Yes, you read that correctly. Written on mobile phones. “In Japan, half of the top ten selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones.”
80 Books, 8oz. Digital Publishing on Campus
(AKA—the Lost Halifax Digital Presentation)
I was invited by the good people of Campus Stores Canada to speak on trends in electronic publishing and reading devices in early November. Unfortunately, right before I left, my flight (and the flights of many other speakers) was cancelled as a hurricane pasted Nova Scotia with 140km winds, leaving the intrepid CSC attendees in the dark and me at the curb with bags—and presentation—in hand.
NEA Study: To Read or Not to Read
The most recent edition of the National Endowment for the Arts study on reading habits in America, To Read or Not to Read, (100pg PDF) will likely cause a renewed epidemic of brow furrowing in publishing circles (and let’s face it, some of those brows already look like William H. Macy during root canal).
So You've Read Eye-Tracking Study Results, What Next?
For anyone designing anything on the web—applications, websites, whatever—take a look at Christina Laun’s 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies.
The Most Beautiful Graph in Town
Amazon Kindle First Thoughts
The Kindle Has Arrived.
Spiderman Finds a New Web
As Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing, (wryly?) understates, kids these days just aren’t finding “that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more” (cut to kids all over the world reading and re-reading that last sentence in abject confusion. Blank stares are misted with tears of non-comprehension).
So Marvel is going to post old versions of classic comics online to be viewed but not downloaded. Subscribers will have access to a number of backlist issues simply by paying a monthly fee.
iWant an iPhone
The iPhone launched in the UK earlier this week and HarperCollins UK has announced their position as the only book content provider.
Shelfari vs. Blogosphere: The Perils of Book Social Networking
There was audible gnashing of teeth in the book-social-networking scene last week. Shelfari, a reasonably well-traffick’d tell-your-friends-what-you-read-and-find-out-what-they-read-too! site, stands accused of astroturfing (posting on blogs as if you were a user but where you are really acting as an employee) and spamming every address in a user’s Gmail account through an unclear (some might say misleading) user interface.
