Grub Street Printing Newsletter #51, July 2013

I owe some of you an apology. It's this whole LinkedIn thing. I guess I just don't get it.

After closing Baker Johnson, Inc. in 2005, every article I read about finding work insisted the key to re-employment was the internet. Trade groups had work available sites (PrintWorkers.com – less than one posting per month), and newspaper ads were said to be useless because of Monster.com where most all jobs were listed in the 21^st century (I tried Monster but I was too old for all the positions listed for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, which made up about a third of all the ads). Most importantly, one must use the worldwide web to network, network, network.

At the time I read that LinkedIn was the best place to network to let people know your talents were available, so the more people you linked to, the faster you'd be hired. I went to town and invited lots of friends from the print industry to “link” to me and accepted a lot of invitations from friends in the publishing industry and...nothing happened.

But I was comfortable being on LinkedIn in a very passive sort of way. I'd get occasional emails inviting me to link with someone and while I felt no urgency to do so, I wondered if anger or disappointment would result from my inaction. Then reality kicked in and I thought, “Get real!”

And there were emails letting me know whenever someone I was linked to had linked to someone else. It began to occur to me that the exponential growth of the whole thing was getting out of hand so that at some point I would have maybe just four or five degrees of separation to anyone in the whole damn world!

Then late last year I started getting the darndest emails. A friend in Hawaii had “endorsed” me, then a friend in Illinois posted a “new skill” (except it wasn't new at all, she'd always had it since I'd known her). What was this? An endorsement? I tried it and endorsed someone but the idea that my endorsement, by checking a little check-box, would make or break anyone's status page was absurd. I tried to recommend someone, but met none of the four requirements needed to recommend someone...as if my recommendation actually mattered either.

So now I've slowed down on accepting LinkedIn invitations. It's a bit out of my league. For those I'm linked to, you already know that I never post anything new anyway.

And while web sites and my email newsletter subscriptions tell me the key to all riches lies in social media, I freely admit that Grub Street Printing doesn't

Face on Facebook

Space on MySpace

Redd on Reddit

Tweet on Twitter

Digg on Diggit

Share on InShare

Stumble on StumbleUpon

Tumbl on Tumblr

Pin on Pinterest

Chime on Chime.In

Eat on Delicious

Inst on Instagram

or attempt any other form of social networking on Grub Street's computer except speaking with you on my Skype phone. Having a chance to talk with you is about all the digital networking I can handle, and I do enjoy it.

 

Penguin Moves to Dismiss Lawsuit

Having purchased publishing services company Author Solutions (a den of scamsters?) last year, Penguin has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit for breach of contract (among other things) and remove Penguin itself from the suit altogether. Penguin and Random House plan to finalize their merger this month.

Fonts for Dyslexics

I know some of you think I go on a bit about fonts, but you can see in this article how a font can influence the ability of the reader to scan across words with clarity and comprehension.

Is Barnes & Noble Terminal?

Many industry watchers believe B&N may be struggling through its death throes. B&N is losing sales, has had to stop offering some Nook models and saw its stock tank 17% in one day last week. B&N executives deny their stores are carrying significantly fewer titles, although evidence suggests that's true.

Paula Deen and Selling Books

While the headlines are about the businesses that are trying to distance themselves from Paula Deen (like her publisher Ballantine/Random House, book retailers Target and Walmart) Amazon reports pre-orders for her next book (due in October) and her current best-seller are #1 and #2 right now. What will Ballantine do? Not supply books?

Adobe Creative Cloud: Friend or Foe?

Certainly a lot of conversation about Adobe's Creative Suite becoming a subscription cloud application. According to this article, designers are extremely wary about the change but most printers deal with the problems as they encounter them and move on.

King's Print Only Book a Pirated Ebook

Stephen King thought his latest book Joyland should be available as a conventional book, sold through bookstores but a pirated ebook became available within days of its release. Lesson learned?

“I Hate Books!”

Anna North, the culture editor for Salon.com posted her thoughts on the ease of reading ebooks as compared to the old clunky way that made you do insipid things like turn pages. The culture editor? I assume she prefers .mp3s to live music also.

Tumblr Poetry

Apparently paid editors had poetry all wrong, and didn't understand the criteria people would judge it by, because it's thriving on Tumblr, where volunteer editors curate the verse, and whose motto is “Follow the World's Creators.” Click here to sign up.

Algonquin Continues Literary Tradition

Decades ago the Algonquin Hotel served as a meeting place for New York City's writers. Now, Simon & Schuster has worked with the hotel to create a S&S themed suite on the 7^th floor as well as present readings from some of its current authors.

Who Do You Link To?

A number of British authors and publishers are chastising some others in the industry for linking their web sites to Amazon or other online retailers, ignoring smaller brick and mortar booksellers.

              I Don't Get It

A reader of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest did a neat job of trimming their copy to remove all the page numbers. I have no idea what “freedoms” he was after but I'm pleased he seems free at last. And I do enjoy the far-ranging comments posted about his rebellion..

A Dearth of English Majors?

There's a growing sentiment in some political circles to decrease funding for some Liberal Arts programs since the employment situation for their majors can be erratic and perhaps that indicates that those areas of study offer less value to society.

But I was always pleasantly surprised by how many English majors (like myself) found their way into book manufacturing. Now it seems that even without political maneuvering a degree in English is losing its luster. I wonder where the Garrison Keillors of tomorrow will come from?

Final Thought

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.                                                                                         Oscar Wilde

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #50, June, 2013

While I'm not sure the fiftieth issue of this newsletter signifies very much (not even five years!), every time I begin to put together the next newsletter I reflect on who the recipients are and where their interests and talents lie.

For instance, many of my friends from the printing industry, both book and commercial, receive this newsletter each month. Many are still working on the shop floor, some still work in the industry but as free-lancers now, and some have left the industry all together and found new careers in other disciplines. Ironically, it is the latter group that contacts me most often.

And out East there's a former Harper Rowe editor who I believe could be persuaded to pick up a blue pencil again to tame an unruly manuscript.

One recipient is not only a publisher but an importer/manufacturer who fills his wholesale and retail orders from over 80,000 square feet of warehouse space. His company began many years ago when he would get home from his day job and and roll a Radio Shack TRS80 out of his closet, using a forerunner of the PC years before most believed the primitive computers of the day had any business applications.

Another distributes his books from a series of pole barns he's added to his property, often traveling to quiet corners of the Midwest with books for his Amish audience.

There are many, many astrologers who read the newsletter. It was a curious course of events that put me in touch with this group, but they are generous people who freely passed my name among themselves whenever an upcoming book was mentioned, and astrologers write (and buy) a lot of books.

There is a gentleman who for years supplied me with information about all things paper, now happily retired. While some paper reps came and went, he became the one who always had the answer, could offer advice when described the application, and endeared himself to our shop by bringing pizza for all. All this after years with a web press book manufacturer.

And I've stayed in touch with a wonderful group in California that collects donated technical books to ship and distribute in Asia.

My newsletter archive even has two people who follow each posting although I have no idea why it interests them.

But the majority of you are publishers and authors, often both. When sorting through thirty days of articles to report on and link to, my selection criteria is first and foremost, “Is this interesting to a book publisher? Will this influence the future of book publishing?”

Still, there are stories like the re-imagined library in Australia, or the mother who uses her Kindle as a bookmark that I include...well, just because.

Just received this article from Salon concerning the book industry seen through lens of the BEA.

 

Book Expo More Optimistic

Book Expo is opening in NYC as I write this. This preview describes a more hopeful attitude in the air compared to the past few years. And yes, NYC allows the publishers to throw some swell parties, but I still would like to see it in some other site in the future. The Big 6 can't dictate to the industry as they used to.

As If You Didn't Know

Over the past twenty-five years, beer prices have matched cost of living increases while book pricing has slightly decreased. Obviously textbooks weren't considered.

Magazines Popular on Campuses

Everyone's assumption that the first generation to grow up in a digital environment would shun ink and paper content for pixels. Everyone was wrong.

Kindle Fire Tablets Target Apple, Samsung

Amazon will make it's new Kindle Fire Tablet and HD 8.9” tablet available in over 170 new countries and will offer Android apps in 200 new regions in a challenge to counter Apple and Samsung's international market penetration. The Fire was previously offered in seven countries.

The Rebirth of Indies

As predicted after the demise of Borders, independent bookstores are beginning to re-appear, and regional chains are expanding. A co-owner of Ann Arbor's newest, Literati, remembers that Borders store #1 “was always a part of what made Ann Arbor”.

New Perspectives On Backlists

How many publishers employ half of their staff as marketers? How many “backlist only” publishers offer 3,000 titles, all as digital editions, plus a few in print? Open Road is that backlist publisher, and when a lost Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in a storage locker, guess which publisher was first offered the opportunity to release it?

Crowdfunding Book Fairs and Books

Kickstarter is the most famous of the crowdfunding websites having raised over $600 million to fund 42,000 projects since 2009.The Sonoma County Book Fest is hoping for sufficient Kickstarter support to hold its 13^th Festival in September. Pubslush is a web site that focuses on funding for authors and publishers.

“New” J.R.R. Tolkein Book Released

J.R.R. Tolkein's unfinished and unpublished poem, The Fall of Arthur, has been released as a book. Tolkein's son Christopher has been working on the manuscript which was written in Old English alliterative meter and also in modern English.

Stephen King Releases Paper and Ink Novel

Although Stephen King released an “ebook only” novel in 2000 (“Riding the Bullet”), and his 2009 novel “Ur” focused on interacting with a Kindle, he has announced that his next novel , “Joyland” will be available as a printed book only without an ebook edition, ostensibly to buoy up sales at bookstores.

However...

A few days before “Joyland” is released, King will release a digital work through Apple's iBooks. While it is a digital book, “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” includes music by John Mellencamp and T. Bone Burnett who teamed up with King to produce this “supernatural digital book musical”.

Paper Mill Fined

For all the strides the paper industry has made to become environmentally friendly, a Texas Temple Inland mill owned by International Paper has been fined $3.3 million for releasing “black liquor” into the Pearl River and causing an extensive fish kill. The liquid is generally recovered from processing pulp and reused inside the plant.

Rubber Stamp a Book?

While GalleyCat is all breathless about a “printing a book” with your children educational toy introduced at BEA, actually The Creative Company has issued a set of rubber stamps, which, I suppose, if you have the time and inclination you could produce a book with. I got my first Superior press when I was 10 (you set the rubber type with tweezers)...and I actually could have printed a book; if I started then it would have been finished about now.

Final Thought

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” ― Stephen Fry

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #49: May 2013

I've collected books for a long time. I think I was a collector before I knew I was a collector. One day you just wake up and realize you have a few hundred books packed into your one bedroom apartment.

I'm not a “serious” collector, though. I don't dream about ribbed leather spines or first editions with pristine dust jackets and the authors signature on the title page. I collect books that I like, and once in awhile books that are outside my interest but have redeeming attributes, like a thumb notched 1930s cookbook (28 notched categories!) or a small guide to ships of the Great Lakes from 1968. Not a very sophisticated collector.

But last weekend I went to our local library's (The Hamburg Public Library) book sale. I'm never the first one in the door, and if I arrive before eleven I must be really hustling. Books are $3 per full grocery bag and they host sales every six months or so, which means you only live with a book that wasn't as good as expected for six months.

After I'd circled most of the tables of books (The Picture Cookbook by Life magazine 1962!) there was one table that had some fellow camped in front of it. I'd gone around behind him twice but his tortoise pace meant it would be another ten minutes before I could see the final few boxes. I checked out the audible books and CDs.

Finally he moved on and I walked over to the last boxes I'd not inspected. I looked over to see what the hell was taking him so long; reading the spines of twenty or so books wasn't very time consuming. Aha! He wasn't reading book spines. He was picking up books, turning them over and snapping a picture of their bar code with his smart phone. He then turned his phone over to check the book's price on Amazon (I'm guessing) and that would inform his decision whether or not to drop the book in his bag. It was “show-rooming” in reverse! He wasn't looking to buy low, he was looking to sell high. And judging by the nearly empty bag he toted, he wasn't having much luck. (I wonder if his competition was there when the doors opened?)

I sorted through my “new” books when I got home. Only one of my books had a bar code! To my mind the price checker may have missed the best books available. Curious, I checked some pricing on the internet and found that two of my books were available for over $30 on BookFinder.

I don't know why but it struck me as a real waste of time to scan book after book without seeing the title, the author, the year it was printed. At some level I accept books as commodities, but really! Even remainder houses have a sense of content.

Some days later I read about a book that I thought may be helpful for research on a project I'm working on, so naturally I again went to BookFinder (although it was available from a number of sources as a free download) . I was looking for the title Quaint Nantucket and it was published in 1896 so it's clearly in the public domain. This link should take you to my search results.

The first four options (displayed under the “New Books” heading) were for ebooks as .pdf for $9.99. And then there were some Print On Demand paperbacks starting at $17.20: plain text covers, uneven scans reproduced on a laser printer. Wow.

Even more surprising, the least expensive book under the “Used Books” listing was an actual 1901 copy. It was listed as “very good” condition. Then there were POD hardcover copies that started at a dollar and a half more and went progressively higher. I had to wonder how deep into digital editions someone would have to be if an unpredictable scan, reproduced with toner “ink” and bound cross grain that cost more than an actual copy of the original book made sense.

I know the writing, publishing, editing and retailing of current titles is in a state of flux, but older titles that were made by craftsman, edited by professionals and sold by people who loved the feel and smell of books aren't getting any respect and I don't know why.

Last minute addition: Too late for the newsletter, Claire Messud author of The Woman Upstairs, answers a question from the media about the “likability” of her protagonist. I think you'll enjoy her answer.

 

What You Should Know about Page Design

Thirty some years ago when I started making books, most publishers neglected to specify

page margins so production planners (aka “book engineers”) were taught very basic principles of page design. Today, whatever looks okay on the screen seems to be fine, but there are actually historic guides to assist the creation of attractive, easy to read pages.

West Virginia Schools to Read Sci-Fi?

A West Virginia state representative has introduced a bill to include science fiction reading as part of state school curricula in hopes it would encourage interest in math, engineering and the sciences. If it motivates kids to read I'm all for it. (Unfortunately, their fifth grade science camps, funded by the Defense Department, are facing the budget ax.)

Most Valuable Book in the World?

Well, it's certainly in the top tier. A copy of the Psalms printed in a run of 1,700 books in 1640 in Cambridge MA is expected to fetch around $30M at auction next fall.

Booksellers Keep Fighting

A group of brick-and-mortar book sellers have asked a court to deny a motion to dismiss their lawsuit for restraint of trade against Amazon and the big six NYC publishers.

Would You Like an Opinion?

Avon Romance has introduced Share Your Book. Authors will be able to upload excerpts from their writing for others to critique, with the promise that occasionally editors will poke around the offerings. Too early to tell if this will evolve into a helpful community or (more typically) losers who will flame everyone's submissions or interject their irrelevant political biases.

Re-Examining the Death of Books (and Publishers)

Predictably, Wired magazine sees doom and destruction in the book business as ebooks continue to redefine the industry. But a closer look at their conclusions paints a very different picture.

Leveling the Retail Field

Efforts to require collection of sales taxes on all internet transactions seem likely to succeed, offering some relief to Main Street retailers and ironically protecting Amazon from the next Amazon.

Kodak Ready to Emerge from Bankruptcy

After cutting a deal giving its UK pensioners its remaining photographic and imaging business, Kodak seems to have cleared the last hurdle to emerge from bankruptcy a much smaller version of its former self.

Even Better

Kodak announced it made a profit during the first quarter of 2013. Kodak hadn't posted a profitable quarter since 2010.

Xpedx to merge with Unisource

Although I reported xpedx was closing all of its paper supply stores last February, it's just been announced that xpedx and last surviving rival Unisource plan to merge and salvage what's left of the paper/printer supply retail industry.

Defending Captain Underpants

Each September I participate in recognizing the paranoia that leads to banning books during Banned Book Week. Now the American Library Association has listed the ten titles most frequently challenged in schools and libraries. Instead of Salinger, Vonnegut or Morrison, author Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants titles for 'tween readers ranks number one in complaints.

A New Weekly for Baton Rouge

The Newhouse family has announced it's beginning a new weekly newspaper in Baton Rouge, LA. Why? This story goes beyond the press release..

Amelia Turns 50!

Children's book icon Amelia Bedelia turned 50 this year. Like everything marketed today, her brand has been extended past Peggy Parish's (her creator) death in 1988 by her nephew who added twenty-seven titles to her canon. If you're not familiar with Amelia, above is a short video of Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping to share with your favorite youngster.

Adapting for Mobile

Some major publishers have released horrible mobile content. Here are some tips so that you don't.

Final Thought

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Stephen King 

GrubStreetPrinting Newsletter #48: April 2013

Printers seem to be born innovators. I remember many employees who “customized” the equipment they ran for more efficiency, perhaps better ergonomics, and (most commonly) to increase quality and production.

While watching the short video in this newsletter about Mergenthaler and the invention of the Linotype, I was reminded that Alois Senenfelder had invented lithography a hundred years earlier when he made some notes with a crayon and went on to perfect lithographic printing to the point that it was commercially viable.

And what we call central air-conditioning was invented by a printer trying to control humidity in his shop during the summer months. Since paper is organic, it absorbs water from the atmosphere (causing wavy edges on the stacked sheets and permitting the sheets to stretch during multiple press passes) or conversely give up its water content in the dry winter months (shrinking the sheets and making the skid tight and difficult to feed through the press). Willis Haviland Carrier found a way to control high humidity for the printer he worked for and surprisingly learned that his apparatus also cooled the drier air.

Another invention in the 1960s offered no such wide spread societal benefit but greatly helped printers around the globe to offer their clients accurate, repeatable color reproduction while stocking less than twenty different colors of ink.

Lawrence Herbert, who owned the Pantone Printing company was working on a display card for a hosiery manufacturer, mixing specific inks for each shade he was to reproduce by trial and error. He wondered how it would be possible to place an order for the same project many miles away and be assured that each color matched the colors he'd printed. He then devised a card which he sent to ink makers on which he'd printed a number of different colors and listed the proportionate amount of different color inks to mix to reproduce each color in any print shop, anywhere. The rest is history.

Today, his Pantone ink matching system is just a small part of what the Pantone Company produces. These experts in the study of color track products from paint to fabrics, molded plastics to tinted glass and defines and classifies them, right down to an annual pronouncement for color of the year (emerald for 2013).

The ubiquity of four color process printing (CMYK) has somewhat reduced the importance of Pantone Color Matching system as Herbert created it, but there a re a number of aides available that will help a printer reproduce a Pantone color by screening back cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K) inks.

The discussion of color reproduction became complicated with RGB computer monitors that displayed colors that were not possible to recreate using 4 color printing. If some of you have encountered problems translating between the two modes, let me know and perhaps I can try to explain the differences and why they matter.

I happen to have a couple of old Pantone Matching System swatch books here and would be glad to part with one to anyone who has a story (happy ending or not) of a print job which specified printing with Pantone mixed colors. I'll even offer a choice of a brand new book (circa 2004) or a shop worn example with tons of street cred. And if you remember the Pantone colors involved in the story. I'll try to rustle up a sheet of rubylith for you.

 

Paywalls, Resignations and a Death

As publishers struggle to find ways to distribute their content while earning enough money to pay the bills, their staffs and critics debate the value of intellectual property and the best way to disseminate ideas. Editors of the Journal of Library Administration resigned to protest the paywall securing its content and the author's loss of control over their articles. An editor explained the the editor's decision was partly influenced by the death of internet activist Aaron Swartz.

RR Donnelley Posts Loss, Closes Plants

RR Donnelley, North America's largest printer, posted a $849 million loss on sales of $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter. Two weeks later it announced plans to close two plants in Ohio, releasing approximately 225 employees.

First Sale Doctrine and International Sales

The Supreme Court has ruled that Supap Kirtsaeng, a California university student, had a right to have his family purchase less expensive Asian versions of textbooks, then ship them to him so he could resell them profitably on eBay.

Metadata and ONIX

The benefit of understanding metadata for the publisher is that it can be used to easily provide relevant information to book buyers. The most common way to make the information available online is the ONIX format (Online Information Exchange) that helps to organize data storage.

Frommers Finished, Lonely Planet Sold

After purchasing Frommers last April as a complement to its earlier purchase of Zagat, Google has announced it is ending publication of the Frommer Travel Guide series. It's been a tough year for travel guides as the BBC has sold Lonely Planet, the travel guide publisher, for less than half of what it paid just two years earlier.

Greenpeace Media Assault Ends

Asia Pulp and Paper has met with Greenpeace and other interested NGOs to work out details for protecting the Indonesian rainforest from further deforestation by the company. Greenpeace has stopped its media assault on the company, at least for the time being.

Aw, C'mon! A Phablet? Really?

Amazon needs to keep its ebook buyers devoted to all things Kindle and so it will introduce a smart phone/tablet early this summer with a 4.7” screen, with a price possibly as low as $100 (but probably closer to $150 or so).

Coated Paper Goes Green...Really

The European Union has sponsored research to eliminate petroleum based paper coatings with a mixture of seaweed extracts mixed with starch.

Need Meets Genius: Short Video

A stenographer looking for a quicker way to transcribe his notes inspired inventor Ottmar Merganthaler to revolutionize typesetting in the 19^th century.

Counterfeit Cash

Most printers are keenly aware of the counterfeiting laws in the US and enjoy hearing about failed attempts by amateurs and pros alike to simulate US currency. But this counterfeiter took amateurism to a new level as he tried to return his used computer printer to WalMart and sheets of paper printed with $100 bills on one side fell out during the scuffle.

Showing a bit more expertise and creativity, two men were arrested in FL after “washing” $1 bills and re-printing them as $100 bills. And yes, WalMart was again a target.

Smallest Book Ever

I think the question,”When is a book not a book?” needs to be asked after Toppan Prining in Japan produced a 22 page book roughly the size of the eye of a needle.

Hi-Tech Bookmark

I should have posted information about the Amazon purchase of Goodreads and the uproar from many authors over the sale. I offer instead this widely tweeted picture of a Kindle being used as a bookmark.

Final Thought

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” Joseph Brodsky

Grub Street Printing Newsletter #47, March 2013

There are times that an industry introduces a new idea using a term or terms you're not familiar with. Some years ago at a Book Industry Study Group (BISG) seminar that I attended as part of the annual Book Expo, the term metadata was used over and over and I had no idea what the heck they were talking about. I remember the definition I found that evening with the help of Google was overly complicated and I certainly didn't feel comfortable with my understanding of the term.

It seems that I wasn't the only one since I opened an email the other day that could have been entitled “Metadata for Dummies”. It explained what metadata is so simply that I wish I'd been able to read it when I first heard the term.

As the author points out, metadata is data about data. When you right click on a song file on your computer, information about the song is generally available, although it appears nowhere in the file name, such as title, artist, length of the performance, perhaps the year it was recorded, and often the genre.

Similarly, by offering publishers the opportunity to describe their titles by market, genre, author, etc. and to have that data available to book buyers provides a more complete analysis for the buyer to consider. For the book industry in general it's a sales tool that large publishers understand and use routinely, but it may be that it would be most helpful for the rest of us who struggle to establish our titles.

 

B&N For Sale

It's been awhile since Barnes & Noble openly solicited offers to be acquired or merged, but now CEO Leonard S. Riggio has announced his plans to buy the company (except for the Nook brand) in an all cash deal. The guessing has begun as to what the retailer might be worth in such a transaction.

Amazon: You Don't Own It But You Can Sell It

In a patent filing that is unusual and very misunderstood, Amazon will allow people who have paid for Kindle content to “sell” the content (which they don't own) and Amazon will cancel the book's availability to the seller and make it available to the buyer (for a fee, of course). ReDigi, an online service already buying and selling “used” digital content, uses a different business model.

What if …?

A number of print and digital publishers reflect on how they would do things differently if they were starting from scratch right now.

Amazon Games

While Amazon continues to fight efforts by state governments to collect sales taxes, it has given its blessing to a proposal allowing states to tax online sales IF they have a “simplified” tax code for such collection.

Amazon is also fighting the same battle over sales taxes in Europe, but got a black-eye for a different reason there; the warehouse security company it hired in Germany seems to have been staffed by neo-Nazis intent on harassing immigrant employees.

France Sued for Lowering Tax on eBooks

The European Commission has informed the European Court of Justice that France has illegally lowered its taxes on ebooks.

Readers Digest Files for Bankruptcy (Again)

Readers Digest Association (the publisher) has again filed for protection from its creditors just three years after it was taken over by its lenders in its 2009 bankruptcy filing.

If Only Henry Luce Was Still Alive

The directors of Time Warner are in discussions with publisher Meredith (Ladies Home Journal) to sell Time magazine, similar to its sale of AOL and Time Warner Cable a few years ago.

Variety to Stop Printing and Offer Free Content

Long running Hollywood tabloid Variety has announced it's ceasing production of its daily print edition while also removing the pay wall from its online edition. A weekend print edition will continue.

Ebook Pricing Settlement, Apple Still Fighting

With Macmillan being the last major book publisher to accept new guidelines for ebook pricing, Apple remains the lone defendant willing to challenge the DOJ lawsuit. But then, when has Apple ever followed anyone else's pricing model?

“Like” Two Sides

Two Sides web-site was created because there is a lot of ecological misinformation about the paper and ink industry. Did you know today's domestic forests contain carbon equal to 27x our annual output of carbon? They're on Facebook now.

How Green is Your Tissue?

Not only has Swedish paper manufacturer Södra Cell Värö been producing “totally chlorine free” (TCF) paper since 1993, it's bark drying kiln means the plant uses no fossil fuels in its tissue manufacturing.

Wausau Closes Mill

Forestry product giant Wausau is closing a paper mill that produced specialty printing papers in Maine to re-focus on the manufacture of tissue in other of its mills. There will be around 130 jobs lost. I had no idea there was so much tissue demand in the world.

Library Re-imagined Down Under

Two young architects have been awarded the contract to design Sydney's new $40 million Green Square library. They presented a vision of the library as a community center with gardens, music rehearsal rooms and a water play area.

Print Company Investors in 21^st Century?

Gerard Cellette must be one helluva salesman. He bilked investors in eight states out of $150 million by selling shares in a fictional printing company. Who invests in new print capacity in the 21^st century?

Final Thought

I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson