Sarah Palin’s new book will appear in print on November 17, but not in E until December 26, the day after Christmas, so e-books won’t steal away p-book sales. But as Kassia Krozer wonders, is that really true about E? And wouldn’t Harper make more money with E piggybacking on the initial publicity for P? Meanwhile, smartly moving in the opposite direction, the Daily Beast’s Tina Brown (right photo) and Perseus are teaming up to get newsy books out in E first. Initial title? Attack of the Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, by...

Jessamyn, at librarian.net, has a very depressing listing of all the sites that should be promoting Banned Books Week - but aren't. Read it and weep: As usual, I clicked through from the ALA web page to the home pages of all the organizations who are co-sponsors of Banned Books Week. Here’s what I found. The American Booksellers Association mentions BBW and offers a broken link to more information about it The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is still offering its handbook from 2007 The American Society for Journalists and Authors appears pretty busy opposing the Google settlement to mention BBW. The Association...

This could be a useful report for the librarians among us who have to make some hard decisions about when to retain hard copy after a journal has been digitized. You can find all the details here. Determining the value of retaining print after its digitization requires a system-wide analysis of the needs of all libraries and their users collectively, rather than focusing only on a region, a system, or a consortium,” stated Roger Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka S+R and co-author of this report. “Our analysis indicates that libraries today can safely de-accession certain print holdings that are...

It certainly seems that an incredible resource has opened up. During October all content will be free and then it will be free at any NARA computer and fee-based for 5 years if you are not using a NARA computer. From Resource Shelf: Starting today, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust-related documents will be searchable online through an agreement between the National Archives and Records Administration and Footnote.com. NARA officials said the massive collection of records about looted assets, concentration camp registers and proceedings of the Nuremberg war crime trials will form part of the Web’s largest interactive collection of Holocaust records. The...

The guy in the picture is reading from a Kindle “in the shadow of the great New York Public Library.” But “old-fashioned library books still reign supreme” there. Could that change? Maybe if librarians will take time to learn the technology, and about specific machine. They’re stretched thin, many of them. But maybe a new Kindle library wiki will help, as a way for librarians to share tips and save time. The Kindle Library Home is a joint project of Duke Medical Center Library and Texas A&M Medical Library. Medicine and med-ed are priorities. there. But...

The Kindle’s tiny chiclet-style keyboard takes up space---but isn’t terrific for fast typing. But what if Amazon someday gave the Kindle voice recognition? Could that work for shared notes in books? For customer-provided book-reviews? Intriguing possibilities come up in the $250 Lighthouse SQ7 from AdelaVoice. The “first portable social media device” uses voice recognition. The idea is to help you update Facebook and Twitter friends. The speech recognition, from what I know, is far from perfect. But consider the future possibilities. Good voice recognition would be one way of dealing with a...

Could Disney get kids excited about books by offering a subscription plan? DisneyDigitalBooks.com will offer 500 e-books for children from three to 13 years old---for $8.95 monthly, reports the New York Times. Annual fee is $79.95 a year (lower month cost). Winnie the Pooh and Tigers, Too and Hannah Montana: Crush-tastic are among the offerings.  Excerpt from the Times: In the “look and listen” section for beginning readers, the books will be read aloud by voice actors to accompanying music (with each word highlighted on the screen as it is spoken). Another area...

How will the Net affect literature based on life? That’s what many of the most memorable books are, from This Side of Paradise to Thomas Wolfe’s autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel. In what ways would Wolfe’s fiction have been different in the Facebook era? The bad: Some writers may feel more inhibited. The people they’re writing about have more chances of finding out what the authors are up to. The good: More opportunities for research, even on topics close to home. So much more may come out on the Net than from traditional paper sources...

Editor's note: Your local public library may not carry e-books for the Sony Reader despite all the talk about the Sony LibraryFinder. TeleRead contributor Jeff Scott agrees with Co-Editor Paul Biba’s complaint. And he finds other Sony-related shortcomings, too. Jeff is deputy director of the Tulare County Library System in California. Also see our post telling how Sony could help bring Long Tail books to local libraries. – D.R. I was disappointed that Sony's August 26th announcement didn't add more to libraries. Earlier I’d thought that Sony presenting at the New York Public Library would indicate improved performance...

Sony’s new deals with Smashwords and Author Solutions were progress, all right. People there see a role for Long Tail books---in other words, the non-bestsellers that so often are better than potboilers from the big guys. But how can Sony get these books onto the e-readers, laptops and desktops of consumers? Public libraries are one way. Bypassing the big p-retailers Perhaps Sony should make a special push for this to happen, with special emphasis on title of local interest. Both Sony and the public would win. Yesterday I showed how inept the retail chains could be in their handling of books by local...

Sony news release follows. In many ways this is similar to a distribution agreement Smashwords signed with Barnes & Noble. On another matter, there’s speculation that Smashwords authors wil keep at least 42 percent of revenues on books sold through Sony. Related: Techmeme roundup and a new TeleRead post, E-library strategy idea for Sony: Long Tail books, especially of local interest. – D.R. September 29, 2009---Continuing to deliver on its promise to provide customers access to the widest selection of content available, Sony today announced relationships with Author Solutions, Inc. and Smashwords, Inc.  Together with Sony,...

This is pretty early in the game, but the Daily Princetonian is reporting that some users aren't too thrilled with the Kindle experience. In the pilot program 50 students received Kindle DX units which contained their source readings. Here is what one student had to say. Read the article to get some positive opinions as well. “I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.” Horvath said that using...