Booksquare

In the coming months, much will be written and said about the Google Book Search settlement. While I do support it in principle, I, like others, have niggles and quibbles and some distinct worries about the specifics. Part of the problem, of course, was that a subset of interested parties created the class, a subset […]

Did you feel the Earth shift a little bit yesterday? Maybe around 1:30 or so Pacific Standard Time (the only time zone that matters!)? Did you Twitter feed seem to be filled with jangly nerves? It turns out that Amazon bought Lexcycle today. Lexcycle? Huh? Who? Erm? Lexcycle is the mighty little company behind the […]

Days later, Amazon has maintained corporate silence on the issue of mistakenly flagging certain books as “adult”, a designation that serves to delist a product (not just books) from sales rankings, making it difficult to find them — unless you know how to look — in the Amazon catalog. While it might represent a blip […]

Dear Amazon, (See updates at the end of the post, including link to official response from Amazon.) Happy Easter (or if it’s Monday morning, happy belated Easter!). It seems the Easter Bunny, while hopping down the bunny trail, left some rotten eggs all over the Amazon site while we were sleeping. Suddenly, many books lost […]

If there is one thing we can agree on, in the discussion surrounding digital books, it is that the issue is not “if ebooks ever take off” but “how ebooks will assimilate”. To my mind, too much energy is wasted on the idea that digital books are not the same as physical books. Focusing on […]

Next Tuesday at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, Kassia put together the most excellent panel ever in the history of the world.  (Oh really? No – O’Reilly!) Smart Women Read eBooks, an examination of ebook technology and the savvy female reader, will feature Kassia, who deserves the people’s ovation and fame forever for the […]

I am tired of protests and petitions, which is probably good because I think there’s really only one more to suffer. Okay, so newspapers are folding book coverage — if they have it at all — into general entertainment sections. Okay, so newspapers are cutting back on book coverage. No surprise considering they’re cutting back […]

A few quick items for a busy day: Don’t forget that the deadline for completing our Booksquare University survey and entering to win a pass to the Tools of Change conference is January 22, 2009. Details, link to survey here. Ron Hogan/Beatrice.com have teamed with “Share the Love”, a non-profit organization that distributes gently used […]

[Note: Don’t forget that our survey for Booksquare University is still open. We’re giving away one pass to the Tools of Change Conference to one reader as a thank you for helping us.] About four, five years ago — not long after we went online, the National Endowment for the Arts released a study with […]

Didja hear, didja hear? The O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference is coming up, February 9 through 11, 2009. It’s going to be awesome. Some of your favorite folks are going to be there. The Booksquare team is going to be there. And you can be there, too. Yes, there’s a tiny catch. Booksquare has wrangled […]