Peter Brantley
Ebook to iPod to Hard Copy Purchase
Hugh McGuire is loving Stanza, the free ereader app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. From the Book Oven Blog: 40,000 ebook dowloads-a-day. I've got 35 of them sitting on my iPod. If you are a publisher, think long and hard about that number. The reason I have 35 books downloaded onto my Stanza is: a) it is easy, b) it…
APIs, New "Transactions" and the Google Book Search Registry
At PersonaNonData, Michael Cairns discusses the Google Book Search registry, and muses whether it might support certain types of transactions through an API: How the registry may be formed is anyone's guess, but for sake of argument I envision a pyramidal structure. The identifier segment forms the pointy top layer, bibliographic data the second layer, content the third and the…
Election Interest Signals Print's High-End Future
Following the sell-out of post-election newspapers, Ed Nawotka looks at the collectable future of print. From Beyond Hall 8: One immediate consequence of Obama's victory was the boost in sales for newspapers. So now we have confirmation that print is not dead — at least as far as collectors are concerned. This merely reinforces my belief that the long-term…
The Barack SlideShow
When archives are built incrementally on top of access, instead of access being born of hard labor from accumulated storage, the nature of the archive is transformed. The possibilities for an Obama Presidential Library — built from today and onwards — are transformative.
Philadelphia Closing 11 Library Branches
The financial crisis is having a huge negative impact on many public sector services, including libraries. From Publishers Lunch (subscription required): As municipalities across the country face large gaps in their budget, Philadelphia is taking "drastic new steps" to face the "economic storm" that include closing 11 of the 54 branch libraries that comprise the Free Library of Philadelphia….
Vanishing Paper in Higher Education
Christopher Conway has a thoughtful essay at Inside Higher Ed on the seemingly inevitable trend towards digital text consumption: It is becoming increasingly easier to put together affordable 'readers' or anthologies culled from existing print material without bypassing rights and fees and without overloading students with unnecessary expense. If this wave of the future takes hold and becomes the…
EFF's Concerns About the Google Book Search Settlement
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes that the Google Book Search settlement accomplishes a degree of access that litigation might have taken years to develop, but it also observes areas of concern: fair use, innovation, competition, access, public domain and privacy. Innovation: It seems likely that the "nondisplay uses" of Google's scanned corpus of text will end up being…
Another Sci-Fi Publisher Opts Out of DRM
Night Shade Books has joined Baen's WebScription service. It's interesting how sci-fi is one of the genres leading the way into DRM-free ebooks. From a Galley Cat: "Baen has successfully led the industry into the future with its DRM-free electronic publishing program," said Night Shade editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen in a press release announcing the move. "This canny insight into…
Connecting the Dots Between Google Book Search and Android
Ed Nawotka of Beyond Hall 8 discusses the possibility that the Google Book Search settlement permits them to envision product delivery through Android-capable devices: Perhaps most important of all is how this cements Google as the industry leader in the distribution of digital books. Sure, there's Amazon with its Kindle…and the Sony E-reader…each with hundreds of thousands of titles…