We’ve been beating the 979 drum for a while, but it’s finally here. And they aren’t being issued somewhere out-of-the-way like Burkina Faso, but in EU/decadent West/producing-tons-of-books *France*! And that means anyone with French books passing through their supply chains has finally reached their day of identifier reckoning.
ISBN Missing You for So Long
Just saying ‘ISBN’ creates an instant bond with any fellow book trade devotees in the vicinity. Whether you favour the spell out (i.s.B.n., generally with an element of slur) or the phonetic slide (IsBin), publishers, booksellers and librarians alike perk up their ears at the mention of this secret password, this shared standard, this format filer.
When does a helping hand, like the ISBN has been for the printed book, become a major pain in the behind?
Google to Sell E-Books Directly in 2009
The Google gauntlet has been thrown. Yesterday’s New York Times article offers more detail on Google’s BEA announcement of plans (Tom Turvey: “This time we mean it”) to sell e-books directly by the end of 2009.
Let’s stroll away from top-level cost/benefit analysis (book customers—good!, Amazon—bad!, e-readers/eRetailers—bad?, publishers—bad/good/goodbad?) for now and talk about what this shift means for the market as a whole.
It Takes a Village to Create an O'Reilly Book
O’Reilly Media is no stranger to reader collaboration. Their first open-source initiative, Rough Cuts allowed books-in-progress to be purchased, read and commented on while still in process of being written, thus enriching the work and creating a community of dedicated readers.
Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS), the new O’Reilly experiment, takes things a step further…
Digital Never Sleeps
Why $9.99 Isn't the Mark of the Beast for Books
Is the lower price of eBooks really comparable to a “flood of cheap houses onto a real estate market,” as a quote in the New York Times article on eBook pricing suggests?
Scribd to Test What E-Consumers Will Pay for Expertise
Stimulating E-Books: Part Two
Like identical twins, just because e-books and print books are born from the same material does not mean they behave or even look like carbon copies. Finding ways to bring out the different but equal potential in each will allow for well-adjusted creations who don’t need literary therapy at a later date.
From the IDPF 2009 Digital Book Summit, three major considerations came to light.
