Booksquare

I kind of wanted to stay out of the way of the ScrollMotion Iceberg iTunes application. While I have issues with the execution — can’t the publishing industry use something akin to, oh, collective clout to create a real iTunes store for books instead of foisting endless application after application (and associated management of said […]

I have a friend who is heading off to Paris for a long vacation. I guess she wanted to see how the other half — the people who survive in cold parts of the world — live. My Paris experience was in February, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower on a cold, clear […]

So, last week there were two big announcements in publishing. The first, of course, was the Google Book Search settlement, which received a huge amount of attention (a trend continuing to this week — it’s that big!). The second was an(other) announcement from Random House that they’re messing around with ebook and digital content royalties. […]

So here I am, in London, part of a country with neither the Sony eReader nor the Amazon Kindle, yet dinner conversation turned, as conversations often do, to the fact that the Sony eReader will soon be available in the UK. I think that’s just cool, even as I think, “What’s taking so long, Sony, […]

I am increasingly convinced that ebooks are not going to be the next big thing. While every pundit waits eagerly for signs of an ebook “surge”, ebooks will increase market share in a slow and steady way. By the time it’s noticed, ebooks will simply be part of the mainstream reading mix. It’s closer to […]

It is not surprising that Amazon has told publishers that it’s their POD (print-on-demand) service or no sales through Amazon. It is surprising that, well, anyone is surprised. Did y’all think Amazon was buying Booksurge for the fun of it? What other outcome did you expect? Readers don’t care if a book ships from a […]

It’s like we invented the written word, and we decided to only write books. Anyone cringing? Feeling a twinge of guilt? Sort of thinking “that’s me, that’s what I’m doing”? Then, “But, hey, books are the be-all and end-all of storytelling, I’m cool.” No worries, mates! That quote wasn’t directed at you. Jane McGonigal was […]

Though I hesitate to make predictions, I’ve always been a bandwagon sort of girl, so here is mine for 2008 (what? too late? never.): 2008 will be the year that ebooks go mainstream. In the ten years I’ve been writing about epublishing and ebooks, the dual stories of the ubiquity of ebooks and the death […]

Bubbling under the surface of various discussions about entertainment media is the question nobody in the industry wants asked: what is the value of what we’re selling to our customers? With physical media, it’s easy enough to point to a book and say, “You get all that and more!” The device I choose today might […]

I am cranky. You’ve been warned. So I’m minding my own business, or, rather, minding other people’s business as I cruise the Internet when what has to be one of the dumber notions to cross my screen appears. Given the stuff I read online every day, this is really saying something. Devices don’t make pirates. […]