As I mentioned, I’m beginning to explore the e-book universe. One thing I’m going to do is post links here as I find them. Hope that’s useful. I’ll be posting soon with a compilation of all the suggestions I received for sources and authorities in this field. Thanks for those!
- What Are Books Good For? [William Germano, The Chronicle of Higher Education]: "Is the book the physical, printed text in its protective case, or is it the knowledge that the hidden text is always prepared to reveal? The answer, of course, is that the book is both. And because the book is and is not the form in which it is presented, it can do its work between boards of calf, or morocco, or Kivar, or from the booklike window of an iPad or a Nook." [via publishingoptimism.tumblr.com]
- Aggregating Deep Discount Readers of eBooks [Eric Hellman]: How libraries and individuals could pool resources to acquire rights to e-books: " If a hundred thousand people offered a dollar to Clay Shirky (and Penguin, his publisher) for Cognitive Surplus to be released as a creative commons licensed ebook, certainly at some point they would examine their prospects for future sales and figure out how to say yes."
- Walter Benjamin’s Aura: Open Bookmarks and the future eBook [booktwo.org]: How do we make books "ours" as they move from objects to bits? "The aura model of art got broken 80 years ago, but we just might be figuring out how to fix it." Great stuff from James Bridle.
- Portable Book Club: Stephen Elliott Builds The Adderall Diaries App [GalleyCat]: iPhone, iPad version of book has a discussion board and other extras.
- An example of where Amazon excels: Kindle for the Web [Rex Hammock]: "a classic 'content' win-win: The user gets some extremely helpful content to add to a blog post and Amazon gets a wider distribution of potential transactions."
- Kindle Version of Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’ Priced Above Hardcover [NYTimes.com]: Will customers rebel over publishers' push to boost ebook prices? Unclear right now.
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