e-books
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E-books Threaten Warehouse Jobs
The rise of e-books are threatening jobs in publishing once again—this time, it’s the warehouse workers that once distributed physical books. Penguin Random House is laying off warehouse workers, since electronic books are delivered wirelessly and never need to be…
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Printed Books Are Here to Stay
A recent New York Times report showed that e-book sales are declining while printed book sales are doing well. Over at Lit Hub, Adam Sternbergh argues that the printed book is going nowhere, for at least another 500 years: Whatever…
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Print Soldiers On as Digital Sales Slump
Ebook sales have fallen 10 percent in the first five months of 2015. The surge of electronic books between 2008 and 2010 coupled with the stress of economic depression on independent bookstores seemed a portent of an all-digital future, but…
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Ebooks Are Changing How Writers Write
The rise in popularity of e-books are changing how readers consume books. Readers now have short attention spans, and that is leading to writers adopting new styles. The Guardian takes a look at the impact of the rise of e-books…
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Indie Bookstore Customers Shun E-Books
E-books are proving unpopular for independent bookstores. Amazon’s juggernaut Kindle device is only available from the online retailer, but independent bookstores can still sell e-books through devices like Kobo. But the Denver Post has found that customers of indie bookstores just aren’t…
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Learning Outside the Classroom
With the goal of “encouraging kids to become lifelong readers,” the Obama administration has teamed up with charities and publishers to offer digital books to children of low-income families. The books will be made available through an app developed with the…
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Publishers Earn More than Authors on E-Book Sales
Authors are earning less on e-books than on physical ones, and the villain isn’t necessarily Amazon. According to the Author’s Guild, a professional organization for writers, publishers are now taking closer to 75% of an e-book’s profit, up from only…
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The Rumpus Interview with Jeremy Hawkins
Author Jeremy Hawkins discusses his debut novel, The Last Days of Video, the resurgence of the independent bookstore industry, and allowing nostalgia to have presence but not precedence in one’s life.
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Word of the Day: Nesh
(n.); soft, delicate, tender; from the Old English hnesce (“soft in texture”) or Gothic hnasqus (“tender; soft”) “Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth over the merits of print versus digital books so many times, it’s as if I…
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Books for All!
For the San Francisco Chronicle, Jim Kuhnhenn reports about President’s Obama’s new initiative to provide low-income students with e-books.
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The Thing Itself
You can’t put everything in the cloud. Over at The New Republic, William Giraldi makes the case for holding onto books in their physical form: We might be reading them—although I find that an e-reader’s scrolling and swiping are invitations to…
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Clean Reader, Dirty World
When the Clean Reader app tried to censor books for profanity, writers were understandably pissed. The creators responded by removing their catalogue, but does their technology have implications for the future of intellectual property?