The Future of the Book
July 27, 2009
Revisiting a Literary Throwdown: Zombie Books for Free 1
by C. Max Magee
It was a battle between an evangelizing visionary and a sage defender of the past, perhaps the first big tussle in the great sorting out of publishing’s new look in the digital age.
This was 2006, when Wired Magazine technology evangelist Kevin Kelly wrote about the helter skelter future of books in the digital age. [...]
July 20, 2009
Amazon’s Orwell Repo an Orwellian Move 3
by M. Ryan Calo
M. Ryan Calo is a residential fellow at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society. He frequently appears in radio, press, and online to discuss new technology.
Everyone knows Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451. First published in 1953, Bradbury imagined a world in which government “firemen” could enter your home at any time [...]
June 2, 2009
Ether Between the Covers: Gifting Books in a Digital Age 13
by Edan Lepucki
I.The other day, while looking for books to buy my future nephew, I recalled The Real Mother Goose, a classic I had loved as a kid. I could conjure the cover, with its illustration of a witch and a baby, riding a giant, flying bird (a goose, I guess). And the border was [...]
May 28, 2009
Follow the Money: The ebook Pricing Wars 3
by C. Max Magee
Last week, self-published author Bryan Gilmer struck a chord with his guest post about using discount pricing to generate ebook sales. By dropping the price of his book to $1.99, Gilmer was able to tempt many new readers to buy his book, which, in the process, catapulted it up Amazon’s rankings, generating even more [...]
May 18, 2009
Finding Indie Opportunity on The Kindle 45
by Bryan Gilmer
Bryan Gilmer of Durham, N.C., teaches newswriting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes for institutional and corporate clients. Until 2003, he was a reporter at Florida’s largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times. He has just independently published a crime thriller novel, Felonious Jazz.
Last week, I created a Kindle version of [...]
May 14, 2009
Amazon Gets Into Publishing 0
by C. Max Magee
Readers may discern a disconnect between the prevailing economic mood and the relentless innovation of online superstore Amazon. Even as whole segments of the economy crumble, Amazon is spearheading a whole new consumer electronics category with the Kindle, and as if that wasn’t audacious enough following it by releasing a bigger, more expensive version.
Now [...]
