On Curation and Books and Models for the Future

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The big achievement of the club was to provide trusted guidance through the jungle of hyped books. Such guidance was not provided by the likes of Book Club Associates, which advertise in magazines. They offer broad selections to their members. As a result, their businesses are in decline. They lack anything like the firm imprimatur of a Richard & Judy. Book promotions didn’t really work, either. Prizes, in particular, suffered from an inherent bias towards the nebulous concept of the literary. How the Richard & Judy Book Club has shaken publishing (Times Online)

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Things That Excite Me

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This past week, I encountered a string of things that made me smile, reminding me that the Internet is a really cool place for people who love to read. What’s exciting is that these are fun items that aren’t flashy, twirly, or even sparkly. They’re just plain fun. So here’s my current shortlist of things that excite me:

Square Pegs

The Reading Problem

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Sometimes I think that everyone’s worried about the future of books, but nobody’s doing anything about it*. More precisely, I think the people who hand-wring the most are the same people who forget why people read in the first place. These are the folks who place books on ivory pedestals and disdain anyone who reads the “wrong” thing. It’s time we make books seem like chocolate rather than broccoli. Reading, by some, is treated like a solemn communion, a sacred ritual, something done — done right, anyway — by the few who cherish delicate jewels of books. They read with

Square Pegs

On Belief Systems

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This reminds me of a comment I heard from a music industry executive at a conference a couple of years ago. “One day there was the iPod and iTunes. The next day 20% of our business was digital. The day after that more than 50% of our revenues came from digital music. Yeah, we believe in digital music now.” Looks Like A Million To Me: How I Realized that Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-Reader Were Exceeding Sales Estimates – Evan Schnittman of OUP digs into some numbers

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