The problem most visible to users will be missing cover images. Goodreads is in the process of uploading replacements. One percent of Goodreads books will appear blank, listed as "Unknown Title" and "Unknown Author," while Goodreads looks for a new data source for them. There's a great lesson here about building a business on top of a competitor's API, but Goodreads has made the switch in the nick of time.

Goodreads has risen farther and faster than its competitors, LibraryThing and Shelfari, except by one measure: Amazon bought Shelfari. This happened over three years ago, and Amazon has yet to do much with Shelfari. It launched Kindle Profiles last year without a Shelfari in sight. But to the extent that Amazon has invested in a social network for readers, it and Goodreads are competitors.

But at the end of the day, Amazon is a retailer and Goodreads is not. Goodreads built its business on Amazon's product advertising API, so there was no problem on Amazon's end. That API required Goodreads to link books back to Amazon, so Amazon made money and Goodreads got a cut, as well as a wealth of images and data about its millions of books.

But the usage requirements of the API are picky. The most troublesome requirement is that clients cannot, "without our express prior written approval, use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device." That's no good. Goodreads has mobile apps, and those are more convenient for checking in while reading a book than a desktop site is.

The other key restriction is that Goodreads couldn't link to competing bookstores while using Amazon's API. Users will notice that Barnes & Noble is now the most prominently displayed book seller on Goodreads, and Amazon sits in a drop-down menu with a bunch of other sites.

Why Goodreads Will Be Fine

Shelfari may have the benefit of using Amazon book data to its heart's content. But Goodreads has built a thriving social network on top of its book data, and it offers much more to users than the competitors. In addition to original content, like interviews with authors, Goodreads makes for a great Facebook Timeline app, so Facebook users can turn the books they read into life events.

But even within Goodreads itself, there are great book recommendations using true reader sentiments, not just purchase and browsing history like Amazon uses. Goodreads acquired Discovereads last year to build a "taste engine" on top of its users' data.

Goodreads also offers a social reading API of its own, so developers can access social data, reviews and discussions. For Goodreads, the books themselves are just the backend. While Amazon is surely a wealth of book data, Goodreads can repair its library on its own. It will pay license fees to Ingram, the largest U.S. wholesaler of books, and it will fill the gaps from libraries and other open data sources.

This teaches a lesson about building a service on top of another company's data, especially one that might want to compete with you. But for the long term, these growing pains will be well worth it as Goodreads makes its way independently.

Do you use Goodreads or another social reading service?

Lead photo courtesy of Tatiana Popova/Shutterstock.

The books, 70% of which are in English and nearly 30% in German, will total 65,000 titles when the project is finished.

According to Springer CEO Derk Haank:

"Up to now, our past titles have been hidden away in our in-house library, but thanks to innovative technologies they can be made available again. We have made significant investments in this project and are convinced that the scientific community will find it useful."

The time frame is due, in part, the company says, to the fact that "Springer proactively contacts authors and copyright holders to clarify the issue of royalties for these digital editions."

Every substantial historical library that makes it online increases the ability of people around the world to gain access to the knowledge it contains. Springer is not a library, and it will cost, but at least these books will be readable whether you are in Berlin or in Pt. Barrow.

In essence, these first 11,000 local libraries just became a chain of local bookstores for Amazon's catalog of virtual books.

It's an extension of the lending library idea we wrote about earlier.

Kindle users will be able to sync a borrowed book's margin notes with Facebook or Twitter for a little literary graffiti.

"Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no," says Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. "But we're fixing this by extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book."

Customers use a local library's website to search for and select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose to "Send to Kindle" and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB, the company said in an announcement.

Customers can check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.

To start checking out Kindle library books, device owners can visit their local library's website, or for more information, they can visit a page Amazon has set up for library lending.

The new feature comes six months after the startup acquired Discovereads, a book recommendation engine which is something CEO Otis Chandler cited as a sought-after feature among Goodreads users.

"With Goodreads, it's as if you combine your favorite librarian, your best friend, and a database of two million book titles into one person and ask 'what should I read next?'" said Chandler. "We're the Netflix of book recommendations. As members add more reviews and ratings, we keep improving our suggestions for them."

When most people hear "the Netflix of book recommendations" they tend to think of another Internet giant known for its powerful recommendation engine: Amazon. Goodreads says it can provide better book recommendations than Amazon can because it has more data about what people actually like and dislike, as opposed to just purchases, browsing history and ratings.

"For example, we have more than 174,000 ratings of the best-selling 'The Help' while Amazon only has around 4,400," said Chandler.

The site's book recommendations are heavily influenced by each user's book rating history, so people are encouraged to rate 20 books before checking out their suggested reading list. The service is now available in beta to all Goodreads users.

This makes CoverCake's data set valuable to anyone interested in the market for books. Boopsie, a mobile book discovery app for libraries, has already integrated CoverCake's data using its API. The new analytics tools now allow users to find or track books using CoverCake's own website.

We've been covering some experiments in publishing lately, and Web technology has enabled rapid innovation in this quintessential pre-Web industry. CoverCake's interface and data science could help bring more precision to a new way of publishing.

The company's business focus, says Business Development Director Todd Gibson, is "primarily on publishers and authors," who derive the most direct benefits from this intelligence. The only way for the rapidly shifting industry to get smarter, he says, "is for them to figure out what people really like, outside of sales figures." The byproduct of that also happens to be an interesting book discovery tool for consumers.

The consumer appeal of these analytics tools is not as obvious as it is for a social service like Goodreads, which helps users discover new books through recommendations from their own social networks, as well as some original content like book lists and interviews. CoverCake lets readers see what books are popular now, as well as who's talking about them, but it's up to the user to filter the data to find what he or she is looking for. But for authors and publishers, CoverCake has an advantage over other enterprise analytics tools, because it's focused on the market that matters to them. Its dataset has limitations, but those can be an asset.

CoverCake's book discovery capabilities can be accessed through its free iOS app. The Android app offers more features, letting users filter by genre and see what books are trending in online conversations. Future versions will include analytics capabilities. The company is also working on an algorithm to separate out conversations about different editions and formats, enabling users to distinguish between print and e-books, for example.

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.

UPDATE: Paulo Coelho left a comment on this post, stating: "I have a very efficient staff for everything else, but NOT for my presence online. Otherwise, where would be the fun?"

Blogging

Coelho has been blogging for over 5 years, since April 2006. He uses Wordpress and averages about 50 short posts per month. The posts are a mix of self-promotion and self-help learnings. For the most part, Coelho doesn't use his blog as an outlet for new creative writing. Rather, the object is to engage with his readers - which he does effectively, judging by the amount of comments and social media sharing.

The two most recent posts at time of writing are illustrative of how Coelho uses blogging. Today's post promotes a video contest for his latest novel, ALEPH. Yesterday's post is entitled '10 SEC READING: Chocolate' and is an inspirational fable sent in by a reader.

Facebook

As you'd expect, Paulo Coelho is enormously popular on Facebook. His Facebook Page has 5.5 million fans. The content is made up of syndicated blog posts, along with short philosophical quotations.

Unlike with the blog, Coelho doesn't appear to create original content for the Facebook Page. Most of the content is either automated (via his blog feed) or is generic enough that it's probably input by assistants [update: the author denies this is the case]. There are a lot of self-help quotes like the following: "If you must say yes, say it with an open heart. If you must say no, say it without fear." That particular quote has 28,265 'likes' and over 1,000 comments at time of writing, so obviously this 'fill in the blanks' type content on Facebook is satisfying to Coelho's fans.

Twitter

Twitter is the third main spoke in Paulo Coelho's social media strategy and he has 1.6 million followers on this platform. Coelho's tweets are a mix of English and Portuguese, the native language of his home country Brazil. He's a pretty regular tweeter, averaging 12-15 a day.

A lot of the tweets appear to be from Coelho's own hand, although - as with his Facebook Page - there are a lot of self-help quotes that any of Coelho's staff could've published on his behalf. For example: "Follow the signs along the path with trust and without doubts".

Regardless, there is enough interaction to show that Coelho genuinely wants to engage with his readers on Twitter. For example, Twitter user @YasserHareb asked Coelho how he finds the time to write. "Time is easy. Subjects are difficult. How do you find time to not writing?" replied the author.

Conclusion

Given how busy and in demand Paulo Coelho must be, the social media strategy he follows is time-efficient and complements his book writing activities well. There is enough of the personal touch on both his blog and Twitter to satisfy his many millions of fans.

What do you think of Paulo Coelho's social media strategy and do you think other authors and publishers would do well to emulate it?

The update will also deliver an upgrade to the tablet's base operating system, bringing it a newer version of Android - Android 2.2, code-named "Froyo." While this is not the most current version of Android available at present, it's less of a concern here because the tablet runs its own user interface designed specifically for e-reading.

The new "Nook Apps" feature expands the Nook Color's previous paltry selection of apps to include many popular titles in categories like "Children," "Education & Reference," "Entertainment," "Games," "Health & Fitness," "Lifestyle & Interests," "News & Weather," "Productivity," and "Tools & Utilities." Barnes and Noble says more categories will arrive in the future.

Some of the notable new apps available now include the ubiquitous and in-demand game Angry Birds, as well as the Pulse news reader, Epicurious, Dr. Seuss apps, Uno, Drawing Pad, Lonely Planet phrasebooks and other from Chronicle Books, Condé Nast, Concrete Software, Gameloft, Goodreads, Loud Crow Interactive, my6sense, The National Geographic Society, NAMCO, Wordnik and more. Some of the apps are free, and some are paid, as is standard in today's app stores.

With the paid apps, B&N splits the revenue generated with app developers 70 (developers)/30 (B&N), as is also a standard practice in the industry today.

Email Added & Web Browsing Improved

The software update now brings a dedicated email client which supports POP3 and webmail services like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. While the tablet itself does not support Microsoft Exchange-based email, there is a third-party application which does.

The Web browsing experience has been improved with this update, too, says B&N, with webpages that load faster, have improved gesture support and offer the ability to switch between the standard and the mobile-optimized views. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 has been added as well, allowing users to watch online videos or other Flash content while browsing.

Early tests of the Flash Player by Engadget found there to be noticeable lag times when playing videos or scrolling on pages with animations, however. But the version it tested was not final.

Better E-Reading

Finally, the core reading experience on the Nook Color has been improved, with small changes like better page-turning animations and support for landscape mode while e-reading. But there are bigger changes, too, like the support for interactive features in children's books, which introduces animations, audio, narration and more.

B&N is expanding its LendMe book loaning feature into a more social experience, where friends can see what each other is reading and make requests to borrow e-books.

The software update will be pushed out over W-Fi sometime in the next few weeks, but those who can't wait can get it today at http://nookcolor.com/update.

"With their deep algorithmic book recommendation technology, we're going to be able plumb our database of 100 million book ratings from 4.6 million users to find general patterns of the kinds of books people read and to generate high-quality personalized recommendations."

Discovereads calls its product a "taste engine."

"(It) compares how you rate books with how everyone else rates books. When it analyzes the data, it finds ways in which you are similar to someone else and ways in which you are different. It builds a web of relationships between users and books and uses an array of algorithms (sometimes different algorithms work better for different users or books) to learn each person's tastes."

In a note, they were more specific.

"We are using several different algorithms, including a 'restricted singular value decomposition' algorithm, some 'nearest neighbors' algorithms, and an algorithm that extracts the means from the books' and users' ratings, with more secret sauce in the works."

Goodreads expects to have Discovereads integrated between two and three months from now.

Book photo by Brandon Staggs

But a new project available in Google Labs today - Books Ngram Viewer - highlights some of the other benefits of digitizing texts beyond better reading and storage. So let me invoke my former life as a literature PhD student here to say, "This is incredibly farking cool."

Using Google's Books Ngram Viewer, you can now visualize how language and literature have changed over time, by searching a subset of the more than 15 million books that Google has digitized since 2004. All told, today's datasets contain more than 500 billion words from 5.2 million books in Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.

The datasets contain phrases of up to five words with counts of how often these occurred each year, providing a great deal of insight - for scholars and casual word hounds - into how language usage changes over time. The datasets were the basis of a research project led by Harvard University's Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Lieberman Aiden and published today in Science that demonstrates how quantitative analysis of texts can offer new insights into areas including censorship, technology adoption, and cultural memory.

And now Google has put that visualization tool into everyone's hands, along with the ability to download the raw data.

Language, Literature, Culture Over Time

Take the word "farking" that I used above. Usage of the word has risen and fallen over the years, skyrocketing not surprisingly once it became the curse-du-jour in the reprised Battlestar Galactica series. If that's too pedestrian, compare the changing usage for spaceship, spacecraft, rocket, and UFO. Or the frequency of communism, anarchism, socialism, and capitalism over the course of the twentieth century. Or the decline of man.

New Quantitative Tools for Scholars

By mining this data, scholars are able to shed new light onto many things we've long assumed about literature, language and culture. According to Dan Cohen, the Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University (whose work on the datasets, specifically the Victorian era, was featured in a recent article in The New York Times), the release of the Ngram Viewer is a "real win" as it provides "an easy-to-use research site and, even better, the raw data behind it."

This is an incredible amount of data, a boon to researchers in both the humanities and social sciences. as well as a pretty fun tool for the more casual lit-geeks and word-lovers among us.

Last month, the group penned an agreement with Amazon and African publishers to bring African lit to kids in Ghana, as well as support African writers and publishers. Now Random House has signed on for Worldreader's iREAD advanced pilot project in Ghana.

Alright. All very nice of course. There are practical aspects to consider, though. In addition to the fact that literate kids who are comfortable around tech mean we'll all keep doing what we're doing. Writers, readers and Random House itself may gain materially from such projects. If these kids grow up reading, and reading Random House authors, it may help to make Random House viable in the future. It may help to prove the viability of books, as a form if not a format.

Worldreader.org's Susan Moody Prieto:

"To help create a deep culture of reading, we there's nothing better to get children 'hooked' than a great series books, and once you start reading about Jack and Annie's tree-house adventures with dinosaurs, mummies, and pirates, you don't want to stop."

Will a group of kids in Africa save the publishing industry? No. But thousands of groups of them around the world might.

Banned Books Week has been running for 28 years now and is backed by some very reputable organizations, but the campaign's Web presence is very simple. It's great that Google Maps makes it so easy for anyone to display sets of information on a map like you'll see below. As more and more content becomes available online, how will that impact banning of and access to literature?

It would be nice if the points on this map were color coded to make bans and challenges distinct. This feels like just the beginning of what could be done, but it certainly is a good beginning.

Banned Books week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress. This map was found on Google Maps Mania, a great place to learn about lots of creative uses of Google Maps.

"The publishing industry is moving rapidly into the digital age," says DiTerlizzi. "I see the integrated use of AR as an ideal bridge, enhancing what readers love best about story and narrative while tapping innovation and imagination, to bring forth entirely new experiences associated with the book."

Exploring the World of WondLa

To access the experience, users need to install Total Immersion's D'Fusion plugin and wait for the applet to load within their browser. I found the experience was loading slow on Chrome, and it didn't load a whole lot faster after switching to Safari.

A few minutes later, when it was up and running, I realized some interesting decisions had been made in the development of app. The interaction one can have with the 3D maps by moving the book around infront of the webcam is very limited. You can move the experience up and down, and can zoom a bit, but that's about it.

This is because the app was designed to be a one-way experience. Once the webcam recognizes an emblem, you can set down the book and let the app take you on a tour of the 3D map. This is mostly a good decision, because it makes it easier for young users to quickly understand what is happening (not to mention the fact that the book is rather large, and kids may grow tired of holing it up).

It is slightly disappointing, however, that more interaction was not built into the experience. In this case, as augmented reality is introduced to a new audience of young adults, it makes sense to simplify things a bit. It's great to see a major publisher like Simon & Schuster get behind augmented reality, as implementations like these could change the way young adults read in the near future.

Over the past three months, according to Amazon, it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks; over the past month the ratio is 1.8:1. Unfortunately, the company did not provide overall figures for those time periods.

The Kindle also faces competition from Borders, which has its own e-readers, and of course with the iPad. Though the Kindle iPad app may take some of the sting out of the competition.

If the growth rate represented is accurate, this may a good indication that the reduction of the Kindle's price from $259 to $189 a month ago helped spur sales. The relative ascendancy of the e-book over the hardcover, however, though interesting, doesn't prove much - certainly not that the e-reader war is won.

Using quick response (QR) codes, a camera is able to detect which page the student is on and can display supplementary 3D materials. The student controls the experience by presenting one of three business card-sized QR codes that either activate or advance a sequence of models for each page. They can get a closer look or a different angle on the models by simply moving the book closer to the camera or rotating it.

The experience is pretty compelling as it is. Animations play on some of the pages, explaining how signals travel differently through the various layers of the earth. The visuals are nothing new, but the fact they could theoretically be viewed by a student holding a smartphone would fundamentally change the way students use textbooks.

I hope, however, that the use of QR codes is reduced when a product like this goes to market. The codes, while big and easy to recognize for computer vision software, are clunky, obtrusive and rob publishers of page real estate. Sufficient image recognition technology exists that should allow smaller imaged based markers to be used to activate the experience (or the entire page could be used as a marker).

Using the handheld markers to activate and change the models shouldn't be necessary either, as previous AR experiences - as seen in this example from Total Immersion - have let users control 3D models by placing fingers on top of specific parts of a marker. Qualcomm, which announced its new AR SDK last week at Uplinq 2010, said the kit would include support for this functionality, which it calls "virtual buttons." Needless to say, it can be done, and in the case of augmented textbooks, should be done.

The possibilities for education and augmented reality go far beyond just textbooks. In fact, augmented reality could make learning safer for kids. Why place dangerous chemicals in the hands of children when virtual chemistry sets could eliminate any dangers? Kids can swap protective goggles for head-mounted displays (HMDs) and beakers and bunsen burners for virtual test tubes with 3D chemicals - all of which could be done from the comfort of the student's desk, or even at home.

Augmented reality has enormous potential in the education space. Earlier this year, the New Media Consortium reported in its 2010 Horizon Report that simple augmented reality is just two to three years away from having a significant impact on education. Augmented books and virtual chemistry sets are likely only a fraction of the way the technology will revolutionize the way students learn.

Photo by Flickr user Neys.

"Our research illustrates the clear link with literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability," said Jonathan Douglas, Director of the NLT. "By ensuring children have access to reading materials in the home and by encouraging children to love reading, families can help them to do well at school and to enjoy opportunities throughout their life."

The connection between books and cell phones in the hands of children is a strange one for the NLT to make. In the press release announcing the study, NLT does not define what they consider to constitute "owning a book," - a significant factor that could change the way readers interpret the study. There are, however, ways to help the literacy problems by taking advantage of the popularity of mobile devices.

While children certainly seem more interested in chatting with friends on their phones than sitting quietly and reading a book, some argue that this debate shouldn't become about the media which children consume. Teacher and education blogger Vicki Davis told ReadWriteWeb that she believes kids benefit from reading on phones or computers as much as they do from paper.

"Whether on a mobile phone, iPod, Kindle, or handheld device or paper - the medium should be irrelevant. The important thing is that students can read and write, or in this case read and text," said Davis. "If ancient man had demanded that their children continue to use their tools - we would still be looking for cave walls to draw upon - paper has been an essential tool of the mass-produced industrial age and electronics are the essential produce of the interconnected information age. Education needs to wake up and harness these tools for learning!"

Redefining "Reading"

Michelle Manafy, editorial director at Information Today, says older generations need to open up their definitions of what "books" actually are. "The very notion of literacy and reading itself has evolved beyond the capacity of many who grew up with linear reading experiences to understand," she says.

"If every kid has a phone, then maybe we need to be looking much harder at creating content optimized for this reading environment, to creating a reading experience that coincides with their voracious appetite and shorter attention spans, with their tangentially and serendipitously connected non-linear reading style and socially mediated tastes," said Manafy

Mobile technology blogger Jason Harris agrees with Davis and Manafy, and adds that the drop in reading skills are likely due to a combination of factors.

"The world is changing in that mobile phones are falling into the hands of new populations, including young children," said Harris. "Of course, there's a competition for time in this age group, so if they're on their mobile phones then all leisure activities, including reading, will take a hit. But are reading scores falling because of this one factor? I doubt it."

Are Parents to Blame?

Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global says the technology is not to blame for the decline in reading skills. As she puts it, the onus is on the parents to make sure the kids have the same access to books as they do phones.

"It doesn't have to be an either or. We can't make it an either or," says Webb. "But that seems to me to be up to grownups [...] I have to put the books in the kid's pocket. Just like we put the phone in the kids' pockets."

Agreeing with Webb is Peggy Anne Salz, founder of MSearchGroove.com, a leading blog on mobile search. Salz says the report is "a call to parents to participate in their children's education, a process they can only improve and enhance with anytime, anywhere mobile access to educational materials."

"Read between the lines, and this is not about a connection between children having a mobile device and any drop in grade school literacy skills," adds Salz. "The report argues there is a link between having literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability. That's an access issue that mobile devices can solve for children in the U.K. and around the world."

It is certainly true that mobile handset penetration is reaching a younger and younger audience, but that is not necessarily a direct catalyst to lowering reading scores. Whether the presence of books in a home affects a child's ability to read is another argument, but it seems strange to try and hook that on mobile phone usage. As technology evolves, so too will the way kids "read" and consume information, so basing studies on the presence of older forms of information digestion may become less and less appropriate.

UPDATE: I received a response after reaching out on Twitter to LeVar Burton, known famously for his love of reading and as the host of the children's show Reading Rainbow. What did the book lover think of the fact that more children own phones than books? "I believe kids need both," he said.

Photo by Flickr user eyeliam.