Posts Tagged: ebooks

Win Or Lose, Amazon War Means Change

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No matter how the dispute between publisher Hachette and online mage-retailer Amazon resolves itself, the one thing that can be assured is that the publishing industry is changing. Amazon might hope to accelerate and seize control of the changes through pricing, but the book industry was changing even before Amazon started picking fights, warns The […]

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Bookless Libraries

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Florida Polytechnic University has just opened, in a building designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, a completely bookless library. Available to all the students is a catalog of 135,000 e-books that can be consulted in an impressive, completely empty room equipped with internet connections and librarians to help the students.  

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Weekly Geekery

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Video game anti-heros. Technology is making everything beautiful. One way technology is making everything awesome (as discussed above): A video of deans losing their cool. Another opinion: Get technology out of school. Forget your soul. What happens to your e-books after you die? Tom Hanks has an app that taps into typewriter nostalgia. You can […]

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The Book As a Luxury Item

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All hailed the e-book for its innovations in technology. Embedded links, comments, and multi-media elements were what is supposed to kill the physical book. This recent essay at Salon contends that now that e-books are essentially being stripped down to resemble physical books, the real book is now considered a luxury item. “But those examples […]

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Which Do You Spend More Money On: Ebooks or Lattes?

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In 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay called “Books vs. Cigarettes,” trying to figure out which habit cost him more and whether books were simply out of some people’s financial reach. For the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kaya Genç updates the calculations in an essay titled “Ebooks vs. Lattes” (he already quit smoking several years […]

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The Millions Is Publishing Books Now!

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Our friends over at The Millions are branching out: in addition to the features on their fantastic website, they’re starting to publish ebooks. The inaugural volume is called Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever, but judging by the excerpt they’ve posted, there’s nothing fail about it. We’re excited […]

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Ebook Bundles Sneak New Authors to Readers

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Or, at least, they could if the “humble indie bundle” scheme gains momentum. The Guardian reports on a new method of pay-what-you-can — bundled ebooks that are advertised to “support authors.” But so far the developers have only included well established writers and have not yet caught on to the grab bag style of other […]

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The Latest in Amazon Ventures

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Amazon is introducing a new service that presents a noncommittal book-buying option for customers. The company is considering a Netflix-like rental service for ebooks, which unfortunately, only provides more opportunity to devalue books. And this devaluing has only caused publishers to be skeptical of this rental-based selling point for ebooks. Let’s hope it doesn’t do […]

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Better Faster Stronger… Flexier: eBooks dEvolved

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“Some computer developers envision tablet computers so flexible that you will literally be able to roll them up and slip them in your bag or pocket — just as you would do with a newspaper or magazine today — and then unfurl them on the train.” eBooks are devolving in the best of ways. Colored […]

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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup

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Your humble Rumpus Sunday Editor is smitten. Over the last couple weeks, the book blogs have been in form, publishing intelligent, hilarious, insightful, and riveting posts. In a word, they’ve been brilliant. Some, but most certainly not all, of my evidence is below. Maud Newton takes on the way we see E-books. The Hate Mail […]

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