Time and tide wait for no-one ...

After a solid year, I've decided to put the blog e-publishing, etc. to sleep. No time. Just no time at all. Like so many other dead blogs, it'll stay here, floating in the cloud. Take it easy.

Dumping print, NY publisher bets the ranch on apps

Reuters: "Since 1980, Nicholas Callaway has made the finest of design-driven books, building a publishing house and his fortune on memorable children's stories and on volumes known for the fidelity of their reproductions of great art. But the quality of paper, ink and binding mean nothing to him now. ... "

Digital Reading: On the Way to the Webcast, a Funny Thing Happened

Digital Book World: "Gather a group of digital publishing pros and usability experts in the same (virtual) room, and the discussion gets deep, detailed, and far-seeing. ... "

Semantics: "Real" Books vs. eBooks

Get with the program. eBooks = BOOKs. Stop editorializing about how eBooks kill "real books." eBooks ARE "real books." eBooks are of course drastically minimizing (though not killing) paper-books, but the narrative (the REAL "real book") remains intact, regardless of the container. Thank you and have a great day.

No More NY Times Links

I'm going to stop posting links to NY Times articles on my blog, not because I dispute the Times's right to charge for proprietary content (I don't), but simply because the links will be of no use to readers of e-publishing, etc. who are not subscribers to the Times and have used up their 20-free-articles privilege for any given month.

Gleick's "The Information" is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand

Janet Maslin, NY Times: "The Information is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly. Imagine luxuriating on a Wi-Fi-equipped desert island with Mr. Gleick’s book, a search engine and no distractions. The Information is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand."

Alexander Nazaryan on the future of publishing - best soundbite of the month award

NY Daily News: "In truth, flooding the market with books doesn't work, because books aren't like shoes or groceries. Readers don't demand choice as much as they demand quality. Fewer books, rigorously edited and thoughtfully published, would have better served both readers and writers. ... If there is hope for publishing, it is with modest presses and modest books, putting out titles for small but loyal audiences. But that's not something that's going to warm the heart of Penguin's CEO."

Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Marginalia

per NY Times re: digital. But I'm a book lover; and I don't give a rat's ass.

AAP Stats on Viral eBook Sales Growth

More good #s: "E-books grew a dramatic 164.8 percent in December 2010 vs the previous year ($49.5 Million vs $18.7M). In the AAP’s ninth year of tracking this category, E-books once again increased significantly on an annual basis, up 164.4 percent for 2010 vs 2009 ($441.3M vs $166.9M). E-book sales represented 8.32 percent of the trade book market in 2010 vs 3.20 percent the previous year. ... "

What's to stop ...

iPaders from buying Kindle books not through app but direct thru browser in Amazon, and only then opening app to read? I'm probably missing something obvious. But, anyway, that's my question.

Big Brains on eBooks

Of these "big brains," only Judith Regan and Bill Lynch have anything to say that's relevant, or based in reality. Newsweek: "The transformation of the book industry has reached a tipping point. Electronic books now outsell paperbacks on Amazon, the retailer recently announced. And Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States, is reportedly considering a bankruptcy filing. With books evolving at warp speed, we polled some literary brains on the future of reading ... "

EXCELLENT Interview with O'Reilly eBook Guru Andrew Savikas

John Martellaro, The Mac Observer: "Recently, I’ve been exploring and writing about ebooks, something of great interest to me. In the process of leaning more about ebooks — and purchasing a technical ebook from O’Reilly which came without DRM — I bumped into Andrew Savikas, interim CEO of Safari Books Online and the VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly media. According to his bio, he’s also 'the Program Co-Chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference, and is a regular contributor to the O’Reilly Radar blog on digital publishing issues.' I asked him some questions that have been on my mind as I’ve been learning more about ebooks, and he kindly provided some thoughtful answers. ... "

Ebook revolution accelerates in sales and status

Benedicte Page | Books | guardian: "The ebook revolution has swept past two more milestones in its ferocious advance upon the bastions of literary culture. As the Man Booker prize embraces the digital era, the online retail giant Amazon has announced that sales of Kindle editions have overtaken paperbacks in the US. ... "

Well Worth Reading: Kathleen Fitzpatrick's "Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology and the Future of the Academy"

Wonderful stuff. Really.

Snooki, Dinosaurs and “Creative Destruction” in the Book Business

My guest blog post for indie author Wanda Shapiro @ One Girl One Novel.

Virginia Heffernan: Watch Me, Read Me

NY Times: "I’ve been a slavish fan of the Kindle almost since it was introduced — the way it lets you read, wholly read and do nothing but read. Not being interrupted by all the material distractions of an overdesigned book — or by the Web’s gaudy video, graphics, music, clocks, e-mail, ads and news bulletins — that was a joy to me when the Kindle first appeared. I still do my most focused reading on the Kindle or the Kindle app for the iPad. But every now and then my imagination just fails. And I reach for the mental cheat that only full-dress audiovisuals can provide. ... " I'm going to miss Virginia Heffernan's fine pieces in the Times. (They've just dropped her.)

Abbreviated e-publishing, etc. Posts Today Through End of Week

There's been a death in the family. Expect limited posting for the next day or so, and no posting whatsoever on Friday.

New York Times Book Review Excludes Black, Latino Critics

BeyondChron: San Francisco's Alt Online Daily News: "The latest example of the sad decline of the New York Times Book Review under editor Sam Tanenhaus is its January 2, 2010 edition on 'Why Criticism Matters' that excludes African-American and Latino critics. Citing the importance of the critic as cultural arbiter, the Times asked six critics to address the subject – none of whom were black or Latino. Further, the back page of the section cites seven cultural critics who inspired the issue’s theme: all seven are white men. We have previously discussed the Book Review’s neo-conservative agenda in its promoting a praiseworthy review of a book unfairly attacking Hampshire College; now it is defining critics as our leading cultural arbiters while ignoring the perspectives of the African-American, Latino and Asian-American critics whose outsider status has often resulted in salient critiques of the elite white culture trumpeted in the Times."

The Next Wave: Print Books as Furniture

NY Times: "It took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-colored leather-bound books for a 'gentleman’s library' in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager. Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheep skin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr. Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative 'book solutions,' as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse. ... For the spa in Philippe Starck's Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, he was asked to wrap about 2,000 books in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a 'textural accent' to the space. He chose mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets — titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson, he said — because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size. ... "

Year One: The Born Digital Publisher

Essential reading from Joe Esposito, who knows his stuff. The Scholarly Kitchen: "While one would be hard-pressed to find any publisher who does not view digital media as a central strategic concern, we have reached a critical point in the evolution of publishing — henceforth, no one who starts a new publishing company is likely to be thinking of the world of print. ... "