Buy
a Book Saturday
The
Saturday after Thanksgiving has been dubbed Small
Business Saturday as a promotion to
counter Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now authors have spread the
word and will
be working with local, independent booksellers
to encourage readers to patronize local brick and mortar stores on
that day. Book stores used to prosper in thriving communities.
Google
Lawsuit Over
The
eight year war is over and the final score is Google 1, Authors 0.
Apparently scanning and selling
copyrighted material is just “fair use”.
Google has admitted that their “Do
no evil” motto was just BS anyway.
Social
Book Selling
BookShout
was created to help authors and publishers stay in touch with readers
and share information via Facebook...I think.
Magazines
for iPhones
Scrunching
down magazine pages designed for tablets to smart phone size seems to
be a bad idea, albeit .one
demanded by the marketplace
Adobe
Guesses Way Low
Adobe
reported it was hacked in October exposing account information for 3
million users. Adobe has now reported 38
million accounts were compromised.
Nautical
Charts Will Be Available
As
reported, the US Government will discontinue printing Nautical charts
in April but the charts can be ordered online as
“Print on Demand”from two certified printers
The charts will be updated weekly by the NOAA (as needed) with new
PDFs for the printers.
Amazon
Hopes for “Stupid”
I
happen to think bookstore owners are generally intelligent (chain
stores excluded) so I'll be very surprised if this sugar-coated offer
from Amazon to
allow
indies to commit commercial suicide
picks up much new business for them. Vote now for America's most
arrogant business: Google vs. Amazon.
The
Problems With Ebooks
I
doubt many of the first ebook adopters anticipated that reading
ebooks would be a similar experience to reading conventional books,
but to some of us its
simply too different to be enjoyable.
3
Part Timers Too Expensive?
Two
weeks after opening,
the Twiggs County (GA) Library is closing.
The $1.15 million edifice was built with state funds and an insurance
settlement after the old library burned. However, the $48,000
operating budget has been deemed too expensive by county
commissioners. The entire budget is payroll for its three part time
employees.
Digital
Revolution Claims Publishers
This
is the first time I've seen anyone quantify the effects of the
digital revolution on publishers. According to a study prepared by
accountants, 98
publishers closed in the UK last year.
Seven or eight years ago the U.S. was losing 1,000 printers each
month.
Amazon
to Rescue USPS?
Amazon's
announcement that it will fill
and ship orders on Sundays
may be just the antidote for falling mail
volumes by requiring drop-off, transport and sorting.
Word
of the Year
The
Oxford Dictionaries have proclaimed “selfie”
the Word of the Year,
no doubt due in some small part to its usage increasing 17,000% this
year. Did you know there was a “Word of the Year”? Hey, at least
it wasn't “twerk”.
Want
to Sell Ebooks in Russia?
There
is apparently a market for English language ebooks in Russia, but
it's currently being met by unauthorized file sharing. Bookmate
is trying to offer a traditional online retail service
for
these books but many US publishers have taken a wait-and-see
attitude.
Letterpress
Magazine Crowdsourced
A
new British magazine calling itself The
Luddite has begun
publishing
The
Luddite features no-tech articles and stories. Ironically, the
funding to start the magazine was crowdsourced on Kickstarter.
Final
Thought
“Great
minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds
discuss people”...Eleanor
Roosevelt
This and nine
other quotes are deemed the best quotes ever on Reddit..
