- Carl Zimmer on “Brain Cuttings” and the Future of Books [Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes]: "I saw people eating up books with their Kindles and iPads. I looked at the numbers and realized that there’s a real ecosystem taking root. I saw other writers saying, 'If I don’t have to deal with paper and glue and binding, I’ll just write something and sell it.' There’s a lot of writing that we all do that could be read by more people.”
- Will physical books be gone in five years? [CNN.com]: Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said the physical book's days are numbered. "It will be in five years," said Negroponte. "The physical medium cannot be distributed to enough people. When you go to Africa, half a million people want books … you can't send the physical thing."
- Barnes & Noble Updates Nook E-Reader [Wall Street Journal]: B&N's new $250 1-lb Nook uses Android, aims for niche between Kindle and iPad.
- Amazon to Introduce Lending for Kindle [Jason Boog, GalleyCat]: “Later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users.”
- Ebook Go-To Guide [Eric Griffith, PC Magazine]: Useful overview of state of commercial ebook world, late 2010.
- iPad Week: E-Books [Nicholas Jackson, The Atlantic]: "You can get a variety of e-book reader apps for your iPad, including Apple's iBooks, Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's eReader, and Lexcycle's Stanza. Here's the rub: Except for Stanza, each app is tied to one specific online bookstore."
- Part Two of My TOC Frankfurt "Ignite" Session [Joe Wikert]: "What if we could turn this model upside down and enable students to resell their textbooks for more than what they paid? How? By including all their notes in them as e-textbooks…. What I'm suggesting is a reseller model where the student can package all their notes together with their version of the ebook and sell it at whatever price they feel is appropriate. The key here is to include the publisher and author in the revenue stream; neither of them share in the proceeds of the used book market today but there's no reason they couldn't in the future.”