"Between 2002 and 2007, production of traditional titles rose 29% compared to a 313% increase in the on-demand segment resulting in an overall increase of 66% in the five-year period." - Publishers Weekly. Related: Some earlier posts on Amazon's POD grab. Also see yesterday's item, Don't horse with our POD biz model, equestrian publisher warns---and complains about Amazon to U.S. Justice Dept....

"It's worth noting that even after more than five years of development and digitization, Google Book Search is still classified as a beta project. Making book content available on the web is, now more than ever, just a work in progress." - "DB" in the University of Chicago Press blog on the death of Microsoft Live Search Books. The TeleRead take: Life and books go on. Still, nothing would beat the permanence of a well-stocked national digital library system---decentralized and with funding from local systems as well as Washington. Even then, we'll still need a vigorous private sector....

Walt Mossberg did a fine job interviewing Jeff Bezos at this week's D6 conference.  Here are a few notes I made while I watched the two-part video of the interview: Sticking with tradition, Bezos declined to provide any sales specifics on the Kindle but he did offer one moderately interesting tidbit. If you take the 125K titles that are currently offered for the Kindle and look at the total sales (print and Kindle) for just those 125K titles, Kindle sales represent about 6% of the total.  Good luck using that figure to come up with an estimate of...

Microsoft's Live Search Books tried hard to make a splash, with regular ads in Publishers Weekly and elsewhere---a major marketing effort. And it recruited Theresa Horner, a key e-book exec from HarperCollins. Now Live's going dead. So what's a publisher to do? Regardless of how certain Luddites may feel, many and perhaps most publishing houses want their titles to be discovered online in a book-oriented area (on their terms). And many prefer not to depend on Google alone for tasks such as scanning and digitization. The tugboat angle A possibility worth investigating is from Ingram Digital,...

News release: LibreDigital, a division of NewsStand, Inc., and OverDrive, the leading eBook and digital audiobook distributor, today announced that they will enable publishers to generate revenue by offering complementary services to deliver eBooks, audiobooks, music and video titles to consumers. As a result, publishers will be able to automatically package for resale digital content from the LibreDigital Internet Warehouse and link to OverDrive’s large worldwide distribution channel of more than 7,500 libraries, schools and retailers such as Los Angeles Public Library, Borders, WHSmith, efollett.com and others. Technorati Tags: OverDrive,NewsStand,LibrieDigital...

The typical book-oriented blogger---I'm talking about book-book, as opposed to e-book---recoils from the slightest discussion of tech. So I'm pleased that one of the leading book-bookers, Kassia Krozser at Booksquare, has just called for consumer-level ePub and the end of vendor-tethered DRM. And reasonable prices, too. Plus books sold in chunks, if consumers want 'em that way. On top of that, she thinks beyond the Kindle paradigm and pushes for the multidevice and multiuse approaches---entirely consistent with her vision of the iPhone as an e-book reader. Kassia is an old hand at E, having started in the '90s,...

Remember the disappearing PDAs? Sales slumping and all that. Maybe I've solved the mystery. They're all turning into mini notebooks---perhaps the next mass e-reading platform, along with cell phones and, yes, yes, E Inkers. Latest MN entrant is Dell, maker of the fire-engine-red Mini Inspiron that Michael Dell showed off. From Gizmodo: "It's a small form factor notebook, just  like the Asus Eee and the HP 2133. He wouldn't tell me what OS it's running, or the pricing, but that it's a low-cost notebook meant for developing countries, and I hope here. Maybe it's Atom-powered. Who knows? But I do...

More from Hadrien at Feedbooks on the company's forthcoming E Ink machine:   "Right now we're mostly focusing on basic features that we believe are very important for such a device: the ability to browse through the device using folders OR metadata (currently no device support both), the UI etc... "We're not planning to initially support things such as a dictionary, I'd rather have a device with a good bookmarking feature (no bookmarks on the iLiad, useless on the Cybook, only Sony did this right) first. "It's very easy to have a discussion with...

Oh, how sneaky. Just after I said no one was clicking on our Amazon ads and buying, I looked at  a fresh sales report. Would you believe, two Kindles are on order (Amazon Associates link)---plus one JanSport Superbreak Backpack (White/Silver Stars), which I'll mercifully picture here instead of running yet another K-machine photo. Hey, whatever it takes to make us sustainable and avoid PBS-style begathons. Below the Archives links in the second column, you'll find an Amazon search form. Keep sneaking away. We're also accepting ads directly or through the Project Wonderful network (thanks again, Colin, for that...

Intrigued by the $40 price drop on the once-$400 Kindle? But you're holding off because another model is surely on its way soon? Don't. Kindle 2 is "not that near," according to a two-part video of an interview that the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg just had with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. A summary from Engadget: "On Kindle 2: 'There will be a second version, a third version, a tenth version. ... but a second version is not that near.' "According to Bezos, on a title-by-title basis of the 125,000 titles available both...

In geography and tech, it's a long way from Seattle-based Amazon.com to the horse country of Kentucky. But Jeff Bezos should beware anyway. Some members of the horsey set just might fly or ride out to Washington state to bean him with an iron shoe---well, almost. Enraged by Amazon's print-on-demand grab, the Long Riders' Guild Press hasn't just written the U.S. Justice Department. It's also complained to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, whose oh-so-green turf includes prime horse country. Guess where Amazon has a fulfillment center? Lexington, aka "Horse Capital of the World"! Beshear should think beyond the Amazon jobs...

Already discounted by other stores, the Sony Reader PRS-505 is now going for $255 at the Style Store---complete with the ability to engrave it. You may not see the new price until you use the checkout basket. Response to the Kindle price drop? (Found via MobileRead forum.)...