The Inquisitr » books

Book publishers, book sellers face being WalMarted to death

Steven Hodson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:35:03 +0000

If there is one thing you can say about the Web it is that it is responsible for the disruption of more businesses than just about any recession. We hear daily about the newspaper industry facing annihilation, the music industry trying to suck out the last dollar it can, and the movie industry trying to constantly stuff the genie back in the bottle.

What we don’t necessarily hear a lot about is the book industry whether it be from the point of view of the authors, or book sellers, or book publishers. Every once in awhile stuff will bubble to the surface but on the whole much of the discussion around books get quickly overshadowed by its more loud mouth industry cousins.

That doesn’t change the fact thought that the book industry is facing a full frontal assault that will have as much an impact on the industry as the ones facing our other entertainment related industries.

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, gives a great overview of this assault in a post yesterday. In the post he outlines how companies like Amazon, WalMart, and Target are cutting the prices of books well below that of the publisher price, to the tune of 40-50%, in an effort to shore up their book sales. This is creating a multitude of problems for everyone in the business as this kind of subsidizing isn’t sustainable.

At some point something has to give. Publishers will be forced by retailers right across the board to cut their prices.

Publishers. For right now, publishers are getting paid an amount equal to the customary discount for hardcover books. But no one in the industry I have spoken with expects this to last for long. Amazon, Walmart, and Target are systematically conditioning consumers to expect these lower prices. Eventually, these retailers will be in the position to force publishers to lower their retail prices.

Book retailers, especially the small mom and pop shops, might be willing to discount some of the bestsellers but that is used to bring in consumers who the hope will buy additional books while there. By putting them in a position where they have to cut already slim margins in order to keep those customers hopefully returning this cheapening of their stock will make keeping the doors open even harder.

When it comes to authors Michael Hyatt has this to say

Authors. If retail prices collapse, it will mean that royalties and advances will also fall. You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that 10–15% of $9.00 is dramatically less than the same percentage of $25–35. Most authors have a difficult enough time making a living now. This will lower the income of all authors and force many to get out of the business altogether.

Now of course the freetards out there will suggest that this is actually beneficial for the authors in that it could allow them to deal directly with the consumer given the ease of creating ebooks and the availability of self-publishing services. There are also those that suggest that like bloggers, musicians, and newspapers book authors need to find different ways to market their books and provide auxiliary tangible goods to make up for what they might lose by giving away their books.

I don’t profess to know all the ins and outs of the book publishing business and I am sure that someone like Michael Hyatt would be able to provide more accurate numbers but the fact is that the large portion of authors out there aren’t making the big bucks. Not all authors are Steven King or Dan Brown and as much as we might think that all authors are racking in the cash nothing could be farther from the truth.

So when companies like Amazon and WalMart turn around and start slashing book prices to the bone because they are big enough to absorb the losses – for now – in the end this house of cards is going to come crashing down. While we might like to think that this will only affect the already rich book publishers the fact is that the ripple effect is going to me much larger and much deeper than we might think.

Free isn’t the answer for everything regardless of what the self professed experts might have us believe. Sometime paying for something tangible at a fair market price with actual real money is the right thing to do as that money spent often has a far wider effect that just clicking on a purchase button.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook to incinerate Kindle?

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:15:04 +0000

A leaked WSJ ad, scheduled for Oct. 25th, has gadget bloggers buzzing about Barnes & Noble’s new e-reader, the Nook.

Running on Android, the Nook is said to be priced at Kindle’s $259 pricepoint. Many people have likened the device to a Kindle/iPhone hybrid, as unlike Kindle with a physical keyboard, the Nook has a touchscreen interface like the iPhone and iPod touch for navigating and browsing. The Nook also is rumored to support color, another advantage over Kindle. Coupled with a rumored deal for the device with Best Buy, Amazon might see their market share seriously sliding in the coming months. But the most intriguing of the rumors, in this era of gadget porn, is not even hardware related.

The first big tidbit is that books will be “heavily discounted”- without a qualifier, it’s difficult to say how impactful this aspect is. I’ve been very pleased with my iPhone Kindle app- the 6.39 pricepoint of most of the trashy vampire romances I favor is decent, but feels a bit like a jack at about a buck fifty less than the ink and paper counterparts Amazon would have to find, handle, wrap, pack, ship and of course, print on dead trees. But the even more intriguing aspect is that the Nook may allow for lending of titles between friends. One of the biggest hurdles the eBook format has in catching on is the inability to share books- the crunchy granola intellectual types that read books tend to like to pass them around between friends so they have something to discuss over soy lattes and cruelty-free hemp granola bars.

While Kindle’s got a tight grip on the e-reader market right now, the Nook sounds like it will be a powerful adversary as consumers make the leap away from analog books. Being perfectly honest, I’ve read more books in the past six weeks than I have in the past six years since downloading the Kindle app. And by December, the number of consumers using an e-reader is expected to double to 3.8 million from 1.6 million in August. Confirmation and more details are expected from B&N at 4pm EST during an event at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.

Update: B&N.com now lists the Nook, and does a specs rundown vs. Kindle.

[Image: Gizmodo]

New Zealand author thinks libraries are a form of theft

Steven Hodson — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:37:40 +0000

In a post back on September 23 New Zealand author Brian Edwards puts forth the proposition that our public libraries are just a form of theft and that people who lend their friends books are thieves.

Yes you read that right. Every time you take a book out at the library you and the library are stealing money from book authors. It seems that Mr. Edwards feels that book authors should be paid every time a library lends out a book. In his opinion the act of lending books is tantamount to taking food out of his mouth

Every public library in New Zealand bought at least one copy of Helen. And they lent each of those copies to other people to read for… nothing. Last year there were still 227.4 copies of the book in New Zealand public libraries. If each of those copies was taken out by one person a month, that’s 2,729 people who read but didn’t pay for my book – my six month’s work. At $4.50 per unsold copy (ed: his share of book sales in stores), that’s a theoretical loss of income to me in one year of $12,280.

He continues on and accuses libraries of grand theft copyright

But there’s a principle here: when one person buys a book and lends it to another person to read, they effectively become an accessory to theft. Their generous act amounts to little more than stealing the author’s work. When a public library buys a book and lends it to thousands of other people to read, it’s grand theft copyright and really no different from illegally downloading music or movies or copying CDs or DVDs on your computer.

I’m still shaking my head over this one. Michael Masnick at Techdirt puts it best

Edwards also seems fully enamored with the myth that copyright law is based on some sort of "labor theory" — that the more time you put in, somehow the more money you deserve to get out. While I’m unfamiliar with New Zealand copyright law, in the US, such theories have been widely discredited in the courts repeatedly. And, of course, they make no sense when viewed alongside the actual purpose of copyright law. Edwards seems to believe that copyright is welfare for creators, rather than an incentive to create.

In the meantime, perhaps the public libraries of New Zealand can do Mr. Edwards a favor next time he publishes a book: don’t buy it. Ditto for anyone who might think of lending it… er… I mean, being an accessory to a crime in distributing copyrighted materials.

I would add that maybe the libraries in New Zealand should pull his books – just to be on the safe side of the law.

Book publishers myopic as they claim e-books will destroy books

Steven Hodson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:05:00 +0000

We’ve seen the same thing repeated over an over with the music industry, television industry, news industry, and many more just like them. Crying doom and gloom about how their individual wealth creators are being driven into the ground by the Web. Granted the Web might be changing the playing field in favor of the actual content creator and consumers but it isn’t to blame for these businesses failing.

It is their own myopia and unwillingness to find ways to make their business work in the new media world instead of trying to constantly bend it to meet their current business models.

The latest of these is the book publishing world and people Araud Nourry, chief executive of French publishing group Hachette Livre. It is his opinion that the monsters out to destroy the book publishing industry are the usual suspects – Google, Amazon, Barnes & Noble along with other e-book retailers.

His point of contention with these evil people is the aggressive pricing of e-books in the case of the major retailers and the availability of out-of-copyright books courtesy of Google.

“On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99,” Mr Nourry said.

There was a real and “muscular” debate in the US, he added. Retailers were paying publishers more than $9.99 for each e-book, so were selling them at a loss: “That cannot last . . . Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: ‘we are cutting the price we pay’. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers.”

Source: The Globe and Mail – E-books ‘could spell the end for hardbacks’

Once again we see some-one who doesn’t seem to understand how the economics of the web works. The fact is that beyond the book author actually getting what their book is worth based on real sales the cost of delivering those e-books is next to zero. In contrast for book publishers the costs incurred to create all those individual copies of the original are far from zero. Why should retailers, and the author, have to sell a copy of a book that costs nothing to create for the same price as what book publishers deem it to be worth.

As with the business behind the other entertainment industries book publishers are finding that because of the Web the middle man isn’t the profit center that it once was.

Ease your conscience – the Kindle is greener than books

Steven Hodson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:34:40 +0000

While most people might not think so it turns out, according to the Cleantech Group, that the Amazon Kindle may end up being more environmentally friendly than paper books.

After examining all the existing studies in order to do a lifecycle analysis the group found that carbon emissions from electronic books is far lower than your traditional book publishing. In light of the fact that e-readers aren’t typically marketed as being a sound environmental alternative to books that impact is becoming a topic of conversation.

According to Emma Rich, the person behind the study, when you take into account the manufacturing and mining needed to produce an electronic e-reader like the Kindle it gets a significant edge over the paper version.

"The roughly 168 kg of CO2 produced throughout the Kindle’s lifecycle is a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle DX. Less-frequent readers attracted by decreasing prices still can break even at 22.5 books over the life of the device," she [Emma Rich] wrote in conclusion.

Source: cnet – Green Tech :: Study paints Kindle e-reader a dark shade of green

While there are some that will argue that the environmental impact needs to take into account the increasing cost of electronic waste as we constantly upgrade to newer gadget. The Cleantech Group suggests that the e-reader industry could help make a significant impact once people become more accustom to using them rather than relying on paper.

As Martin LaMonica notes in his post though it all boils down to how the e-reader is used.

If a person continues to buy books and print periodicals and doesn’t recycle the product, the environmental impact could potentially be negative, according to this study.

Jordan Matter’s Uncovered shows us NYC, with boobs

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:18:41 +0000

We call it the naked city, but did you know getting your tatas out ain’t so illegal up in here?

Jordan Matter’s new book Uncovered: Women In Word and Image was inspired by Janet Jackson’s most controversial nip-slip of all time at the Superbowl. If someone just moved the rock, Jackson’s nipple was exposed for a nanosecond under some kind of weird nipple dungeon and American freaked the frick out. Most Americans were terrified for the children (who may or may not have been eating from breasts directly before seeing one on TV) but Chris Rock did say “right idea, wrong titty.”

Matter said she began thinking about the “culture of covering up,” and the idea for the book came about. It makes sense- despite being perfectly legal, I would see many topless men on warm days in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but never a set of tatas on the C train. Such a double standard.

Matter snaps women out and about in the city, and uses women of a variety of ages and body shapes- it’s not just Girls Gone Wild: The Lexington Avenue Line. Below are some mildly NSFW excerpts of breasts in the wild in New York.

[Via: The Frisky]

Once Upon a Twilight Dream

Kyle Brady — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:00:07 +0000

This past weekend was San Diego Comic-Con, where nerds, fanboys, and devotees of all things magical/fantastic/scifi/comicbook show up in droves to see snippets from upcoming movies, glimpses of their most obsessed-over actors/actresses, and to get “inside information” on upcoming projects – this year was no different. Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance, footage debuted, and the flames of rumors were fanned. Oh and something called New Moon, the latest upcoming movie in the Twilight series, had an event.

The first official trailer for this movie debuted long ago (see below for an embed), but the days prior to Comic-Con saw a release of official photos and some more details on the movie – culminating in a Friday panel where many attendees waited in line for a day. A day. That’s defined as “greater than 24 hours”, where hordes of teen/preteen girls (with their dads) and middle aged women waited in line for a brief interaction, by proximity, with the cast and crew of their obsessions.

Very simply, the fact that these sort of people would brave a highly judgmental and vocal crowd of thousands of nerds says volumes for their sanity, not to mention what they might consider devotion. Comic-Con is a place for geeks to enjoy themselves once a year and indulge in all of their favorite geek activities, which runs the gamut from comic book-based movies to science fiction TV shows, but definitely does not include the world of Twilight. A new (and not-yet-real) panel for the announcement of a new Blade movie? Sure. But a place for a bunch of screaming females to fawn over the upcoming release of slow-motion shirtless males? Not so much. If Blade is an example of nerd-acceptable vampirism, then Twilight is its antithesis.

Based on the trailer, it’s safe to say that New Moon will just be more of the same seen in the previous movie, albeit with a new director and potentially better visuals. But it doesn’t change the fundamentals of the story, which is based mostly on the drama and inner thoughts of a helpless teenage girl who needs lots of manly men to save her, some of which just happen to be “I shine in the sunlight like diamonds and it’s sooooo cute!” vampires. Oh, and the fundamental beliefs of the Mormon Church (LDS).

More disturbing than the material itself, however, is the rabid fanbase. The panel at Comic-Con was reportedly barely-controlled chaos, as the female hordes screamed such unique one-liners as “I love you Rob!”, but, somehow, insights were given into the acting prowess of Robert Pattinson (“Edward”): “[he had to] stand on a green box and look and stay basically expressionless”. How truly talented he is! But the throngs of fans found “camaraderie” as they waited to have the brilliance that was the Twilight panel bestowed upon them, so all was not lost.

Comparisons will inevitably be made to nerd diehards like Star Wars fans, but there are crucial differences, not the least of which is that overnight lines were formed for the movies, not a quick Q&A session. The most important differentiation is that no matter how devoted a Star Wars fan is, they are able to dissect any part of that universe and judge it objectively for its quality – Twilight fans are completely the opposite. While many of even the most diehard Star Wars nerd may recognize that Episode I was far from the peak of the series, anything even remotely related to Twilight is defended to the absolute death. For evidence, look no further than reactions to criticisms that all the books have horrible literary value, that the actors in the first cinematic installment have no talent, or that the whole concept of the series is little more than a vehicle for the delivery of softcore porn and Mormon values – the knee-jerk fan response is fantastically hilarious.

And this past weekend is just further evidence that the borderline-illiterate nonsense is not going to stop any time soon: there are still books left to translate into movies, and Meyer has one (or more) sequels in publishing limbo. Unlike Meyer’s not-at-all-similar counterpart JK Rowling, most authors in the vampire pornfiction industry don’t know when to stop, and her zombie following will no doubt create a bestseller out of every page or frame ever published.

Being part of the anti-Twilight minority is not going to become any easier as the years of the next decade progress, especially as the movie studios find out what a cash crop the series truly is. But comfort can be had in a key fact: while geeks and nerds are known for occasionally doing odd things in pursuit of their fandom, the rabid Twilight hordes will continue to embarrass themselves on a scale unprecedented, most especially in the eye of the media.

Go Team Jasper!

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

An Open Letter to the Publishing Industry

Kyle Brady — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:15:25 +0000

Dear Publishing Industry,

You’re screwed, and everyone knows it – especially since you whine and moan about it on what seems like a daily basis via the very pulpits you are trying to protect. Crying over spilled milk doesn’t help anyone, and will likely only exacerbate the situation, regardless of Old World medium: newspapers, book publishers, and magazines. For the sake of simplicity, the Internet is assumed to not exist.

Newspapers

Despite being a minimum of twelve hours behind other media outlets, you continue to claim to be the only source of “true journalism” – while devoting days of front page coverage to Michael Jackson, publishing barely-modified Press Releases as news, and taking an ever increasing number of stories from wire services. Does that really sound like valuable, source-verified, original journalism?

Whining about personal problems (i.e. decline in sales) via the same journalistic channels that purportedly carry important, topical news pieces is not helping your argument. The value of newspaper-based journalism is not in “Breaking News” stories, but rather in-depth investigative pieces or complex works that can take months of traveling and significant capital to produce. The average, non-investigative article in a newspaper does not include enough room for a thoughtful analysis, and such works are better left to those with more time and space to do them properly.

Furthermore, the inexplicable coverage of nonsense over true news, such as celebrity drama instead of attempted healthcare reform, is disgusting. You’re contributing to the dumbing-down of a culture that doesn’t need any extra help, when, only twenty years ago, newspapers were once revered for their intelligent and thought-provoking insights.

Book Publishers

You’re an industry rotting from the inside because of overreacting to your audience. If you need proof of this, look into the saturation of the “Fantasy” market with hugely drawn-out “epic” multivolume series about people with swords and magic, most of which are the same book written by different authors – Lord of the Rings can only be reproduced so many times. Or the rampant existence of softcore porn fiction masquerading as “Horror”, or occasionally even “Fantasy”, using vampires and werewolves to get unsuspecting readers to purchase such idiotic literary filth – the Twilight and Anita Blake series are perfect examples.

“Science Fiction” readers, who are some of the most devoted consumers, are currently being shunned for more trendy genres, with only a handful of actual “SciFi” novels being published each year – Tor-Forge, a major publisher, is an exception. Even the best of “SciFi” is being labeled as “Thriller” or other more profit-friendly genres, based off of a core genre misconception.

Additionally, you continue to pump out cook books, celebrity novels, and other trend-hopping tomes. The following of fads inevitably results in market over-saturation, excess stock, and, in the end, smaller profits than if books were published in an intelligent fashion. Quotas for genres should be turned into an intelligent review process, where only interesting, smart, and original (or at least semi-original) material is published – does the world really need another Harry Potter clone?

Magazines

GQ? Vogue? Teen Girl? Us Magazine? These are magazines in only the vaguest sense of the word, and are more akin to tabloids than anything else. TIME, Newsweek, and US Weekly are newspapers parading as magazines – while these publications are to be applauded for their significant, in-depth analysis and extreme feats of journalism, they largely chase the stories-of-the-moment which have already been covered elsewhere by faster outlets. If these were to be instead published monthly, at four times the length with a wider range of interests, the value would increase significantly – as would subscribers. Readers are not interested in the crazy-talk of extreme feminists or angry nonsensical “Tea Baggers”, but intelligent, coherent articles.

Other publications like WIRED and Popular Science have found a formula that works well: discover/create a niche market, and cater to it endlessly. Neither magazine deviates from this formula, and they typically stay within their audience parameters, although WIRED does occasionally produce some boring pieces. If the rest of the magazine market were to follow the leads of Popular Science, instead of continuing to rely on now-failing Old World principles, they could potentially be rejuvenated in the eyes of the reading public.

Publishing Reform

As a dying industry with many faces, and many problems, you will need to reinvent yourself and some of your practices in order to survive. Clinging to methods and ideologies that worked a decade ago is counter-productive – just ask the GOP how they’re doing at the moment. The readers across the world do not wish to see you fade from existence, but rather adapt to a more modern existence, since there is a benefit to each platform from which you operate.

Sincerely,

Kyle Brady, avid magazine and book reader

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Harry Potter and the Worldwide Love Affair

Kyle Brady — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:00:47 +0000

It should be obvious, at this point, to any observer: the world loves Harry Potter. Not just America, or even the Western World, but the whole World – Planet Earth. The first of the last three movies based on the successful series by British author JK Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, came out last week, leaving only two more movies to cover the final book in this epic saga of magic. It will be another two years before the movies are released to the public and the mixed tears of both unrelenting sadness and joy are shed, which gives both Rowling and the studio (Warner Bros.) time to consider the all-important question: what’s next?

After the last book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, was released two years ago, JK Rowling stated in many different interviews that the series would not continue – she felt the characters had been brought to completion, and included a halfhearted “look at the characters in the future!” epilogue as if to prove she was serious. However, she’s not likely to stay away forever, and the reasons are simple: the world adores her work, she’s made millions from the series, and, most importantly, this magical realm lives inside her head in a very real way.

The best authors, when creating imaginary worlds, construct them in their heads piece-by-piece and treat it as if it were real – J.R.R. Tolkien and Rowling have this trait in common. But when these imaginary worlds become a part of the author’s life for so long, Tolkien for the better part of his, and Rowling for the last twelve years, their very existence becomes entwined. Evidence of this can easily be seen in the fact that Tolkien could not leave Middle Earth, even after all the books were completed, or that Rowling will offhandedly refer to a previously-unknown fact like “Dumbledore is gay” as if it were obvious to the outside world.

Rowling has already revisited the magical land of Harry Potter once, to write “The Tales of Beetle the Bard” and a few more times as a consultant for the production of the movies – who’s to say she can stay away for good? The options for her to return to the series are many and varied, with most of them being great ideas in and of themselves. A few storyarcs come to mind almost immediately:

Voldemort’s first ascent to power, just prior to Harry’s being born, with the original Order of the Phoenix
James, Sirius, and the rest of the gang as they grow up through Hogwart’s themselves
“parallel” novels following important, but not central, characters such as Luna Lovegood or Neville Longbottom, intertwining plotlines with the existing books
Dumbledore’s past, including the adventures (and eventual battle) with Grindelwald

The options for the growth of the world are nearly endless, and it can be done delicately and appropriately without offending fans of the current series or appearing to continue the “Harry Potter grows up” storyline past its already obvious end.

Additionally, these movies have been a huge source of fame and fortune for Rowling, so much so that it’s easy to question whether she can financially leave the world. Without ever writing again, she will be able to live comfortably and without much thought for finances, but she will eventually get bored with having nothing to do – as everyone does. When that time comes, she may consider finding a job to occupy her time, and will know that she lives as she does thanks to her writing career. Logic follows that she will pick up the pen and word processor once again, with the legions of Harry Potter devotees hoping she result is another chapter in the series.

Harry Potter has become an international, multigenerational sensation that will live on forever in the hearts and minds of its fans, future readers, and the halls of literary greats. Other modern commercial successes, such as Twilight, do not and cannot live up to the precedent that Rowling has set for young adult fantasy novels, no matter how hard book publishers or movie studios try – pure genius is self-evident. An intelligent, creative woman at the age of 43, JK Rowling has many years ahead of her to decide what the future holds for Harry Potter – and whether or not to continue the largest love affair the modern world has ever seen.

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction. He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

Real hope for the next generation

Steven Hodson — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:03:12 +0000

One might think in this day and age of instant gratification, texting non-stop, and sound bite attention spans that appreciation for literature, classic and modern, has fallen by the wayside. Well thanks to Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing I thankfully found one young person who was will to chance punishment in order to share some of the best books written, but were banned by the school, with fellow students. I’m not even going to try and paraphrase the story which starts as a question at Yahoo Answers

Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker at school?

Let me explain.
I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we’re not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well… I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality. Some of these books are:

>The Perks of Being a Wallflower
>His Dark Materials trilogy
>Sabriel
>The Canterbury Tales
>Candide
>The Divine Comedy
>Paradise Lost
>The Godfather
>Mort
>Interview with the Vampire
>The Hunger Games
>The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
>Animal Farm
>The Witches
>Shade’s Children
>The Evolution of Man
> the Holy Qu’ran
… and lots more.

Anyway, I now operate a little mini-library that no one has access to but myself. Practically a real library, because I keep an inventory log and give people due dates and everything. I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it’s the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I’m doing a good thing, right? Oh, and since you’re probably wondering "Why can’t you just go to a local library and check out the books?" most of the kids are too chicken or their parents won’t let them but the books. I think that people should have open minds. Most of the books were banned because they contained information that opposed Catholisism. I limit my ‘library’ to only the sophmores, juniors and seniors just in case so you can’t say I’m exposing young people to materiel they’re not mature enough for. But is what I’m doing wrong because parents and teachers don’t know about it and might not like it, or is it a good thing because I am starting appreciation of the classics and truly good novels (Not just fad novels like Twilight) in my generation?

- Kat Atreides

All I can say is – faith restored.

Book ownership a story to tell our grandkids

Steven Hodson — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:29:41 +0000

“Once upon a time people use to be able to walk into something called a bookstore and actually touch the covers of books, flip through the pages of a book and then buy that book if they wanted to. There was a time when we use to have shelves in our homes where we would keep all those real books which we could pick up an read again anytime we wanted.”

That scenario could one day very soon be the type of story that we will be telling our grandchildren. As books slowly join the ranks of music that we play on our portable music players one has to wonder if, as with music if the whole idea of ownership will become a murky gray area. As eBook readers grow in popularity and books are electronically transferred questions are being raised about who really owns that book you just paid ten to twenty bucks for?

If some of the reports coming out about the Kindle and their DRM’ed books it would appear that Amazon does. With a growing number of people finding that their Amazon accounts have been closed for as little as returning too many book we are hearing that the nice $360+ Kindle is now nothing more than a brick. As well, all those books you bought and thought you owned – well think again because you don’t.

When this user’s Amazon account was closed, he also lost access to all the books he had purchased, as well as the ability to shop for new material.

This situation brings the bigger picture of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to the forefront. When you purchase any form of media from a company, do they have the right to deny you access in the future (presuming it was not purchased on a subscription basis)? The above mentioned user ended up with a $360 device that was totally worthless to him. He couldn’t even access books he had already paid for.

Source: Channel Web

Yup all this electronic versions of music and books is sounding better and better every day.

Breathing life into books

Steven Hodson — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:07:27 +0000

With everyone talking about how the dead tree publishing world is dying off I thought it was nice to see some ideas for breathing new life into the old book idea of publishing.

Things – Edith Kollath Creates Books that Breathe from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.