The growing dominance of Amazon in the bookselling and publishing world is bound to have an impact on the world of books, but that impact will be different for different sectors of the industry. Bookstores will be the hardest hit by the competition with the internet giant; Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Books a Million are all down in sales for the holiday season, while Amazon is doing fine. This trend will probably continue, at least as long as our current economic woes do. Amazon tends to be cheaper than any of the big box stores, even if you end up having to pay for shipping, which makes it the more economical choice. A big part of a physical bookstore’s appeal is the ease of browsing around through the shelves and finding little treasures that you didn’t know you were looking for, and that kind of browsing is something that people in an economic crunch will be less likely to do. For the bookstores, then, Amazon is a real problem.
Read the rest of this entry »
|
While poking around O’Reilly’s TOC blog, I came across a review of a pretty interesting new site. Or service. Product, maybe? It’s called Shortcovers, and it’s from the people at Indigo Books and Music, a large Canadian retailer. Essentially, it’s an iPhone app (though one would assume that they will also be looking into making their service available for other smart phones) that combines the content delivery of a iTunes with the community orientation of a site like goodreads. When the site goes live next month (their iPhone app is still making its way through Apple’s approval process), after getting the app you will be able to download the first chapter of any number of books for free. Chapters beyond the first will be available for a fairly low price–about 99 cents. As Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal points out, that will be a real boon for people looking for just part of a travel book or a business book. You will also be able to buy the whole book through Shortcovers, or even order the print book along with (and often bundled with) the eBook. eBooks bought through Shortcovers will typically sell for about half the publisher’s list price, according to Mossberg. In addition to buying eBooks, people will be able to use Shortcovers to recommend books, talk about them with their friends, rate them, and even make “mixes” of chapters of different books and upload their own writing. It’s this community focus that intrigues me most about Shortcovers. People like to talk about the books that they like, and combining book selling with discussion groups seems like a very sharp move So I’ve been thinking a bit lately about fantasy and sci fi and how they differ–particularly about the kinds of stories they allow us to tell and the kinds of things they allow us to talk about. On the surface, they’re both pretty similar forms; they aren’t particularly connected with the “real” world, and there are all sorts of strange new things. There are those who will argue that the difference is that sci fi is based in reality and is just an extrapolation of what we already know, while fantasy is purely imaginary and not based on anything in particular. I would disagree, though–fantasy has just as much internal logic as sci fi does, and sci fi has just as much imagination as fantasy does. Read the rest of this entry »
More stuff cropped up today that resonates with Accelerando. Linda from Ink and Paper tweeted about an article on Mashable about a pretty fascinating service. Or program. Or some combination thereof. It’s called WordPressDirect, and it’s essentially a blog automation service. You get the program, decide what sort of niche you want to blog about, and enter some keywords. The program then sets up a blog for you (though you get to choose how it looks), making categories for posts dependent on the keywords you’ve given it. So far so good, and no huge deal. The next bit is what put me in mind of Accelerando: the program will then monitor RSS feeds, other blogs, YouTube, and a host of other resources, and automatically post blog entries for you. More after the break. . . . Read the rest of this entry » I’ve recently been reading Charles Stross’s Accelerando, and that, combined with the news that the Google settlement has gotten preliminary approval and the recent offer I got from Verizon for a new phone has made me think that I’m probably going to go for a high-end phone come June or so. In Accelerando, Stross paints a not-unfamiliar picture of the near to distant future: Technological change continues not just to advance, but to accelerate, aided by ever-faster computers and more and more ubiquitous communication. It’s a pretty fascinating book so far (I’m just about a third of the way through, but my rate of advance, like his technological change, is accelerating), and I’m reminded more than a bit of George Zebrowski’s Macrolife. Both books span a large stretch of human history, but beyond that they both stress the interconnectedness of people when technology approaches the singularity. So what does this have to do with my phone and the Google settlement? Well, assuming the Google settlement is approved in June, I’m sure it will not be long until we see the fruits of that settlement show up online. All those books that Google has scanned in will be available for the downloading or the on-line perusing, and there will be a system set up to pay rights holders–and to pay them about twice what Amazon pays for works they sell on the Kindle. To me, this sounds like Google is aiming to enter the ebook market with a bang. So in June or July, I would expect to see a Google alternative to the Kindle store pop up. So is Google going to roll out an ebook reader? I would say no. Well, not really. But kind of. What we’re going to see, I think, is a new version of the Android cell phone OS that comes out in, oh, June or so. Maybe May. Right now there’s just the one phone that I know of that runs on Android, but there are more companies who are interested. And I would be surprised if we don’t see a new version of the OS, or at least new applications built for the OS, that are tailor-made to display ebooks purchased from Google. So the letter from Verizon? It was one of those “new every two” things, where I can get a discount on a new phone since I’ve had my old one for two years, as long as I sign a shiny new contract with them. And will I? Well, reading Accelerando has excitied me about the prospect of virtually ubiquitous internet connection. even if I have to do it through a cell phone instead of cool heads-up display glasses, cranial implants, or having my consciousness uploaded onto the internet. So far. So yes, I’ll probably be getting a new phone in June or so, and it will probably be running Android. I suppose that leaves whether or not I’ll be signing up with Verizon, up to Verizon. For those of you in the Portland area, this weekend you ought to stop by the Portland Convention Center to check out Wordstock, Portland’s annual convention of the book. There are going to be a lot of authors and a ton of publishers and booksellers there, so even outside of the panel discussions and presentations there should be plenty of chances for great conversation. Plus, admission is only $5. Ooligan Press will have a couple of tables, with a pretty neat display showing the publishing process and a pitch table for authors to come throw their ideas at us. So come on down, meet cool people, and enjoy book culture for an afternoon!  Copyleft symbol Cory Doctorow, science fiction author, blogger, and part time super hero, has an interesting article up at Locus Online titled “Why I Copyfight.” Doctorow has been involved with Creative Commons for a long time, and has progressive-to-radical views about copyright law and copyright reform; he asks a lot of very pertinent questions, and asks them well. The thrust of his article in Locus is that copyright laws were created in a time when copying took time, effort, and expensive equipment. As such, he argues, it is out of place in the modern world, where copying is ubiquitous and even necessary. He also brings up the point that copyright law today is at odds with the way that people live their lives; we are all copyright infringers, he argues. More after the break. . . . Registration has just opened for O’Reilly Books‘ Tools of Change conference in New York. As reported in the TOC blog, O’Reilly is offering a chance to win free admission to the conference to four authors of personal accounts about “your experience with a new technology, technique, or strategy based on the shifting publishing landscape.” These accounts can be in any format; text and video are both mentioned. O’Reilly is one of the big names in tech books of the “not for dummies” variety, and it should come as no surprise that they are very interested in new technology and publishing. The conference promises to be fascinating; there’s certainly a lot to be discussed, from what publishers sell to how they sell it. Their site doesn’t have a detailed list of presentations that will be given yet, but I’m sure it will be forthcoming as the date of the conference gets closer.  More of my bookshelf. Clever, no? Well, here it is, hot off the presses both here and over at Ink & Paper: Part 2 of my exploration of ebook world. Again, thanks to Jen, Linda, Bo, and Cam for giving me the green light about posting this here as well as on their site! Welcome back to the world of ebook design. Last time, we talked about the necessity of mutable design for ebooks; specifically, about the need for things like reflowable text and proportional rather than static margins. Today, we’ll be looking at how to achieve that mutability of design. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Entries (RSS)