For as long as there have been e-books, my pals in the font design world have been shuddering at the very thought of reading one. And why? It’s all about the font, baby. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “For typography fans, electronic books have long been the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.” I’ve seen the nails-on-chalkboard reaction in the type community whenever the topic is mentioned. One could say a lot of […]
Wish you could read more quickly? There’s an app for that. From Quill & Quire: Boston-based tech company Spritz has developed a technology that replaces digital pages with quick-streaming text, thereby eliminating time-consuming “inefficient eye movements.” According to the company’s website, some test subjects were tracked reading 900 words per minute, thanks to a process referred to as “spritzing.” At that pace, the company claims Atlas Shrugged could be read in a day. Read the […]
Despite increasingly strident warnings over the last decade that the physical book is taking a dive, signs that the opposite is true continue to rise. The latest of these voices comes from PolicyMic with an article by Shan Wang called “How Book Porn is Actually Revolutionizing the Book World.” If you’re one of those who are tired of hearing all the doom and gloom around books and reading, this is one you’ll want to peek […]
PatentlyApple.com reports that the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple Computers on September 26th that “reveals a new iBook autographing system and more specifically to techniques and systems for embedding autographs in electronic books.” From PatentlyApple: Book signing is the affixing of a signature to the title page or flyleaf of a book by its author. A book signing is an event, usually at a bookstore or library where an […]
How could this headline in Good E-Reader not catch your eye? “The Overwhelming Majority of Self-Published eBooks Are Terrible” In a piece about the lack of gatekeepers in the current self-publishing model, Michael Kozlowski writes: At the Writing in a Digital Conference in London, Andrew Franklin, founder and managing director of Profile Books, blasted authors who self-publish. “The overwhelming majority of self-published books are terrible—unutterable rubbish, they don’t enhance anything in the world.” Franklin went […]
It’s interesting that, even though he was a pioneer in getting his books to market electronically, Stephen King has actively delayed e-book versions of his new book, Joyland, from shipping on the book’s June 2013 publication date. From Slashgear: Stephen King is shunning ebooks in favor of traditional print runs for his new novel, Joyland, the outspoken author has revealed, confirming he has “no plans for a digital version.” King – whose new book is […]
It’s news to just about no one at all that digital publishing has taken a heavy toll on many aspects of traditional publishing, but here’s one we hadn’t thought of before. The Economist looks at what may be a death knell for the ISBN: Look inside any book published since 1970 and you will find a number. But perhaps not for much longer. The International Standard Book Number (ISBN), invented in Britain in 1965, took […]
Ever since e-books began to assert their dominance, people have been talking about the library of the future: a bookless place about books. And as ill-conceived as the idea will appear to booklovers nearly everywhere, Bexar County, Texas is about to lead the way to a brave yet strangely bookless new library. This coming fall they will open Bibliotech, the first completely digital public library in the United States. From My San Antonio: Bexar County […]
Big publishers are finding that electronic books are generally more profitable than their print counterparts, according to Paid Content. Here’s the thing, though: since production costs on e-books are fixed and distribution costs pretty much nonexistent on what planet is this news? Especially since, in many cases, they’ve been able to hang onto electronic rights that a more prepared marketplace would not have allowed them to hoard. The fat lady has not sung yet, but […]
We live in a time when only the largest assertions get any attention. Go hard or go home. It may be silly, but it’s true. And you can make those big assertions and they can be empty because, a year from now? Pretty much no one besides Jon Stewart will remember what you said. So when Hugh McGuire of Pressbooks released the part of an upcoming book that says that books and the Internet will […]
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