19,99 for three months or €59,99 euro for a full year.
24symbols is launching, reportedly in June, first with a majority of Spanish-language books, but aims to move into English-language books in a matter of months, with other languages like French, German or Italian waiting in the wings if everything goes right.
Founder and CEO Aitor Grandes said 24symbols is a bit like Sweden’s Spotify—a website, popular in western Europe, that streams music, with no downloads, under a freemium system—but for books.
For a U.S. audience, he says it would best compared to what Netflix does for video, or Pandora Radio does for music.
As in the case of Copia, a U.S.-based rival launched last year, 24symbols bows with reverence to the almighty power of social networks, and encourages users to share, recommend and discuss books via Facebook.
The absence of downloads is a key difference, though. Sol Rosenberg, a vice-president at Copia, says cloud-only reading is not yet available in their service but coming soon as publishers having balked at the possibility at first, have now relaxed their stance.
24symbols, meanwhile, is all about the cloud, and is betting that publishers will see this as the lesser evil, compared with the Copia model, mostly based around downloaded, heavily-protected Adobe files.
In theory a streaming model will allow publishers and even authors access to information about readers behavior at a previously unseen level, even down to the page. If readers all give up a reading a book at a certain point then publishers and authors can see what the problem is and use that to change future titles.
from: Wall Street Journal
A Spanish company is hoping to do to books what Spotify has done for music; give readers access to a library of content to be streamed to their computer or mobile.
24symbols, a Spanish start-up created all of nine months ago, is online in beta mode since March 31, with 10,000 testers that have signed up to check out some books, mostly novels.
The website combines freemium content—allowing users to read and browse books for free, as long as they put up with ads, or pay for ad-less reading—with a cloud-only model. It involves no downloads of titles into reading devices of any kind, but allows reading, via the website, through a variety of devices. The paid-for model is provisionally priced at €9,99 a month, €19,99 for three months or €59,99 euro for a full year.
24symbols is launching, reportedly in June, first with a majority of Spanish-language books, but aims to move into English-language books in a matter of months, with other languages like French, German or Italian waiting in the wings if everything goes right.
Founder and CEO Aitor Grandes said 24symbols is a bit like Sweden’s Spotify—a website, popular in western Europe, that streams music, with no downloads, under a freemium system—but for books.
For a U.S. audience, he says it would best compared to what Netflix does for video, or Pandora Radio does for music.
As in the case of Copia, a U.S.-based rival launched last year, 24symbols bows with reverence to the almighty power of social networks, and encourages users to share, recommend and discuss books via Facebook.
The absence of downloads is a key difference, though. Sol Rosenberg, a vice-president at Copia, says cloud-only reading is not yet available in their service but coming soon as publishers having balked at the possibility at first, have now relaxed their stance.
24symbols, meanwhile, is all about the cloud, and is betting that publishers will see this as the lesser evil, compared with the Copia model, mostly based around downloaded, heavily-protected Adobe files.
In theory a streaming model will allow publishers and even authors access to information about readers behavior at a previously unseen level, even down to the page. If readers all give up a reading a book at a certain point then publishers and authors can see what the problem is and use that to change future titles.
from: Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The new way we read: 10 ways digital books are changing our literary lives
by: Claire Martin
The Hermitage Bookshop in Cherry Creek North, decidedly old-school with its oak furniture and elaborate Persian rug, isn't where you'd expect to find a fan of e-books, but listen to owner Bob Topp: "E-books have increased the purchase of print books," he says.
"It's easy for people to read the Sunday paper, look at a book review, and 10 minutes later, they've got that e-book on their Kindle. More people reading is good. I think it's way too early to say that the e-book will kill the hardback."
Topp doesn't use an e-reader, but his wife does. She praises its ability to store hundreds of novels in a slim, mobile device that weighs less than most of the venerable collectible books on the Hermitage shelves.
Certainly, digital publishing is changing the way people consume books — how and where they acquire books, and how and where they read. Here are 10 examples, old school versus new.
PRINT BOOKS: We joined book clubs.
DIGITAL BOOKS: We discuss them in booklogs. Readers extract favorite (or hated) passages from books to comment on in dedicated blogs, aided by Google, which is indexing and ranking individual book pages and passages, based on online chatter. Read a perplexing or inspiring passage and then instantly browse comments from other readers — effectively, a global book club. This option takes reading a book from being an individual activity to a group sport.
Some examples: bookblog.net, book-blog .com, and Kirkus Review's kirkusreviews .com/meet-the-bloggers, an aggregation of book blogs.
PRINT BOOKS: We find them in libraries, bookstores and bookmobiles.
DIGITAL BOOKS: For people who own personal computers, e-readers, smartphones, iPads and other tablets, there's 2 4/7 access to libraries and bookstores for purchasing, borrowing and downloading material.
However, people who don't own those devices are left behind. Underfunded schools, for example, barely have funds for printed books, much less e-books, e-readers or laptops, educators say.
"I hate to see our increasingly divided culture leave the poor further behind by making texts available mostly in unaffordable and impractical formats," says Denver School of the Arts literature teacher Gregg Painter.
PRINT BOOKS: Scribble notes in the margins.
DIGITAL BOOKS: We use Kindle's Public Notes virtual annotation application.
Want to see how this works? Go to kindle.amazon.com, click on "Most Popular," then "Books with the most public notes," then on a title to bring up a list of note-writers, and clicking the "+" sign next to each name to see an individual's notes.
Notes aren't necessarily illuminating — "Note: look up ostergarden in wikipedia," writes Joel Gianoli in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." (It's a farm in Sweden.)
But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.
PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed. Fort Collins author Lauren Myracle, whose latest book, "Shine," has its own Facebook page, maintains at least three Facebook pages that are followed avidly by fans who exchange views with her.
"Last night I read 'The Corsage' and you were absolutely right! Very scary stuff! It took me two hours to try and sleep last night," wrote fan Emma Dougherty.
Loveland historical mystery writer Charlotte Hinger calculates that she spends nearly as much time promoting her books on Facebook and other social media as she does researching and writing "Lethal Lineage" and her other books. Her Facebook page quotes Agatha Christie, and her wall updates fans on book signings, reviews, conferences and her progress on her new novel, "Hidden Heritage."
PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad. The writer calls up his book, inserts a blank page between the title page and the first chapter, and then inscribes the blank page. The process takes less than three minutes, and authors can e-mail their inscriptions remotely.
PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department
DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.
PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore.
DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist. Purchased books remain indefinitely on e-readers. Amazon Kindle books are automatically backed up on Amazon servers, so if a reader loses a Kindle or wants to upgrade, the books on the old Kindle move to the new one. The Kindle app will do the same thing for an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, plus Macs and PCs.
PRINT BOOKS: Swap books with friends.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.
The borrower doesn't need a Kindle, just a Kindle reading application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android.
PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page. This function is available on newer e-readers, including the latest Kindle, which includes the New Oxford American Dictionary.
PRINT BOOKS: Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books.
DIGITAL BOOKS: There's no equivalent so far. Hermitage owner Bob Topp says he sees quite a few new customers who've become fans of an author after reading several digital books.
"It's a whole new group of people discovering a new world of older books, a dimension they never knew about," he says.
"They come into our store, and the look in their eyes is 'Book! I just gotta touch a book!' They've read the e-book on the plane, but now they want a book they can hold in their hand."
from: Denver Post
 |
| (Bloomberg) |
The Hermitage Bookshop in Cherry Creek North, decidedly old-school with its oak furniture and elaborate Persian rug, isn't where you'd expect to find a fan of e-books, but listen to owner Bob Topp: "E-books have increased the purchase of print books," he says.
"It's easy for people to read the Sunday paper, look at a book review, and 10 minutes later, they've got that e-book on their Kindle. More people reading is good. I think it's way too early to say that the e-book will kill the hardback."
Topp doesn't use an e-reader, but his wife does. She praises its ability to store hundreds of novels in a slim, mobile device that weighs less than most of the venerable collectible books on the Hermitage shelves.
Certainly, digital publishing is changing the way people consume books — how and where they acquire books, and how and where they read. Here are 10 examples, old school versus new.
PRINT BOOKS: We joined book clubs.
DIGITAL BOOKS: We discuss them in booklogs. Readers extract favorite (or hated) passages from books to comment on in dedicated blogs, aided by Google, which is indexing and ranking individual book pages and passages, based on online chatter. Read a perplexing or inspiring passage and then instantly browse comments from other readers — effectively, a global book club. This option takes reading a book from being an individual activity to a group sport.
Some examples: bookblog.net, book-blog .com, and Kirkus Review's kirkusreviews .com/meet-the-bloggers, an aggregation of book blogs.
PRINT BOOKS: We find them in libraries, bookstores and bookmobiles.
DIGITAL BOOKS: For people who own personal computers, e-readers, smartphones, iPads and other tablets, there's 2 4/7 access to libraries and bookstores for purchasing, borrowing and downloading material.
However, people who don't own those devices are left behind. Underfunded schools, for example, barely have funds for printed books, much less e-books, e-readers or laptops, educators say.
"I hate to see our increasingly divided culture leave the poor further behind by making texts available mostly in unaffordable and impractical formats," says Denver School of the Arts literature teacher Gregg Painter.
PRINT BOOKS: Scribble notes in the margins.
DIGITAL BOOKS: We use Kindle's Public Notes virtual annotation application.
Want to see how this works? Go to kindle.amazon.com, click on "Most Popular," then "Books with the most public notes," then on a title to bring up a list of note-writers, and clicking the "+" sign next to each name to see an individual's notes.
Notes aren't necessarily illuminating — "Note: look up ostergarden in wikipedia," writes Joel Gianoli in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." (It's a farm in Sweden.)
But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.
PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed. Fort Collins author Lauren Myracle, whose latest book, "Shine," has its own Facebook page, maintains at least three Facebook pages that are followed avidly by fans who exchange views with her.
"Last night I read 'The Corsage' and you were absolutely right! Very scary stuff! It took me two hours to try and sleep last night," wrote fan Emma Dougherty.
Loveland historical mystery writer Charlotte Hinger calculates that she spends nearly as much time promoting her books on Facebook and other social media as she does researching and writing "Lethal Lineage" and her other books. Her Facebook page quotes Agatha Christie, and her wall updates fans on book signings, reviews, conferences and her progress on her new novel, "Hidden Heritage."
PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad. The writer calls up his book, inserts a blank page between the title page and the first chapter, and then inscribes the blank page. The process takes less than three minutes, and authors can e-mail their inscriptions remotely.
PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department
DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.
PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore.
DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist. Purchased books remain indefinitely on e-readers. Amazon Kindle books are automatically backed up on Amazon servers, so if a reader loses a Kindle or wants to upgrade, the books on the old Kindle move to the new one. The Kindle app will do the same thing for an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, plus Macs and PCs.
PRINT BOOKS: Swap books with friends.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.
The borrower doesn't need a Kindle, just a Kindle reading application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android.
PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning.
DIGITAL BOOKS: Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page. This function is available on newer e-readers, including the latest Kindle, which includes the New Oxford American Dictionary.
PRINT BOOKS: Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books.
DIGITAL BOOKS: There's no equivalent so far. Hermitage owner Bob Topp says he sees quite a few new customers who've become fans of an author after reading several digital books.
"It's a whole new group of people discovering a new world of older books, a dimension they never knew about," he says.
"They come into our store, and the look in their eyes is 'Book! I just gotta touch a book!' They've read the e-book on the plane, but now they want a book they can hold in their hand."
from: Denver Post
Monday, April 25, 2011
Israeli sues Google Books for copyright infringement
Yonatan Brauner: The project infringes authors' copyright "on the greatest scale in human history".
by: Ela Levy-Weinrib
A lawsuit has been filed against Google Books with the Jerusalem District Court, with a request to recognize it as a class-action lawsuit. The petitioner, Yonatan Brauner, the author of "Things you see from there" (in Hebrew), claims that the project infringes authors' copyright "on the greatest scale in human history".
Brauner claims that Google continuously scans, collects, copies, and makes publicly available millions of books, thereby grossly and systematically infringing copyright without first obtaining the authors' consent. He said it was not yet possible to estimate the damage caused to authors because he lacks precise figures about the quantity of creations affected or the extent of the copyright infringement for each work, but he provisionally estimates the damage at "tens of millions of shekels or more".
Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Google Books venture aims to put online hundreds of thousands of books worldwide in a digital database, which will include content and word search capacity.
Brauner claims, "However fantastical it may sound, Google, one of the world's largest and wealthiest corporations, is infringing the copyright of books like a thug, and knowingly uses the Google Books project, whose basic purpose is to present books without receiving permission from the copyright's owner or publisher, and without paying a penny for it."
The statement of claim says that, as of the date the lawsuit was filed, over 15 million books from over 100 countries in 400 languages had been scanned and stored. Thousands of books (and possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) of these books are in Hebrew, by Israeli authors, which were published in Israel and are protected by Israeli copyright law.
from: Globes
by: Ela Levy-Weinrib
A lawsuit has been filed against Google Books with the Jerusalem District Court, with a request to recognize it as a class-action lawsuit. The petitioner, Yonatan Brauner, the author of "Things you see from there" (in Hebrew), claims that the project infringes authors' copyright "on the greatest scale in human history".
Brauner claims that Google continuously scans, collects, copies, and makes publicly available millions of books, thereby grossly and systematically infringing copyright without first obtaining the authors' consent. He said it was not yet possible to estimate the damage caused to authors because he lacks precise figures about the quantity of creations affected or the extent of the copyright infringement for each work, but he provisionally estimates the damage at "tens of millions of shekels or more".
Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Google Books venture aims to put online hundreds of thousands of books worldwide in a digital database, which will include content and word search capacity.
Brauner claims, "However fantastical it may sound, Google, one of the world's largest and wealthiest corporations, is infringing the copyright of books like a thug, and knowingly uses the Google Books project, whose basic purpose is to present books without receiving permission from the copyright's owner or publisher, and without paying a penny for it."
The statement of claim says that, as of the date the lawsuit was filed, over 15 million books from over 100 countries in 400 languages had been scanned and stored. Thousands of books (and possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) of these books are in Hebrew, by Israeli authors, which were published in Israel and are protected by Israeli copyright law.
from: Globes
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Peter Mansbridge and Winnie The Pooh Rule The Canadian Reading World, According To Sony's Digital Reader Study
International Study on Reading Preferences for April 23 World Book and Copyright Day Reveals What People Love to Read, Where They Read, and What Books They Want to Pass on to Their Kids
TORONTO, April 21, 2011 – From a cardboard baby book to a digital novel on a sleek electronic reader, literature can be a life-long pleasure. In celebration of World Book and Copyright Day on April 23rd, Sony of Canada today announced the findings of an international reading survey conducted in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
The survey was conducted in March by RKM Research and Communications, Inc., and polled 500 readers in each country to discover the books that have had the most profound effect, the literary characters readers relate to and which celebrity book picks would be the most influential.
“While April 23rd marks World Book and Copyright Day, for many literature lovers every day is a book day. The Sony Reader allows any one to carry more than 1,000 books with them wherever they go,” said Tim Algate, Marketing Manager of Reader Digital Books at Sony Canada. “The international Reader survey illustrates the important role books play in our lives.”
Canadian Media Book Picks Hold Sway
According to the study, when Canadian respondents were asked “Whose book picks would you most want to read?” Canadians indicated interest in recommendations from Canadian broadcaster and news anchor Peter Mansbridge. Twenty-six percent of French Canadian respondents said they would be most swayed by songstress Celine Dion’s choices. Other in-demand sources for book recommendations include actor Jim Carrey (20 percent), ‘Sex and the City' star Kim Cattrall (10 percent), former Canadian professional ice hockey player Mario Lemieux (9 percent), The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean (9 percent), The Right Honourable Adrienne Louise Clarkson (4 percent), essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul (4 percent), host and co-creator of the Q on CBC Radio One Jian Ghomeshi (4 percent), best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell (4 percent), and Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber (2 percent).
Comedians top the list as literary influencers for Brits and Australians. In the United Kingdom, 29 percent of respondents would read books recommended by funny man Ricky Gervais. Down under, 31 percent of Aussies responded that they would read books recommended by native comic Andrew Denton.
Treasured Books Passed Onto Kids
The survey also found that when asked, “What classic book would you like to pass on to your children?” One in four Canadian parents cited Dr. Seuss’ Winnie the Pooh at the top of their list, followed by classics including Cat in the Hat (18 percent), Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever (18 percent), and Anne of Green Gables (16 percent).
When asked the same question, Americans, Brits, and Australians unanimously agreed that Winnie the Pooh would be at the top of their respective lists as the book of choice to pass down to their kids.
Readers Can Relate
Canada’s favourite character is “elementary” – when asked, “Which literary character do you relate to the most?” Nineteen percent of Canadians chose Sherlock Holmes. Americans (17 percent) and Australians (14 percent) felt the same way about the treasured detective, while 14 percent of Brits responded that they most related to James Bond.
Other survey findings
- Books in bedrooms - When asked where they read most often, more than three in four Canadians take their books to bed with them. The living room is second, with 70 percent, followed by 38 percent who like to read on vacation. Eight percent of total respondents report taking a book on their commute to work.
- The Bible’s effect – Canadian respondents claim to have been impacted by the Bible. Over one in five (11 percent) named the Bible as the book that “had the most profound effect on you,” versus 21 percent of Americans, 9 percent of Australians and 8 percent of Brits.
- Harry Potter’s power - While the Bible is tops overall, the next most influential literature cited by respondents is the Harry Potter series. Amongst younger respondents age 18-24, Harry Potter topped the Bible with 8 percent versus 5 percent.
Methodology
The results of this report are based on an international online survey commissioned by Sony Electronics. The research was conducted as part of Sony’s support of World Reading and Copyright Day.
The survey was conducted by RKM Research and Communications, March 11-21, 2011. The survey is based on a sample of 500 randomly selected consumers in: 1) the United States; 2) the United Kingdom; 3) Australia; and 4) Canada. The Canadian sample included 122 consumers who self-identified as French Canadian.
The survey is fully representative of adults in each of the four countries under investigation. Online panels were used to select respondents, and invitations to participate in the survey were systematically balanced to match the demographic characteristics (gender, age, education and income) of respondents within each country to known census information. Each country panel was also balanced by region to ensure the representativeness of each sample.
About the Reader™ Digital Book
Sony of Canada’s line of beautifully-designed Reader digital books include the Reader Pocket Edition™ and Reader Touch Edition™. Reader digital books feature a host of design and technology enhancements that make them the perfect device for any reader’s lifestyle. Reader brings a fresh level of flare to e-reading with colourful, elegant aluminum designs and highly responsive full touch screens designed specifically for digital reading. The new, first-to-market technology improves response time and increases reading clarity, creating a natural, immersive reading experience. Since its inception in September 2006, Sony's Reader Store has included a wide offering of new releases and bestselling eBook titles for book lovers of all kinds. Today it features access to more than two million titles and links to borrow eBooks from local public libraries nationwide.
Note from poster: yes, I realize there's an error in it, but as the work is not originally mine, I did not feel comfortable changing it.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Librarians: Masters of the info universe
File this under better late than never...
by: Kerith Page McFadden
Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And, though you might not know it, they are everywhere.
And so in their honor during National Library Week, we enjoy the following tidbits of information.
Famous people who were librarians
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Casanova, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, former first lady Laura Bush and China's Mao Zedong. At one point in their lives, each of them either worked as librarian or in a library.
Librarians are techno-savvy
Librarians don't just use books anymore. Searching through tweets, blogs, podcasts, websites and more to find accurate and authoritative information has become more the rule than the exception.
At a time where anyone can Google just about anything, librarians don't just find information, they find the correct information -- and fast. The American Library Association reports reference librarians in the nation's public and academic libraries answered nearly 5.7 million questions each week in 2010.
Filmmaker's library
Even "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has his own research library on his Skywalker Ranch. Lucas started the library in 1978, and the collection is housed under a large stained-glass dome.
Librarians influence our culture and society
While clearing out old archives at the Palmer Theological Seminary in 2005, librarian Heather Carbo found a working manuscript of one of Beethoven's final compositions.
Librarians track spy info and classified intelligence
When the CIA needs to provide information to the U.S. president, they turn to their librarians. To become one of the U.S. intelligence's community research experts, a librarian must pass medical and psychological exams, polygraph interviews and clear extensive background investigations.
Librarians are heroic
Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, removed 30,000 books from the city's main library before it was destroyed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Their numbers are many
In 2009, there were 206,000 librarians, 50,000 library technicians and 96,000 other education, training and library workers
Librarians are behind the scenes in current events
-- Federal government shutdown. Lawmakers go to the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, for information.
-- The royal wedding at Westminster Abbey. The Abbey's Library and Muniment Room has a historic collection of books, manuscripts and archival material.
-- NATO no-fly zone over Libya. NATO's Brussels Headquarters houses a multimedia library with a collection focusing on international relations, security and defense, military questions and world affairs.
Warning to readers about librarians
A character in "The Callahan Touch", one of science fiction writer Spider Robinson's books, said, "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off."
Good advice.
Kerith Page McFadden has a masters of library science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and has been a librarian at CNN for the past 12 years.
from: CNN
by: Kerith Page McFadden
Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And, though you might not know it, they are everywhere.
And so in their honor during National Library Week, we enjoy the following tidbits of information.
Famous people who were librarians
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Casanova, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, former first lady Laura Bush and China's Mao Zedong. At one point in their lives, each of them either worked as librarian or in a library.
Librarians are techno-savvy
Librarians don't just use books anymore. Searching through tweets, blogs, podcasts, websites and more to find accurate and authoritative information has become more the rule than the exception.
At a time where anyone can Google just about anything, librarians don't just find information, they find the correct information -- and fast. The American Library Association reports reference librarians in the nation's public and academic libraries answered nearly 5.7 million questions each week in 2010.
Filmmaker's library
Even "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has his own research library on his Skywalker Ranch. Lucas started the library in 1978, and the collection is housed under a large stained-glass dome.
Librarians influence our culture and society
While clearing out old archives at the Palmer Theological Seminary in 2005, librarian Heather Carbo found a working manuscript of one of Beethoven's final compositions.
Librarians track spy info and classified intelligence
When the CIA needs to provide information to the U.S. president, they turn to their librarians. To become one of the U.S. intelligence's community research experts, a librarian must pass medical and psychological exams, polygraph interviews and clear extensive background investigations.
Librarians are heroic
Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, removed 30,000 books from the city's main library before it was destroyed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Their numbers are many
In 2009, there were 206,000 librarians, 50,000 library technicians and 96,000 other education, training and library workers
Librarians are behind the scenes in current events
-- Federal government shutdown. Lawmakers go to the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, for information.
-- The royal wedding at Westminster Abbey. The Abbey's Library and Muniment Room has a historic collection of books, manuscripts and archival material.
-- NATO no-fly zone over Libya. NATO's Brussels Headquarters houses a multimedia library with a collection focusing on international relations, security and defense, military questions and world affairs.
Warning to readers about librarians
A character in "The Callahan Touch", one of science fiction writer Spider Robinson's books, said, "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off."
Good advice.
Kerith Page McFadden has a masters of library science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and has been a librarian at CNN for the past 12 years.
from: CNN
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Salman Rushdie services New York hotel rooms with books
In honour of PEN World Voices festival in New York, which he is chairing, novelist selects books for the city's high-end Standard Hotel
by: Alison Flood
Guests staying at New York's luxury Standard hotel next week will not have to resort to copies of the Gideon Bible if they find themselves short of reading material. Instead, their bedside tables are being furnished with a selection of books picked by a somewhat unlikely maid: Salman Rushdie.
As founder of the PEN World Voices festival and chair of this year's event, which takes place in New York next week, Rushdie has selected a series of American classics for the rooms at The Standard, which is hosting many of the festival's events. The Booker prize-winning author has come up with a wide-ranging line-up for guests, from Walt Whitman's 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass to Philip Roth's 1969 tale of the sex-obsessed Alexander Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint.
Other titles picked by Rushdie range from William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, while a more modern perspective is provided by Toni Morrison's Beloved, Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, Thomas Pynchon's V, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Those wishing to dip into a book of short stories of an evening might be tempted by Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, or collections by Eudora Welty and Bernard Malamud, while science fiction comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
The PEN festival, which is intended to "celebrate the power of the writer's voice as a bold and vital element of public discourse", runs from 25 April to 1 May in New York, featuring more than 100 writers from 40 nations, from Harold Bloom to Hanif Kureishi, Amélie Nothomb, Elif Shafak and Irvine Welsh. Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka will deliver the Arthur Miller freedom to write lecture on the closing night.
Announcing the festival earlier this year, Rushdie said it would enable visitors "to hear from writers from every corner of the globe". He added that: "What becomes clear is that the role of the intellectual varies tremendously from country to country. In tyrannical or authoritarian regimes, people turn to writers and intellectuals to serve as the conscience of those countries. On the other hand, in free societies, you have a country like France, in which the voice of the writer is at the centre of politics – or a country like the US, in which the role of the intellectual has steadily declined. We now call on the public intellectual to have a much louder and more potent voice in American political life."
from: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
Guests staying at New York's luxury Standard hotel next week will not have to resort to copies of the Gideon Bible if they find themselves short of reading material. Instead, their bedside tables are being furnished with a selection of books picked by a somewhat unlikely maid: Salman Rushdie.
As founder of the PEN World Voices festival and chair of this year's event, which takes place in New York next week, Rushdie has selected a series of American classics for the rooms at The Standard, which is hosting many of the festival's events. The Booker prize-winning author has come up with a wide-ranging line-up for guests, from Walt Whitman's 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass to Philip Roth's 1969 tale of the sex-obsessed Alexander Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint.
Other titles picked by Rushdie range from William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, while a more modern perspective is provided by Toni Morrison's Beloved, Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, Thomas Pynchon's V, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Those wishing to dip into a book of short stories of an evening might be tempted by Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, or collections by Eudora Welty and Bernard Malamud, while science fiction comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
The PEN festival, which is intended to "celebrate the power of the writer's voice as a bold and vital element of public discourse", runs from 25 April to 1 May in New York, featuring more than 100 writers from 40 nations, from Harold Bloom to Hanif Kureishi, Amélie Nothomb, Elif Shafak and Irvine Welsh. Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka will deliver the Arthur Miller freedom to write lecture on the closing night.
Announcing the festival earlier this year, Rushdie said it would enable visitors "to hear from writers from every corner of the globe". He added that: "What becomes clear is that the role of the intellectual varies tremendously from country to country. In tyrannical or authoritarian regimes, people turn to writers and intellectuals to serve as the conscience of those countries. On the other hand, in free societies, you have a country like France, in which the voice of the writer is at the centre of politics – or a country like the US, in which the role of the intellectual has steadily declined. We now call on the public intellectual to have a much louder and more potent voice in American political life."
from: Guardian
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Kindle Library Lending and OverDrive – What it means for libraries and schools
by: Karen Estrovich
Today Amazon and OverDrive announced the Kindle Library Lending program, which will enable Kindle customers to borrow and enjoy eBooks from our library, school, and college partners in the United States. The program is scheduled for launch later this year, and will significantly increase the value of the investments that libraries have made in OverDrive-powered eBook catalogs.
Many of our partners will immediately receive inquiries about this new program, so here is a brief introduction into what can be expected when the program launches:
Karen Estrovich is manager of content sales for OverDrive.
from: Overdriveblog
Today Amazon and OverDrive announced the Kindle Library Lending program, which will enable Kindle customers to borrow and enjoy eBooks from our library, school, and college partners in the United States. The program is scheduled for launch later this year, and will significantly increase the value of the investments that libraries have made in OverDrive-powered eBook catalogs.
Many of our partners will immediately receive inquiries about this new program, so here is a brief introduction into what can be expected when the program launches:
- The Kindle Library Lending program will integrate into your existing OverDrive-powered ‘Virtual Branch’ website.
- Your existing collection of downloadable eBooks will be available to Kindle customers. As you add new eBooks to your collection, those titles will also be available in Kindle format for lending to Kindle and Kindle reading apps. Your library will not need to purchase any additional units to have Kindle compatibility. This will work for your existing copies and units.
- A user will be able to browse for titles on any desktop or mobile operating system, check out a title with a library card, and then select Kindle as the delivery destination. The borrowed title will then be able to be enjoyed using any Kindle device and all of Amazon’s free Kindle Reading Apps.
- The Kindle eBook titles borrowed from a library will carry the same rules and policies as all our other eBooks.
- The Kindle Library Lending program will support publishers’ existing lending models.
- Your users’ confidential information will be protected.
- The Kindle Library Lending program is only available for libraries, schools, and colleges in the United States.
Karen Estrovich is manager of content sales for OverDrive.
from: Overdriveblog
Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books
Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books
SEATTLE, Apr 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- (NASDAQ: AMZN)-- Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.
"We're excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries," said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. "Customers tell us they love Kindle for its Pearl e-ink display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight, up to a month of battery life, and Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights and last page read between their Kindle and free Kindle apps."
Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer's annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
"We're doing a little something extra here," Marine continued. "Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced."
With Kindle Library Lending, customers can take advantage of all of the unique features of Kindle and Kindle books, including:
•Paper-like Pearl electronic-ink display
•No glare even in bright sunlight
•Lighter than a paperback - weighs just 8.5 ounces and holds up to 3,500 books
•Up to one month of battery life with wireless off
•Read everywhere with free Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Phone
•Whispersync technology wirelessly sync your books, notes, highlights, and last page read across Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
•Real Page Numbers - easily reference passages with page numbers that correspond to actual print editions
Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. "We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer Kindle Library Lending to the millions of customers who read on Kindle and Kindle apps," said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive. "We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle, so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle."
Kindle Library Lending will be available later this year for Kindle and free Kindle app users. To learn more about Kindle go to www.amazon.com/kindle.
from: amazon.com
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Secret History of Ads in Books
by: Jennifer Schuessler
 |
| Advertising inserted into a 1972 science-fiction paperback by A. E. Van Vogt. |
But books haven’t always been an ad-free zone, as this 2007 essay by Paul Collins from the Book Review shows. Back in the mid-19th century, readers of Dickens serials were bombarded with paeans to Freeman’s Spermazine Wax Lights and Dr. Lucock’s Pulmonic Wafers. And in the 1960s and 1970s, you could hardly open a mass-market paperback without encountering a pitch for Q-Tips, Sanka or Canadian Club.
But the bulk of the advertising, Collins wrote, came from cigarette companies, who were looking for new ways to push their product after the 1969 federal ban on television and radio advertising. By 1975, the Lorillard Tobacco Company had placed ads in some 540 million paperbacks. The focus was mainly on pulp titles like “Purr, Baby, Purr” and “Group Sex,” but Lorillard also placed ads in some 74,000 copies of Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye.”
Authors and readers alike assailed the ads, with one columnist lamenting, “We will see the day when we turn a page of Hemingway or Wolfe … and the next page will say Are Your Underarms Really With It?” The ads began to fade away in the early 1980s, thanks in part to new author contracts forbidding unauthorized ads.
But Amazon’s partners in its new Kindle venture may take comfort from the fact that the ads seemed to work. According to one 1972 study, while readers claimed to dislike the idea of advertising in books, after actual exposure their negative feelings declined while brand awareness climbed.
from: NY Times
Monday, April 18, 2011
Investigation throws 'Three Cups of Tea' author Greg Mortenson's charity work into doubt
by: Carolyn KelloggAn investigation by "60 Minutes" to be broadcast this weekend will cite multiple sources that contend some of the most inspiring stories in Greg Mortenson's books "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools" are not true.
Significantly, Mortenson's origin story -- of being saved by a remote village in Afghanistan and promising to build a school for them -- appears to be a fabrication.
In a news release, the television program explains:
The heart of Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” is the story of a
failed attempt in 1993 to climb the world’s second-highest
peak, K2. On the way down, Mortenson says, he got lost and
stumbled, alone and exhausted, into a remote mountain village in
Pakistan named Korphe. According to the book’s narrative, the
villagers cared for him and he promised to return to build a school there. In a remote village in
Pakistan, 60 MINUTES found Mortenson’s porters on that failed expedition. They say Mortenson
didn’t get lost and stumble into Korphe on his way down from K2. He visited the village a year later.
That’s what famous author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer, a former donor to Mortenson’s charity,
says he found out, too. “It’s a beautiful story. And it’s a lie,” says Krakauer. “I have spoken to one of
his [Mortenson’s] companions, a close friend, who hiked out from K2 with him and this companion
said, ‘Greg never heard of Korphe until a year later,’” Krakauer tells Kroft. Mortenson did eventually
build a school in Korphe, Krakauer says, “But if you read the first few chapters of that book, you
realize, ‘I am being taken for a ride here.’ ”
The story of Mortenson's efforts to support education in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly their remote regions is widely known, and has helped draw many to his charity. Since opening his first school in 1997, Mortenson has been said to have been involved with establishing hundreds of schools, working with tribal leaders, Islamic clerics and militia commanders. He even survived an eight-day abduction by the Taliban.
Yet the story of his abduction has been called into question. 60 Minutes reports:
In “Three Cups of Tea,” Mortenson writes of being kidnapped in the Waziristan region of Pakistan in
1996. In his second book, “Stones into Schools,” Mortenson publishes a photograph of his alleged
captors. In television appearances, he has said he was kidnapped for eight days by the Taliban. 60
MINUTES located three of the men in the photo, all of whom denied that they were Taliban and
denied that they had kidnapped Mortenson. One the men in the photo is the research director of a
respected think tank in Islamabad, Mansur Khan Mahsud. He tells Kroft that he and the others in the
photo were Mortenson’s protectors, not his kidnappers. “We treated him as a guest and took care of
him,” says Mahsud. “This is totally false and he is lying.” Asked why Mortenson would lie about the
trip, Mahsud replies, “To sell his book.”
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Who’s the Biggest Loser in E-Books?
by: Stephen J. Dubner
The e-book explosion is for real, and growing. What’s interesting is that most of the complaining you may have read in recent months is from the publisher side — that it will be ever harder for them to stay solvent in an e-book world. But the latest edition of the Authors Guild bulletin, reprinting a recent e-mail alert to Guild members, shows that under current royalty configurations, the real losers aren’t the publishers; it’s the authors.
This is plainly an opportunity for literary agents to exercise whatever muscle they can muster, as they have in past decades when formats changed. Here’s how the Guild (hardly a disinterested party) puts it:
Among the ills of this radical pay cut [lower prices for e-books than for hardcovers] is the distorting effect it has on publishers’ incentives: publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than they do on hardcover sales. Authors, on the other hand, always do worse.
How much better for the publisher and how much worse for the author? Here are examples of author’s royalties compared to publisher’s gross profit (income per copy minus expenses per copy), calculated using industry-standard contract terms:
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$3.75 hardcover; $2.28 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -39%
Publisher’s Margin:
$4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +33%
Hell’s Corner, by David Baldacci
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -37%
Publisher’s Margin:
$5.80 hardcover; $7.37 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +27%
Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$4.05 hardcover; $3.38 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -17%
Publisher’s Margin:
$5.45 hardcover; $9.62 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +77%
So, everything else being equal, publishers will naturally have a strong bias toward e-book sales. It certainly does wonders for cash flow: not only does the publisher net more, but the reduced royalty means that every time an e-book purchase displaces a hardcover purchase, the odds that the author’s advance will earn out — and the publisher will have to cut a check for royalties — diminishes.
What’s tricky here in the publishing world is that an awful lot of writers do not write for the money. But I can guarantee you that the agents of the books listed above — and the authors themselves — aren’t happy knowing that they earn a little bit less money every time they sell a copy of a book that nets the publisher a little bit more money.
from: Freakonomics
The e-book explosion is for real, and growing. What’s interesting is that most of the complaining you may have read in recent months is from the publisher side — that it will be ever harder for them to stay solvent in an e-book world. But the latest edition of the Authors Guild bulletin, reprinting a recent e-mail alert to Guild members, shows that under current royalty configurations, the real losers aren’t the publishers; it’s the authors.
This is plainly an opportunity for literary agents to exercise whatever muscle they can muster, as they have in past decades when formats changed. Here’s how the Guild (hardly a disinterested party) puts it:
Among the ills of this radical pay cut [lower prices for e-books than for hardcovers] is the distorting effect it has on publishers’ incentives: publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than they do on hardcover sales. Authors, on the other hand, always do worse.
How much better for the publisher and how much worse for the author? Here are examples of author’s royalties compared to publisher’s gross profit (income per copy minus expenses per copy), calculated using industry-standard contract terms:
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$3.75 hardcover; $2.28 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -39%
Publisher’s Margin:
$4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +33%
Hell’s Corner, by David Baldacci
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -37%
Publisher’s Margin:
$5.80 hardcover; $7.37 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +27%
Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
Author’s Standard Royalty:
$4.05 hardcover; $3.38 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -17%
Publisher’s Margin:
$5.45 hardcover; $9.62 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +77%
So, everything else being equal, publishers will naturally have a strong bias toward e-book sales. It certainly does wonders for cash flow: not only does the publisher net more, but the reduced royalty means that every time an e-book purchase displaces a hardcover purchase, the odds that the author’s advance will earn out — and the publisher will have to cut a check for royalties — diminishes.
What’s tricky here in the publishing world is that an awful lot of writers do not write for the money. But I can guarantee you that the agents of the books listed above — and the authors themselves — aren’t happy knowing that they earn a little bit less money every time they sell a copy of a book that nets the publisher a little bit more money.
from: Freakonomics
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Poetry Slams Spur Student Literacy in the South Bronx
by: Liz Dwyer
In the South Bronx, the birthplace of hip hop, the art of spitting rhymes is alive and well—in the form of competitive performance poetry. Local nonprofit Global Writes teaches middle and high school students the fine art of the poetry slam by bringing working poets into English classes for 32-week sessions. Students as young as 12 become fully engaged in the writing process because they get to write about the things they care about—everything from the poverty and obesity in their community to their families. Along the way, their confidence, critical analysis skills, and performance and public speaking abilities skyrocket.
Schools with the program—they're now in three cities in six states—show improved attendance, gains in writing test scores, and more motivated students. Jesica Blandon, a student at Dream Yard Preparatory School told Edutopia that "When you find out that words can actually change the world, and the words that change the world come from you, it makes you feel so important." You can watch Blandon and other students slam in the video above.
from: Good Education
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cheaper Than A Tablet: 'Rooting' Your E-Reader
by: Jon Kalish
What if you could buy a tablet with a slightly smaller screen than the iPad for half the price or even less? Hackers have been turning e-book readers into tablets for cheap Internet on the go.
In fact, San Francisco hacker Mitch Altman doesn't read e-books on his Kindle at all. He only uses its Web browser to access maps and restaurant listings when he's traveling.
The Amazon Kindle has 3G data connectivity so that readers can download e-books anywhere there is cell service. As many Kindle owners know, the device can connect to Google and Wikipedia to look up things mentioned in e-books, too. That connectivity is all the opportunity hackers need to turn an e-book reader into a tablet.
Cheap And Portable Internet
"This is something that is starting to get around in geek and hacker circles, and it's a relatively cheap way to have Internet anywhere you go," Altman says.
When Altman says it's cheap, he's referring to the fact that the 3G Kindle costs a mere $190 and there is no charge for the 3G Internet. Of course, there's a trade-off here: the Kindle doesn't have a touch screen, so you have to use scrolling buttons to navigate around the screen, which Altman has found cumbersome. But for $60 more, he could've gotten the Nook Color.
The Nook Color is one of Barnes & Noble's e-book readers. It sells for $250 and can access the Internet only via wi-fi. It runs a stripped-down version of the Android operating system.
Alex Kuklinski, a college student in Omaha, Neb., has a YouTube video showing people how to hack their Nook Color to make it into a "full-blown Android tablet."
Kuklinski posts videos almost every week on YouTube, where he goes by the name "Huskermania." He's quite fond of the Nook Color and its high-end touch screen. "It's a really high quality device for the price."
He says the procedure for converting the Nook Color into an Android tablet is relatively simple. It takes about a half-hour, and the only cost beyond the Nook itself is the purchase of a micro-SD card, which can run about $15. Otherwise, it involves downloading a piece of free software that includes the Android operating system.
"I was nervous at first," Kuklinski admits. "I was basically nervous that I was going to ruin something. But once I did it, I realized how easy it was."
Unlocking Devices Not Just For Geeks Anymore
Theunlockr.com is a website devoted to the notion that consumers can get more out of their mobile devices if they unlock or "root" them. David Cogen runs the site. He compared a Nook running Android to the Samsung Galaxy Tab — another Android tablet device — and found the unlocked Nook stacked up well.
"It's a little slower," Cogen says. "There are occasional glitches. Sometimes things don't appear correctly on the screen in certain applications. If you're just using it to surf the Internet, use some apps, play Angry Birds, etc., it works very well — and the thing I like about it is it's very lightweight and thin, even more so than, say, the Galaxy Tab."
Cogen credits a huge community of software developers for driving innovation in the hacking of smartphones and tablets. And though the crowd that is inclined to root something like a Nook e-reader is relatively geeky, Cogen says, it's growing.
"People are going to realize that they can get a very inexpensive Android tablet with this device, and the developers see that," Cogen says. "It's a challenge to them, and they're going to continue to make it better. So it's definitely going to get more stable, less glitches as time goes on. We're talking weeks, days."
Barnes & Noble declined to comment on the use of its Nook Color e-book reader as an Android tablet. The terms of service for the device make it clear that rooting voids the warranty. But recent talk in the tech blogosphere indicates that the company may soon issue a software update that will make the Nook more of a tablet without hacking it.
from: NPR
What if you could buy a tablet with a slightly smaller screen than the iPad for half the price or even less? Hackers have been turning e-book readers into tablets for cheap Internet on the go.
In fact, San Francisco hacker Mitch Altman doesn't read e-books on his Kindle at all. He only uses its Web browser to access maps and restaurant listings when he's traveling.
The Amazon Kindle has 3G data connectivity so that readers can download e-books anywhere there is cell service. As many Kindle owners know, the device can connect to Google and Wikipedia to look up things mentioned in e-books, too. That connectivity is all the opportunity hackers need to turn an e-book reader into a tablet.
Cheap And Portable Internet
"This is something that is starting to get around in geek and hacker circles, and it's a relatively cheap way to have Internet anywhere you go," Altman says.
When Altman says it's cheap, he's referring to the fact that the 3G Kindle costs a mere $190 and there is no charge for the 3G Internet. Of course, there's a trade-off here: the Kindle doesn't have a touch screen, so you have to use scrolling buttons to navigate around the screen, which Altman has found cumbersome. But for $60 more, he could've gotten the Nook Color.
The Nook Color is one of Barnes & Noble's e-book readers. It sells for $250 and can access the Internet only via wi-fi. It runs a stripped-down version of the Android operating system.
Alex Kuklinski, a college student in Omaha, Neb., has a YouTube video showing people how to hack their Nook Color to make it into a "full-blown Android tablet."
Kuklinski posts videos almost every week on YouTube, where he goes by the name "Huskermania." He's quite fond of the Nook Color and its high-end touch screen. "It's a really high quality device for the price."
He says the procedure for converting the Nook Color into an Android tablet is relatively simple. It takes about a half-hour, and the only cost beyond the Nook itself is the purchase of a micro-SD card, which can run about $15. Otherwise, it involves downloading a piece of free software that includes the Android operating system.
"I was nervous at first," Kuklinski admits. "I was basically nervous that I was going to ruin something. But once I did it, I realized how easy it was."
Unlocking Devices Not Just For Geeks Anymore
Theunlockr.com is a website devoted to the notion that consumers can get more out of their mobile devices if they unlock or "root" them. David Cogen runs the site. He compared a Nook running Android to the Samsung Galaxy Tab — another Android tablet device — and found the unlocked Nook stacked up well.
"It's a little slower," Cogen says. "There are occasional glitches. Sometimes things don't appear correctly on the screen in certain applications. If you're just using it to surf the Internet, use some apps, play Angry Birds, etc., it works very well — and the thing I like about it is it's very lightweight and thin, even more so than, say, the Galaxy Tab."
Cogen credits a huge community of software developers for driving innovation in the hacking of smartphones and tablets. And though the crowd that is inclined to root something like a Nook e-reader is relatively geeky, Cogen says, it's growing.
"People are going to realize that they can get a very inexpensive Android tablet with this device, and the developers see that," Cogen says. "It's a challenge to them, and they're going to continue to make it better. So it's definitely going to get more stable, less glitches as time goes on. We're talking weeks, days."
Barnes & Noble declined to comment on the use of its Nook Color e-book reader as an Android tablet. The terms of service for the device make it clear that rooting voids the warranty. But recent talk in the tech blogosphere indicates that the company may soon issue a software update that will make the Nook more of a tablet without hacking it.
from: NPR
Monday, April 4, 2011
'La-La Land,' now the dictionary definition of Los Angeles
by: Carolyn Kellogg
The Oxford English Dictionary made some stellar updates on March 24, which are now online. For instance, "e-mail" is now "email." You can now, with reference to the OED, eat a banh mi sandwich or a taquito. And FYI (newly added), OMG is there too -- and it dates back to 1917. (OMG!).
But then there's this: La-La Land is in the newest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and it defines our fair city. Here's the definition:
la-la land n. can refer either to Los Angeles (in which case its etymology is influenced by the common initialism for that city), or to a state of being out of touch with reality—and sometimes to both simultaneously.
What is it, the sun, the palm trees, the nightclubs, the limos, the fact that Spiderman can get arrested on Hollywood Boulevard? Do we deserve this (new word) smack-talking from a bunch of dictionary writers? Maybe they should all be wearing (new word) tinfoil hats.
from: LA Times
The Oxford English Dictionary made some stellar updates on March 24, which are now online. For instance, "e-mail" is now "email." You can now, with reference to the OED, eat a banh mi sandwich or a taquito. And FYI (newly added), OMG is there too -- and it dates back to 1917. (OMG!).
But then there's this: La-La Land is in the newest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and it defines our fair city. Here's the definition:
la-la land n. can refer either to Los Angeles (in which case its etymology is influenced by the common initialism for that city), or to a state of being out of touch with reality—and sometimes to both simultaneously.
What is it, the sun, the palm trees, the nightclubs, the limos, the fact that Spiderman can get arrested on Hollywood Boulevard? Do we deserve this (new word) smack-talking from a bunch of dictionary writers? Maybe they should all be wearing (new word) tinfoil hats.
from: LA Times
Saturday, April 2, 2011
500 treasure hunters to overnight in NY Library
Five hundred scavengers will spend the night roaming the inner sanctums of the New York Public Library's grandiose main building on a treasure hunt game, the library said Friday.
Applicants to join the elaborate hunt began registering Friday on game.nypl.org in hopes of being chosen to stay up from dusk on May 20 till dawn the next day in the Fifth Avenue complex.
The website features a tantalizing taste of the fun. Spooky music plays over shots of the library apparently meant to recall Dan Brown thriller-style images - a close-up of the library's lion statue, ancient manuscripts, endless rows of books, the old world main reading room.
"It's never been attempted before," the website says. "It might not be possible."
The library says players will have the night to track down 100 treasures, such as the copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson's hand, scouring even the rarely visited miles (kilometers) of underground shelves.
But this will be as much a high-tech challenge as a bookworm's dream. Clues will be distributed by mobile phone apps and as contestants home in on the objects they will then have to write stories related to each find on a library computer.
Eventually the stories will be bound into a real book that will become part of the library's permanent collection.
Registration ends on April 21.
from: Independent
Applicants to join the elaborate hunt began registering Friday on game.nypl.org in hopes of being chosen to stay up from dusk on May 20 till dawn the next day in the Fifth Avenue complex.
The website features a tantalizing taste of the fun. Spooky music plays over shots of the library apparently meant to recall Dan Brown thriller-style images - a close-up of the library's lion statue, ancient manuscripts, endless rows of books, the old world main reading room.
"It's never been attempted before," the website says. "It might not be possible."
The library says players will have the night to track down 100 treasures, such as the copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson's hand, scouring even the rarely visited miles (kilometers) of underground shelves.
But this will be as much a high-tech challenge as a bookworm's dream. Clues will be distributed by mobile phone apps and as contestants home in on the objects they will then have to write stories related to each find on a library computer.
Eventually the stories will be bound into a real book that will become part of the library's permanent collection.
Registration ends on April 21.
from: Independent
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