Maybe not exactly on topic, but I thought we should be part of the chronicle of the end of an era. The Monitor is 100 years old and is now the first paper to embrace a primarily-internet strategy. I find this fascinating. My daughter, who is 28, has a Masters in Journalism from Medill and has just made the masthead of Wired as a Correspondent. Despite being a professional journalist she, and all of her peers whom I have met, consider print newspapers to be irrelevant. We are seeing this attitude reflect, of course, in the increasing problems all newspapers...

In a step forward for open standards, ECTACO has announced that its jetBook will support EPUB in the first quarter of 2009. Additionally, the jetBook will also support MobiPocket at that time. Fodor's Travel Guide will also be included as a pre-load on every jetBook. You can find the full press release here....

TeleRead is already running first-rate contributions from Ficbot, Joe Wikert, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, Garson O'Toole, Chris Meadows, Richard Herley and other talented writers---but the more the merrier. Especially while David is recuperating from his open heart surgery, I would welcome additional help. Let's grow an interactive community where we all can participate and help spread the word about the pros and cons of e-books. More than the usual blog Yes, cons, too. TeleRead is notable for its candor on topics ranging from DRM to eBabel. In the blog word, it is the leading advocate of e-book standards. Along the way, it also gets picked up by...

Wired has an article looking back at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was signed into law ten years ago today. In a touch of hyperbole, the headline calls it "the law that saved the web," which has drawn ire from many of the people leaving comments below it. The article itself is a fairly well-balanced retrospective on the DMCA's first ten years of effectiveness, examining both the good and the bad. The good is the DMCA's "Safe Harbor" provision, which gives content hosts immunity from prosecution for copyright violation as long as they act to take down...

As reported on Slashdot, Google and the Authors Guild have settled their litigation over Google Books nee Print's unauthorized scanning of copyrighted books. This appears to be a classic case of a compromise that benefits all sides. If it is approved by the courts, Google will pay $125 million in legal fees, settlement of claims by scanned authors, and to establish a "Book Rights Registry" that will keep track of known rightsholders and work on locating unknown ones. This could lead to more than just snippets of books being available. One of the press releases breaks it down so:...

Our contributor Richard Herley describes this book on his website as: In 13th-century Sussex, an illicit love-affair and ruthless power-politics find focus in a masterwork of medieval engineering. Well, it certainly is that. I decided to download Richard's books (he is offering them for free on his site and asks you to make a contribution if you like what you've read) as I was intrigued by the time frame in which it was set, as well as by the the concept of medieval engineering. The book centers around the attempt of an English Lord to erect a mill that is...

I would like to send a message to all large publishing houses reading this. Electronic reading devices are here to stay. Instead of fearing the loss of sales through historic paper publishing venues, publishers should embrace this new technology. Just think of the possibilities! With electronic editions, publishers can offer enhanced e-books with author interviews, photos, music clips, and other inducements to increase electronic sales. Book stores such as Barnes and Noble could offer exclusive electronic editions containing content available only through their outlets. The possibilities are there to drive sales in ways open to the imagination. Printing...

I just ordered the paper version of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book from Amazon. There is a certain class of books that I have no interest in having in ebook form. This set of books is stuff from authors I dearly love and I just want to be able to see all their books on a shelf and say to myself that I have them all. Gaiman is one of the authors in this category, Glen Cook is another and Terry Pratchett is the most important of all! There is something about having these things right in my...

"...only by eliminating DRM and making e-books cross platform compatible will the e-book really benefit from the Oprah push. An Amazon with monopolistic control over e-books will be bad for the industry and bad for the readers." - Dear Author. "I guess we'll soon find out whether Winfrey is the Kindle's golden goose. If Amazon begins spilling the beans on Kindle sales---and it has the perfect opportunity to rattle off how many units it moved over the weekend or wait a few more days to give us the first week of the Winfrey bump---you'll know it's a winner." -...

Editor's note: Kudos to Florrie Binford Kichler of Patria Press, who sent in the essay below in response to our call for reader contributions. She is president of the Independent Book Publishers Association. Got anything on your mind? Speak up if it's relevant. No organizational title needed. That's what early e-book proponents promised us a decade ago, and while we may get there eventually, my prediction is that it will take another generation to do so. The major sticking point of the e-book readers---including the Kindle---to date is that they have been limited to a proprietary format only available from one...

A recent article in the Toronto Star talks about parity pricing---the issue of the publishing industry setting higher list prices for non-Americans, and how customers lose out when all is said and done. I've blogged earlier about the bargains to be had for Canadian e-customers, but that was when the dollar was still at par with the American dollar. We're at about $0.86 cents US now, so are e-books still a bargain? Here are the last five books I bought from Fictionwise. For each, I'll list the amazon.com list price, the amazon.ca list price, and the Fictionwise club price I paid....

Best of luck to Fictionwise, which is being dogged by Mobipocket-related problems that originated with Mobi, not FW. This is hardly the first time that Mobi has suffered woes. Anyone know of Mobi problems at other stores? Or elsewhere? Able to download Mobi books you've already paid for? Excerpt from FW e-mail dated 11:27 a.m.: The Fictionwise bookshelf is back up. Mobi is still down with absolutely no word from them. We'll keep trying but we're getting auto-email replies to our main contacts over there (the auto-replies say they are on vacation). The troubles have been going on since...