OverDrive and Sourcebooks to Launch Ambitious E-Book Data Experiment (Library Journal) Goodreads Alternative Riffle Goes Live (Publishers Weekly) How much does a Pulitzer affect books sales? (Melville House) Codex Group: Ebooks to Level Off at 30% of Publishing Revenues, With Caveats (DBW) Kindle Daily Deals: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (and 3 others)...

Honestly, I hadn't even heard about this until I woke up this morning and checked my phone, but apparently today—that's Friday, May 3, 2013—is something of a holiday in the digital publishing community. It's the fifth annual International Day Against DRM. Huh. The organization behind the holiday—which in reality is more of an awareness-raising movement—is known as Defective by Design. As the DBD website explains, "We are a participatory and grassroots campaign exposing DRM-encumbered devices and media for what they really are: Defective by Design. We are working together to eliminate DRM as a threat to innovation in media, the privacy of...

Earlier today, O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly announced in a blog post that after seven years of hosting the Tools of Change for Publishing conference, a digital publishing event attended annually by many of the biggest names and most important members of the industry, the conference is being officially retired. Also folding along with the conference is the popular TOC blog, which, like its namesake series of events, is considered a crucial portion of most every digital publishing professional's media diet. The rationale behind the cancellation of Tools of Change seems largely to be one of financial priority. In the aforementioned blog...

A social entrepreneurship company based in Australia, Mailbooks for Good, has recently launched a literary-minded project that combines good design and a simple but strong idea with the joy of philanthropy. The company's tagline, "Re-gift the gift of reading," does a decent job of explaining the concept. But here's the general idea, direct from the MFG website: Mailbooks For Good is an innovation in book publishing, which allows you to donate books directly to those who need it. When the books are finished, readers simply turn the covers inside out and the books become pre-paid and pre-addressed packages. Once posted they are...

There's something inherently fascinating—although I've never quite been able to put my finger on it—about those mysterious and supposedly intellectual fine art thieves who seem to make international headlines every few years. It's very James Bond, I guess. It turns out that stealing rare maps is also a thing. According to a fantastic book by Miles Harvey I recently read about this surprisingly odd underworld, map thieves in the United States tend to ply their trade in rickety old Eastern Seaboard university libraries, where they use X-Acto blades to remove maps from bound books. And of course, historic bound volumes themselves are stolen all the...

I had a pretty bizarre email waiting for me in my in-box this morning. It was from a fellow I'll call Bill, since I don't know if he would actually appreciate being identified here or not. At any rate, Bill was getting in touch, odd as it may sound, to alert me to the fact that TeleRead had somehow—at some point—been cloned. Bill proceded to tell me that a website of his had previously been cloned by someone using the IP address 192.155.93.220—he thinks they also used 184.22.242.240—and he was eventually able to stop the cloners by simply blocking their IP address. (He's...

The public library question is one we ask ourselves frequently here at TeleRead: In general, how well—or how poorly—are libraries adapting to the Internet age? And how, exactly, are library patrons using their local branches? (As low-cost coffee shops or free Internet cafes, perhaps?) And for that matter, do most patrons consider their local library's print book collection to be just as crucial as it ever was? Tough questions, all of them. If you spend a moment studying the infographic below, which was sent to us today from the website CityTownInfo.com, you'll likely come to the same conclusion we've come to...

OverDrive's Upcoming API Will Allow Ebook Checkout Directly from OPAC (The Digital Shift) Publishing should fight ebook retailers for more data (Boing Boing) Ebook anxieties increase as publishing revolution rolls on (The Guardian Judge: No Jury for Penguin in E-book Case (Publishers Weekly) Kindle Daily Deals: American Gods by Neil Gaiman (and 3 others)    ...

The Independent Book Publishers Association yesterday announced that it has selected Angela Bole, currently the deputy executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, as the association’s next executive director. Bole will be replacing Florrie Binford Kichler, who will be retiring from the IBPA this June. “IBPA has been uniquely positioned as the heart and soul of independent publishing for 30 years,” said Angela Bole, in a release. “Being extremely passionate about books and storytelling in all possible genres and formats, I knew right away IBPA was the perfect fit. It’s a community center, a support network, an education hub, and proof that it’s...

I won't pretend to be familiar with the European Inventor Award myself, but according to the European Patent Office, "it pays tribute to the men and women whose quest for new ideas drives technological progress and economic growth, shapes society and improves our daily lives." Fifteen inventors are in the running for the award this year, and interestingly enough, one of the non-European inventors in the running is the U.S.-based team of Joseph M. Jacobson (pictured above) and Barrett Comiskey. Never heard of them? Me neither. But apparently they were the actual inventors of E Ink technology. E Ink displays, of course, have...

Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre? (NPR) What Kids Think of Books, Reading and Technology {Infographic} (E-Book Friendly) Bill for compulsory science fiction in West Virginia schools (The Guardian) Sydney bookseller holds Kindle 'amnesty' (The Bookseller) 30 Things to Tell a Book Snob (Booktrust) Kindle Daily Deals: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (and 3 others) * * * ...

Mike McEnaney spent nearly 10 years working as both an editor and a publisher of B2B photography and digital photography magazines for North American Publishing Company (NAPCO), the same organization that owns and operates both TeleRead and the Technology Tell network of websites. Very recently, though, McEnaney struck out on his own. And somehow, along with fellow journalist Greg Scoblete, he has already managed to launch Your Digital Life, a website about the digital photography revolution. McEnaney and Scoblete's latest project, however, is an e-book, also about the world of digi-photography. From Fleeting to Forever: Enjoying & Preserving Your Digital Photos and Videos, as...