There are some conflicting stories coming out the BookExpo America today about Google's plans for Google Books: one story speculating that Google may be planning an e-book rental service and another speculating that Google may be closing its e-bookstore.
The shuttering of the e-bookstore was something that Melville House Publishing wrote about today, contending that publishers are finding it difficult to get started in the bookstore and that Google has pulled its developers from the project. When ReadWriteWeb asked Google to comment, the company responded, "We refuse to comment on rumor and speculation," pointing to a blog post from Monday touting some of the successes from the first 6 months of the Google Books program: three million free Google eBooks and 250 independent booksellers selling them, for example.
But more interesting - although difficult to say if more plausible - is the possibility of an e-book rental service.
Digital piracy. It's an illicit activity undertaken by college students in their dorm rooms or by teenagers in their parents' basements, right? Wrong, according to a recent survey by the British law firm Wiggin. Or wrong when it comes to e-book digital piracy at least.
According to the firm's annual Digital Entertainment Survey, one in eight women over age 35 who owns an e-reader admits to having downloaded an illegal version of an e-book. That compares to just one in 20 women in the same age group who admits to having pirated music.
Barnes & Noble announced a new version of its Nook e-reader today that is aimed squarely at challenging the dominance of Amazon's Kindle in the e-reader market. The new Nook has a six-inch display - as does the Kindle - but the Nook ditches the keyboard for a touchscreen interface.
That interface might make the Nook seem more tablet than e-reader at first glance, but despite running on the Android operating system, the new device is a dedicated e-reader. (That is, of course, until someone roots it and opens more of the Android functionality.) But as a dedicated e-reader, the improvements to this version make it very competitive with the Kindle. The new Nook boasts a lighter and thinner design than the Nook Wi-Fi 1st Edition, the device that this update replaces.
Kindle e-book lending service Lendle has added an interesting new feature to its service today: the ability for users to earn a little money when they lend their e-books via the site.
Most users will be credited $.50 for every e-book lent, and patrons - those who've supported the site with a one-time $25 donation - will get $1.00 for every e-book lent. Every time users rack up $10 in credits, they'll receive a $10 Amazon gift card.
The public library may be one of this nation's most important cultural and civic institutions. Yet it faces a number of threats - budget crises at the state and local level and the shift in the publishing industry from print to digital books. Of course, the library is more than just a repository for books - paper or otherwise. And even as libraries move to embrace more digital content, the local library will (hopefully) persist as a community center and as a portal to Internet resources.
But efforts are underway to create a DIgital Public Library of America, an online library . The project's steering committee have announced a "beta sprint," asking people to weigh in on what they think this library should look like. Librarians, archivists, developers, and the general public have been asked to contribute "ideas, models, prototypes, technical tools, user interfaces," and so on to the project, helping design how the DPLA might index and provide access to the digital content.
Pick up a book like James Joyce's Ulysses and you'll likely want a library at your side to help define, translate and help give the context needed to understand the plethora of heady content inside. Before the days of the Internet, reading some of the more scholarly literary texts involved just that - having a dictionary or other reference materials on hand.
Now, Google has brought these things together by adding search, translation and word definitions directly to its Google eBooks offering.
Google Books has scanned and uploaded 150,000 books written in the 16th and 17th centuries. But there have been repeated requests to see the volumes in "full color," according to Dan Bloomberg and Kurt Groetsch on the Inside Google Books Blog.
Now, Google has begun that process, allowing readers to see the books as originally printed instead of rendered onto an artificially-generated white background.
Paulo Coelho is one of the most successful fiction writers today and he actively uses social media to engage with his readers. For the past 25 years the Brazilian author has written many inspirational books, which have garnered him a huge fan base all around the world.
I recently discovered Coelho's writing and have been busy devouring his books ever since. I've also been checking out his online presence, which is based around 3 main platforms: blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Writers and publishers can learn a few tricks from how Paulo Coelho uses social media.
Yesterday Seth Godin posted an essay on his blog about "The Future of the Library," a call-to-arms for librarians to envision their work less as a defender of a "warehouse for dead books" but as as a "producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario." To paraphrase the response of librarians on blogs and on Twitter: "Yes, we know." and "Yes, that's what we do."
One example of this "future of the library" that is indeed here now: the newly released New York Public Library app, available today via iTunes: Biblion: The Boundless Library. The app is a re-launch of the library's Biblion journal, but in a format specifically designed for the tablet.
In February, Apple announced a new subscription service for all publishers of content-based apps. This system took a 30% cut of subscription fees for Apple. The announcement had bloggers, publishers and mainstream media alike calling Apple everything from greedy to anti-competitive and wondering what effect it would have on subscription reliant apps.
For iFlow Reader, that effect has been to remove any profit margin the company had. The company has announced that it will be shutting down by the end of the month and that, in no uncertain terms, it is all because of Apple.
