Rubrica semanal de notícias e artigos relacionados com a edição de livros digitais.
Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the non-profit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every webpage ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.
"There is always going to be a role for books," said Kahle, as he perched on the edge of a shipping container soon to be tricked out as a climate-controlled storage unit. Each container can hold about 40,000 volumes, the size of a branch library. "We want to see books live forever."
E-book pricing continues to be a tricky issue for publishers, with both publishers and e-tailers experimenting with different price points for different kinds of works. To help provide some answers, Vook has written a white paper on the key factors creators and sellers need to consider when pricing digital content. Based on an analysis developed during creation of the Vook pricing engine, the multimedia publisher has come up with 10 rules for maximizing digital sales of e-books, enhanced e-books, and Apps.
Tech companies handcuff our files to protect against digital pirates. The strategy isn't just annoying for customers—it could be hurting sales.
I’ve gone so far as to characterize this machine, despite its clunky ugliness, as incredibly sexy — while allowing that, as a librarian, my threshold of sexy may be lower than average — and I’ve said that it has the potential to change utterly not just the nature of the library collection, but the whole world of publishing. By freeing publishers from the tyranny of the print run and libraries from the enormously wasteful practice of building huge just-in-case collections based on inevitably erroneous guesswork about future patron needs, the EBM could greatly increase both efficiency and effectiveness, allowing a library or bookstore to give researchers exactly what they need within minutes of the realization that they need it, all while reducing the clear-cutting of rainforests, the carbon emissions from pallet-laden delivery trucks, and the twin scourges of returns and remainders.
And almost two years later, I don’t regret it. However, in the spirit of “How We Done It Bad,” I want to share some of the lessons that we’ve learned from our experience so far.
So does this mean that Facebook is getting into the book publishing business? According to Matas and Tsinteris, it doesn’t. “Although Facebook isn’t planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories. With millions of people publishing to Facebook each day, we think it’s going to be a great home for Push Pop Press.”
This, in a nutshell, is the argument that publishers have been having with Amazon for the last couple of years. When they first started selling ebooks, publishers argued that they should cost pretty much the same as physical books, and tried to set prices accordingly. Amazon, though, has always been in the business of driving prices down, and sought to sell them as cheaply as possible in order to gain as large as possible a share of the ebook market. In their efforts to drive prices down, Amazon has been hugely assisted (Levine points out) by the fact that they also manufacture the most popular ebook reader. Because Amazon makes big profits from its Kindle, it doesn't need to bother about making profits from its ebook sales. Indeed, if it sells ebooks at a loss, it may still be better off overall, because this will drive up sales of its Kindle.
Shopping in person can have a social element to it, but shopping online is always a solitary experience. To be fair, I don't make a habit of bothering other customers in the bookstore but there have been times when I've asked their opinion, particularly if I overhear them saying something I'm interested in or if I see them picking up a book I'm considering. Then there are the in-store clerks: I've gotten valuable pointers from store personnel countless times.
What's the analog to that in the online bookstore? There isn't one. Sure you can read through product reviews but that's not the same as talking realtime with other customers or a clerk.
Online bookstores have gotten along just fine despite this brick-and-mortar advantage, of course. But if online stores enable this functionality would it lead to an even richer shopping experience?
In a fit of living in the real world, the British government has announced plans to introduce legislation to allow people to make copies of their DVDs and CDs and make changes in the current laws relating to Intellectual Property in a number of other areas.
With speculation abounding since the introduction of the spec in the spring of this year, publishers have been waiting to see what’s really possible with EPUB3 — and what reading systems will support it.
To help manage expectations and alleviate confusion, I’ve provided a brief snapshot of some of the spec‘s new features, as well as what publishers can do to start preparing for them, and notes of caution as to what may, or may not, be available in EPUB3 reading systems.
Libraries will increasingly rely on volunteers and community groups, with more books distributed from shops and village halls, according to a report released on Friday from the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
New York Times E-Book Best Sellers
These lists are an expanded version of those appearing in the August 14, 2011 print edition of the Book Review, reflecting sales for the week ending July 30, 2011.
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