No one told me but apparently this week was not only Earth Week, but also Cool Canadian Book Campaign week.
An iPhone App for Indies
If you could put a smart, book-loving professional recommendation maker in your pocket next time you were looking for a great read, would you? How about a whole slew of them? Concerned about the pants-straining logistics or the funny looks you might receive due to your hitchhiking buddy? Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief thanks to the newest bookselling iPhone app: Indiebound.
Books and Beyond: Enriched Editions from Random House
The new Random House UK premium eBooks offer extras not included in their print iterations. These “ePub premium” files are created with extra content from the author…
Book Clubs without Borders
One of my favourite sites in the whole wide web, the Onion AV Club, has just announced a new book club that leverages the massive fan collaboration, quirky cultural tastes, and online community.
Over 1,000,000,000 Served?
The Apple App clock approaches a billion downloads (is that real time downloading or just Flash for effect?) and two major lessons for book industry folks are hidden among the Spores and the Light Saber.
A New Acronym = A New Standard!
An interesting alliance has opened up between Stanza, Adobe, the Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media. Perhaps alliance is putting it too strongly, but these are the key players who are pushing a new initiative to develop a standard to enable the widespread discovery, description and access of book and other published material on the open web.
Boycotts, DRM, and Shifting Sands of Pricing Power
The recent tagging spurt/protest of Amazon Kindle owners rebelling against eBook prices above $9.99 sheds a lot of light on the way power dynamics are shifting.
The electronic supply chain is still evolving but at least three factors are influencing existing power dynamics when it comes to pricing (and maybe more).
In the Beginning, There Was EPUB Boot Camp
It’s finally happening. The eBook is coming to fruition as a thing that some people want. It didn’t work with Rocket EBook, but with new technologies—eInk, wireless readers, smart phones, etc—people are reading books off of a screen.
BookNet Canada and the Association of Canadian Publisher’s EPUB Boot Camp was a great introduction to the format and general overview of the available tech.
