April 2008 Archives
Britannica Opens Up with Free Subscriptions
Bloggers, journalists and other Web content creators can apply for free subscriptions to Britannica Online, the Web arm of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Taking a note from the Wall Street Journal, Britannica.com will also allow direct access ("deep-linking") to specific entries. The move is explained in a Britannica.com press release: Access to much of the site, including full-text entries from the…
Sorting through Layers of Copyright
John Mark Ockerbloom writes about the discrepancies between organizational policies toward copyright and database policies: The AAA [American Anthropological Association] relies on JSTOR for providing its older issues online. JSTOR has the American Anthropologist back-run going to the very first issues in 1888, but it won’t actually give me access to the articles in the public domain issues unless…
Bookstores Confront Fake Author Scam
Scammers claiming to be authors are trying to pluck money from California booksellers. From the L.A. Times: … slowly but surely, stores are being contacted by people claiming to be someone they're not and trying to persuade the bookstore staff to send them money. It's bewildering to a community that operates largely on trust and personal relationships. The "authors"…
Q&A: Philip Parker, Developer of Automated Authoring Platform
Philip Parker uses his automated authoring process to develop thousands of books across 17 different genres.
TOC Tutorial DVDs Now Available
DVDs from four of the eight TOC 2008 tutorials are now in-stock. If you attended the conference, check your email for information on how to save 50%. If you missed TOC 2008, you can still save 30% on the DVDs using discount code TOCD3 (and sign up for the conference newsletter to make sure you don't miss TOC 2009)….
Book Reading Down, Book Writing Up
In a New York Times Sunday Book Review essay, Rachel Donadio notes the interesting discrepancy between book reading and book writing. Namely, people aren't reading, but they're certainly doing a lot of writing. In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which…
The Key to Web Success: Pretend Print Doesn't Exist
Josh Gordon at Folio explains why pure-play Web businesses are beating established publishers are their own game: Print people are spoiled. Too often when a magazine launches a web product the editorial focus [is] the same or similar to the positioning as the print product. As for functionality, too often the mission statement is, “To extend the magazine brand onto…
Newspaper Circulation Falls to WWII Levels
Population growth and newspaper circulation are going in opposite directions. From Reflections of a Newsosaur: Though circulation has fallen back to pre-Baby Boom levels, the population has more than doubled since 1946. If you divide circulation by population, you will find that fewer than 18 out of 100 Americans today buy a daily or Sunday newspaper. Back in 1946,…
Kindle's All-Encompassing Future Path
Jeff Nolan writes about the path of the Kindle: It's clear that [Jeff] Bezos sees a day when any and all content can be delivered to a Kindle and not only won't Amazon have to store inventory, they also won't have to ship anything but the Kindle itself to support their book business. In that light, the Kindle totally…
Nabokov's Final Novel: The Perfect Mash-Up Source
It'll never happen, but the 50 index cards containing notes on Vladimir Nabokov's "The Original of Laura" would make for an interesting digital publishing experiment.